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Creation

              For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse . (Romans 1:20)                 Oh boy. Say something like this to many people and you’ll get laughter, eyerolls, and possibly argumentation that probably includes lots of name-calling and gaslighting. But if you ask them how the universe began, they are likely to say that 1) it didn’t, it’s always existed, 2) the Big Bang, or 3) some combination of the two in which the universe cycles through multiple Big Bangs with billions of years of development and destruction between them. Mind you, there is no good evidence for possibilities 1 or 3. Most cosmologists claim that some variation on the Big Bang theme is best answer to the question of how th...
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That's Once.

                   I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.  Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:28-30)                 First, a side note and answer to prayer. My boss gave me the rest of the week off to recover from my knee “ injury. I’m angry with myself for the injury but I’m grateful to Terry and God for the time. Part of the anger is that the time feels like it’s lost. I don’t get paid and I’m not getting things done at home, either. I’m healing from something I inflicted on myself while trying to fix what I thought was wrong. I think. Stupid, stupid….                 Now, to today’s passage. You...
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This Is The Way

                 Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” (Isaiah 30:21)                 It’s been spring for a month, and my vegetables and herbs aren’t in the ground. Forget the fact that it’s too cold and that they generally look better than any of my previous sets of seedlings. It’s a week before my birthday, and I’m feeling set adrift – no goals, no plans, no ideas for direction other than the same direction that hasn’t proved wildly successful yet. I did something to my left knee yesterday, enough that I had to call off work, which is irritating my right knee. And, I’m having a pity party. OK, maybe it’s not quite as bad as all that, except when I start wallowing in it. But it is enough that I appreciate the reassurance that God is still guiding me and s...
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Our Own Folly

                 A person’s own folly leads to their ruin, yet their heart rages against the Lord . (Proverbs 19:3)                 A man rages at God because the alcohol he’s consumed for decades has finally destroyed his liver. If God were a good God, alcohol in excess would do no harm. People move into an area near the sea where the land’s altitude is below sea level and when the tidal surge of a hurricane destroys their  homes and ruins their lives (in some cases for the second or third time), they rage at God. If God were a good God, there would be no hurricanes and their land would rise sufficiently that even if there were, the tidal surge would do no harm. People get out of their vehicles and stroll within feet of an American Bison and grumble in their hospital beds about how God could make fluffy cows with such rotten dispositions.  W...
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Give to Everyone What You Owe Them

                  This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor. (Roman 13:6-7)                 Pay taxes? Pay revenue? Pay respect ? Pay HONOR? Didn’t Paul read the Declaration of Independence?  We must fight for our freedom! We might fight for the freedom and dignity of others! He didn’t understand what we face and have faced! Well, except the Jews were conquered by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Greeks, and Romans before Paul’s time and Rome still controlled Israel at the time Paul wrote, and what’s more, the Christians (not called that yet) were being persecuted and martyred.    ...
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The Message Of The Cross

              For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (I Corinthians 1:18)                 You’ve seen the movies or read the book. Someone (usually a scientist) comes forward with some warning about a disaster, and “everyone” laughs. Then it happens. The boy cries “Wolf!” repeatedly, and then he cries “Wolf!” because there really is a wolf. The cliché of “a wise man raises an alarm and is called a fool” is alive and well and thriving in our culture. I suspect it is in every culture and always has.                 This is just reality. Last week, I mentioned schismogenesis, and it comes into play again. We can warn everyone, and we’ll be ridiculed and worse, because they have a choice between their worldview, which ...
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Let No Debt

                     Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. (Romans 13:8)                 Debt: something owed: obligation                 Financial advisors tell us to get out of debt. Even if they don’t, at least some of us have the sense that debt is a bad thing. It may be something we believe we’ll never escape, but when one is in debt, one is not free. Some people think that certain people owe endless debts to others that we can only repay by handing over everything we own and spending the rest of our lives as their slaves. In a sense, they’re right, but I do not hate those to whom I am indebted in this way to require that they take on the role that they described as evil when ...
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