Ripple Effect

The One True God of Israel had worked great miracles for the nation of Israel in the early chapters of Exodus, finally bringing his people out of Egypt, having plundered the wealth of the nation and destroying the Egyptian army.  Moses and the people praised God with a new song whose first verse is still sung all over the world: “I will sing unto the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously, the horse and rider thrown into the sea” (Exodus 15.1).

The song continue to describe the events at the Red Sea, and in verses 14-16 proclaims even more than they knew:  “The peoples have heard; they tremble; pangs have seized Philistia.  Now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed; trembling seizes the leaders of Moab; all the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away.  Terror and dread fall upon them; because of the greatness of your arm, they are still as a stone…”

God moves ahead of the people.  Even though they spend forty years in the wilderness as a result of their disobedience, the nations remember what God has done.  Years have passed when the Israelites approach Jericho, but Rahab can explain her actions to the Hebrew spies in Joshua 2.8-11: “I know that the LORD has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you.  For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Read Sea before you when you came out of Egypt… And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the LORD your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath.”

God had promised the land to Abraham’s descendants 500 years prior. Making people remember and their hearts melt because of forty-year- old events is part of His glorious plan to redeem his people.  That same plan continues today as God’s people share the Good News of Jesus Christ, and God continues to change hearts.

Two Year Anniversary

Today (5/7/15) marks two years of blog posts here at AKnappforthat.  Thanks for tuning in today.

I’ve been able to do a post most days, and the categories continue to be helpful. The counts so far, by category:

Clean Jokes:                                       301

Cool Numbers:                                  122

Fear and Awe:                                   72

Gospel Messages:                           79

Group Prayer:                                   67

Holy Lists:                                            90

This I Know:                                        75

Two or More Categories:              11

The numbers make some sense.  Jokes are generally Tuesday, Thursday (but not today), and Saturday, so there are more of them.  Every Sunday is about the cool number dates in the upcoming week.  I quit applying the Two or More Categories label after the first year, so I should get rid of that one.  And the other five are about the same – Holy Lists has the most because it is the easiest one to write in a hurry!

When I started I thought I could fill up the days with wonderful, heart-warming stories of my youth (This I Know).  But it turns out there is not much to say about me, and there is a tremendous amount of material when writing about God (all the other ones!).  As John famously says in his gospel, “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did.  Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (verse 21.25).

Remember and Look Forward

We used Psalm 40 as the starting point for our church Leadership meeting recently.  Since we are experiencing “transition” in staffing, denomination, and other areas, this Psalm was a good choice.  As the ESV study bible says, “This psalm contains two parts:  first, it gives thanks for the many past mercies received from God, and then it presents a fresh instance of need for God’s help.”

We first read the psalm, each person taking a verse in turn.  We answered two questions:  In what ways had God helped the psalmist in the past?  What ways has God helped our church in the last three years?  Then we looked at our agenda to see ways we need His help with the latest issues.

The first question was quickly covered, and the second one brought forth a long stream of major and minor ways God had been at work in our midst. It was a great time of fellowship and led easily into prayer for the agenda and the transition issues facing us.  It was very natural to give thanks and ask for God’s continued blessings in the future. Those guys who wrote the psalms sure knew a thing or two!

El Cinco is Not What It Seems

Tomorrow is El Cinco de Mayo, and my friend Rebecca from Mexico clued me in to this interesting bit of history – it is an American, not a Mexican, holiday.

The following is the Amazon blurb for El Cinco de Mayo: An American Tradition, by David E. Hayes-Bautista.

“Why is Cinco de Mayo – a holiday commemorating a Mexican victory over the French at Puebla in 1862 – so widely celebrated in California and across the United States, when it is scarcely observed in Mexico?  As David E. Haves-Bautista explains, the holiday is not Mexican at all, but rather an American one,  created by Latinos in California during the mid-nineteenth century.  Hayes-Bautista shows how the meaning of Cinco de Mayo has shifted over time – it embodied immigrant nostalgia in the 1930s, U.S. patriotism during World War II, Chicano Power in the 1960s and 1970s, and commercial intentions in the 1980s and 1990s.  Today, it continues to reflect the aspirations of a community that is engaged empowered, and expanding.”

So El Cinco is not what I thought, but that’s okay because May 5 is actually my half-birthday.  Regardless of Mexican-American influences, I can still celebrate my Hobbit side.

By the way, today is May 4 – Star Wars Day.  May the fourth be with you!

Cool Number Dates – 5/3/15-5/09/15

There are four different kinds of days this week!  Today, 3/5/15, is first as a multiplication day (3 * 5 = 15).

Tomorrow is an especially fun day.  May the fourth be with you. 5/4/15 is Star Wars Day!

Tuesday, 5/5/15, has two labels.  All three of the month, day, and year are multiples of five.  And, El Cinco de Mayo is a national holiday in Mexico.

Shapes

Think outside the quadrilateral parallelogram

The pentagon was supposed to be an octagon, but the contractor kept cutting corners.

Two wrongs don’t make a right.  However, three rights make a left.

 

Mystery Bodies

We don’t know exactly what awaits in heaven, but 1 Corinthians 15.35-58 Paul gives some clues and descriptions of the changes coming:

Where our earthly bodies are perishable, our heavenly bodies will be imperishable

Our earthly bodies are dishonored by sin; our heavenly bodies will be glorious

Our earthly bodies are weak; our heavenly bodies will be powerful

Our earthly bodies are temporal; our heavenly bodies will be eternal

Our earthly bodies are like Adam’s; our heavenly bodies will be like Jesus’

Our earthly bodies bear the image of Adam; our heavenly bodies will bear the image of Jesus

Our earthly bodies are mortal; our heavenly bodies will be immortal.

The most comforting part of this is in verse 38 – “But God gives (it) a body as he has chosen.”  It is a pleasure to rely on the God who is good and trustworthy to provide a glorious and marvelous new-body experience to his children.

Timing

The 16th tee had a long fairway that ran along a road. The first golfer hooked his shot badly. It soared over the fence and onto the street where it hit the wheel of a moving bus and ricocheted back onto the fairway.

The golfer’s friends were all amazed. “How did you do that?”

He replied, “You have to know the bus schedule.”

Salvation Things God Does

In the book of Job, the main character and his “friends” argue back and forth about the cause of Job’s recent misfortunes and debilitations.  Job maintains his innocence and desire for an explanation from God.  His friends encourage Job strongly to repent because he must have done something wrong.  The youngest friend, Elihu, touches on the workings of God in verses 33.29-30: “Behold, God does all these things, twice, three times, with a man, to bring back his soul from the pit, that he may be lighted with the light of life.”  “Bring back his soul from the pit” sounds like good news; what are “these things” that God does?

The first “thing” is described in chapter 33, verses 15-18.  God sends warnings to men in dreams.  The purpose is conviction of sin – to “turn man aside from his deed.” We hear testimonies in our day, particularly in the Muslim world, of men and women who claim a visit from Jesus in a dream, causing them to seek out the Word of God.

A second thing, in verses 19-22, is discipline in the form of physical pain or suffering.  We also hear stories of people who cry out “Save me, Lord” in the midst of their hurts.

A third thing, in verse 23, is an “angel” who declares the truth to man.  This is our mission as Christians, to proclaim the truth and grace we know in Jesus Christ.  It is cool to think that our evangelistic efforts make us like angels to those we witness to.

And the fourth, most important thing that God does is in verses 24-28.  God is merciful (v 24), he restores to man his righteousness (26), causes man to repent and believe (27) and redeems man’s soul from the pit (28).

Even back in the Old Testament, men like Elihu know how God was working.  This side of Jesus, the Word of Life, we know that God’s mercy and salvation work is all that is needed to save us from the pit, and that God uses multiple means to open eyes, discipline, and provide witnesses of His goodness.