From someone who knows...

This was posted on an e-mail group I have contact with, and it was rather encouraging to me. I know many of the folks who read this are on a similar path as I am and may also reap some fruit from it. For the rest... perhaps a glimpse into the world of being a pastor in Christ's Church.

This originates from this man: www.rbvincent.com

When I think about the work of the ministry, I look back on my mother's father,* a Presbyterian minister who served churches in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee, at the end of the nineteenth and first part of the twentieth centuries. How differently he must have approached his work than I do. He never showed up at the church building except for services on the Lord's Day and midweek prayer meeting. He did not have an office or office hours; he studied at home and visited his members in their homes in the late morning and afternoon. People were almost always home, and husbands would leave what they were doing to join their families when the pastor came to call. Unless it was some kind of emergency, pastors tended not to make calls after dark; people were home with their families at night.

People had certain expectations of their pastors, but they were not unreasonable, because society was stable, divorce virtually nonexistent and most families practiced self-reliance. The Christian Sabbath was observed by the whole community by means of Blue Laws, and there was no television, nor, in the early days, movies either, so people went to church, attending both the morning and evening services on the Lord's Day, and they looked forward to it. Boys could talk to girls after church, and older people got caught up on the news -- along with the Protestant public school system, the church was the center of people's social life. The local Methodist and Baptist preachers believed the Bible, preached salvation by grace alone and held to the moral standards of the Ten Commandments. Pastors were not well paid, but they got by, and people saw that their children did not lack for the necessities of life. My grandfather had six children who lived into adulthood, and all of them finished college. The vast majority of people respected pastors, and when special services were held at a particular church, most of the townsfolk attended.

Now, I know that I have painted an idyllic pastoral scene, and it was not all a bed of roses a hundred years ago in the South. My grandfather only stayed one year at the wealthy Presbyterian Church in Port Gibson, Mississippi, 1909. Something must have happened between him and that congregation with the gold hand on top of their steeple. My mother told me about a banker who was the treasurer of a church pastored by my grandfather, and the man would browbeat him, almost making him beg for his salary -- one day my grandfather had had enough and said to the banker, "You look like a monkey behind that cage." Mama also told me about the time my grandmother, a child of the manse herself, ran off a woman who had eyes for my grandfather. The woman was on her way to my grandfather's study with a cake, and my grandmother spotted her and asked her to leave.

How differently I go about my work. I have a study at home, but I keep office hours, too. Unless the people are retired or sick, I have to visit them at night, after supper. So with Sunday and Wednesday nights always committed and other meetings here and there, I count myself blessed if I have three evenings at home a week. That was hard on my children, but not nearly as hard on them as my often having to break commitments because of an emergency. I've cut short a vacation because of a death.

The twenty-first century is a strange time to do the work of the ministry. Western society is in an upheaval -- child molestation, incest, pornography, homosexuality and adulterous affairs are pervasive. Divorce is rampant -- two of my former elders are now divorced; both are bitter at me -- they are no longer in church. Medical doctors dispense psychotropic drugs at the drop of a hat, and people who would never think of sipping a glass of wine, think nothing of zoning out with Zoloft and Xanex.

Yet among all these people are God's elect. The task of my grandfather's day is still our task today: to call lost people to the Lord Jesus as he is offered in the gospel, then baptize and teach them whatsoever our Lord has commanded. But that task is hindered, as it has always been, by people within the Church itself, sometimes in its leadership. Pity the pastor who has elders who are dominated by their wives and not respected in the world. The man who gets kicked around everywhere else and finagles getting on a church session can make the life of a minister pretty miserable.

Here is what I would say to a minister or to someone who aspired to it.

1. Maintain a devotional love for the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, making diligent use of the means of grace.

2. Take your sins seriously, but take the gospel more seriously. We are justified by faith alone. Our sins were put to the Lord Jesus' account; his righteousness has been put to ours. Remember that you are far worse than you think you are, but so is everybody else. You have an impeccable, unimpeachable righteousness imputed to your account and you can never come into condemnation.

3. Watch out for women. Many an earnest Christian has made shipwreck of his faith because of a sexual dalliance. Frankly, I am terrified about the possibility that I could fall into the sin of adultery, even after all these years of marriage and ministry. The drive is still there, deep down in the old man -- it scares me to the point that I never step inside the door of a woman's home unless her husband is there, or unless I have my wife or an elder or deacon with me.

4. On the basis of God's grace plead his promises and expect God to do grand things, things that he may sometimes permit you to see. Pray especially for the success of evangelism. Nothing so encourages a person as seeing lost people come to the Lord Jesus to be set free from reigning sin.

5. Maintain a healthy relationship with your wife: pray with her; share problems with her, making her your partner in the ministry, doing much of your counseling ministry with her at your side; take her out on regular dates; develop and maintain a healthy, regular sexual life.

6. Take time to be a father to your children. If you have sons, get involved in something like the Boy Scouts with them.

7. Make yourself accountable to a small circle of brothers.

8. Demonstrate that you love your people -- a congregation will put up with an awful lot if they know that their pastor loves them.

9. Don't take yourself too seriously. You are an idiot at times, but so is everybody else. Drink deeply and daily from the Romans 8:28, divine cordial. God, not the session or your peers, is the ultimate judge of success in the ministry. You will never get all your work done, but what God requires of you is faithfulness to Scripture, not cleverness and not even meeting measurable goals.

10. Choose your battles carefully. If you are going to win the war, you simply cannot fight every battle. There are a lot of things that you are going to have to overlook. Establish yourself as a man of God, developing a strong pulpit ministry. Stress the essential truths of Calvinistic, Evangelical Christianity. Build on that foundation before you take on more controversial, peripheral things, because the core of the gospel, with its backdrop of total depravity and foundation of unconditional election, is controversial a plenty.

11. Maintain a devotional love for the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, making diligent use of the means of grace. Yes, I already mentioned that, but it's fundamental.

Regularly meditate on the fact that you are a hell deserving wretch, still after all that God has done for you and in you. "How many things are necessary for you to know, that in this comfort you may live and die happily? Three things: First, the greatness of my sin and misery. Second, how I am redeemed from all my sins and misery. Third, how I am to be thankful to God for such redemption." (The Heidelberg Catechism, 2)

Linger over the fires of hell and look at the cross on which our Savior died, because it is the blood of Jesus alone that washes away your sins. Fundamentally, what you do -- when you do the work of the ministry -- you do to show your gratitude to God for his free gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ. You never do it, primarily, for the people. They will betray you, lie about you, deceive you, let you down. You do it for Jesus, and when you do, many times you will discover that the Great Shepherd has entrusted to your care some of his choicest sheep.

I will never forget an elderly woman who had never married; Miss Mary was a member of the church that I served in Kansas back in the early seventies. She had been a missionary to China, then after Mao, to Japan. When she was forced to retire, she moved to Wichita and spent her days riding buses all over town gathering children for Bible clubs, especially the children of Asian immigrants. She did this until she was too blind to ride the bus and finally ended up in a retirement home.

I'll never forget my last visit with her, shortly before she went home. She couldn't see and had lost a lot of weight, so much so that her dentures no longer fit her. She would take a mouthful of food, and when she did, her upper dentures would drop down, and she had to manipulate them back up with her tongue at the same time that she carefully put the food in between her tongue and her dentures. It was most awkward, to say the least, and I thought about what my attitude might be at her age, in her nineties. What was her attitude?

Sheer joy! I mean it, sheer joy, joy unspeakable, the real McCoy. I've only known one other person as happy as she, a Chinese lady who had been imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution. While she and her husband were imprisoned, Mao's Red Guards attacked their children, and one was martyred for the Lord Jesus. This woman exuded the presence of Christ; she was full of joy, too, in spite of a cupful of tragedies.

Being a minister brings me into contract with such choice sheep from time to time. I count being a minister the greatest privilege on earth.

-- Thanks Bob

My inflated sense of self-worth...

has just increased significantly:

I am worth $2,378,272.00 on HumanForSale.com

oh the inanity of the internet...

T.S. Elliot and the Holy Spirit (redux)

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.

We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

T.S. Elliot -- Little Gidding IV


I do not try to pass myself off as a poetry guy anymore. There was a time when much of my "free time", back when there was a whole lot more of it, was spent with pen and paper pouring myself and all my teenage angst onto a page blackened by my inky lifeblood. There was ne'er a feeling left untapped or an emotional episode left unrecorded. It is probably safe to say that those days were what lead to my eventual traverse on the stage and some wonderful years pursuing acting and singing. But this is not who I am today -- of course there are vestiges -- pieces of me that need outlet from time to time, be it by singing in the car or hearing a great opera or symphony, watching real actors (i.e. maybe 2% of the Hollywood crowd) really dig in and do great, gritty work. Things like that are few and far between, but when they happen the joy is unspeakable. Excellence is hard to come by these days, especially in poetry. I have made attempts to watch some of the publicized poetry that is out there now and, with a few certain exceptions, it is largely just politically liberal cry-babying that has no real soul. Maybe I'm jaded, my emotional spigot drawn in by the all to realness of reality and the height of the stakes at which the real is played. Life doesn't move moment by moment - life is epochal.

Now, don't get me wrong -- this is not some push toward some stoic, or Gnostic existentialism that says the now doesn't matter. It matters. But if you have a true philosophy of history then you know that moments are not for themselves, they are all moving towards something else, something that transcends each, a climax.

T.S. Elliot understands this, and phrases it in a way that nearly brought me to tears when it was first read to me. The backdrop is a series of classes on the Book of Acts (yes, that's in the bible...), more specifically on Pentecost and the giving of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles of Jesus in Chapter two. We had spent weeks discussing what is happening in the passage, and looking back at the prophecy of John the Baptist in Luke, and looking at Jesus' own baptism. We had been going to great lengths discussing what it meant to be baptized with the Holy Spirit and Fire, and what the fire meant, the double entendre... and after our study on this section came to an end, my professor put this stanza of Elliot's poem on the overhead and read it to us, and in these two verse, crystallized all that we had spent weeks working to understand.

I don't know anything about T.S. Elliot. But after reading this stanza (I have yet to read the rest of the very long piece), I know that he knew scripture, he knew it well, and he had some personal knowledge of the Holy Spirit.

There is an urge in me to deconstruct these lines -- I want to take you through line by line and tell you each and every thing the author is alluding to, but I feel as though it would ruin it in my own mind, lessen it -- and I don't think I can do that.

But I will say this -- A couple of posts down I posted a verse from Deuteronomy in the Hebrew which read, "Our God is a consuming fire". Mr. Elliot understood and expresses this well, saying that we have no choice but to interact with that flame -- one way or another it will touch us, it must. It will be the touch of a refiner's flame, or the flame of judgment.

p.s.

I encourage you to study it yourself. Look through the bible at all the references for fire and it's spiritual 'uses' - what it does (Joel 1 and 2, Malachi 3, 1 Peter 1 - only for starters), and then read the accounts of John the Baptist's ministry/prophecy and the Baptism of Jesus in Luke 3, and John 1 -- then read it's fulfillment in Acts chapters 1 and 2.

White Out

Philly in today's snowstorm.

Makes me want Hot Chocolate!

The Internet and Baseball -- Perfect Together

I remember a time when mornings consisted of coffee and newspapers. Back in those days when you could only get one story on your team, maybe two, a day. Even in Spring Training when there is so much going on and guys are getting evaluated, at best you got two different papers at your doorstep, one local and the other regional, then you might get an extra story or two. It made coffee time an efficient 10-15 minutes at the breakfast table.

Enter the new age of the Internet, and for a small fee at espn, you can get every story in print for your team all across the country. This is not a huge deal if you live where your team is, because most of the stories are local, but for the transplanted fan, it just doesn't get any better. Now each morning you can sit down with your coffee and spend as much time as you can spare reading stories about workouts, getting to know new players, and forging a bond with the team you will be following for the long haul, 162 game season. And when your team is stationed in a city that has 15 local papers between 3 states that all cover your team, it is even better. At that level you need to be a little more choosy on the stories you read, because as always, time is of the essence, and you don't want to waste your time reading a story you have already seen, so you have to learn to be able to see behind the headlines. There is only so many times you can read about how Carlos Beltran is taking David Wright and Jose Reyes to the gym with him after practice for extra baseball-focused workouts - and there is no telling how many different ways a sportswriter can headline that story -- I'm telling you, it's a tricky business...

But of course, that is just the beginning. Stories in the morning are just a fraction of the internet goodness available for the baseball lover. History, stats, video highlights, full games, audio or video, interviews, press conferences... everything you could ever ask for is right there at your finger clicks. If you love baseball enough you could spend every moment in baseball related euphoria.

All of this, of course, does not even mention the obvious -- Fantasy Baseball. Could you imagine trying to play this game before the internet? Manually drafting players, keeping stats and adding up points.. every day would be a statistical nightmare.. this would definitely be a full time job (with overtime) for any mere mortal.

So make sure, as you dive in head first to a veritable cornucopia of infinite baseball gratification, that you are thankful to the Lord for Baseball, and of course -- the internet.

Now pardon me while I go repent of my idolatry...

Calm before the storm

For expecting 9 inches of snow in the morning, the sky is quite clear, and there is a perfect moon over Philadelphia.

It's 1am and I am studying (or not) for a Hebrew exam in the morning.
So much for productivity.

but here is a Hebrew lesson for you:



It means: "Your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God" ... from Deuteronomy 4:24

"Therefore watch yourselves very carefully" (v.15)

The Divine Counsel

"The Son did not move the Father to love; electing love arose from the Father himself. Scripture, accordingly, everywhere teaches that the cause of all the decrees does not lie in any creature but only in God himself, in his will and good pleasure (Matt. 11:26; Rom. 9:11ff; Eph. 1:4ff). For that very reason, both for unbelievers and believers, the doctrine of election is a source of inexpressibly great comfort. If it were based on justice and merit, all would be lost. But now that election operates according to grace, there is hope even for the most wretched. If work and reward were the standard of admission into the Kingdom of Heaven, its gates would be open for no one. Or if Pelagius's doctrine were the standard, and the virtuous were chosen because of their virtue, and Pharisees because of their righteousness, wretched publicans would be shut out. Pelagianism has no pity. But to believe in and to confess election is to recognize even the most unworthy and degraded human being as a creature of God and an object of his eternal love. The purpose of election is not -- as it is so often proclaimed -- to turn off the many but to invite all to participate in the riches of God's grace in Christ. No one has a right to believe that he or she is a reprobate, for everyone is sincerely and urgently called to believe in Christ with a view to salvation. No one can actually believe it, for one's own life and all that makes it enjoyable is proof that God takes no delight in his death. No one really believes it, for that would be hell on earth. But election is a source of comfort and strength, of submissiveness and humility, of confidence and resolution. The salvation of human beings is firmly established in the gracious and omnipotent good pleasure of God."

Herman Bavinck
Reformed Dogmatics Volume 2: God and Creation


If you have made it this far, congratulations... not because the above is difficult reading, but it means you have an interest in what is being said -- so congratulations.

This particular section in this volume, which covers far more than the small quote above, is one of the clearest and most helpful discussions on the decrees of God and particularly election and reprobation that I have ever read.

If you are not a theologian, but want to understand some difficult subjects, Bavinck is your man. He is challenging, but very clear and as you can tell from the above quote, often very practical in his dealings with topics in systematic theology. He is quickly becoming my favorite theologian, not only because of his clarity and practicality (and the fact that he's right a lot), but also because he engages the Reformation tradition from the inside in a way that is refreshing and incredibly helpful.

Focused Blather (Blogging Integrity)

Today I am tempted to do something I don't normally like to do... But first:

I feel that when one decides to throw their hat into the "blog-ring", as it were, they are, at least in some small sense, entering into the realm of journalism. We are all editorial writers with no assignment, and so we editorialize on our lives. However, because we do so publicly, I feel as though there must come, with the choice to write, a sense of responsibility. With that in mind, when I threw my own hat in, I did so with a certain standard in mind. I made up rules for myself, none of which are actually written down, but all of which I gathered while wandering through the existent realm of "the blog".

Now, I do not think that what I have started here is some great accomplishment. There are hundreds of people out there, at least one of whom is linked on the right side of this page, that do this way better than I do. They are better writers, have better content, and, on the whole, perhaps more interesting lives... or at least more opinionated ones. But what I had hoped to shy away from during my foray into the world of blogging was the temptation to fill the vast, limitless void of the internet with moment to moment blog posts about the menial "stuff" of life.

Far too often when I happen to click the "next blog" button in the upper right hand corner of my web browser, I am thrown into a meaningless whirlwind of bloggers who insist on telling the world that they don't have very much meaningful to say. When I stumble onto a person's blog, I want to hear them, perhaps see them, not in pictures, even though I do not know them. Frankly, I don't really want to "get to know them" in the sense of what they do and where they live, I'm not interested in the superficial things like what you do for a living or how you hate your boss or that the boy in your study hall circled "no" on the "do you like me?" note you passed him in second period. I want to learn something substantial about them in a different way; through how they interact meaningfully with the things that effect them in their world.

That doesn't mean that every post has to be some in depth dissertation on the price of tea in China, but I think we should all seek to write something that requires a response. I do not mean that we should end with a question, or that we should expect everyone who reads our latest post to leave us a comment, be it positive or negative. I mean that we should all at least try, on some level, to engage whoever stumbles upon our very small pixel of cyber space and give them something worthy of stopping to read - something that they can take with them when they go. Whether that is a laugh, a "hmm, never thought of that", raging disagreement, or a subtle nod of appreciation or agreement, we should not allow ourselves to fall into the habit of posting our vomit in public, just for the sake of making other people smell it.

That being said, there are of course times when we will all fall below the somewhat high standard I have suggested. If you go through my own archives you will surely find posts you'll read and say "who freakin' cares?" ... I guess what I am trying to say in far too many words is that we should write what we care about, and care about what we write.

But perhaps I have become a blog snob in my short time here...

Now I wrote all of that because I was tempted to write a crap post about how I looked at my tracker for this blog when I got home and saw that only 1 person visited today. I was going to talk about my sometimes "short-term-obsessive" nature and how there was a while were this blog was way to important to me - like fantasy baseball last year: Spending way too much time with very little return on my investment. I was going to whine a little about how blogspot can be so very unresponsive and how slow things have been moving lately and how really unfair blog-life can be. I was going to complain about how I only won 3 dollars today in my friendly neighborhood seminary poker game, and quip over how one of my friends left his credit card at our usual lunch spot and my temptations to go on a spending spree. I was going to top it all off with how my professor circled "yes" on my "do you think I am a good student?" note I left on his podium during a class break today...

Now aren't you glad I didn't do that?


**Addendum**
Please - do not be offended if anyone reads this who actually has a blog like that which I describe here. I did not write this with any particular blog in mind, nor did any one blog or series of blogs inspire me to do so. It was only for my own amusement and self flagellation.

Forever Valentine

Valentine's Day was never a big deal for me. I never cared if I was alone on V-D and most of the times I was with someone, the day was a pressure filled mess. Always trying to think of new and exciting ways to say "I Love You" - or as it happened for many years.. something far less romantic...

But those days are long gone.

Last year I had my last Valentine's Day as a single man. I had it in mind that I was going to ask my girlfriend to marry me in the near future, but I had no plan of attack or big bad scheme to blow her mind or sweep her off of her feet. I had designed a ring for her and was waiting for it to be finished. It just so happened to be Valentine's Day when the jeweler called me to let me know it was finished.

Now, I have to preface the next part of the story that I am sure is already unfolding in your mind. You have to understand that I am the least cliche type person you may ever know. The mere idea of proposing on Valentine's Day makes me want to hurl. That being said, the fact that my then girlfriend, now wife, Natalie knew this about me, made for a unique opportunity.

While leaving work(last year, V-D was on a Saturday), Natalie was cajoled by her co-workers, half joking, about her coming back with a ring on her finger. She, knowing her man, replied with an aloof "yeah right". I think the idea of me proposing to her on Valentine's Day was perhaps as unbecoming in her mind as it was in mine.

So when I showed up at the Jeweler, I actually had no intention of even picking up the ring. I just wanted to check it out and make sure it was what I wanted, etc.. But after examining it, I was loathe to leave without it. So I took it with me, just in case...

As I drove back to my place, the last thing in my mind was whether or not to propose tonight... but as I walked up onto my porch, it dawned on me that I may never have the opportunity for surprise like this ever again... hmmm... nahhh... But I'm going to take the ring with me.. just in case. I left the box at home.

I had bought her some gifts and a card which I had surprised her with earlier, a diamond pendant necklace, and a love letter. We also had plans for the night. Natalie made lobster for dinner (yum!) and Creme Brulee for desert (my favorite!), and we went to see 50 First Dates which had just come out. We really had a great time, and the movie was a lot of fun, maybe my favorite romantic comedy.. right up there with Serendipity. We went back to her apartment to eat Creme Brulee and hang out for a little while and end our fun Valentine's Day together. I went into the bathroom before I left and after washing my hands I slipped one into my pocket and found something I had completely forgotten about... the ring. I don' think it could have been more perfect.

I left the bathroom with my hand still in my pocket. I sat down next to Natalie on the couch and after a moment, I said, "I have one more surprise for you."

Now, in an ideal world I would have very smoothly slid my hand out of my pocket and directly onto her finger while asking her to marry me... it didn't quite go so hot. I fumbled it, and even dropped it.. but she was in shock, so unless you remind her, she may not even remember. I finally got the sparkling ring onto her ring finger, and asked her if she would be my wife...
You obviously know how she answered.. but if you could have been there, you would have waited with me for what seemed like an eternity until the fog cleared from Natalie's mind. I have no idea what was going on during that time. I could not tell if she was seriously thinking about it, or if she was blinded and entranced by the shiny rock, or if she had not yet realized what had happened.. in any case, she eventually said yes, and as they say... "the rest is history".

It is not, however, ancient history. This is the anniversary of our engagement. Tonight we will go grocery shopping together for our dinner - my 'specialty' steaks. We will enjoy an evening of each other's company and watch the movie that got me "in the mood' to pop the question one year ago. Perhaps this will become our V-Day thing, dinner and 50 first dates.

Lord willing, this is the first of decades of Valentine's Days together. And now it means more than ever.

Technical Words...

I found out this week that I am a Supernaturalist Evangelistic Particularist of the Hetero-Soteric order.

Not to be confused with a Naturalist, or a Remonstrant Naturalist or even a Supernaturalist Remonstrant. Not to mention the Supernatural Sacerdotalist, or the Supernaturalist Evangelical Universalist of the Remonstrant, Wesleyan or Lutheran Orders.

I think the scary thing is that I could explain it all....

A Texas "Flashback"

About 3 weeks ago I posted THIS record of my traipsing about Texas with my friend Kyle.

Today I received the above photo from the groom of one of the weddings we attended. I had not really forgotten the circumstance of the photo, but not having a picture to commemorate it, I did not share it with you, as words just could not have done it justice. But now I have a picture, and can explain my severe, sometimes life threatening, stupidity.

The festivities were drawing to a close and the bridal party and some other friends (myself included) were trying to see the happy bride and groom off to their first night of marital bliss together. We loaded up the explorer with balloons, wrote on the car with show polish, and were dashing about trying to get as much done as possible before the newly married couple emerged from the hotel ballroom.

Some folks like to throw rice at this time, but this has become bad for the birds, as the rice expands in their stomachs and kills them (reminds me of alka-selzer rumors). Others use birdseed to alleviate this threat to the wildlife, and a still newer trend is blowing bubbles, which leaves no mess and is environmentally friendly. As this wedding took place at night, none of these solutions were viable, so they went with the most obvious choice for a night wedding - Sparklers!!!

(Now, as you may or may not know, sparklers are made from Potassium Nitrate or similar fuel. By itself, in the form of a sparkler, it tends to be fairly harmless, although it does burn quite hot, and can easily burn you if you are not careful.)

The couple was just about to run out, and we had not lit any of the sparklers yet!!!
and they are cumbersome and sometimes hard to light, so trying to help things along, I came up with what, at the moment, seemed like a very good idea. I grabbed about 20 sparklers with the intention of lighting them all at once and quickly handing them out to guests in order to have everyone ready for the exit of the honored coupled. Now, had I taken an extra 10 or 15 seconds to think about this, I would have anticipated what came next, as the photo clearly indicates...
I lit the lighter in my right hand and leaned it in to the waiting stack of sparklers in my left. The first one lit and began to burn...
but then without warning the rest of the sparklers began to light all at once from the heat of the first, and with each new lighting, the combined fire burned brighter and hotter. It was all over in less than 3 seconds, but I assure you, to me the process was nearly eternal. The spark built from a small flicker to a blazing birth of a flaming star right before my eyes. I might have been entranced much longer had the sensation in my left hand screamed in searing pain as its proximity to the burning Potassium Nitrate quickly snapped me out of my trance.

I of course threw the burning rods to the ground, screaming like a small child, dancing out of the way of the blazing inferno that nearly seared my very soul from my flesh... (slight hyperbole for effect)

We all had a very hardy laugh at the whole thing, no one more than me. My being one of the only 'yankees' in the vicinity, most people were very understanding.

I was unaware however, that the ruckus was caught on film. But I am grateful.

Feel free to inundate me with messages questioning my intelligence.. I deserve it.

Some notes on Nehemiah

One more book after this and my outlining escapade through this section of the Old Testament will be over. Today we stop in Nehemiah, and there were just a couple of thoughts that came to mind while I was reading this.

First, is Nehemiah the only book, apart from the Psalms, that is written at least partly in the first person? I had not really noticed this before (I couldn't tell you the last time I read Nehemiah, honestly).

The other thing is.. There is something that tweaks me a little about this book, about Nehemiah. And perhaps it says more about the nature of the Law than Nehemiah himself.
It seems to me that the kind of obedience that Nehemiah was trying to bring about, especially in chapter 13, is not the kind of obedience that God would want to bring about.
And especially in regards to how marriage was looked at and treated. Yes, the Jews married women from other nations and that was forbidden, but marriage was still marriage was it not? Is this not the behavior that Jesus is trying to correct in when He teaches on marriage in the Gospels?
It seems that here in Nehemiah we perhaps see the beginning of the "fencing" of the Law that has become our understanding of first century 'law keeping'. So much focus on the outward keeping of the law and no understanding.
My instincts tell me that Nehemiah is not a 'how to' model for good church life. Perhaps an example of what not to do? Or am I off base here?
How are we really supposed to read this book?
I guess I'll find out... classes start tomorrow.

I also get the sense that there may be a few Nehemiah's wandering around the Church these days as well...