God is great!
God calls us to be witnesses of what he’s done in our lives. In February this year, I had the privilege of sharing my testimony with the staff at Answers in Genesis. What a fantastic group of people. Of course my testimony is rather lengthy (I am a lawyer), but this rendition covers the major points of my salvation story and the beginnings of my journey to becoming a young Earth creationist: Tony’s testimony at AiG
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you rise. Dt. 6:4-7
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Eph. 6:4
The pathologies of Godless living are undeniable and undeniably negative. Humanism, post-modern thought, and institutionalized secularism produce wrecked lives, broken families, and crushed hearts. Lifelong relationships are increasingly rare. The post-modern culture seems inherently hostile to whatever is good and lasting. Relationships with the living God of creation seem increasingly rare and certainly not appropriate for public discourse in “well educated” circles. God is now deemed personal and subjective, and better done in isolation. We’re a mobile, fractured society. We’re easily fractured from each other and ever increasingly fractured from our creator and sustainer God. People from “less developed” areas of the world comment on how we retreat into our closed garages and live inside, isolated from our neighbors and rarely in contact with our families. The body of Christ is thriving and growing most outside “developed” nations.
As people increasingly accept the post-modern paradigm that truth is a subjective experience, the institution of the church suffers. Churches that try to stay “relevant” to the culture and liberalize their theology become irrelevant and die or simply become moral social action clubs. The intellectual elites increasingly view the Bible with hostility. The church in Western Europe approaches extinction.
The family also suffers. Divorce is now accepted as normal. Increasingly, young people decide against marrying and opt instead for co-habitation and increasing numbers of children are born out of wedlock and increasing percentages of children are raised without fathers in the home. Earlier terms had pejorative terms for what we now accept as normal. Reproduction rates across most of Western Europe have fallen below replacement levels. The same was recently reported for the native US population. Within our hermetically sealed suburban homes, family connections are also suffering as we spend more time each year plugged into the latest electronic stimulation and less time each year plugged into each other.
There is an ever increasing body of evidence that these pathologies, particularly the breakdown of the family, have very negative effects on our children, and as a result, on society. Another recent commission of experts has drawn the same conclusion. Of note, this analysis also demonstrated the critical importance of a father’s involvement in the lives of his children.
LARGE AND GROWING numbers of U.S. children and young people are suffering from depression, anxiety, attention deficit, conduct disorders, thoughts of suicide, and other serious mental and behavioral problems. Why? What can be done to reverse this trend? In this pioneering report, the Commission on Children at Risk, a panel of 33 leading children’s doctors, neuroscientists, research scholars and youth service professionals, draw upon a large body of recent research showing that children are biologically primed (“hardwired”) for enduring connections to others and for moral and spiritual meaning.
Hardwired to Connect: The New Scientific Case for Authoritative Communities, order here.
DadsWorld.com reports:
Children with involved Fathers are more confident, better able to deal with frustration, better able to gain independence and their own identity, more likely to mature into compassionate adults, more likely to have a high self esteem, more sociable, more secure as infants, less likely to show signs of depression, less likely to commit suicide, more empathetic, boys have been shown to be less aggressive and adolescent girls are less likely to engage in sex.
My youngest brother just graduated from high school, and like his brothers, he plans on serving his country in the US Army, which awarded him a scholarship to study engineering in college while training to be an officer.
I admire and support his decision to commit to officer’s training; I don’t though envy him though. It’s not because the US is in a land war in Asia; it’s because the future looks so uncertain for purposes of planning a career … we may hardly comprehend or even imagine today what our economy and technologies will look like in 40 years.
The rate of change only continues to increase. The world in 2000 AD looked nothing like the world of 1900. I’m afraid 2100 will be even more dramatically removed from what life in 2000 was like. The founder of www.howstuffworks.com, Marshall Brain, hasa thoughtful essay on this topic titled Robotic Nation here.
National Review comments in their May 3 edition:
We have been hearing for some time — about a century — that we shall soon have robots to take over low-level manual tasks, leaving the human population free to write sonnets, compose symphonies, or paint in oils. Perhaps there is something to it: Researchers at the University of California – Berkeley, have just demonstrated a robot that can fold towels. There’s some way to go yet, though, before all drudgery is purged from our lives: The mechanical marvel takes an average of 25 minutes to fold one towel.
Not only are we piling up lots of debt — trillions and trillions — for our children to pay off, apparently, we’re birthing fewer and fewer children to pay it in the future. Fittingly, during the year where we’ve cast off constitutional constraints and moved deliberately to the European social welfare state model, we are now also adopting for the first time their birthing practices, ie our birthing rate has fallen below the replacement level. See here. The social welfare state with a declining population base is economically unsustainable absent massive immigration, which creates its own set of problems and instabilities.
I’m not at all against technology; it makes life more predictable and safe and often more interesting. It can, however, also detract from the pleasures of life. For example, the PDA is great technology, but it can take away from family time and family communications. Technology can also take away from what it means to be human. Here’s an instance where technology may do both. The UK’s Daily Mail reports that “scientists” opine: Sex will not be used to have babies in just 10 years, as couples turn to IVF
Maybe the Luddites were on to something?
Grand River Old grey mists fleeting past We were summer’s children With warm grandparents in winter We were together only yesterday Forests and playfields gone 28 empty theatres Quiet houses, lonely streets They were real only yesterday New faces and buildings My children now laughing Grandparents hugging smiles Time flowing on like yesterday.
Is there any more exciting and important question?
21. God whispers
22. Fresh pineapples from Hawaii
23. Cheeseburgers fresh off the grill and hot, buttery, salty corn on the cob, and seconds on those cheeseburgers
24. God’s incredible creativity
25. We live in a land where we are free to worship and praise God
26. God hears our worship, praise and prayers
27. How incredibly made is the human body
28. Faith in eternity
29. A loving, faithful wife
30. the Gettys
From the Investigative Project on Terrorism: Government Pays Mosque it Considers Radical
My political outrage meter is so worn from the past year that this hardly registers … but it should.
Remembering those halcyon days, when t-shirts used to simply be fun. Could this lead to the next arms race?
The apostle Paul encourages us to focus on those things that are good and pure. Mother’s day is a day devoted to just that – celebrating and rejoicing in one of the purest and best aspects of humanity. The bond of mother and child is one of our strongest and most intimate forces. Praise God for the love of and for our mothers.
I thank God for the woman who gave me birth and raised me and for the woman who has given selflessly of herself to birth and raise our children. My wife’s love for our children is as certain and steady and warming as the sunrise. I thank God also for my grandmothers who loved my parents into existence, and then me, my siblings, and my cousins.
We really shouldn’t need a particular day to celebrate mothers. The birthday of each child should be a celebration of the birth, i.e. a celebration of what God has accomplished through the mother’s labor. The child should bring gifts to the mother. That is not, however, the nature of parenting, particularly of motherhood.
There’s an old Hebrew proverb, God could not be everywhere, so he made mothers. While I disagree with that theology, I agree with its sentiment. Motherly love is perhaps the closest our fallen race gets to godliness. Self-sacrificing love is the essence of motherhood. Thank you Moms!
I remember the first time I visited Craigslist. We had posted some children’s items for sale. I was surprised and initially impressed by the range of products and services offered on the site and started surfing around. It wasn’t too long before I noticed the “friendship” or “relationship” ads. The explicit statements stunned me. The Red Light District in Amsterdam had nothing on those postings. Turns out that at least some of those girls advertised on Craigslist were/are still little girls. While we were selling kids stuff, other folks were selling their kids …
The open letter below to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster is a good reminder that the sex-porn industry is based on abuse, either harvesting the fruit of sexually abused children or too often, directly exploiting and abusing children.
An Open Letter to Jim Buckmasterby Rachel Lloyd
Dear Jim,
We met about 18 months ago via video-conference and at that time I shared with you a story of an 11 year old girl that I was working with. I’m not sure if you remember her, but I’d like to share this story with you again.
“Bethany” had been in foster care since she was 2 years old and had bounced from foster home to foster home, until at 11 she was introduced to a friend of her 14 year old sister. This friend was a 32 year old man who lured her in with promises of a stable home and love, everything she’d been craving her whole short life. He took Bethany from New York down to a hotel in DC, bought her some ‘sexy’ clothes, and took pictures of her and then posted those pictures on your site, Craigslist. Bethany didn’t really think there was anything unusual about this, after all her 14 and 16 year old sisters were both being sold on Craigslist too.
For nine months, almost till she turned 12 years old, Bethany’s pictures were posted on Craigslist. Sometimes she was “NEW IN TOWN” when her pimp/trafficker would bring her to cities up and down the East Coast, posting her pictures in different regions. Sometimes she was “HOT N SEXXY FOR U” with her price listed as 150 roses. Night after night, adult men clicked on her ads, dialed a number and ordered her as easily as they would’ve ordered a pizza. Night after night, adult men came to the hotel room she was being kept in and had sex with her, or rather raped her, as at 11 years old she was too young to consent. Night after night, her pimp collected the money that he made from her and if it wasn’t enough he beat or whipped her, badly enough that she has permanent scars.
No-one who saw Bethany’s pictures ever clicked on the link on your site and reported “suspected exploitation of minors and/or human trafficking to the appropriate authorities”. No law enforcement ever found the ads that her trafficker posted in the midst of the hundreds and hundreds of other ads of girls for sale.
Bethany, and her two sisters, were sold on your site, just like hundreds of other girls I’ve worked with have been. Just like thousands of other girls and young women across America are sold every night. It’s hard to imagine that as a businessman with a sense of social responsibility that this wouldn’t sicken and horrify you. The thought that you could profit even one dollar, let alone millions of dollars, in any way from the sale of children has to deeply sadden and make you outraged to the point where you would want to ensure that this can’t happen – at least not on your site. I would’ve hoped that would be your automatic response anyway.
Unfortunately that hasn’t been the case. Your responses to the criticism though raise some interesting points. Yes, while there may be a few people who are concerned about “casual sex” on your site, the vast majority of people who are signing petitions and raising their voices about this issue are doing so on behalf of girls like Bethany who don’t have a voice. Yes, while there are of course other sites, magazines and Yellow Page ads where girls and women can be bought, very few of them have the brand-name recognition that Craigslist does, and besides, the “other people are doing it too” argument seems to be one that our mothers taught us when we were in kindergarten didn’t hold much water. (Kudos, by the way, to New York Magazine for dropping all their sex for sale ads last year). And yes, while Craigslist has been cooperative with law enforcement on this issue, the sheer volume of postings of girls for sale on each night, in each city makes truly targeting traffickers and pimps a Sisphyean task.
This campaign isn’t about a “cynical misuse of a cause as important as human trafficking as a pretense for imposing one’s own flavor of religious morality”. In fact, for those of us on the ground who work with girls like Bethany every day, it’s saddening to have our work and our advocacy efforts framed as such. While we recognize that Craigslist taking a stand on this issue won’t end commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking in our country, it will send a powerful message to the adult male buyers that Craigslist will have no part in, nor take any profit from, the sale of 11 (or 14, or 16) year old girls.
Rachel Lloyd is the founder of Girls Educational & Mentoring Services.
Remember those horrific stories about Nazi doctors performing medical experiments on Jews? Don’t think that our secular socialists are so terribly different than were the German Nationalist Socialists, particularly at American public universities. WorldNetDaily reports that after a significant public relations campaign against the project, a major Big Ten university has cancelled plans to conduct late term abortions that would be used to harvest baby organs for research:
The University of Wisconsin Hospitals have dropped plans to establish a late-term abortion facility at the publicly funded Madison Surgery Center that would be used to provide “fresh fetal body parts” to researchers at the institution, according to reports today from American Life League and the Alliance Defense Fund.
I think the Keith and Kristyn Getty are the best songwriters of our generation and that people will be singing the songs they’re writing today until the Lord returns. Here’s a favorite …
In Christ alone my hope is found,
He is my light, my strength, my song;
this Cornerstone, this solid Ground,
firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
when fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My Comforter, my All in All,
here in the love of Christ I stand.
In Christ alone! who took on flesh
Fulness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness
Scorned by the ones he came to save:
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied –
For every sin on Him was laid;
Here in the death of Christ I live.
There in the ground His body lay
Light of the world by darkness slain:
Then bursting forth in glorious Day
Up from the grave he rose again!
And as He stands in victory
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me,
For I am His and He is mine –
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.
No guilt in life, no fear in death,
This is the power of Christ in me;
From life’s first cry to final breath.
Jesus commands my destiny.
No power of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home,
Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand.
I enjoyed a father-daughter camp retreat this weekend. We enjoyed fantastic Carolina weather and the Pamlico sound and a host of activities, but more importantly, it was really special having so much time together, just the two of us. There is no substitute for time spent together, particularly when the purpose of the time is to enjoy the time together. The memories were precious and even a little painful as I’m reminded that this “parenting period” is temporary. Older parents always say with nostalgia that it’s over before you know it, and most often it’s said with a tint of regret.
I’ve been really convicted this year on how easy it is to get sidetracked even obsessed with things that ultimately have little or no significance while at the same time neglecting what really matters — each other. Some quotes to further that conviction:
“When you are in the final days of your life, what will you want? Will you hug that college degree in the walnut frame? Will you ask to be carried to the garage so you can sit in your car? Will you find comfort in rereading your financial statement? Of course not. What will matter then will be people. If relationships will matter most then, shouldn’t they matter most now?”
— Max Lucado
“Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happines there is in our lives” C.S. Lewis
“No relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater…The love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And that’s the key. It’s like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot.”
— Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
“It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride.”
— John Ruskin
“The capacity for friendship is God’s way of apologizing for our families.”
— Jay McInerney (The Last of the Savages)
“The willingness to forgive is a sign of spiritual and emotional maturity. It is one of the great virtues to which we all should aspire. Imagine a world filled with individuals willing both to apologize and to accept an apology. Is there any problem that could not be solved among people who possessed the humility and largeness of spirit and soul to do either — or both — when needed?”
— Gordon B. Hinckley (Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes)
“Never ruin an apology with an excuse.”
— Benjamin Franklin
“How did it get so late so soon?”
— Dr. Seuss
God is greatly using Samaritan’s Purse to bring relief to Haiti’s impoverished quake victims. The relief provided by Samaritan’s Purse includes the following:
See also here, here, and here.
Last week, the Creation Museum celebrated its ONE MILLIONTH visitor … and in less than three years. God continues to bless the ministry of Answers in Genesis.
Trans World Radio has announced a radio ministry to equip youth pastors in China, where there are over 500 million people under the age of 18.
Door 43 (Distant Shores Media) is providing technical support for the delivery of stories of the Bible in the Lusoga language (Uganda) over the Internet and to mobile phones anywhere in the world that a Lusoga speaker happens to be. Slowly but consistently, Door 43 is working toward creating an international resource pool of open source discipleship and Biblical resources.
I’ve long been a fan of John Ruskin’s quote: “A book worth reading is worth owning.” It’s fairly conventional wisdom that a book-rich home encourages children to read which in turn introduces children to the joys of learning, thinking, and imagining. A recent study now shows benefits of actually owning those books …
“Home library size has a very substantial effect on educational attainment, even adjusting for parents’ education, father’s occupational status and other family background characteristics,” reports the study, recently published in the journal Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. “Growing up in a home with 500 books would propel a child 3.2 years further in education, on average, than would growing up in a similar home with few or no books. “This is a large effect, both absolutely and in comparison with other influences on education,” adds the research team, led by University of Nevada sociologist M.D.R. Evans. “A child from a family rich in books is 19 percentage points more likely to complete university than a comparable child growing up without a home library.”
More here.
We enjoyed a touching and enjoyable piano dedicatory recital Monday evening at the beautiful Butler University Chapel on Campbell University. Randall Atcheson was the pianist. He performed on a new Steinway nine-foot concert grand model “D.” Great performer and wonderful instrument. Mr. Atcheson, a member of the international roster of Steinway Artists, professed a strong faith in Christ and gave a wonderful performance. After playing a set from Chopin, he performed a Gospel, popular, and patriotic selection, each of which he arranged. Mr. Atcheson is a passionate and fun performer who loves God and is excited about everything, particularly music and God and other people. And he wasn’t afraid to express it. His stories about his southern preacher father were touching and humorous. We also share the same favorite song: Amazing Grace. Great performer if Monday night was in any way typical for him.
The litany of dedication was also touching:
Creator God, You have given us minds to know You, hearts to love You, voices to sing Your praise and instruments to resound the majesty of Your name. We are grateful You have gifted Your people with music.
When words fail, music can express our deepest yearnings. In those seasons of our lives, we can find You in the notes of the familiar hymns whose melodies bring soothing calm and sweet serenity.
When we are still in Your presence, we can seek You and find You in the songs of quiet contemplation.
When we gather to worship, music can voice our highest and most exalted praise through the sounds of strength and majesty.
With spring comes the warm promise of summer months. Summer means family vacations, warm beaches, long hikes, and sweaty afternoons. Spring is positive. Spring’s filled with hope, and hope depends on a vision for the future, a better future.
Hope is also one of the three greatest blessings from God – faith, hope and love. The hope God gives is more than a season; we have hope for eternity.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
John 14: 1-3.
[W]e speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written:
“No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him” …
1 Cor. 2:7-9.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” …
Rev. 21:1-5. God promises us a tomorrow beyond our ability to even conceive. Faith in Christ is the spring of what will be a perfect eternity.
Why God made moms, here.
Sapphire Sky 