Truly an Earth Day

Good Friday and Earth Day are crammed into the same calendar square this year.

If you are looking for an Earth Day scripture that fits the pop-culture rhetoric, try Isaiah 24:5
The earth is also polluted by its inhabitants...

But now try putting it in context by adding the next line:
The earth is also polluted by its inhabitants, for they transgressed laws, violated statutes, broke the everlasting covenant. Therefore, a curse devours the earth, and those who live in it are held guilty.

God isn't talking about oil spills or greenhouse gases. He clearly tells mankind what pollutes the earth way back in the earliest chapters of the Bible. We see it in the story of Cain and Abel. By the time mankind advances to the Book of Numbers, it is codified into law:

So you shall not pollute the land in which you are; for blood pollutes the land and no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it. Numbers 35:33

And THIS is what makes Good Friday truly an Earth Day. The blood of Christ was shed for the clean-up of the Earth.

Spring 2011

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110221.html

Riparian Christmas

This week has brought a confluence of seemingly unrelated thoughts and channeled them onto a most unlikely Christmas post.

The first rivulet was a guy's general complaint about feeling the pressure of giving. He believed too much is expected of him. His attitude was that if he had money, he could give the gifts that he wanted. Instead, he felt guilty and gloomy.

In real life, my response dripped with suggestions of spending time doing things with and for others. Quality time produces better memories than merchandise. That answer is true enough, but the raw truth is that the guy is clueless. I did not tell him that. What he "feels" is the weight and heaviness of too much expectation is not even close to what God expects.

The next runnel to join my stream of consciousness is something that I am beginning to suspect is a societal myth. Haven't you always heard that Christmas depresses people? Google, Bing or Whatever and you will find many articles that say it is so. You won't find the case studies in their footnotes. It is difficult to find any hard proof of Christmas-caused depression. What you may find is seasonal affective disorder. The Mayo Clinic says SAD is caused by the effect of decreased daylight on neurochemicals and hormones. Blame Winter Solstice, not Christmas!

Another tributary, this time courtesy of a Facebook comment, fesses up to feeling "like I am playing dodge ball" whist Lucifer attempts to lob his munitions of depression.

All of which mingles in the unlikely estuary of finding a Christmas message in the Book of Job.

The setting for Book of Job is one of the most ancient; perhaps only the first eleven chapters of Genesis pre-date it. Near the end of the book are 123 verses of direct quotes from God, ending with a picture of God as Dragon Master. (Revelation, the book that reaches farthest into the future, shows God as the Dragon Slayer. From beginning to end, God has final victory over trouble caused by sin, death, and Satan.) When we see God in His grandeur as Master of the Universe, it helps put our problems into perspective.

You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who had suffered more sever affliction than Job. He had lost seven sons, three daughters, 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and the shepherds and servants who managed his livestock. That is a lot of loss of life. Yet Job's deliverance came not in the counsels of his three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, nor in the diatribe of the upstart theologian Elihu, but release came in being reminded that God laid the foundations of the earth and set its measurements.

He enclosed the boundaries of the sea and caused the dawn to know its place. He led forth the constellations and channeled the lightning. He provided food for the animals of the earth. He gave the horse its might and caused the eagle to rise upon wings.

Chapter 40 tells of Behemoth. This beastly dinosaur has strength in his loins and his power in the muscles of his belly. "He bends his tail like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are knit together. His bones are tubes of bronze; his limbs are like bars of iron." [...] "Under the lotus plants he lies down, in the covert of the reeds and the marsh. The lotus plants cover him with shade; the willows of the brook surround him. If a river rages, he is not alarmed; he is confident, though the Jordan rushes to his mouth.


As the Lord continues to describe His creation in Chapter 41, He reminds Job that He can strip off the outer armor and come within the double mail of the dragon. (He calls it Leviathan, but it describes a dragon.) Even though the dragon's skin is air-tight and "out of his mouth go burning torches; sparks of fire leap forth; out of his nostrils smoke goes forth as from a boiling pot and burning rushes; his breath kindles coals, and a flame goes forth from his mouth"—even in all this, God can draw him out with a fishhook.

When Job gets a picture of the majesty of God, his recovery was near. Job, who had been falsely accused of sinful actions, discovered that the only thing he had to apologize for was his lack of understanding who God is.

Before, Job had heard about God. After his experience, he saw Him for Who He Is.
And THAT is what Christmas is about. Immanuel. God with us. Understanding who God is. The thing that got Job out of his funk was getting a fuller, more complete picture of who God is.


That is where the first guy in this blog got stuck on the shoals. He does not see a God in control of creation. He feels pressured to buy stuff. I should end this post now with a nice, pithy river reference. But, no. Instead, I am going to row this boat over to comment on the teaching of evolution. When kids are taught evolution only, the school robs them of the opportunity to see God in control of creation. Children who are robbed of the opportunity to see God in control of Creation are doomed to greater despair and hopelessness.

Roads end, but rivers flow on to the sea. Evolution is a dry gulch dead-ending in a desert. To deny creation is to deny the Creator. To deny the Creator is to end in desolation. God wants to be known. He went out of His way to make Himself known. He has visited His people.

This is the article that was supposed to post last month but didn't. The reason is simple enough: I never know who is going to read this. Since complaints tend to sound worse secondhand, it seemed prudent to do some preemptive damage control. That mission successfully completed, let the rant begin!



Christmas cheer took an early hit this year. The church bulletin announced that the Christmas Eve Candlelighting Ceremony would be on December 22nd.

It sounds to me like people want to have their Christmas cookie and to eat it too. All the fun of a candlelight service with none of the inconvenience or sacrifice. So much for the lights in the firmament of the heaven being for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years. Don't find the date convenient? That's okay, we'll just ratchet our waning gibbous moon back to full.

The pagans are not so cavalier about it. I had to check, and we are okay for 2010. Solstice is on the 21st at 23:38 (or 11:38pm) UTC this year, so that gives us 22 minutes to spare. But some years, a candle lighting on the 22nd would be sharing the glow with the wiccan Sabbat of the Yule. That is just wrong.

That is not my biggest complaint though. That is just the one that sounds good.

My biggest complaint sounds selfish. My biggest complaint is that moving Christmas Eve services to the 22nd robs me of my power. If the candle lighting were on the real eve, I could get my entire family to church. With two working retail and one living a hundred miles away, it is not going to happen on the 22nd.

Ah, the irony. It seems that some folks don't want a Christmas eve candle lighting on the real Christmas eve because they "want to spend time at home with their family." That type of reasoning makes me feel like an Asperger kid. I do not connect the dots. Spending family time at home seems pretty ordinary to my kids. What would make Christmas Eve special would be going to church as a family and singing a very old and very traditional carol slightly off key. Then we would come home and have chocolate mousse before bed.

I am not stupid. I know what is going to happen. One will say, "Well, mom, since you don't have anything special planned, I'll just come over in the morning." And another, "Can I borrow some wrapping paper? I didn't wrap my stuff yet since you didn't have anything planned." Then they will be off to another room with the door shut tight. Or this, "My friend asked me to go hear their church's bell choir, and since our family isn't doing anything, I said yes."

So what would I like in a church? I would like a little support in keeping the light of Christmas Eve focused where it ought to be.


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The Halloween To-Do

Two weeks ago, the pendulum was still swinging over my Halloween proclivities; it had pretty much swung back to the notion that it is probably best if the church ignores it.

That is what my childhood church did about Halloween—nothing. Trick-or-treating was a secular thing; its hours and patrols were run by the local government. During my elementary years in public school, a Halloween celebration usually included a couple creepy stories, an art project, and a classroom costume party after the final recess. The room mothers kindly gave us real sugar cookies and did not try to 'trick' us into more healthful eating by 'treating' us with carrot sticks. (I heard all the politically correct places are doing that now.)

In my high school, observation of the holiday was nonexistent outside hallway chatter. Perhaps the administration felt that keeping it off campus would minimize the destruction of school property; who knows? Some years the community theater raised funds by haunting a local building and charging for the tour. I went to a Quaker College, and if the Society of Friends has an official position on Halloween, it was not made known.

Life moved on and the next thing I heard as a young adult was that Halloween was suddenly Evil. The bob had changed directions; Halloween was a pagan holiday and anyone who celebrated it was dabbling in the occult—or worse.

The church community was having alternative Halloween activities thinly disguised as Harvest Festivals. The kids 'harvested' candy. In hindsight, I think that was a horrible idea. There were standard announcements from the pulpit in those days: Bring in your donations of candy because we don't want our Christian kids to be left out. OK folks, what is wrong with that theology? Hint: The pretense of having an alternative was to avoid worldly things, and with the exception of dark chocolate, candy accrual is pretty worldly.

Further proof of worldliness infiltrating the alternatives is that the celebration of Reformation Day never caught on. This October 31^st anniversary of Martin Luther nailing it in Wittenberg ought to be a day of celebration for the Protestant church. To bad old Marty wasn't known for giving away sweets.

With a half century of thought on the matter, the pendulum swung back and I had decided that Halloween is a secular holiday, no matter how it is handled.

Then I found this:

Your dead will live; Their corpses will rise. You who lie in the dust, awake and shout for joy, For your dew is as the dew of the dawn, And the earth will give birth to the departed spirits.
Isaiah 26:19

Now, isn't that just about the coolest thing ever? I think the pendulum finally struck 'dead' center.

This statement, originally addressed to collective Israel, was metaphorical as it addressed her deliverance from exile and the restoration of the nation; it can be literal as it applies to the near and coming end times. Better still, a literal interpretation goes world wide.

Metaphorical support: Ezekiel 37: 1-14, valley of the dry bones
Literal support: Daniel 12:2, "Many of those who sleep in the dusty ground will awake – some to everlasting life, and others to shame and everlasting abhorrence."

Secular All Hallow's Eve: Boo!
God's All Hallow's Eve: Woo-hoo!

Clothesline.

Laundry is one of the more mundane things in life. I was hanging clothes on the line this week and I suppose some folks would, beratingly, call me obsessive/compulsive about the way that I did it, but this is very simply the way that I think.

Let me back up a little...

I often hear people describe things, just general stuff—I'm talking water cooler chit-chat or church pot-latch dinner conversations—and I'll start feeling like I am from another planet. These common, everyday things are so not my experience. For example, I will hear some mom say that she can hardly wait for school to start so that the kids will be out of her hair. I cannot relate. Or some guy will say that he can't go fishing because his wife is making him finish her Honey-do List this weekend. Really? That is completely outside the realm of my experience. Where do these wives get this power? I would never be able to get my husband to ever agree to a Honey-do List, especially if it would mean sacrificing something that he wanted to do.

I'd say that I have a hard time relating to about a quarter of scenarios offered as examples by motivational speakers and in sermons. Doing things that are normal stuff for others, I will be attacked for. I once had a small, well-contained, perfectly legal leaf fire burning, when Jeannine, the demon-possessed neighbor, called the fire department on me. The firemen drove right past our place at first; the driver said he had driven past three larger leaf and brush fires on the way to this call and had had a hard time finding this fire. He wondered why it had been phoned in.
I have a lot of stories like that. I'm totally legal. I'm totally innocent. I'm totally attacked by hypocrites who do far worse. That is my reality.

But today's blog is about the clothesline.


At this time of year, past the autumnal equinox, the clothesline gets only a few hours of midday sun at the western end. Due to the position of a towering water oak, the east end gets less. I hang the slow-to-dry heavy socks and jeans at the western end and the quick drying polyesters at the east. This is normal for me and makes sense. It is not something I stopped and contemplated, I just did it. Everything gets dry this way. If jeans are hung on the east end, they will have damp crotches and pockets whist the flimsy stuff on the western front would have been dry much earlier.

I don't get why anyone would think that is odd. I think making jokes about "getting shed" of your kids when school starts is odd.



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Autumnal Equinox – Harvest Moon

It is 2010, (at least it is on the most common of Earth's calendars,) and this year the autumnal equinox and the harvest moon occurred within hours of each other. Calculating the sun's position relative to the earth, fall began on September 22 at 11:09 PM Eastern time and the moon became fully full (or if you wish to sound like a scientist, it achieved maximum illumination) within hours, early on September 23. It will be nineteen years before we come close to that again.