So how much is your mother worth? Not that she was anybody’s mother, the subject in Picasso’s painting “Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur.” Turns out she was the renown painter’s mistress—which hardly makes her an appropriate theme for Mother’s Day. And yet the buzz throughout the art world this week has been all about the auction price this oil canvas of Picasso’s actually fetched on Tuesday night. Reputed to have been painted by Picasso in just one day back in 1964, this 5 feet by 4 feet painting put up for auction at Christie’s auction house lasted a full 8 minutes and six seconds on the auctioneer’s block. In the end six bidders drove the price through the ceiling, until it soared to a new world record for any auctioned piece of art. How much did Picasso’s woman go for? A feverish $106.5 million. Not bad for a day’s work, is it?
If only our beloved mothers could have enjoyed the luxury of just a day’s work. The nation pauses this weekend to remember these devoted women we dearly love—mothers who never ended up on a Christie’s auction house canvas—and yet whose self-sacrificing love for the likes of you and me is a portrait of infinitely greater worth than any Picasso masterpiece. For truth be known, when the colors of our mothers were splashed across the canvases of our own childhoods and teen age years, how could anyone possibly affix any price at all to their devotion and love?
No wonder the scene of that shining moment was etched onto the canvas of Calvary, never to be effaced—when from the cross the God of the universe gazed down through his own tortured pain onto the face of the woman who had birthed him and bathed him, loved him and caressed him, taught him and trained him, who had fiercely held him in her heart when it seemed that all the world rejected him. No wonder his dying thoughts—not unlike young soldiers on many a forgotten battlefield whose final cries, history records, were for their mothers—no wonder Jesus whispered to his mother, when prayers to his Father were choked and stifled. The Son of God had but one mother. And to her his undying love was pledged.
This Mother’s Day as you thank God for your own mother and recite to her your love again and again, ponder this recollection of William Cowper, “On Receipt of My Mother’s Picture”:
Oh that those lips had language! Life has pass’d
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine—thy own sweet smiles I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me;
Voice only fails, else, how distinct they say,
“Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!”
The meek intelligence of those dear eyes
(Blest be the art that can immortalize,
The art that baffles time’s tyrannic claim
To quench it) here shines on me still the same.
I love you, Mother.
Pastors' Blog
By Pioneer Pastors
What do golden orb spiders have to do with you 600 Andrews graduates this weekend? This past fall a shining piece of yellow-gold textile (11 ft x 4 ft) went on display in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Woven from the silk of more than a million wild female golden orb spiders, this rare cloth is a four year collaboration of seventy people searching telephone poles in Madagascar to collect the spiders (which bite), with another twelve workers gingerly extracting the silk filament from each of the arachnids (about 80 feet per spider). Weaving the 96-filament threads together resulted in “the only large piece of cloth made from natural spider silk existing in the world today.” (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/spider-silk/)
Why the fascination with spider silk? Because it’s “stronger than steel or Kevlar but far more flexible, stretching up to 40 percent of its normal length without breaking.” If science could mass produce spider silk, we could have fabric for biomedical scaffolds or perhaps an alternative to Kevlar armor. But so far we haven’t been able to replicate the spider’s stunning production that begins as liquid protein in a small gland in her abdomen. When she subsequently applies physical force to that liquid, she actually rearranges the protein’s molecular structure and turns it into solid silk, “stronger than steel!”
What’s all this have to do with you graduates today? Let me get a bit more personal now, since one of you is named Dwight Kirkpatrick Nelson (which means his mother and I are as excited as your parents over the incredible achievement that we’re celebrating together). For four years you’ve been the recipient of the “liquid protein” of a Seventh-day Adventist education. Semester after semester of information, knowledge, wisdom, experiment and experience have been poured into your bright minds. And tomorrow you receive the well-deserved accolades and recognition of your academic feat.
But as the golden orb spider reminds us, having reserves filled with liquid protein is one thing—producing shiny golden silk quite another. Which is why, like the spider, it will take the collusion of forces within you and around you—forces spiritual, social, intellectual and even physical—to weave a unique new silken tapestry out of your life—one you were destined for from the beginning. Choose the companionship of the God who has loved you from the day of your birth and guided you to this day of such accomplishment, and you can be certain your life tapestry and story will be woven with silk “stronger than steel.”
And so on behalf of your parents, who love you dearly and are very proud of you—and your professors and your campus pastors—let me send you into the uncharted adventure ahead with this unfailing promise: “There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears” (Philippians 1:6 Message).
It isn’t pretty when Mother Nature blows her stack! For over a week now the economy of our little planet has been held hostage by an angry volcano fuming above the frigid plains of Iceland. They call her Eyjafjallajoekull (meaning “island mountain glacier”), and the good news is she hasn’t put on a display like this since 1821. The bad news is that back then she threw her tantrums for thirteen long months!
But there was no air travel back then. While flights have now been “ungrounded” in Europe, the airline industry has calculated that air carriers lost $1.7 billion as a consequence of their decision to keep their passengers and planes out of the wind-blown ash clouds. But that “better to be safe than sorry” precaution came with a very heavy price tag. Without auto parts shipments, BMW and Nissan auto plants in Germany and Japan were forced to close temporarily. Flower growers in Kenya—which exports to the world 1,000 tons a day of fresh goods—threw away 10 million flowers, mostly roses, with refrigerated storages overflowing. Asparagus and broccoli ended up, not on European tables, but as cattle feed instead. Tourism in Europe dropped. Train travel skyrocketed. Oil prices fell. And then the mountain went still. Almost.
But if she should resume belching her black plumes into the heavens for a prolonged period, Reuters reported that some economists estimate the European GDP could be lowered between 1 and 2 percent. Amazing, isn’t it, how a faraway island volcano can impact an entire globe?
Just another cycle . . . or just another reminder? After all, you could hardly expect Mother Nature to keep still as this civilization approaches the day of reckoning, could you? Seismologists in Southern California “cannot fully explain” why already this year that region has experienced 70 quakes greater than 4.0 magnitude, when there were only 30 in all of 2009 and 29 in 2008.What’s going on? No—who’s coming back?
The confidence implied in that second question is captured in the hymn of the psalmist: “God is our harbour and our strength, a very present help in trouble. For this cause we will have no fear, even though the earth is changed, and though the mountains are moved in the heart of the sea; though its waters are sounding and troubled, and though the mountains are shaking with their violent motion” (Psalm 46:1-3 BBE). Mountains shaking with violent motion in the heart of the sea—sounds like Iceland’s “Island-mountain-glacier,” doesn’t it? But never mind: “The LORD of hosts [the angel armies] is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge” (v 7 NKJV).
Great news for the students of this university who end another academic cycle. Graduate or returnee, the promise is that “the Lord of Hosts” or “the King of Angels” is with you. And who better to be with you, when nature trembles, the economy tumbles? Who better to open a closed job market than the God whose angel still guards and guides you? No wonder Psalm 46 can be your hymn, too. “For this cause we will have no fear.”
Here’s an Earth Day idea for you. Paul Hawkens in his “green” book, Blessed Unrest, tells of an old rabbinical teaching that if we hear that the world is ending and the Messiah is coming, we must first plant a tree and then go and determine if the story is true or not. For Seventh-day Adventists, who champion God’s creation memorial and who celebrate the return of the Creator, planting a tree isn’t such a bad idea, is it?
For millennia now our creation has suffered deeply under the effects of our very human rebellion. “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. . . . We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now” (Romans 8:19, 22). Can you imagine the latent longing within the natural world for the promised deliverance? But until then, how shall we live, we Sabbath-keepers of the Creator’s flame?
We could begin by eating green—that’s right, vegetarianism would diminish the number of animals raised and killed for consumption, and thus reduce the one-fifth of earth’s greenhouse gases livestock produce! We can turn off the lights in the rooms we exit. We could inflate our tires and save 2 billion gallons of gas a year, some say. We could shorten our showers by two minutes, saving twelve gallons of water. We could recycle. We could save a few trees by skipping the receipts at ATMs and gas pumps, saving by one estimate 3 billion feet of paper. We could use our own thermos bottles and quit drinking bottled water, since a one liter bottle requires 5 liters of water to cool the plastic, thus resulting in six liters of water for each bottle! Lists of “green” or environmentally friendly ways to live (like these from Ashleigh Burtnett in the Student Movement here at the university) are all over the web, and you can make your own.
The point? As Creator-worshiping, Sabbath-keeping, nature-preserving friends of Jesus, shouldn’t we be at the forefront of ecological conservation and environmental care and protection? Truth be known, God himself planted a tree once upon a time to save this creation. “To the death of Christ we owe even this earthly life. The bread [our farmland] we eat is the purchase of His broken body. The water [our rivers, streams] we drink is bought by His spilled blood. . . . The cross of Calvary is stamped on every loaf. It is reflected in every water spring” (DA 660). Given the infinite cost of planting that tree, we must join him in saving his creation. Don’t you agree?
Why wouldn’t a preacher want to visit there? We just returned from spending the Easter weekend in Birmingham, England—preaching at a conference for a group of highly motivated young adults, AdvANCE (Adventist Apologetics Networking Conference on Evangelism). And I was blessed. Not only because of their passion to communicate the everlasting gospel to their extremely secular homeland (one European survey ranked the United Kingdom as the most “godless” nation in Europe). But also because just a few miles up the motorway is the English town of Lutterworth, the final parish of the great 14th century English preacher scholar, John Wycliffe. In that stone and brick sanctuary stands the pulpit containing wooden pieces from the very one Wycliffe thundered from during his pastorate (1374 to 1384). Behind glass are the fragments of the robe this great preacher once wore. And on the platform beside the altar is the still crimson-padded chair he once used.
On the south wall of the high-ceilinged sanctuary is a marble mural carving of Wycliffe, dressed in humble garb, standing in front of the cross, one hand pointing to an open Bible, the other raised to his gathered countrymen. Inscribed are these words: “His labours in the cause of scriptural truth were crowned by one immortal achievement, his translation of the Bible [from the Latin Vulgate] into the English tongue. This mighty work drew on him indeed the bitter hatred of all who were making merchandize of the popular credulity and ignorance: but he found an abundant reward in the blessing of his countrymen, of every rank and age to whom he unfolded the words of eternal life.” Incensed by the mendicant friars who plied their beggarly superstitions across England, Wycliffe, at one time a chaplain to the king, became a champion of the commoners’ right to read the forbidden Holy Scriptures for themselves, in their own tongue. Three times Roman and royal courts attempted to silence the Reformer’s voice. But all three attempts failed. Before his second and mortal stroke would fell him, Wycliffe completed his translation of the Bible. But with no printing press (yet to be invented), its leaves had to be hand-copied by volunteer scribes and secretly passed throughout the country by itinerant preachers (Lollards).
Why bother with this story of an Englishman? “The character of Wycliffe is a testimony to the educating, transforming power of the Holy Scriptures. It was the Bible that made him what he was. The effort to grasp the great truths of revelation imparts freshness and vigor to all the faculties. It expands the mind, sharpens the perceptions, and ripens the judgment. The study of the Bible will ennoble every thought, feeling, and aspiration as no other study can . . . . [and] would give to the world men [and women] of stronger and more active intellect, as well as of nobler principle, than has ever resulted from the ablest training that human philosophy affords” (Great Controversy 94).
Called “the Morning Star of the Reformation” (John Hus and Martin Luther would later draw their inspiration from his ground-breaking reforms), Wycliffe died in his parish at sixty. Enraged they had been unable to publicly silence him, forty years later Rome ordered his bones exhumed, burned to ash and then cast into the nearby Swift River—unwittingly symbolizing the eventual reach Wycliffe’s teaching would have, flowing to every shore on earth. We are his spiritual descendents. Then may the God of Wycliffe raise up a new generation of young, fearless, Bible-saturated defenders of Christ’s faith! That is my prayer.
They found the door to heaven this week! A gentleman named User served as the chief minister to the powerful and long-ruling Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt (15th century BC). In fact for twenty years he was “vizier” (an Egyptian civil officer having viceregal powers) in her palace. Along the way he also acquired the titles of prince and mayor of the city. So while he wasn’t royalty, he hobnobbed with them. In life, and even in death. For archaeologists have found his tomb on the west bank of the Nile at Luxor, the burial ground reserved for kings and queens. User had connections.
But what is intriguing is the ultimate connection he sought. On Monday the Egyptian antiquities authority announced the discovery of a 3500 year old pink granite door that archaeologists have determined belonged to the tomb of User. Nearly six feet tall, the granite slab is a carved “false door” that was placed in a recessed niche inside User’s tomb. No door handle, no hinges, just a tall slab of granite inscribed with enough hieroglyphics to determine that User intended the door to represent a gateway into the afterlife. In front of the door was an offering table upon which food and drink were left for his departing spirit, a bit of refreshment on the way to heaven.
Two thousand years ago another slab of rock was rolled across the mouth of a garden tomb. Inside lay the body of the Deceased, clearly a victim of Roman crucifixion. Buried late Friday afternoon, the body lay at rest through the long Sabbath hours, the sepulcher door sealed shut by the nervous Jewish and Roman hierarchy. But nobody—not even the Dead Man’s closest followers—anticipated that explosion of lightning outside the grave just before dawn on Sunday. And when the towering angel tossed aside the sealed stone and with the voice of a thousand trumpets shouted into the sepulcher, “Son of God, Your Father calls You”—only then was the truth about the door to heaven at last unearthed. Not pink granite, the true door to the afterlife. Just the living, pink flesh of the “I was dead, but now I am alive” resurrected Christ! The same Christ, who two millennia later still proclaims, “I am the door. If any enter by Me, they will be saved” (John 10:9).
If User walks into heaven one day, it will be this Door—and only this Door—that will be his gateway to eternal life. Because the Door to Heaven has always been and will always remain the person of Christ. “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me—though they die—yet shall they live” (John 11:25). Which means that if you choose to live close to the Door now, it won’t matter which side of the river they bury you . . . or me.
Have you read the 2300 pages of the newly passed health care bill? I haven't either. But as one report summarized the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that the president signed this week, it is "the most sweeping expansion of government social policy in more than 40 years, and perhaps the most polarizing." Regardless of your personal convictions about the new health care law, most all of us are agreed that its protracted debate certainly did not bring out the best in civil discourse, did it? And I wonder if all of this is a harbinger of days to come, the grinding gridlock of political process and national governance that in a time of economic (or any other) crisis could unexpectedly veer this nation down a pathway long predicted but hardly anticipated. But never mind that notion right now.
Because in the 2300 plus pages of this new law, is there a single word about "soul care?" Health care aplenty, of course. But what about that care that in the big picture matters most? Oh, it's true-we don't look to government to mandate the realm of the spiritual. But in all the noisy debate over the care of the body, isn't it essential that we seek the care of the heart and soul, too?
So consider this insurance policy that provides not only national, but global coverage: "Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst" (I Timothy 1:15). Soul care insurance for every man, woman and child that inhabit this planet. Signed into universal law—not by the 22 pens the president used to affix his signature this week—but by the crimson of the divine signature on that cross remembered next week throughout the Christian world. It was a Good Friday for the human race, but it was a dark and awful Friday for the incarnate God who offered up his life to become the signatory of an insurance policy—health (spiritual) and life (eternal)—for "whosoever believeth in him." How could the terms of his policy be simpler? Trust the God of the universe with your life ("I ask you please to take charge of my life and lead me for the rest of my life"), ask him to be your Savior and Lord ("Forgive my sinful ways and give to me the peace of your loving acceptance)—and the very big print of the policy declares you not only have his friendship now, you can bank on his saving gift that one day will throw wide the doors to his home forever and ever. Amen.
In spite of the rancorous debate over health care, why would any clear-thinking human being reject the provisions of this policy for soul care?
At what point does a thinking person become concerned with nuclear proliferation in the Middle East? This Tuesday both Israel and Syria announced their intentions to produce atomic power plants, ostensibly for peaceful energy-generating purposes in their nations. And of course the world has been warily keeping an eye on Iran as it proceeds with its own nuclear power program. And now word on the street is that Egypt, Jordan and United Arab Emirates are also eager to develop their own nuclear power. And who’s to blame any of them? After all, nuclear fission is environmentally cleaner than coal-burning, avoiding the belching of fossil fuels into our atmosphere, thus theoretically reducing global warming and its effects. The small matter of nuclear waste storage, of course, is a perplexing down-side to atomic power. But viva nuclear fission—and a brave new world precariously balanced on the edge between peaceful energy and nuclear weaponry.
Will our civilization eventually destroy itself in a nuclear holocaust? I had a gentleman once explain to me that Jesus was hinting at nuclear destruction when he spoke the words of Luke 21:26—“‘Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’” Does Christ warn of apocalyptic nuclear proliferation? That isn’t how I read his somber words.
But while Holy Scripture is silent on the reality of nuclear fission, it is not a stranger to unbridled divine power. In fact the word it uses is the Greek dunamis, from whence comes our word “dynamite.” And it is not a coincidence that Paul seizes that word to describe the spiritual nuclear fission at Calvary: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the [explosive] power [dunamis--dynamite] of God” (I Corinthians 1:18). All the explosive spiritual-moral power of divinity was concentrated in the split-second fission at the cross—wherein the spotless and pure life of the incarnated God, Jesus Christ, became the moral receptacle for every sin every sinner like you and me has ever committed. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us” (II Corinthians 5:21). Or as the ancient prophet described that explosive Calvary exchange: “And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6).
Truth is, there is no greater power in the universe than that unleashed by God for sinners at the foot of the cross, where the darkest guilt and the foulest sin are obliterated. “O let us contemplate the amazing sacrifice that has been made for us! Let us try to appreciate the labor and energy [nuclear fission] that Heaven is expending to reclaim the lost, and bring them back to the Father’s house. Motives stronger, and agencies more powerful, could never be brought into operation” (Steps to Christ 21—if you would like a free copy of this classic, see the offer at this website).
No wonder my friend Roger Morneau taught me to read the story of the cross (Matthew 27:24-54) every new morning. What better way to ensure spiritual nuclear proliferation? And who more powerful to enlist as your Savior, Protector and Friend than the Jesus of Calvary?
In the space of one and a half months, our hemisphere has suffered two immense killer quakes—the 7.0 magnitude quake that leveled Port-au-Prince, Haiti, January 12, and left 230,000 dead and an entire country in economic ruin; and the magnitude 8.8 monster that ravaged Chile last Sabbath morning, unleashing destructive tsunamis in its wake (one eyewitness reported a wall of water “fifty feet” high). While the Chilean death toll was a small fraction of that in Haiti (because of enforced earthquake construction codes), the energy released by the Chilean quake was so immense scientists are now telling us it knocked our planet 3 inches off its axis, thus shortening our day by 1.26 microseconds. Our hearts and our prayers (and our financial gifts—go to www.ADRA.org to make a much needed contribution) reach out to the sufferers in both regions of our home hemisphere.
But while the Apocalypse predicts an earthquake on the eve of Christ’s return that apparently will be off the magnitude charts in its destructive energy (see Revelation 16:18), could it be that the church today in fact suffers in need of a spiritual earthquake? Of the infant church in Acts, it is recorded: “After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly” (Acts 4:31). An earthquake of epic spiritual proportions—that’s what we, too, need, isn’t it? The moving and shaking power of the mighty Third Person of the Godhead, sweeping over a praying congregation, desperate for God’s outpouring. How else shall the 6.7 billion inhabitants of this planet be reached—without the earthquake of the Spirit?
So what if we added this prayer to the PRYR 101 strategy we shared last week (you may download the PRYR 101 podcast @ this website)? What if we quoted Jesus’ words back to him? What if we asked him every day to fulfill their promise where we live, study and work? “‘But you will receive power [Gk dunamis, “dynamite”] when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth’” (Acts 1:8). You don’t believe Jesus’ promise has been diminished by the passing of time, do you? Then can you imagine a more earth-shaking promise with off-the-chart possibilities than this one?
7.0—8.8—before the “big one” strikes, isn’t this the right time for God’s people to be in fervent prayer for the spiritual earthquake the Spirit has promised? After all, the two seismic temblors in our hemisphere already this new year are a somber reminder that life as we know it simply can’t go on, won’t go on indefinitely, will it?
Why are the “talking heads” so glum? Thomas Friedman, in his Sunday column in the New York Times, reported that because of the economic downturn the residents of Tracy, California, are now going to be charged to use their emergency 911 service. You can pay $48 a year to cover unlimited 911 calling, or you can wait and be billed $300 for every time you have an emergency. “Welcome to the lean years,” Friedman opined. For the past seventy years Americans have lived off the fat of the land. Our parents may have been the Greatest Generation, but we have become the Grasshopper Generation, Friedman observed, “eating through the prosperity that was bequeathed us like hungry locusts.” But after the feast comes the famine. “Let’s just hope our lean years will only number seven,” referring to the Genesis story of the crippling Egyptian famine. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/opinion/21friedman.html?scp=2&sq=Thomas%20Friedman&st=cse)
Have you noticed—there is a growing chorus of voices who, with increasing doom and gloom, are pronouncing an impending finis to life as we know it? (“The fat lady has sung” is the headliner to Friedman’s column.) Even the young are becoming disillusioned. The Pew Research Center released a study this week revealing that young adults (18-29 years old)—who were a political force to be reckoned with in the last presidential election—are now “quickly cooling . . . amid dissatisfaction over the lack of change in Washington” (SBTribune 2-24-10). Political gridlock, economic quagmire—maybe the pundits are right—it’s fast becoming our way of life. But shall their “woe is us” carry the day?
May I recommend two responses from us, who profess a higher allegiance to a greater kingdom? Response #1—the stunning rapidity with which life as we know it is changing makes it imperative that now we invest our best and freshest energies to seek a deepening relationship with God. The new mini-series at this website, “Primer for the Next Generation,” is a series of teachings designed to aid us in doing just that. “PRYR 101” (part two) is a practical spiritual strategy for successfully living straight through a turbulent time like this. So please download the podcasts. Christ’s invitation is for you: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened [with life’s woeful headlines], and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28).
Response #2—the escalating newsbeat of uncertainty may exacerbate our anxieties, but by its very nature it also feeds the human longing for resolution. And what greater re-solution to this society’s woes than the invitation of Jesus, “Come to me and I will give you rest.” Do you realize that your friends right now are “wide open” for you to share your Savior with them? Crises always open the heart. So if you’ll email me at this website, I’ll send you a book that will change their lives, and yours, too. The little classic Steps to Christ is a practical, inspirational guide on how to experience Jesus’ “rest” in 2010. And given the gloom and doom of the talking heads and headlines, who better to turn to for the rest of his peace for the rest of our lives?
- ‹ previous
- 50 of 64
- next ›