My First Grandpa Christmas Pics

Oh man, Sam recently posted several excellent pix of my grand-boy Drew – just a few posted here. It continues to amaze me, this experience of seeing my son be a father. I wonder what traits I’ve passed on, for better or worse; I wonder what Drew will remember, and what Sam’s remembering as he fills shoes I once wore. And the innocence, the virginity, the wonder in Drew’s face….I don’t think I can stand it!

Heaven and Hell

The afterlife is quite popular these days, judging from the popularity of books relating “near death” experiences. But what does the Bible actually say about heaven and hell? This is the subject of Edward Donnelly’s book Biblical Teaching On The Doctrines Of Heaven And Hell, and I’m finding it an excellent read. Donnelly points out that of course we don’t like to think or talk about hell; but we don’t hear much preaching or read much writing on the subject of heaven, either. His book is devoted to a Biblical exposition of both. And while it may sound quite abstract and theoretical, I’m finding it comforting, awakening, and pastorally helpful.

Here, for example, is one quote that clarifies what heaven is, and isn’t:

• It is interesting that the New Testament nowhere speaks of believers going “to heaven” when they die. Instead, they go to be “with Christ”. Paul writes from prison to the Christians in Philippi, explaining how eager he is for the life to come, “having a desire to depart” from his present existence. But what, or who, is the attraction in that future realm? Not so much, apparently, heaven itself. The apostle’s great desire is “to depart and be with Christ, which is far better” (Phil. 1:23)….For Paul, heaven means Jesus, so much so that the place and the Person are almost equated. Just as heaven is often synonymous with the glory of God, so is it inextricably identified with the Son of God, in whom his glory is revealed.

Tim Challies has reviewed the book and says this about it:

• Though only a short book, weighing in at just 127 pages, Biblical Teaching on the Doctrines of Heaven and Hell still seems to be thorough. This is, I believe, because though the subjects of heaven and hell are mentioned often in the Bible, we do not receive a great deal of detail about them. They are so far beyond our experience that God can only give us glimpses of what they will be like by drawing comparisons to what we know and experience in this life. This is a book that dedicates equal time to both subjects, first allowing the heart and spirit to recoil at the though of hell but then comforting it with the knowledge of heaven. Throughout the book Donnelly is pastoral, often challenging the reader and continually returning to the gospel, ensuring the reader knows that the promises of heaven are given only to those who know the Lord and that the horrors of hell can be avoided by those who will turn to Him. For those interested in doing some reading on the subject matter, this book is a worthwhile investment in both time and money. I recommend it.

So do I. It just might make a good Christmas gift for someone who wonders what the “true meaning of Christmas” really is.

One Happy Guy

Our grandson Drew is a pretty serious little guy. So when he smiles it’s a real treat! I’m so glad his mom Jen put this pic and others on her Facebook page. Behold! One Happy Guy! May this face be in your hearts to bless you today!

And yes, that’s snow you see in Dallas…

John The Baptist, Coming Up

For the next two Sundays we’ll be hearing about, and from, John the Baptist. His fierce appearance and fiercer message seem so out of place in our time, when we approach Christmas with “holiday cheer”. So the lectionary reminds me that the we do not prepare for Christ the same way we prepare for Christmas, and that it’s the Word of God not the Word of Walmart that defines that preparation.

This Sunday’s reading is Luke 3:1-6. This is Luke’s description of John (John’s message itself will be the subject of the December 13 sermon) and here’s what struck me about it:

• Luke piles on the historical markers: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas…”  Luke could have more simply said “in the 15th year of Tiberius’ reign” and left out Pilate, Herod, Philip, etc. But instead he piles on the historical markers. Why? I’ll say more about this on Sunday, but for now I just want to point out that Luke is doing something here. This piling on is intentional. What’s the intention?
• Luke continues: “the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah” – something about this rang a bell with me, but I had to do some research before it became clear. I think this is an instance where a reference can go completely unnoticed in our culture, while it would have set off alarms in the ears of at least some of Luke’s hearers. So here’s some homework for you – compare Luke 3:1-2 with
  • Jeremiah 1:1
  • Ezekiel 1:1-2
  • Hosea 1:1
  • Joel 1:1
  • Jonah 1:1
  • Micah 1:1
  • Zephaniah 1:1
  • Haggai 1:1
  • Zechariah 1:1
    • what parallels and echoes do you see?
• Luke continues to describe John by quoting Isaiah 40. Question about “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight”: is this a command to all who follow Jesus, something we should be doing this time of year? Or is this a description of John the Baptist, a unique preparer for Christ?
• In Luke’s quote of Isaiah 40, who’s doing what? Who’s the subject of these verbs?

Good stuff. Let’s see what He’ll make of it for this Sunday!

Drew Turns Over!

Ah yes, the older one gets, the less one takes for granted things that used to come naturally. Like getting up without grunting. Anyway, here’s a video taken by my daughter Melinda when she and Joh were in Dallas – it’s little guy turning over. Ooooooohhh! One day I expect I’ll need help with that too!

Now he’s getting some help from his ma, aunt and granny – but isn’t it just fascinating that the human brain is hardwired to do things it can’t do you – to turn over so as to crawl, to crawl so as to walk, to walk so as to run, to run so as to run into the Wall, to run into the Wall so as to remember how baby-like and helpless we really are regardless of how fast we run…

Anyway, I’m too cheap to pay the upgrade to post videos directly to my blog, so here’s a link to my Facebook page with the video of (drumroll please) Drew Turns Over!

Veterans Day

Does anyone remember the origin of Veterans’ Day? The purpose? Or is it just another excuse to shop?

World War I was known as the “War To End All Wars” – by far the bloodiest, destructive and most savage war the world had known. Maybe we’re not impressed with WWI anymore because it seems so technologically primitive to us now – in that war, we used carrier pigeons in the field to communicate. But it’s precisely that primitiveness that strikes me – poison gas warfare, freezing and rain soaked in trench warfare – I don’t think we could take it these days. Talk about post-traumatic stress syndrome!

When the war was finally over (for good, we thought at the time), the treaty that ended it (the Treaty of Versailles) was signed at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. Since then the name has changed (from Armistice Day to Veterans’ Day) and the date has changed (most recently it’s been returned to 11/11). And, I’m afraid, the purpose has changed.

I’d suggest that instead of going to the mall to catch all those wonderful Veterans’ Day Sales “values”, you spend an hour or two at the VA Hospital in South County.  Or spend some time getting to know folks of another nationality (yep, St. Louis has a big Bosnian population, and Vietnamese population, and Iraqi population). Or maybe spend an hour in some church sanctuary pondering how human beings are moved to make such sacrifices, and what it means to be a “nation under God”. Or you might spend an hour learning German, because that’s what we’d be speaking now if not for our participation in WWI. But hey, that would interfere with your selfishness now, wouldn’t it? It would interfere with your shopping.

We’ve largely forgotten “The War To End All Wars” now. In Freeburg there’s a statute of a WWI soldier calling his comrades into battle. It’s used by skateboarders these days. We’ve forgotten the nobility (yes, the idealistic, costly, naive nobility) of WWI and have settled, instead, for….shopping. We’re older and wiser now; we’re….shoppers. We’ve observe the sacrifices and suffering and ideals of our veterans by…shopping.

So, shop on brothers and sisters. Your consumerism has degraded you. And it’s leading you to another war, as our insatiable consumption of oil and all things cheap and Chinese are showing. Maybe one day, when our children and grandchildren are all speaking Chinese, they’ll institute another holiday: Shoppers’ Day, when they remember the incredible national selfishness that led to another war that finally woke us up…or not.

Rant over.

My Kids

My lovely wife and daughter are in Dallas this weekend, getting caught up with baby Drew. He’s making noises now! Chewing on his finger! What delights! What thrills! Wish I were there…

Anyway, here’s Sam and Melinda – they make a papa proud!

And here’s Joh and The L’il Guy!

Who’s having more fun here, really??

Renovated Sanctuary At Night

After our new piano arrived, I went to the sanctuary one evening to take some pix. It’s a beautiful place at night! These don’t really do justice to it, and these pix are just a touch blurry, but they give you the idea. Anybody wanna come sit here a while one evening and pray?

Tim Keller on White Horse Inn

You know if you’ve been reading this blog, I’ve been reading Tim Keller’s book The Reason For God and found it quite clear and helpful. Keller’s forte is discussing the Christian faith with “cultured despisers” of Manhattan. I just downloaded a recent radio program on White Horse Inn where Keller discusses his book with Michael Horton and the other program hosts – well worth listening to. You can go directly to the WHI site, or download the program here. Or, you can see a quick video of Keller discussing this book here.

New Confirmation Pix

Gene Kramer, our 7th Grade Confirmation teacher, has uploaded 3 new pix of his class – and a great bunch of kids they are! Here’s one, taken after the “Trapped In Sin” exercise. To see the other two, go to St. Paul’s website (www.stpaulsfreeburg.org), click on the “Pictures” tab on the left, and follow the links.

Old Folks Can Make Me Laugh

This Youtube video has been around for a while, but it still makes me laugh. Maybe it just gives me hope for my geezer years – still driving Red, though…

The Importance Of Hell

One of the books I’ve been reading is Tim Keller’s The Reason for God, which led me to poking around the internet for more about and by him. I found the website for his church (Redeemer Presbyterian – click here) and read one of his articles there entitled “The Importance Of Hell” (clickhere). Here’s a quote that caught my attention:

“Fairly often I meet people who say, ‘I have a personal relationship with a loving God, and yet I don’t believe in Jesus Christ at all.’ Why, I ask? ‘My God is too loving to pour out infinite suffering on anyone for sin.’ But this shows a deep misunderstanding of both God and the cross. On the cross, God HIMSELF, incarnated as Jesus, took the punishment. He didn’t visit it on a third party, however willing.

So the question becomes: what did it cost your kind of god to love us and embrace us? What did he endure in order to receive us? Where did this god agonize, cry out, and where were his nails and thorns? The only answer is: ‘I don’t think that was necessary.’ But then ironically, in our effort to make God more loving, we have made him less loving. His love, in the end, needed to take no action. It was sentimentality, not love at all.”

I hadn’t thought about it that way before. The “loving god” of people I meet who deny the reality of hell or the cross, is actually a squishy god, unable or unwilling to bear the cost of love. In my own experience with my wife and children, I know that love costs. And the deeper the love, the more the cost. But this ‘loving god’ who makes no demands, pays no cost, bears no cross, endures no hell, is more the figment of my self-absorbed and self-affirming ego than the God of the Scripture.

Funny how important hell is to my happiness.

New Header

You may have noticed that I have a new header on my blog. No big significance here, just wanted a change. Originally I had used a pic of the stained glass window above St. Paul’s altar – Jesus in Gethsemane. It’s a lovely window and a focal point of our worship. But one of my other passions is driving my delightful Miata – particularly at Deal’s Gap NC. Each year I go there just to drive and enjoy some solitude and creation. And I take pics, lot of pics! So my new header for my blog is now a shot of one of the roads at Deal’s Gap, taken over the shoulder of Red, my car. Here, BTW, is the entire photo:I enjoy the curviness of the road – it’s not high speed (maybe 45 mph) but it’s enough to be pleasant, calling for enough attention to focus on the road, but not so much attention that you can’t enjoy the scenery. The road ahead is often hidden, but does not come up on you so fast that you’ll be taken off guard.

Here’s another one that I took last July, from my modest motel (you can see more of the curves in the second pic):Oh man, it makes me ache for the road! The motel is out of the 50’s – it’s got yer basic a/c and indoor plumbing, and a shop to pick up some drinks or a snack. But the whole point is not the motel itself, but the road, the drive.

I can wax eloquent on this stuff – the road of life. I wrote a sermon once about how I often get so involved in cleaning my car, waxing my car, detailing my car, accessorizing my car, that I forget to DRIVE the car. Kinda like faith, I think. It’s meant to be trusted and driven, not tweaked and admired. Though tweaking and admiring are good, they’re not the main good.

So the new header is somewhat spiritual after all. Brothers and sisters, start your engines! None of us knows how much road we have left, or when the next curve will be the last. Don’t wait. Drive!

St. Paul’s New Website

Check out our new website – the address is still www.stpaulsfreeburg.org – but newly designed. Lemme know your thoughts – and we could use pics for our “Pic of the Week” section.

Quality, Quantity, and the Balloon Boy

Colorado sheriff sees no hoax in balloon incident – Reuters, Fri Oct 16, 2009 5:45pm EDT

Balloon boy case a hoax, says sherrif; charges coming – Reuters, Sun Oct 18, 2009 7:50pm EDT

I was driving home from a hospital call last Thursday, and heard on the radio about the “balloon boy”. And not just on one station – they were all over it! Following the balloon, reporting moment by moment on what was happening (or what they thought was happening). When I got home I saw that several TV channels were carrying the “news”, again with live video so we could watch every single moment. And on the ‘Net, my news homepage was full of balloon boy “news”.

Now, it seems, it might well have been an intentional hoax. We still don’t know, and I suspect it will take some time to know.

And isn’t that the problem with the “news”? So quick to report, so slow to analyze. The emphasis is all on quantity (=fastest) rather than quality (=what is actually happening here?)

It takes time to know what things mean. I suspect a look at your own life will tell you that. You lost your job – ok, but what will that mean in the bigger picture of your life? OK, you won the lottery, but what will that mean? It takes time.

In the meantime, I think it’s very distracting to have a river of “look at that” and “watch this” passing before us. (I’ve noticed that my local news guy/gal will actually say “take a look at this”, like I might not have my eyes glued to the screen and need to have my attention called to the image on the TV rather than on my wife sitting next to me).

The media, it seems, is fixated on getting it first, not getting it right. If we don’t ignore that blather and take the longer view of what things actually mean, we’re going to be continually blown about by every of wind images, unrooted, unanchored, and helpless on the fast road to hell.

New Website For St. Paul’s Coming

I’m hoping that St. Paul’s will have their new website set up by this Sunday, or shortly thereafter. It’s been an interesting process!

When our webmaster and choir director resigned, we found ourselves in the position of many churches –  at least, according to one excellent article that I read. According to this article, there have been many churches that had websites set up by creative, technologically oriented (“computer geek”) members. Those websites were creative and attention-getting, if not flashy. But those churches found that when their technogeeky members tired of the website, or otherwise moved on, they were left with a website no one knew how to maintain. Thus, the author of the article concluded, usability and maintainability are more important, in the long run, than technological dazzle.

So, when it came to developing a new website, I wanted something easy to maintain; something our church secretary or administrator could edit without having to learn HTML or other code. Something that was simple enough to be used regardless of change in personnel. And I found it.

Actually, Sandi Haege showed it to me. At Microsoft Office Live (click here) you can create your own website for free. Yep, free. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that “for fee” sites and software have. But it does the job quite nicely, in my book. Anyone who can use a word processor can use this site. Simple, easy, straightforward, basic. Kinda like our church, come to think of it!

So, God willing, our new site will be up soon. Our web address will be the same – www.stpaulsfreeburg.org – so I invite you to check it out and give us any feedback you have, good or bad.

Stepford God

I’ve been reading Tim Keller’s book, The Reason For God, and found it quite engaging. Keller is a pastor in Manhattan, whose church is growing despite being surrounded by secular skeptics. One of the reasons for that is Keller has a way of engaging the non-believing mind with respect, understanding, and challenge. The book is an apologetic for the faith, but it demonstrates Keller’s way of understanding those who disagree with him.

In the first part of Keller’s book he deals with the most common objections or reservations to Christianity that he’s heard over the years. One chapter is entitled “You Can’t Take The Bible Literally” – the concluding paragraphs, headed “A Trustworthy Bible or a Stepford God?” are what caught my attention last night – to wit:

“If you don’t trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct your thinking, how could you ever have a personal relationship with God? In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you….Remember the (two!) movies “The Stepford Wives”? The husbands of Stepford, Connecticut, decide to have their wives turned into robots who never cross the wills of their husbands. A Stepford Wife was wonderfully compliant and beautiful, but no one would describe such a marriage as intimate or personal.

Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won’t! You’ll have a Stepford God! A God, essentially, if your own making, and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction. Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination. So an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal relationship with God. It is the precondition for it.”

I never saw the Stepford Wives, but remember that beautiful, empty headed, compliant look. On the one hand, every guy’s dream. On the other hand, every guy knows there’s something better out there than a Stepford God.

You can order the book here, if you’re interested. I haven’t finished it yet, but so far I’d recommend it highly.

Nobel Sign of the Times

President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” He joins an impressive group:

• Mother Teresa (1979)
• Dag Hammarskjöld (posthumous 1961)
• Jimmy Carter (2002)
• Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin (1994)
• Desmond Tutu (1984)
• Amnesty International (1977)
• Martin Luther King (1964)
• Henry Kissinger, Le Duc Tho (1973)
• Teddy Roosevelt (1906)
• Woodrow Wilson (1919)
• International Red Cross (1917, 1944, 1963)

Regardless of their different political leanings left or right, it seems to me that these organizations and people have one thing NOT in common with President Obama. They actually did something to deserve the recognition of the award. Of course this is old school thinking, that you should perform first and then be awarded. Or, in economic terms, save your money first, then spend it. Notice the International Red Cross awards? They were given in the war years. That’s Old School thinking. New School thinking would be to award the prize before the next war, not during or after.

Seems to me this is so typical of the way things are now. Style not substance. Intention not accomplishment. Image not content.

Brothers and sisters, we get the government we deserve.

Getting Very Close

Renovations are getting very close to being complete. Today, Saturday 9/26, I took these pix showing that the carpeting is almost finished, the pews are in, but there’s a lot of cleaning up and putting in place yet to do. The piano is coming on Monday 9/28, and I’m sure that, God willing, the place will be complete by October 4!

Just a couple of notes on the pix below – a couple of additions were made along the way, including a fan in the balcony for our balcony birds (see pic) and spotlights for the altar (also see pic).  Lights at the steps are also new (see pics). You’ll also see that the chancel carpeting has a color border at the edge, like the warning track in the outfield. The new computer/soundboard in the balcony sits on a raised step – it’s quite a view of the whole sanctuary.

There are a good many folks who have spent uncounted hours on this project – Nolan Shook, Dean Huston, Mary Weber, and many more whose names are escaping me right now. My heartfelt thanks to all of you!

Carpeting Soon!

The sanctuary painting was completed on Friday 9/18, with a couple of additions suggested by our members: accent color was added to the chancel arch and around the stained glass windows. In addition, Shirley Baumgarte thought it would look good to add some white accent to the accents – so we tried it out (see pic below) and indeed, the committee approved!

This Sunday we’ll be worshiping “in the round”, on our old folding chairs. Sorry balcony birds, but the balcony will be closed this Sunday! God willing we’ll have new carpeting installed on Monday and Tuesday, and next Sunday the project should be complete!

PS – that’s Emil changing the light bulbs in the sanctuary…