The Pastor’s Piece
FCFI
March 5, 2023
Random Thoughts – Part 2
Time – It’s that time of year again – Daylight Saving Time (Saving – not Savings). The clocks go ahead in order to give us more daylight. But we all know moving the clocks around doesn’t add or take away any amount of time. We also know there is no such thing as making time or losing time. Time is constant. There are only so many hours of daylight in a day no matter where the hands of the clock are. Everyone has exactly the same amount of it. It is a resource the government cannot print. It is something everyone consumes. We all burn a lot of daylight.
Have you ever noticed that sometimes time is referred to in the context of BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini or ‘Year of Our Lord’)? But several hundred years ago, somebody didn’t like the fact that time was referenced in the context of Christianity so they changed it to BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era). According to Google, “The simplest reason for using BCE/CE as opposed to AD/BC is to avoid reference to Christianity and, in particular, to avoid naming Christ as Lord. Is it better to say BC or BCE? The short answer is that BC and BCE both refer to years before the birth of Jesus Christ, and AD and CE both refer to years after the birth of Jesus Christ. BC and AD reference Christ’s birth directly, while BCE and CE are more secular ways to tell time.”
So there you have it.
Blood – A few years ago, my wife and I took our children to Springfield, Illinois where we visited an Abraham Lincoln museum. There was a lot of civil war history in the museum. One of the displays showed wounded soldiers on the ground and the caption said that during the Civil War it was commonly thought that dirt was a purifying agent so when a soldier got injured on the battlefield, they covered the wound in dirt. Today, that practice would be considered foolish and deadly. In earlier eras of time, it was also common practice for doctors to bleed their patients. It was called bloodletting. Bloodletting was the removal of blood for medical treatment. It was believed that bleeding a patient would rid their body of impure fluids and would cure a host of unhealthy conditions. Those kinds of practices amaze us today, but we then assume that we are doing nothing comparable. We believe that no one in the future will be amazed and appalled at what we are doing.
Laws – We seem to be stuck in an era where we wish to repeal some fundamental laws of the natural order of things. But the fundamental laws of nature cannot be reversed whether one is talking about mathematics, gravity, herding cats, sweeping water uphill, or the human body. We can try, but nature will never let us succeed in overturning them. It always wins.
Hellfire and Brimstone – Here’s an interesting thought about the Bible – Revelation in particular … Some people say it is too symbolic and difficult to understand, so why bother trying? There are lots of reasons to bother, but one thing to remember is that when referring to symbols, the symbol is always less than the reality. The symbol H20 is less than water itself. The symbol O2 is less than oxygen. This means that if the lake of fire is a literal lake of fire, then it must be really bad. But if the lake of fire is merely symbolic, then that means that the reality it represents is far worse. Saying that the fire and brimstone are symbolic does not fix our dilemma.
The Universe – Some argue that after God created the universe and set everything in motion, He sat back and let it run itself, which translates to us that God is very impersonal. Natural laws are the laws that determine our destiny, they say. In logic, gravity holds things to the earth, centrifugal force pushes them out to the edges, and the law of supply and demand determines the price of a dozen eggs. But the biblical doctrine is actually one of purpose and meaning in every experience of life. Being formed by God and created in His image means God has an individual plan and purpose for you in His universe. All of it is personal.
History has a way of purging itself. Kingdoms rise and fall. Cultures come, change, and eventually burn out. The last phase of any culture is decadence. The sensual is glorified, and it is a warning sign – not of glory, but of decay and weakness and eventual death.
Finally, a few days ago I was speaking with a fully educated, full time homemaker who had come out of the workforce to stay at home with her family. I asked why and how she came to that decision. She said, “Work is work wherever you are, I prefer being with people I love instead of being with people I don’t.”
God’s best to you.