Revelation 2:4

"But I have this against you, that you have abandoned your first love."

The church in Ephesus was loved deeply by Christ, but was warned about what would follow losing their "first love." The following churches that suffered rebuke were experiencing what Christ warned against: they followed strange doctrines (heretical teaching) into judgment. There are so many goals and desires that we seek in this world, they can lead our hearts away from our First Love. Don't let go!

"The life we live on earth has its own attractions as well, because it has a certain beauty of its own in harmony with all the rest of this world's beauty. ... All these things and their like can be occasions of sin because, good though they are, they are of the lowest order of good, and if we are too much tempted by them we abandon those higher and better things, your truth, your law, and you yourself, O Lord our God. For these earthly things, too, can give joy, though not such joy as my God, who made them all, can give, because honest men will rejoice in the Lord; upright hearts will not boast in vain."
— St. Augustine Confessions, ii:5

Deuteronomy 32:2

"My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass."

"Distill" is a very interesting word choice here, for that is exactly how dew forms! Distillation requires a cooling of vapor so that condensation produces liquid, exactly what happens to warm surfaces after a cool, windless night. This passage was written by Moses about 1,000 years before the Golden Age of Athens, and nearly 3,000 years before the Renaissance. Pretty good science for a Bronze Age man — or was it Something Else?

Feallengod II

Well, the rewrite on Feallengod was shot down. Still not enough of a protagonist, but if the real protagonist is the Trinity, and part of the conflict is that the King seems so distant, what am I supposed to do? The agent compared it to 'Pilgrim's Progress' and called it 'ponderous,' which is either really good or really bad. She said before she liked the writing, so at least it's not that. I do think the rewrite improved it, anyway. So now it's back to sending letters. Tally ho the fox, that miserable wretch.

I think I'll go to the zoo today.

Iraq

I have a friend who is shipping out to Iraq this week. He is risking his life to keep schlubs like me safe. This is not pro-war propaganda. On 9/11 all the people who died were regular joes who only wanted to go to their jobs or travel somewhere. This is the lesson we have to carry with us: Our enemies (and Saddam was one) know they can't defeat our military, so they will go after the everyday American slob like me. The people in our military put their lives on the line every day to keep us alive.

In another matter, there's something fishy about that woman in Jordan who says she tried to bomb the hotel with her husband. If she was there, why isn't she dead, or at least wounded? Why did she still have her bomb on a day later? Certainly the soldiers and police and camera crew there in the room with her knew it could still go off. Why didn't they take it off her and disarm it? Something's just not right here.

Cool quotation

"History never repeats itself, but it often rhymes."

— Charles and Louis-Vincent Gave, "Our Brave New World"

Church history

A couple of useless comments today:

I've just gotten finished reading through Colossians, reading along through IVP's "Ancient Christian Commentary," gleanings from the writings of the church fathers. This is a great series of books, but here's the problem I ran into: The comments are little paragraphs of sometimes only one sentence, taken out of long treatises or sermons. So as they appear in the books they are completely without the context of the original writings. I found that I had to be careful to be really immersed in the point of the scripture passage or of where the various church fathers were coming from, or the commentaries could easily be misconstrued.

Second thing, the History Channel is showing a four-hour program about the first three crusades. What I'm writing about here is the third crusade, in which Richard the Lion Heart and Muslim leader Saladin basically fought to a draw. First, there's no arguing that the crusades are a blot on the church's history, and there were atrocities on both sides (although saying war crimes existed in the 12 century is probably a foolish argument.) But here's an interesting thing that came out of the program. Both Western and Muslim historians were used as sources, one Muslim historian in particular, who had written a biography on Saladin. When Saladin recaptured Jerusalem, he summarily executed the Knights Templar there, considered the greatest of the crusader soldiers. The historian rationalized this, saying Saladin was a vicious man in a vicious time, and he was just trying to survive. Later Richard conquered the city of Acre and took some 250 Muslims prisoner, whom he eventually summarily executed as well. The same historian expressed outrage at the brutality of the act, and not just that the people of the time were shocked at the brutality but shocked that it was perpetrated in the name of Christianity. So he unwittingly witnessed that Islam was a religion of violence, but Christianity was not supposed to be.

Colossians 2:15

"And, having spoiled principalities and powers, (Christ) made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in (the Crucifixion)."

Is this the most important verse in scripture? Could be — this pretty much wraps it all up. God's victory over powers and principalities was accomplished on the Cross, and it is demonstrated further through the church (Eph. 3:10): As with Job, when the body of Christ suffers but does not turn away from its faith in Him, it humiliates His enemies. To extend the argument, we can truthfully say that Jesus was not crucified to redeem a fallen creation, but instead creation was established and allowed to fall so Jesus would be crucified. This is an inescapable conclusion to the declarations that He is the "Lamb crucified from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8), that "the works were finished from the foundation of the world" (Heb. 4:3) and that His grace was given us "before the world began" (2 Tim. 1:9). The point is, we are not the center of God's reality; what is happening on this tiny creation is a demonstration of His supremacy over His enemies, the powers and principalities that swirl about us, and Christ is central to that demonstration, and was from before the beginning.

Feallengod

The rewrite on Feallengod (the most important book ever written) is complete and going into the mail to my agent contact today. Pray for Feallengod — it's where you live. After grinding gears for a day or two, I'll find the right one and start work again on Wars of the Aoten (second most important book ever written.) At this point I need to do a little reading on Hindu before writing more. The two stories are completely different, and it's hard to switch back and forth. Tally ho the fox!

Acts 26:20

"... But showed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughoutall the borders of Judea, and then to the gentiles, that they should repentand turn to God, and do works fit for repentance." Acts 26:20

It'skind of puzzling that in all his letters Paul preaches salvation by faithalone, but then always encourages his readers to behave well. This phrase"works fit for repentance" in Acts helps clear that up. Just as John's baptismwas unto repentance, but not salvation, Paul encourages works unto repentance,but not salvation. Service we offer to God should be in a spirit of humility,grieving for our disobedience and the sin nature that made Christ's sufferingnecessary.

Rosa Parks

There is something purely grass-roots American about someone who would insist on her rights because her feet hurt. I'm so glad Rosa Parks lived to see the fruit of her work, particularly since she never sought publicity, fame or fortune from it. She was a great American hero.

Halloween

I have no great opinion on Halloween one way or another, but I did get a little girl at my door last night who was dressed as a cute little Satan. I think when we minimize the one who's sole desire is to destroy us, it's not a good thing. So I laid a blessing on her in the name of the Lord, and she laughed. Perhaps one day she will remember.

I also noted how polite the kids were this year.

In other news, Diet Coke with lime tastes vaguely like Alpha-Bits.

End is beginning

Sunday I went to a memorial service for my cousin, who was a suicide. So of course I've been thinking about it a lot. I grieve not for his death so much as for the suffering that preceded it, which apparently nobody in his family really knows, and so of course neither can understand. But here's some thoughts about suicide: One, the person who kills himself takes his suffering and transfers it to those who love him most. Second, he tells them that he doesn't trust them with the things that are torturing him. I don't want to sound like I'm passing judgment, because I'm not. But I'm not sure his parents will ever recover.

The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.