Rainy Monday Musings

This is kind of a hard post for me to put into words. I know what I want to share but I don't know where to start. I've been in kind of a funk spiritually since April. I don't know whether the exhaustion of moving the office and various other big projects have anything to do with it, spending my first ever Mother's day ALONE this month (as in no kids in sight) or what, but daily devotions and regular church activities just haven't cut it. It finally hit me that I'm missing peace and that "sound mind" part of II Tim. 1:7. Thanks to a visiting speaker that peace issue was addressed. Thanks to Pastor Henry Wright's teaching I know that a sound mind is found in a right relationship with the second person of the trinity, Jesus Christ.

I didn't intend to neglect Jesus. He is my Savior and best friend, yet I've had to admit that I have spent a long time (years) learning to love and trust God (the Father) the way He intended a father/child relationship to function. Fear is no longer a stronghold in my life thanks to this dynamic, for lack of a better word, in my relationship with God.

And now it's time to move on. I'm hungry to know my Savior.

It's his power that has my mind reeling today. A lot of things come to mind when you hear the word "power". There are so may uses of the word and ways in which power is defined, shown, and used it covers a lot of ground. And Jesus said "all power is given me". "All" in itself, considering all the meanings, is pretty staggering. Combined with the word "power" and, well, our gaskets just can't hold that much. It's here we step from the realm of understanding into the realm of faith.

But I do want to offer a faint glimmer of understanding. This is something that God showed me yesterday while teaching at the jail. Consider the atomic bomb . . . Little Boy that was detonated over Hiroshima in 1945 successfully converted 600 milligrams (.02 ounce, the weight of a little dust) of uranium into energy. The resulting explosion killed 140,000 people with those closest to the blast being vaporized in nanoseconds.

When you consider the Holiness of our God having the power of even a few pieces of uranium dust, how dare we think we can stand before Him? At least not without a covering of His provision? This is exactly what God did for his friend, Moses, when he hid him behind a rock to prevent him from being killed by the brightness of His glory.

"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereoff." My Jesus owns far, far more than a few specs of uranium dust. It's ALL His. When you consider the mass of the earth is generally accepted as 5.9742 × 10²⁴ kilograms, (did you get that, ten to the 24'th power kilograms?), the energy stored in our world alone is so far beyond comprehension we can only express it in terms of power.

And it's all His. I don't know about you, but I know who's side I want to be on! And I'm thankful to have His covering!

The Grinch That Tried to Steal Christmas

Last night for the third year in a row I went to the Ozark City School Bands Christmas Concert to watch our friend Justin play. It consists of three bands starting with the beginners playing Christmas Music. It's always a treat and I look forward to it every year.

The last piece played by the high school band was a medley from the original Grinch that Stole Christmas, the one with the Dr. Seuss comic drawings. . I had to chuckle at the coincidence while listening to "You're as cuddly as a cactus, You're as charming as an eel, Mr. Grinnnnncccch . . . You're a bad banana With a greasy black peel!"

It's the same theme I plan to teach at the jail this month.

Only this version isn't a cute cartoonish story.

Enter, the Terminator movies. Yeah, yeah, I know. Robots from the future didn't travel back in time to try to kill Jesus. Truth be told, the real version is actually freakier, yet all Christendom lives with it like it's nothing.

Think about it - two eternal beings bent on destroying each other vying for power in a temporal world. One is bent on saving the temporal world, the other on destroying it.

And being eternal, the bad one uses time, and time again to prevent the good one from his ultimate mission to save the temporal world. How? He tries to keep him from being born. In order to save the temporal world the good eternal being has to become temporal.

So here you have this huge plot to keep him from coming at all. Key persons are targeted for destruction. Didn't work. Mass genocide is scheduled to destroy all potential ancestors. A single key player prevented it from happening. And in the end he does come.

Enter - The Grinch, i.e. Herod: A despot so full of himself that he orders the slaughter of babies to prevent anyone from threatening his power. This was Satan's last ditch attempt to destroy Jesus before having to deal with him face to face. Had he succeeded, there wouldn't be a Christmas to celebrate, let alone any other good thing in life.

Despite all obstacles Jesus did fulfill his mission. After all, He IS God. He made a way for those in the temporal world (like me!) to be saved. (Yeah!) His mission was his own death, burial and resurrection.

And that is what Christmas is all about.

Bad news for Men

A recent article on Men's Health dealt with the phenomena of declining testosterone levels in men. This should come as no surprise. While the use of bio-identical hormone replacement therapy has been gaining popularity among women, the corresponding issue in men is somewhat more serious. It's natural for a woman's endocrine system to change as she ages. The alarming decline of testosterone, and especially for men in their prime, is not normal, and is downright scary. It lends credibility to futuristic si-fi films like Children of Men and Stargate episodes dealing with the end of humankind because we fail to reproduce.

The good news is that the condition is treatable. The bad news is that we continue to shoot ourselves in the foot with new chemicals that come out at an alarming rate. They pass FDA approval because they aren't found to cause cancer, but are not tested for how they affect us otherwise - the endocrine system in particular.

The human male is a complex being who's chemical makeup is every bit as sophisticated as the female. Real men, those who are strong in will, character and integrity, are priceless and few. God forbid that they cease to be men physically as well.

All I know about Colony Collapse Disorder, aka CCD

Ahh yes - my favorite topic. - - - - NOT!

I'm asked about this almost daily by non beekeeping people. All the articles have got the public actually CARING about bees. This is a good thing. They've been mankinds underappreciated little caretakers and servants for centuries. We rob and eat their honey, make candles and cosmetics from their wax, and feast on food they pollinate whether directly or indirectly. It's time we cared. So here's the lowdown as I know it today, 5/10/2007.

#1 No known incidents in Alabama. :)

#2 and I quote:

"Good story for sure, (speaking of a mass hysteria cell phone article) except that the study in question had nothing to do with mobile phones and was actually investigating the influence of electromagnetic fields, especially those used by cordless phones that work on fixed-line networks, on the learning ability of bees. The small study, according to the researchers who carried it out too small for the results to be considered significant, found that the electromagnetic fields similar to those used by cordless phones may interrupt the innate ability of bees to find the way back to their hive. Those searching for answers for the recent disappearance of millions of bees in the United States - what researchers are calling colony collapse disorder - jumped on the possible explanation though there was one particular, cellphones and cordless phones emit different types of radiation and what you learn studying one type is not necessarily significant to the other, according to the researchers. We cannot explain the CCD-phenomenon itself and want to keep from speculation in this case, Jochen Kuhn, a professor in the physics department at the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany who co-authored the bee study, wrote in an e-mail message. "Our studies cannot indicate that electromagnetic radiation is a cause of CCD. "If the Americans are looking for an explanation for colony collapse disorder, perhaps they should look at herbicides, pesticides and they should especially think about genetically modified drops, said Stefan Kimmel, a graduate student who co-authored the study last year with Kuhn and other professors It's not my fault if people misinterpret our data, said Kimmel. Ever since The Independent wrote their article, for which they never called or wrote to us, n one of us have been able to do any of our work because all our time has been spent in phone calls and e-mails trying to set things straight. This is a horror story for every researcher to have your study reduced to this. Now we are trying to force things back to normal." Herald Tribune

#3 University of Ohio claims it's related to stress (so what ARE the stress factors???)

#4 Other universities are looking at the above mentioned items: possible residual pesticides in comb, modified crop dna, contaminated pollen, etc. Nothing conclusive announced to date.

My personal gut feeling is that regardless of specific "causes" that the poor honeybee is groaning under the curse of sin just like the rest of creation. They've gone about their business pollinating the food we eat for thousands of years with little appreciation and lots of abuse. Remember those sweet romantic upside down baskets they used to keep bees in called skeps? You harvested that honey by immersing the skep and drowning the bees! I'm not the only Christian to consider that disappearing bees may be a contributing factor to the end time famine that has not happened yet. It's a frightful thought, and while I love bees, I have to cry "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven!" about the whole issue. God's plan of ultimate redemtion WILL go through, but dark times are ahead till that happens. In the meantime the bees DO matter and as a steward of God's earth part of my job is to take care of them to the best of my ability. It's a mandate I hope everyone else takes seriously now.

Ok , now I'll get off my soap box.

Science and Scripture

As a kid growing up in a denominational church wayyyyyy out in the country and attending public school my influences for a attaining a Christian world view were rather limited. We had Sunday School and church on Sunday morning, the Bible, and the occasional Sword of the Lord. No Christian Radio; not even a Christian bookstore within a hundred miles; no college tour groups; Bible camp was unheard of. The words "Youth Pastor" were unknown.

Not to get off on a rabbit trail here, but the Bible itself was enough. That is huge.

That being said, high school posed some interesting challenges. The first was being thrown in a big mix of people with varying backgrounds. I was a quiet, conservative, quirky Bible thumper who didn't fit in too well. (Still am, only definitely not so quiet anymore.) The other thing was public education itself; the whole humanistic worldview; forced evolution and sociology, etc. Fortunately we had a few older teachers who themselves embraced truth despite what the textbooks said. Mrs. D in biology was quick to point out that evolution was a THEORY that some people chose to believe. We didn't get any of this "proven fact that you're stupid not to believe" junk.

Chemistry was where I got my wings though. Our teacher was a Methodist pastor's wife, an organized, reserved and refined woman - good traits for a pastor's wife. Also good traits for a chemistry teacher. Early in the year we covered the basics of molecular structure. Why I was the only one in the class to question the inconsistency of the laws of physics I'll never know but the hand went up and the question was asked. "Since protons are positive and electrons are negative and like charges attract, what keeps the those things apart? Why doesn't that thing just (hand motion for crunching together)?" I think that was the only time I saw Mrs. H's shell crack. She took on a bemused little smile and a twinkle in her eye as she answered, "If that happened the universe as we know it would collapse. I guess whatever's holding it together keeps that from happening."

She knew. And I knew. And we each knew that the other knew. It was God. I did not know Colossians 1:16 and17 yet, but it didn't take a degree in rocket science to see the obvious. For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

The other thing that happened that year was a casual observation about that evolution thing. If life on earth was evolving into something better, why were things getting worse? It didn't add up. I later learned that observation was based on entropy, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, what the Bible calls the "law of sin and death". Creation wasn't changing into something better, it was groaning in travail awaiting redemption.

All that was 30 years ago. I didn't need science to confirm scripture, but as a young person it was exciting that real science existed peacefully and in harmony with God's Word. A conscious choice to reject the world's science was the first of many steps of faith.

As I understand it now the creation/evolution debate taking place on a larger scale was getting into full swing. Dr Henry Morris and other believing scientists fought for the hearts and minds of young people. Debates took place on campuses. More people joined the battle. It hasn't let up and has only got more ugly. I meet people all the time who grew up as I did and had their faith shattered or corrupted by "science so falsely called" in university. I'm just so thankful that God showed me the truth early on and I had enough sense to believe it.

Royal Thoughts

It's crossed my mind several times since studying the biology and social structure of bees that something I heard from my dear sister, Cookie, is very true. She had told me that every plot, every character, every story line Hollywood or Bollywood or "whoever" comes up with is in the Bible. It wasn't long after that ABC started showing Desperate Housewives. Yes, I watched a few episodes, more out of curiousity about the murder mystery than anything, and no, I don't watch it now. All that to say this - a Martha wannabe, Potiphar's Wife, the silly woman and Eli's wife were all there. Split them up into their respective years, put robes on them and viola! Bible characters. I think Potiphar's wife was probably the most blatantly obvious of the four original main characters.

But back to bees. Leaning more toward biology than Bible, it's crossed my mind on more than one occasion that si-fi has borrowed heavily from bees. Yes, I watch a bit of si-fi too, mostly Star Trek and Stargate. A lot of the other stuff that poses as si-fi is geeky occult not worth the trash can it needs to go in.

Queen bees have long held a particular reputation as the she-boss of the hive that everything centers around. There is some truth to that, but we'll skip the particulars for now. The important thing to understand for this discussion is that she's the key to hive cohesiveness. It is her pheremone spread throughout the hive from her to one bee, then another, then another as they go about their business, that signals "all is ok." This pheremone determines the "personaility", if you will, of the hive. I had a particularily cantankerous hive once. Replacing the queen caused it to become gentle within a few short weeks. Changes in pheremone tell a hive to prepare to swarm. Absence of pheremone causes a hive to become agitated and worrysome. You can actually hear the difference in a hive when no queen is present.

Relating this to si-fi, it's been interesting to see this concept applied to super villan races in both series mentioned. In Star Trek it was the Borg. Of course they explained it as low frequency sub space transmissions or something like that, but the concept of all within the ship or species being connected via "something" was not new. Same thing for the Raith in Stargate Atlantis. Their ships are called hive ships. Could it be more obvious?

The good part is as believers in Christ, we have such a bond. It's, He's, called the Holy Spirit. His presence in our lives is very precious as He gently (and sometimes not so gently as the need calls for) works to perfect us in Christ. One of my most striking memories is of an event that happened deep in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in the early 80's. Baby Doc was still in power and the country was much safer for Americans then. My dh and our 3 month old were visiting his parents (missionaries) at the time. Dad H drove us into slums that looked worse than anything we had ever seen in Chicago. I was scared to be there. He stopped the jeep in front of what looked like a hole in a wall and we were greeted by a dark skinned man who didn't speak a word of English. We recognized him immediatly though. No, we didn't know his name or his job or anything, but we recognized a brother who loved the same God we love. We visited in his home a while and it was an amazing oasis of peace. Of course Dad H spoke Creole so they conversed, and we never got past "hello", but the bond was there non-the-less.

It's happened many times since then. Deep fellowship with someone you strike converstation with in a tire store in a strange city. (Could that be the reason for that blowout?) Finding someone with a need greater than a clump of bees in their yard who gave you the encouragement your heart desperatly needed? We are after all part of the same body. And Spirit is life.

Ok, so maybe God did that queen pheremone thing as an image of one aspect of Himself. Cool, very cool nontheless.