Left behind as a good thing.

37As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

The flood "took ... away" unsuspecting unbelievers.  At the end, when Jesus returns to cut short the tribulation afflicting His own, few will see it coming.  Like a tsunami, the wave of glory will wipe out those not anchored in faith and connection to Jesus.  Those left standing, those "left behind", will be looking up in newfound peace and rapturous wonder.

The message:  hang on, love until He pulls you up or clears all the debris around you.  

King James appreciation

I like the King James version because the guys prepping it did not mind leaving it a bit "raw" and with a lack of elegance when all the pieces didn't naturally fall into place.  Like having pieces of a jigsaw puzzle where the punch blade was a bit dull, so some pieces had little extra stuff attached.  It feels like KJ boys held an underlying assumption that they were not up to the challenge of knowing all the time exactly how to trim those pieces.  So they settled for leaving the extra on, trusting God would take it from there.

That's helpful for me, because it keeps some clues stuck on passages I would otherwise be even more clueless about.

Prayer Book Service at Home

Grabbed the Book of Common Prayer off the shelf today to do a little "church at home."  Despite being the 1979, the girls and I went through Morning Prayer (Rite One).  This exercise needs a lot of modifications when you've got kids who can't read.  But still, I could see the potential of having a few families meeting at a home and doing this regularly.  As a sermon, we just read Matthew 1.

First Church of Craig's List Denver part two

I forgot to get to the church part in that last blurb. The reason I started talking about the gay marriage radio program was not so much to theorize on the issue, but to trace a line to why I think we need more churches interested in teaching and living better doctrine. Teaching and living.

I'm living in a big metropolis and I can't find one church suitable for me. I know that sounds conceited and elitist. There are plenty, just about all, in fact, where there are lovely people I can serve and be served by. What I mean is that it is frustrating not being able to find an assembly which gets, or rather the leader gets, the need to attempt self-conscious submission to the Bible and it's perspective. As I see it, this should result in:

• lots of interaction
• lots of learning

That interaction should often have strong ceremonial elements, especially in regular worship. But the context for that worship should be a community of believing friends and family who come together to interact. We need to eat together, work on projects, help out ourselves and our neighbors.

We should have a building that serves as a focal point. We should have a school, including for the homeschoolers. We should find a way to get all the parents and their kids inside this or a similar nonpublic school environment. We should have a kitchen and pantry. We should have thrift store like garage for needy people to get things from and richer people to give to. Speaking of a garage, we should have a shop where the guys and their boys can come and hang out and work on their stuff together, and also do some work on the cars of needy church members and others.

By membership, I mean those whom we understand to be members of Christ's body, as in saved. We take people to be saved if they say so, and if we can't see evidence to the contrary. And we take others to be saved even if they don't say so, but we do see evidence that they are. Children of ours, for example, I understand to be His. And if you are His, you are ours.

So I want a church that's lively with real church home centered activity and purpose. That's the context for the worship, that would then be like a celebration of what we're already doing as a group. We've already got our arms around each other, so to speak, when we come in to worship. We've already been crying with each other, eating together, helping each other and others. We come in pretty much knowing all of what's up with each other and now we're ready to surround the throne, banish the sorrows and let our songs abound, as the Watts hymn goes.

I would like to characterize the "worship experience" of my ideal church as exuberant, boisterous yet dignified enough. I think that a lot is going to depend upon the pastor. He is going to have to be very strong in purpose, very connected with and in tune with what is happening in the congregation. A ceremonial style would be peachy, IF you had a super strong leadership. On the other hand, standard modern repetitive choruses, long bible study style sermons, or ritualistic perfunctory liturgy is not so helpful.

Besides the worship time, we need to offer the regular good long bible study and other teachings we nixed from the worship. We need to feed and nourish the mind and set the backdrop to our actions. So where can you find this perfect mix?

That's where I thought of Craig's List. Maybe there are others out there hungering for the same thing.

First Church of Craig's List Denver

It's funny how long it takes to try to get things somewhat clear in my head. Somewhat, and at least noticeably more clear than they had been for me!

Last night I had listened to an archive from last Friday of Ronn Owens' KGO radio talk program. He was jubilant as he celebrated with San Francisco's mayor the California court decision recognizing the rights of homosexuals to marry. It came to me that these nice folks don't see how they are floating along blissfully down to Niagara. They have undercut any argument they might have had against, say, accusations of their own "bigotry" in opposition to the right of Washington Elementary's second grade class to be a married family. One happy, polygamous band of flies.

If the Constitution is understood to recognize the rights of all individuals as more or less autonomous, then let's not stop with the marriage rights of a consenting adult male-female couple. On what basis? We have rights because we're human, gay or straight, black or white. OK, you get nicked if you commit the type of crime against others that requires us to restrict some or all of your rights -- especially hate crimes, like restricting the rights of others. That's important, because many Christians will soon be so accused by virtue of their anti rights doctrines.

So if being a live human is the playing field, why is it level only for 18 year olds and up? Up until now, their unchallenged assumption has been that "naturally" this was for the children's own good. Just like "naturally" marriage is between a man and a woman? They will be forced to admit their doctrine of human rights rests on only one thing -- the right of "I want." We are endowed by our Creator with the right to pursue whatever makes us happy, as long as we don't hurt others -- so they preach. If I want, nobody has the right to stop me.

Up until now, those Washington Elementary seven year olds have been prohibited from exercising marriage rights because they were considered incapable to properly do so. Like that's a valid argument, in light of the I Want doctrine. Age inhibits their ability to properly engage in and enjoy marriage, they have been told. And who gave you, oh parent, the right to withhold this enjoyment, in the first place. Why, this is a form of slavery!

Ageist, biggotrous arguments against child rights (to spell out what they will be charged with) is nothing but residual (and warped) Christian thought that will eventually be challenged.

They are saying: "You don't get all our rights yet, little Susy. It's because your brain hasn't grown enough. We're not saying you're not human, just not yet human enough. You need to be mature enough in thought power to sustain independence outside the care of your guardians. It seems arbitrary, we know, but we figure eighteen is the average age most folks come into their full humanity. Full enough, anyway. It's for your own good. When you cross the threshold into what we deem sufficient mental ability, then you can do whatever you want, as long as you let me do what I want."

Of course, if God or other humans place laws on them for their own good, restricting them from what they want, they object. Once they hit eighteen, no fair. Says who? Well, common sense. And who says their common sense should be taken as the guide?

Bottom line, it's one big scheme. It's the best we can come up with to legitimize our desire to get what we want. It keeps us looking respectable to ourselves and our acquaintances as we pursue our interests, our passions, our divorces and maybe our homosexual predilections, our pornography, our pot, certainly our selfish and self-centered avarice, but mostly our self-determination. I see the apple. I want it. That should be enough. Nobody has the right to stop me.

Family

Dooters likes to be lifted into a standing position and supported as she toodles around the room, making commentary as she goes, and sometimes stopping to smell the roses. Or in her case, stopping to disassemble some stack or rings or blocks that somehow annoyingly evolved again into organized construction.

Corvon, our visiting baby friend, is going off the phenobarb today, so we'll see if he maintains his mellow self.

Rib roast is in the oven, snow is coming down to make it a white Christmas. Syd is in Kansas counting the days to Japan, and Alex is there doing what all Japanese do on Christmas. I don't know what that is. Slav should be shlogging his way over soon. Lena is doing her hair now as the kids are down for a nap. I'm going out to shovel the driveway, then shred carrots for the salad. Not a bad day!

Bible, then Beale & Carson

I know there's no substitute for spraying Scripture around in my cranium much like dry wall guys with their texture coat. Still, this Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament edited by Beale & Carson appeals to me as the best help a guy can get (in addition to actually reading the Bible).

Imagine getting a bead on how God reads the Old Testament! Through the inspired eyes of Matthew, Paul and the rest, I might learn how to interpret all those otherwise inscrutible passages -- plus others they weren't given to illucidate. But are they inscrutible? Should I have been able to read the "Out of Eqypt I called my son" passage and see not only a "poetic" description of a historic occurance (God lovingly rescued His "son" the Hebrews) -- but also the "obvious" correlation to Herod's death? I'm starting to think I should!

What I mean is that I don't want to read the Word as PsychoBible. That's the method that grabs the "personal application" out of selected passages, skipping over the rest as odd bits of history or poetry, geneology or law. I DO want the personal application, but not at the expense of what God the author explicitly intended. But I'm starting to see that this is exactly what was intended in the production of each and every passage. It's even what many of the human authors could see while they were being inspired.

What if it ALL of it was INTENDED for terrible and wonderful personal (and familial) application? What if I were to pick up the Bible, and before I opened it, I heard this little voice say to me: "Every passage you come to -- without exception -- is primarily focused on portraying what it means for God to save the world, and to save you. It does this through having all parts of it reflect upon and tell you what Jesus was to do and did to get you that salvation. This is a magical book -- by just hearing about Jesus, He might bring escape from death. Don't skip a thing. See Him EVERYWHERE."

Then I open to an evidently backwards looking passage like "Out of Egypt I called my Son" and with Matthew I can see that this is really talking primarily about how God calls me and all His children out of bondage to sin and death! Oh halleluya!! And I see that, of course, Who best represents this more than Jesus Himself, Who was saved by the Father from our sinfulness and death?! And that event about His own trip down and back from Egypt? What a perfect way to picture how His life captures all the pictures and events of Israel -- itself a picture of me!

So here goes, using this little 1239 page book to help me start to understand how God wants me to go about deciphering all the Old Testament passages.