David w/ Goliath Head!

Caravaggio 1573 – 1610 - oil on panel (91 × 116 cm) — 1606/07

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Caravaggio mostly painted on canvas, but this work was made on a panel. For more on Caravaggio see Caravaggio biography.

This work is linked to 1 Samuel 17:54

David has just killed the giant Goliath and takes the head with him in order to show it to his people.

Niccolò Machiavelli, in The Prince, states that we should learn this lesson from David and fight with our own weapons, using our own strengths, and not try to borrow or hire those of others.

What are some of the Goliaths we face in life?

Goliath represents the many insufferable obstacles and pitfalls we encounter in life, whether they be spiritual or physical. Goliaths will try to win over us, but, like David, we have the grace of God on our side, and God empowers us to confront and conquer those enormous giants. Like David, we fight with our God given weaponry to defeat them. We do not need to borrow or hire the weapons of others; all we need is the Person and Work of our Lord Jesus Christ to defeat whatever Goliath we encounter. So pray, study the Word of God, and witness to God’s grace in the face of today's Goliaths.

Heads will roll!

enjoy, ron

Karl Barth Quotes

 

Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is himself the way. - Karl Barth

Source: Karl Barth Quotes

Light!

Someone once said, "There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures."

"Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

"Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor 4:1-6).

lighten up, ron

Murdered Bible Printers!

Killing Christians in the name of religion doesn't raise an eyebrow to Muslim murder in the name of civility! Click on the below link and ask yourself what's wrong with this picture?

Link to GetReligion » Print » Lackluster coverage of murdered Bible printers

See also this FOXNews link & Christianity Today Link.

ex parte? ron

Theodicy!

A gunman walks into various dorms and classrooms at Virginia Tech and opens fire on students and professors. Students jump out of four story classroom windows to get away from the carnage. Then, the gunman, a fellow student named Cho Seung-hui, turns the gun on himself. In the worst school shooting in U.S. history, 33 students (including Cho) and professors are dead.

Immense tragedies such as this raise a host of questions. Where is God in all this? How could he allow this to happen? What kind of anguish would cause someone to randomly shoot people, and then commit suicide? What can we do as a society to prevent such tragedies in the future?

We are again facing the age old question of evil in a world both created and controlled by a good God (known, in theological circles, as theodicy). In case you are unfamiliar with either the term or its definition, here is one way the problem is presented:

God cannot be both all good and all powerful because:

1. if he is good then he would do all he could to stop evil; evil exists, therefore God did not stop it and is not all powerful.
2. if he is all powerful and evil exists then evil is his doing; therefore he is not good.

N.T. Wright makes the following point in his brilliant book Evil and the Justice of God:

If you offer an analysis of evil which leaves us saying, “Well, that’s all right then; we now see how it happens and what to do about it,” you have belittled the problem…. for the Christian, the problem is how to understand and celebrate the goodness and God-giveness of creation and, at the same time, understand and face up to the reality and seriousness of evil.

Evil cannot be explained. It can be viewed from different perspectives, but we, as finite creatures, do not fully know why evil is in the world and what God’s purpose for it is. What we do know, as Christians, is that we believe in an all powerful, all holy, all loving, all knowing, just God who has acted faithfully in the past and in whom we can be confident will act in the future.

At the end of the day there are no worldviews or religions that give a satisfying reason for evil in the world. What Christianity does have to offer above all other worldviews is the confident hope that God will restore the world. On that day, and not a day sooner, will we then understand the ‘why’ of the problem of evil.

“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, of the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; and it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify what has happened.” Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

For further reading:

The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis

Evil and the Justice of God by N.T. Wright

Unspeakable by Os Guinness

How Long O Lord? by D.A. Carson

Why Does It Have To Hurt? The Meaning of Christian Suffering by Dan McCartney

Suffering and the Sovereignty of God by John Piper

Peace, ron

The Real Easter!

Easter greeting illustrated by Michael Walker.

enjoy, ron

Receive Jesus!

The life & death of Jesus Christ!



Jesus took your punishment upon Himself -"For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3.16-17). Then He rose from the dead and defeated death. Please, repent (turn from sin) today and trust in Jesus, and God will grant you everlasting life. Jesus is alive! Follow Him today!

The Three Marys at the Tomb!

Hubert van Eyck ? – 1426

Jesus has risen!

Van Eyck’s painting shows three women positioned at the empty grave of Jesus. An angel is telling them what happened while the guards slumber in a deep sleep. The women bring bottles with ointment and spices to anoint the corpse.

None of the gospels describes the scene exactly as Van Eyck does on this panel. The painting is closest to Matthew's description, the only gospel that mentions an angel sitting on the door to the empty grave, and that also mentions the sleeping guards.

Mark talks of "Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome" and a young man sitting next to the grave.

Luke says the women were "Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James". He also claims that "two men stood by them in shining garments".

John only mentions Mary Magdalene visiting the grave.

This work is linked to Luke 24:1.

He is risen!
He is risen indeed!

Happy Resurrection Sunday, ron

The Entombment!

By Caravaggio 1573 – 1610

Monumental work by Caravaggio on the Entombment.

Nicodemus and the apostle John have wrapped Jesus in cloths. The women look on and throw up their arms and wail as Jesus is laid down.

The painting first served as an altarpiece for Roman church,

but is now part of the papal collection.

This work is linked to Mark 15:46

enjoy Easter, ron

Rise Up!

"Tsisa Dulehisanv" is Cherokee for “Jesus / when he arose”.

He is risen!
He is risen, indeed!

Happy Easter!

Red Alert!

Prophet Dylan!

Pope Benedict XVI ( alias, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) is known to have a strong dislike of popular music. As a matter of fact, he tried to stop Bob Dylan playing for the late John Paul II. It seems that Benedict feared Dylan was a "prophet" whose beliefs were at odds with the Roman Catholic Church.

In a recent book of memoirs about his predecessor, Pope Benedict recalls the events of the World Eucharist Congress at Bologna in 1997. It was a gathering of 300,000 young Catholic pilgrims who were to be exposed to Bob Dylan's radical songs with their "completely different" message.

Benedict wrote: "The Pope appeared tired, exhausted. At that very moment the stars arrived, Bob Dylan and others whose names I do not remember.

''They had a completely different message from the one which the Pope had.

"There was reason to be sceptical - I was, and in some ways I still am - over whether it was really right to allow this type of 'prophet' to appear."

At the time he gritted his teeth and sat it out. But now Pope Benedict XVI has admitted that he thought his predecessor's encounter with the singer Bob Dylan was a awful scheme.

In 1997, John Paul II sat on a stage along with 50 cardinals in a vast fairground outside Bologna while slightly below and in front of him, Bob Dylan, wearing a cowboy hat and rhinestone-spangled zoot suit, crunched his way through "Knockin' on Heaven's Door", "It's a Hard Rain" and "Forever Young".

After his performance Dylan went to greet John Paul on the podium to robust roars from the young and enthusiastic crowd.

Dylan became a born-again Christian sometime in the late 1970’s and released several albums relating to personal salvation. Notable among his Christian releases is Slow Train Coming.

enjoy, ron

Sinnerman!

Check out this YouTube of David Eugene Edwards (Woven Hand), the long-time front man for those remarkable gothabilly rockers 16 Horsepower singing Sinnerman.

16 Horsepower is not your ordinary Christian country-music band. There’s little hillbilly or cowboy about them. Rather, their subject matter turns on man's sins and breakdown, societies lack of faith, wallowing in a world of superficial possessions... all swallowed up in traumatic soundscapes of `ghostly banjos and a rather pulsation low-end. This music and lyric is not for the faint of heart!

Sinnerman lyrics

o sinnerman where will you run to
sinnerman where will you run to
sinnerman where will you run to
all on that day

run to the mountain
the mountain wont hide you
run to the sea
the sea will not have you
and run to your grave
your grave will not hold you
all on that day

see sinnerman
mountains are falling
sinnerman
the sea it rages
sinnerman
the grave will not hold you
all on that day
run to the lord
lord please hide me
run to the lord

sinnerman
sinnerman
sinnerman

where you gonna run to
all on that day
run to the mountain
the mountain wont hide you
and run to the sea
the sea will not hold you
and run to your grave
the grave will not hide you
all on that day

sinnerman
the mountain is falling
and sinnerman
the sea it rages
and sinnerman
sinnerman
sinnerman
where will you run to
all on that day

the mountain wont hide you
the sea won’t have you
and the grave will not hold you
all on that day

enjoy, ron

Poet Longfellow!

Speaking of poetry and Longfellow, as a kid, I was once considered a poet by an admirer. Here's a rough paraphrase of their comment: “Ron, you’re a poet but don’t know it. But your feet sure do show it. They’re Longfellows!”

On a more serious note, one of my sons, Geoffrey, attended a medium sized Christian prep school called Minnehaha Academy. As you may surmise, it’s located near Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis Minnesota. The falls is in Minnehaha Park, a large city park on the shores of the Mississippi River. The park includes picnic areas, trails, sculpture and the 53 foot falls, just off of Hiawatha Ave (Route 55). Although Longfellow never visited the spot, Minnehaha Falls is the waterfall of his Song of Hiawatha.

By the way, when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow turned 70 on February 27, 1877, the USA celebrated the day, hosting parades across the land in his honor and sending "salutations and friendly greetings from far and near." Had he the constitution of Methuselah, this year he would have celebrated his 200th birthday with the writing of another amazing poem.

In his day, Longfellow was a star. More than 50,000 bought The Song of Hiawatha. His friend Nathaniel Hawthorne said, "No other poet has anything like your vogue." People from all walks of life would knock on the door of his Cambridge, Massachusetts, home to ask for autographs.

"A Psalm of Life" is one of Longfellow’s best-known works. It captures the kind of poetic spirit that will continually make him one of America's favorite poets

A Psalm of Life

What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act--act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

enjoy, ron

1 Corinthians 3.18-23

The following is an introduction to this week’s Sunday sermon. Specifically, I’ll be expositing verses 1 Corinthains 3.21-23.

Nearly 2000 years ago the church of Jesus Christ in Corinth was wrestling with problems similar to our own. Gluttony, hero worship, jealousy & dissension were prominent expressions of church life then as now. Their principal struggle, as is ours, turned on the question of what to do with worldly wisdom. They had the mind of Christ! Yet, spiritual ignorance & human arrogance was vitally eroding their essential understanding of His Person & Work.

Succumbing to creature influence, they were substituting worldly wisdom for God's wisdom. Value swapping! Exchanging eternal value for temporal values! In other words, by placing inordinate worth on material things, their understanding of Spiritual things became confused & amorphous. As a consequence, Paul could not speak to them as to spiritual ones.

Keep in mind the Corinthian church was secure in Christ, confirmed to the end! It was a dynamic, spiritual community, not lacking in any gift (1 Cor. 1.1-9). But their fitness in impacting the Corinthian culture & in ministering to one another was being undermined by jealousy, factions, intellectual egotism, & selfish ambition.

Paul has already contrasted God's wisdom with human wisdom several times in the first three chapters 1 Corinthians. Now here in 3:18-23 he continues to challenge his Corinthian brothers & sisters concerning their attraction to human wisdom. Paul carefully contrasts the wisdom of this world in vv 18-20 with the wisdom of God in vv 21-23.

Here’s the point: What these Corinthian Christians have done in pretending to be wise by the standards of the world is to show themselves foolish in the eyes of God. So Paul is saying, "You must stop exalting individuals, put an end to divisions, deny any wisdom that you think you have, & instead embrace God's wisdom & the tremendous riches & blessings & resources & growth & health that God gives."

Enjoy, ron

Praise Children!

Psalm 127 says that children are a gift of the Lord. I have seven children and three grandchildren and every single one are worthy of praise. After all they’re exceptionally bright! Or are they? For that matter, do I even need to praise them for being so smart or talented or athletic or just generally so much better than the rest of the hoi polloi (rabble). Well guess what…

...a growing body of research - and a new study from the trenches of the New York public-school system - strongly suggests it might be the other way around. Giving kids the label of “smart” does not prevent them from underperforming. It might actually be causing it.

Well it turns out that praise is fine. Praise your children often and with sincerity. However, remember to praise them for their effort, not their intelligence. If you praise kids for their intelligence, they tend to avoid tasks they fear they will fail at. And get this recent insight from an article in New York magazine:

Scholars from Reed College and Stanford reviewed over 150 praise studies. Their meta-analysis determined that praised students become risk-averse and lack perceived autonomy. The scholars found consistent correlations between a liberal use of praise and students’ “shorter task persistence, more eye-checking with the teacher, and inflected speech such that answers have the intonation of questions.” ...image maintenance becomes their primary concern - they are more competitive and more interested in tearing others down. A raft of very alarming studies illustrate this.

What does the eternal wisdom of the Scriptures tell us about child-rearing? It uses vivid images. Psalm 127 goes on to portray children as arrows in the hand of a warrior. Ancient warriors made their own arrows. It took lots of time and attention to detail to shape the arrowhead so the shaft would fly true and straight. We are preparing our children to be "shot" into the next generation, and there aren't any shortcuts; it takes time.

That really means that each child must be treated as a unique individual who requires shaping and molding and attention and investment. There's no one-size-fits-all approach to child-rearing. And it takes a lot of time to pay attention to your kids.

"Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it." (Proverbs 22:6)

enjoy, ron

Ash Wednesday!

Memento homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.

Remember, man, that you are dust And unto dust you shall return. Genesis 3.19

You may see a few Christians with real dirt on their foreheads today. Fat Tuesday was their "last hurrah" before Lent began now, Ash Wednesday. Yet regardless your own level of participation in such carnality, is it not far time you repent as well?

What is Ash Wednesday? Ash Wednesday is the day Lent begins in the Catholic faith leading up to Good Friday and ultimately Easter, Resurrection Sunday. It is forty days of penance commencing with the reception of the biblical symbol of mourning and penance, ashes. The words from the book of Genesis (3:19) help us to think of the shortness of life, of our last end, and of that moment when each shall come before God to be judged. "Remember," wrote Saint Teresa of Avila, "that you have only one life, which is short and has to be lived by you alone; that there is only one glory, which is eternal."

Of course Ash Wednesday is celebrated by more than Catholics. Interestingly even Catholic churches have changed the recitation while marking foreheads from the Genesis verse: “For dust you are and to dust you will return” to “Turn away from sin and believe the Gospel” or some variant thereof. After all as per the Bible, a mark on a person’s forehead indicates his/her ownership. So the mark of cross on the forehead is a symbol of the person’s belonging to Jesus Christ, who died on a cross.

As for me? I don’t celebrate Ash Wednesday formally.. I seem always to ere on the side of essential truth over ritual truth. I’m reading through St. Augustine Confession (a book all should read). He offers some words to Jesus that I feel best depicts my own Ash Wednesday observance:

Too late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient, O Beauty so new. Too late have I loved you! You were within me but I was outside myself, and there I sought you! In my weakness I ran after the beauty of the things you have made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The things you have made kept me from you - the things which would have no being unless they existed in you! You have called, you have cried, and you have pierced my deafness. You have radiated forth, you have shined out brightly, and you have dispelled my blindness. You have sent forth your fragrance, and I have breathed it in, and I long for you. I have tasted you, and I hunger and thirst for you. You have touched me, and now I burn for your peace. – Augustine Of Hippo (Aurelius August) (354–430), North African philosopher, theologian. Confessions, bk. 10, ch. 27.

repent & enjoy, ron

For Life!

The following news item touched me this morning (click here). As an advocate for life I was pleased to hear the good report on Amilia Tayor who after four months in a neonatal intensive care unit was going home.

Her claim to fame? She is the world's most premature living baby, born at 21 weeks and six days. No baby born at less than 23 weeks was previously known to have survived.

When she was born, Amillia weighed 280g and measured 24cm, slightly longer than a ballpoint pen. Now 17 weeks old, Amillia drank from a bottle for the first time this week.

So the good doctors now surmise that she is thriving and well enough to be cared for by her parents at home. "Even though she's only four pounds now, she's plump to me," the baby's mother, Sonja Taylor said.

Enjoy, ron

Late breaking news: Now I read that Amillia may not go home today (click here). Regardless, I'm happy she's alive and I'm praying for her! Go girl!

Know Thyself!

I believe it was Socrates who once exclaimed: “An unexamined life isn’t worth living!” Perhaps you can understand the philosophy behind this guy’s approach to life. If the above media doesn’t work for you, click here (self smart). Now sit back and revel in the sophisticated way in which this life expert intertwines advanced brain theory, drug abuse, weight lose, marriage & family and book learning to come up with his philosophy for living.

enjoy, ron

Love and/or Charity?

The observance of Valentine’s Day Wednesday moved me to pay a little closer attention to this concept of love, specifically, giving love. Since Valentine’s Day is a day of loving and giving, what do the two have to do with one another? This problem was wrestled with back in the 4th century by St. Jerome.

The story goes that Pope Damasus commissioned ascetic scholar St. Jerome to prepare a Latin translation of the Bible now known as the Vulgate. You see, the translation was into the common people's "vulgar" Latin. Jerome's sources were mainly in Greek, and in trying to get from Greek to Latin, one of the first problems he faced was what to do with agape.

Agape is a Greek word meaning "love." But it's love of a special species. The ancient Greeks had a number of words for love, each with different implications. For example, a celebration of Valentine’s Day is sopping with the Greek love word eros, and you don’t need a cupid’s bow to bull’s-eye what kind of (erotic) inferences it carried.

Agape, on the other hand, implied a holy or pure love, as in "Love (agape) the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" and "Love (agape) your neighbor as yourself." Jerome's problem was that he lacked a good Latin equivalent for agape. Latin's primary love word was amor, but its meaning was very broad. The love of a parent, brother, friend, lover - all sorts of love were amor in Latin. So Jerome turned to caritas instead.

Caritas is a Latin word that used to mean "dearness" or "high price." By extension, it sometimes meant "esteem," "affection," or - in an indisputably chaste sense - "love."

By choosing it as his Latin agape, Jerome lent great importance to caritas - and to words, like "charity," that ultimately rose from it. He also inadvertently set up a schism in English Bibles. Some versions, like the King James Bible, talk of charity ("And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity"). Others go right from agape to love ("And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love").

However you translate it, agape is one of the three primary Christian virtues, along with faith and hope. In his first letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul writes, "And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing" (1 Corinthians 13.2).

Give me a little love here, ron