Who is God?

Tonight we had a movie night at our church. Too bad more people didn't come, but it sure was phenomenal to see. As a matter of fact, my Tim, age 10 (who before we left to see it winced a bit when I said it wasn't an entertainment movie but a movie about God's creation), said that this is now his favorite "movie" and that he loved it! The film we watched was far better than mere entertainment. It was called "Indescribable" and the speaker, Louie Giglio, told in extensive form, using pictures taken from the Hubble Telescope, about how the heavens declare the glory of God. I tell you, our universe is beyond amazing in size, in beauty, in creativity, in variety. It definitely puts who we are in perspective, and makes all the more amazing how far God came to enter our dirty sinful little world to become like us, so that He could be rejected by us and die for us. It makes all the more unthinkable how He could even think of us, let alone love us as much as He has proven and continually proves that He certainly does.
One of the prayers that were given up afterward was regarding how in our current world, when we are able like no society ever before, to know just how amazing and intricate our universe and all of God's creation is, we are more accountable to seek and find Him and give glory to Him. It is all the more evident to us, when we see outer-space photos of the universe, in-the-doctor's office pictures of our corneas, in-the-doctor's office pictures of our babies growing within...when we know that we are made up of complex cellular structures, as are even the tiniest bugs and germs...we know that an amazingly creative God has put it all together. We are privileged to have this knowledge; just 10, 40, 80, 120 years ago, the knowledge was far more limited. Yet more people who hear of God and Jesus Christ reject and oppose Him than they did when humanity's knowledge was more limited. I don't understand why this is, but God's word said that people would fall away toward the end times, that His name would be used as a swear word, that people would exchange the truth for a lie, that they would worship the creation rather than the Creator. He is not surprised, He knew this, and yet He came to offer His life for us.
Who is God? He is love. We love, because He first loved us. He is the Prince of Peace. He is the King of kings. He is the Lord of lords. He is our Creator, Sustainer and Savior; He is the Friend of Sinners.
I think people think of Jesus as condemning. John 3:16 is often quoted, but less so John 3:17, which in the NIV version says, "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." Jesus' reason for descending from heaven, a universe away, to come into our nasty insignificant world was, first and foremost, to save sinners from the penalty of their own sin. God is great--but admit it--we knew it already, didn't we!

Kind of a Wild Life

It's starting to feel like we're breaking out of the winter freeze. Last night we opened the bedroom window to air out the painting fumes, and so all night I could hear two different kinds of frogs croaking from the pond about 100 feet from our house--it sounds like we're surrounded by them! There seem to be hundreds of little ones, which we will find in various places all summer including near the lights at our front door. I think they are drawn there by the easy meal of flying insects that come to the lights at night. Then there are those that croak with a deep, huge voice, and sound like they must each be a foot across or so. Once in a while all the frogs would simultaneously fall silent. I don't know if there was a coyote or heron that kept haunting them, but every time they did, even if I was almost asleep, I had to laugh. It was amazing how suddenly they would stop and then start again.
Then this morning, not only were the frogs still croaking, but I could hear various bird calls. Without looking out the window, I could almost imagine it being a jungle environment with all the animal sounds going on. I tried counting the bird calls, and thought that I came up with seven different calls before I got too confused to continue.
On the way to church I had a phenomenal experience: I drove right past a bald eagle taking off in flight from the side of the road. It flew up right in front of me, such that I had to brake to keep from hitting it. I was probably within five feet of it; it was almost surreal to have the white-brown-white pattern come up in startling closeness and reality in front of me. It was a huge bird, with huge, distinguishable feathers! Definitely amazing.
Still, I pondered how much I would be likely to tell people at church about it; not very likely, because there was too much other excitement going on. Our pastor and a young member of our congregation had just come back from a missions trip to Russia, and that same pastor was speaking about his upcoming sabbatical. In all of that, I forgot for the while about the eagle.
I went out tonight to bring Tim in, and the air felt a bit balmier than usual, and the frogs were back at their constant croaking. All in all, it was an eventful, animal-filled day. I'm thrilled to think that summer will be coming soon, we'll be able to keep the windows open more and be lulled to sleep by croaking and wakened by bird calls.

Cold, Sand, and Anemones...by Flashlight

Barnacles and sea slugs, anemones and shrimpy bugs...okay, so I'm not a poet. Still, these animals are on my mind! We were nose-to-er...who-knows-what with them last night. Gary found a blurb in the newspaper promoting the WSU Beach Watchers starlight beach walk in the extreme minus tide. It's not typical for Gary to pick up on those types of things, but this time he did with great enthusiasm, asking everyone he could whether they'd want to go along. We only got one taker, Richard, a friend of Tim's.
Richard was admonished by his mom not to go swimming...she said he would if she didn't tell him not to. He was wearing the full-height rubber boots, and had his head lamp so he wouldn't have to carry a flashlight. Ready to go! I promised her we'd keep track of him and not let him get washed away.
It didn't take long after we'd arrived for the boys to head off apart from us. We walked in the wrong direction looking for them, so when we turned around and finally found them I was a bit perplexed to see them in water up to near the top of their boots. It took three times telling them to get out of the water for them to get all the way back onto the sand, hesitating like toddlers would because they were loathe to leave it. I could envision them losing their footing and falling in, and me being responsible for the resultant hypothermia. After a thorough explanation of why they needed to stay with us, we continued and saw everything we could find of what the sand and pilings were willing to share with us.
There wasn't as much sea life as we might have hoped, since it's not a beach full of very big rocks, but we looked at those things we could find and talked with the volunteers who were so happy to share what they knew of the animals. I told them the things I remembered seeing at Coos Bay when I was at a camp there, the pycnopodia and the gumboot chiton (I always think of footballs when I see them), little octopi and ceramic crabs. When I told them that some of the students at our camp had been talked into putting their tongues on the anemones, they laughed. I guess they knew the resultant numb tongue; they were too kind to ask any of us to do the same. (That was one of the few occasions in my youth that I exhibited any wisdom, was in not trying that little experiment. I guess I've always valued my power of speech a little more than I might.)
Strangely enough, there were anemones that appeared to be fastened not to rock, but to the dense sand deposits in the area, among the sea grasses that grew there. All of these anemones were tiny, whereas on the rocks they grow to quite a bit larger. I think it shows that this sand was an unfavorable place for an animal intended for the solid grounding that only a rock can give--either the stress of being less-fastened kept them small, or after reaching a certain size, I imagine they might be too big for the sand to hold them any longer, and they would wash away before maturity. It was the only place that my mind could imagine to connect with life in Christ. We are intended for life on the Rock. The shifting sands will keep us small and we will not withstand the storms, but lose our footing and be washed away.
Even though the fauna of the area was limited, I think the boys enjoyed it. Perhaps they would have been happy with the outing even if we hadn't found anything; just getting out and poking around in a cold, messy area by flashlight in the dark of the night was right up their alley. Seeing a few critters that weren't native to their neighborhood habitats was just a bonus. Still, next time (and I hope there will be a next time soon, it was very much fun), I think we will go to Mukilteo Beach where the sea life is said to be much more plentiful.
I wish we were more prone to get away and do these things! Viewing more aspects of God's creation brings a greater awareness and appreciation of His wonderful works. Besides the fact that it's just plain fun.

The Simple Pleasure of Nature

One of Tim's favorite simple pleasures is to go for a walk to a nearby creek that runs through a park near our house. The place is so secluded that in the summer when the leaves are plentiful, you can't see any nearby houses or roads, and it could as readily be a scene 20 miles away from civilization as one within about 1000 feet of the nearest house. Except for the recent carelessness of litterbugs, and thoughtlessness of kids with spray paint cans who decided that some boulders and a tree were a great place for their messages. That has a tendency to telescope the place in a bit closer to humanity.
Still, it was a peaceful, tranquil place, and I sat at the edge on the root of a tree while Tim puttered about in the creek. He knows to look for crawdads; a couple of summers ago he found an adult crawdad and we put it in a mayonnaise jar and brought it home to observe for the day. We kept it overnight in the fridge so it wouldn't get too warm and die, and the next morning we walked back and put it back in the creek.
So yesterday he found another crawdad, this time a baby, probably less than an inch long. Very tiny, it took the patient observing eyes of an eager young boy to find it.
While he puttered and I sat, I listened to the world around us. Even in our house I don't find such a feeling of tranquility, even if everything is as silent as it can be. Even though there was much more noise at the creek than our home is if I'm quietly sitting in it, there's a peacefulness that the hum of even the quietest electric appliances can't match. The birds were singing, and the wind was whirling through the trees, easing loose the first yellowing leaves so they'd flutter down hesitantly to herald the fall season. It makes me wonder that I never ended up being the outdoorsy naturalist I think I imagined myself to become when I was growing up.
One thing that struck me while enjoying the quiet and calm surroundings was that the entertainment world that would attempt to present some of the natural world to kids, such as Disney movies, seems to completely miss the mark in shows like The Jungle Book, Finding Nemo, and Ice Age. Though I know that in nature there's a certain necessary amount of the "big fish eats little fish" scenario that causes all animals to be on some level of constant alert, there's so little of the high-tempo panic mode in the average natural environment that is everywhere in a Disney movie. To truly experience nature is to actually be there in it, not to see it on a screen anywhere or to use any man-made imitations.
I love the fact that Tim loves the outdoors. I love it too. My dad loved it, and used to take us camping every weekend that he could. I always assumed that we'd be campers, and yet it didn't happen that way. We tried, but the effort that went into camping just always seemed far too demanding; I wasn't one who could make it seem effortless. (Maybe it had something to do with camping in a tent?) All that effort, all that exploration and adventure ended up just getting choked out by the everyday chores and the inconvenience. I regret that. And our little Katie hated hiking, didn't care for being dirty, didn't muck about much in streams and in all the mysterious flora and fauna that you never find at home. I don't know if Katie's enthusiasm for the natural world would have grown if we had kept trying. I think, though, that as an adult she may have gained more of an appreciation for all that, more than she would have if it were forced upon her.
Tim seems to have received both of his grandfathers' inherent love of the outdoors, of tools, of mucking about. I hope that it will open doors for a love of science, and maybe of art and music, because I think all these loves may be connected. These subjects have something of the dreamer, the curious, the experimenter, the adventurer. Perhaps now that I am focusing more directly on him and his learning, we will need to pursue the trails and the backroads a bit more. I'll have to keep the mayonnaise jar handy.

Our Little Air Soft Pellet

Here's another thing I shared, in part, with our small group. It's a somewhat simple observation, about how it's impossible to get our finite minds around an infinite God.
A month or two ago, my son and I went to the Pacific Science Center, a wonderful science museum in downtown Seattle. One exhibit keeps coming to mind, and yesterday we discussed it in more detail.
They had a clear ball a bit bigger than a basketball that represented the size of the sun. Inside of that were maybe 50 Jupiter representations. Each Jupiter ball had inside of it about 50 Earth representations--such that the Earth balls were about the size of the little plastic pellets our neighbor kids tend to shoot all over the neighborhood with "air soft" guns. (My numbers are no doubt off, but I approximate for the sake of a mental picture.)
Tim and I were pondering: Imagine the sun. It's smaller than many of the other stars out there; yet God made it and all the rest of them. He made Jupiter, and Earth. On one of these little pellets, our little city of about 60,000 would hardly make a pinprick. Within that city, God is familiar with the hair on the head of the smallest person in the city. He even created the germs that make us sick--and each type is distinct and identifiable. Each germ is made up of cells, which in turn are made up of molecules, made up of atoms--all of which God designed. How He designed the big things and the little things and knows how to run them all so perfectly is beyond my comprehension. How He's out there controlling the universe and yet sending some intricately made little germ to humble me when I need it most, I don't know. I can hardly move my fumbly stubby fingers to get the little screws out of the hole to open my son's flashlight battery case, let alone hold a small planet on my shoulders and direct it in some divinely-ordained path.
He's everywhere present. He deals with the vast and infinite, as well as the microscopic and invisible. He runs the passive things of the universe and orchestrates the lives of the stubborn human things of earth. He knows what we know without thinking like we think. He loves us knowing what we know and also what we think and who we hate; loved us while we hated Him--I think His love, great enough to send His Son in light of these things and because of these things, is probably the most amazing part.