After an interesting exchange on the page of one of my friends, I got thinking about faith. Of course the Bible says that "without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is". There are those who are dismissive or suspicious of those of us who believe in God. As I thought about it, I realized that although the passage above refers to a very specific faith, faith in its essence is a part of every humans life. Those who don't believe in God have faith that there is no one there who will judge them. Those who think all life has value have faith that it is true. No matter what you choose to believe, faith is inherent. The question is not whether you are, as LOST puts it, a man of science or a man of faith. It is simply, how do you choose to exercise your faith. For me, I have found the evidence for God and the Bible to be overwhelming. I have faith that it is true.

I was rather disappointed by certain elements Sunday. My very public fight with the power point really frustrated me. I was very excited to finally share that song with everyone as our theme song for this series and I spent a lot of time perfecting the lyrics power point. Then to have the problems it had with the music stopping and the slides skipping... . I was very crestfallen. Oh well. It is a good lesson in humility. It does have me looking into some technology upgrades, like maybe a new remote that won't be so apt to skip through the slides. It has always done it, but lately it seems like it is getting worse. The message seemed to go ok which is good since the struggle with the song left me feeling a little discombobulated as we headed into the message. But God is faithful and He can speak no matter how weak the messenger. I am excited for this next week. I think it will be a good challenge for us all. God is already using it to speak to my heart about what I need to do in response to His Word in this message. Hopefully He will speak to other hearts as well. So, just some personal reflection for today's blog post.

There is a great article in the most recent issue of "Northern New England Journey" from AAA. I can't link to it because there isn't an online version (its a member magazine). The title of the article is "How Much Wood?: The restorative power of honest labor" by Craig Idlebrook. In it, the author tells about moving back to Maine with his wife, who is native Mainer. He began to go crazy in the woods, "The trees surrounding the house comforted [my wife]; they were old friends from childhood. To me they were something from a Grimms' fairy tale." Then one day he decides to go out and help his father inlaw split wood.

But wood splitting was my salvation, an endless supply of work that needed to be done. I'm a working breed. Academics gave me constant assignments to keep me from climbing the walls. Now, instead of doing required reading, I pick up the ax. There is a primal happiness that comes from watching a log split in two that no term paper can match.

The author goes on to describe the hard work and sweat that goes into splitting and then later brining in the wood. He finishes the article with this line, "I've learned to love Maine over the years. How could I not? There's so much work that needs to be done." Great article and well written and it demonstrates that God made man to work. Work fulfills us and completes us. It is our nature to work and we need work to be what we were created for. The fall may have made us resent work and it made us work harder to produce less, but the need for work is not a curse in itself. Man was given work to do in the garden when perfection still reigned. Well, I've got to go. I've got a lot of work to do today! :)

Following on the idea of identity. There are some who call themselves followers of Christ who don't want to be called a follower of Christ. This is an interesting irony in our modern western Church. We see it especially in the lives of young people who have been raised Christian but are eager to live in the world and enjoy the things it offers. These people, rather teens or adults, are looking to go to heaven, but do not want to wear the Christ-follower label as it would interfere with some of their current lifestyle choices. Then there are others who simply choose to follow their heart in how they deal with people. They may allow their anger to vent toward their family or at work. They may talk at work in ways they would never dream of speaking on Sunday. At home or with friends they will rehearse and repeat the faults and wrongs of others or pass along their failures. They allow sinful desires to control their decisions. Once they get in the phone booth of church, they will rip off the disguise and be SuperChristian! but out in the world, it is a secret identity.

This made me laugh. In this article a piece of bread ended up on an electrical substation causing some supercooled magnets to overheat. They think a bird dropped it in a freak accident. This is all at that big collider that some fear could destroy the planet. Ok so far, but now here's where it gets interesting. A quote;

While most scientists would write off the event as a freak accident, two esteemed physicists have formulated a theory that suggests an alternative explanation: perhaps a time-traveling bird was sent from the future to sabotage the experiment. Bech Nielsen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, have published several papers over the past year arguing that the CERN experiment may be the latest in a series of physics research projects whose purposes are so unacceptable to the universe that they are doomed to fail, subverted by the future.

So, two "esteemed physicists" think a time traveling bird was sent by the universe to stop the collider? Cue laugh track! How about God? No that I think that God is out to stop this thing (though he could be) but how come these esteemed scientists don't consider him ahead of a time traveling bird? Maybe because most scientists refuse to consider the existence of God, even though there is evidence suggesting it. But hey, a time traveling bird is more fun! LINK