Today marks the midway point of our Daniel Fast.

At this point, I have found the experience to be different from the Daniel Fast I participated in last year at this time. Last year, I inadvertently excluded nuts and whole grains from the menu, and the result was great hunger. Now some would say that, since you’re on a fast, shouldn’t you be hungry? Certainly, however while one is hungry on a fast, hunger should not be the focus of the fast.

Another aspect that is different from my fast of last year is the absence of the feeling of frustration. During most of my fast in 2009, though I engaged in the reading of the Word and in prayer, I experienced a great deal of frustration. That has not been the case this year. I haven’t experienced any great workings of the Spirit, as some of my more extroverted friends may have, but I have certainly experienced an immense amount of inner peace.

The reading of the Word has included the book of Acts. Some selected verses (all ESV):

All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers. – Acts 1:14

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. – Acts 2:42

Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. – Acts 3:1

But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. – Acts 6:4

So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church. – Acts 12:5

Imagine what we could do if we would pray in the same manner as the early Christians. But, we’re too busy.

Between soccer games, movies, concerts, after-school events, happy hours, television, the internet, hobbies, work, etc., we might be able to squeeze in a 5 or 10 minute prayer… if we’re lucky.

Fresh strawberries. A great fruit item to our menu.

Image – © 2010 A. R. Lopez

If you’ve ever limited your diet to only fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and nuts, then you’ve probably gone through the experience of your body reacting to the change in diet. I won’t bother you with the details, but let’s just say that your body lets you know, as if you didn’t already know, that something has changed in its normal diet sequence.

One side effect I will speak about is a bit of heartburn that woke me up last night, somewhere around 3:30 a.m. Now, normally I’d just try and deal with it – maybe some antacid or the standard baking soda routine. However, the main purpose for participating in a group fast is to draw closer to God, through Bible reading and prayer. Could it be that I was wide awake in the middle of the night for a reason? Well, regardless of whether or not the heartburn was providentially motivated, I took the time to enter into prayer.

Thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to pray!

Psalm 29 was particularly striking, this week:

1 Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
2 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.

3 The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the Lord, over many waters.
4 The voice of the Lord is powerful;
the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.

5 The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;
the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
6 He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf,
and Sirion like a young wild ox.

7 The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire.
8 The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness;
the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.

9 The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth
and strips the forests bare,
and in his temple all cry, “Glory!”

10 The Lord sits enthroned over the flood;
the Lord sits enthroned as king forever.
11 May the Lord give strength to his people!
May the Lord bless his people with peace!

Yes, the voice of the Lord is powerful, and His blessing is the only peace we should seek.

Apples, fresh or dried, are a wonderful treat during our fast!

Image – © 2008 A.R. Lopez

I’m not a poet. Actually, a more candid statement more accurately state that I’m just about as far removed from being a poet and possessing poetic sensibilities as one might get. When I read prose fiction, I don’t see words … images and a sense of what transpires moves through my consciousness as my eyes and the reading process occurs at an unconscious level. When the story gets slow or I’m hurried by external circumstances, I turn the pages faster and the story picks up. Writing as a result comes very hard for me, as normally I don’t interact with sentence, phrase, and the art of the written word. Thus most of my reading misses and fails to perceive the quality and beauty of the prose. Narrative, yes, that I get, wordcraft not so much.

Similarly modern evangelical movements, especially in the US, are for the most part barking up the wrong tree. All to often they fall back on Pharisaic proclamations declaiming legalist standards regarding behavioural norms. There are indeed scriptural precedents for this. Scripture, for example Jeremiah and the minor prophets, abound in strong declarations of consequences of forgetting and falling away from God. But, for the most part, these same minor prophets are inspired by the Spirit of God and also promise reconciliation and a restoration of the covenant after a period of exile. I might suggest that few of those making those proclamations are in a position to offer the same promises, for they are not speaking as God’s prophets.

It is a Christian dogma that we come to Christ through the action of the Spirit of God working within us, drawing us to Him and to seek his Grace. So, how does that work? What does that action look like? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously remarked that the line between good and evil passes through every human heart, so too one might paraphrase this to offer that another line (perhaps with hook attached) can be found in every human heart, that being the one of the Spirit pointing out God to man. But unlike the more obvious maxim of Mr Solzhenitsyn it might be instructive to spend a moment considering what sort of features God’s hook in my heart looks like and what part in me it might be. Read the rest of this entry

While day 2 opened with a red sunrise, today closed with a red sunset. The heavens declare your glory, Lord! The vividness of the sunset was made even more astounding due to my vantage point, where I was able to look over the southern coast of California and see the crisp image of Catalina, one of its Channel Islands.

During our fast in 2009, I encountered more hunger pains by this point. However, we didn’t include nuts in our menu until about the third week. I believe a protein supplement is needed, while on a Daniel Fast. This year, we’ve made sure to include nuts and whole grains. Still, it was a bit disconcerting when a co-worker brought in some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies! And while we essentially have no limit on the amount of fruits and vegetables we can eat, I made sure to pick up, and eat, one almond that happened to fall on the floor during lunch.

In Luke, I was impressed with the following line,

And he went out and wept bitterly.

Of course, it is what Peter did, after denying his Lord – and then gazing upon his eyes.

I’ve wondered what Peter must have felt, after having cursed at the notion that he even knew Jesus, to then look into his eyes. Although we are separated by 2,000 years of time, and the physicality of Jesus’ presence, are there times in our own existence when we deny Jesus? Even though I’m not a proponent of personalizing scripture in an attempt to make it “speak to us”, I do think we can take away application and personal significance from the Word.

And what are we to make of this denial? Bitter remorse… precisely because of the love Peter had for Jesus.

The good news is that Peter’s bitter weeping was not the end of the story.

Any religious expression, it seems.  A commentator can’t say anything remotely religious without getting lambasted by the Left.  (And, no doubt, with exclamations like "Jesus Christ!" thrown in for good measure.)  While commenting on the Tiger Woods situation, former Fox News anchor Brit Hume dared dig deeper into the story and commented on one of the underlying issues.

Tiger Woods will recover as a golfer. Whether he can recover as a person, I think, is a very open question… the extent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He’s said to be a Buddhist, I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger would be: ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.’

This has led folks like Keith Olbermann to compare Hume to a "jihadist" and his guest Dan Savage to consider him a "lunatic".  Later, Olbermann said that Hume was attempting to "force" or "threaten" Woods into conversion.  From my local paper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jay Bookman called Hume arrogant and pompous.  Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly trashes Hume and seems to think that if adherents of a particular religion aren’t perfect then it’s perhaps hypocritical to suggest turning to that religion.  His multitude of commenters seem to agree. 

But as LaShawn Barber notes, this was all inevitable.  The Secularists, those trying to essentially make religion a taboo in the public square and who overwhelmingly live on the Left, simply will not tolerate any mention of religion.  (How tolerant.)  And certainly not comparatively.  If you dare insist that belief in Jesus is any better than venerating a toaster, you’ll get shouted down. 

On top of that, LaShawn links to Christian apologist and author James White who points out that, indeed, Brit Hume is right.

The secularists are, of course, howling in protest, but if you read what they are saying, one obvious underlying theme comes to the fore. No one is offering reasoned, objective criticism of the substance of Hume’s comments, because, quite simply, he is right. Buddhism does not, in fact, provide for redemption and forgiveness, but instead directs one to look inward for enlightenment and eventual freedom from suffering (via freedom from desire). But redemption? Not in this life, for in its classical expression, this would involve a long process of moving toward enlightenment through many lifetimes. In any case, secularists do not care about the objective truth contained in Hume’s words, but instead they are enraged that he would actually dare to express his thoughts in public—the realm over which they now claim absolute authority and control.

(Emphasis his.) 

If we are not allowed to speak of religion in public, it may be time to hold a wake for the First Amendment, something the Left claims to uphold. 

Today began quietly, with a beautiful sunrise lighting up a sky full of clouds with a deep, reddish glow.

No stomach growls until mid-morning, although I did have a bit of a caffeine-deprived headache (ahhh, coffee…). With this particular type of fast (I am doing) one abstains from meat, dairy products, and luxury foods. Luxury foods, in my case, would include sweets and products such as coffee. I’m limiting the amount of my intake for both breakfast and lunch, but have no restrictions with regards to the evening meal. Essentially, I can eat all the fruits, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains I want. As my pastor has said, although it might appear easy to engage in such a fast, after a couple of weeks you start to get pretty tired of carrot sticks!

Scripture reading today included the first few chapters of Luke. In meditating over the verses I was struck by the manner in which John the Baptist addressed Jesus the Christ. In our extroverted let’s-all-be-friends smiley culture, we many times run the risk of trivializing who Jesus is, and how we should relate to him. Yet here in Luke 3 we find John the Baptist, the one chosen to prepare the way for the Lord, explicitly state that he is unworthy to even untie the sandals of Jesus.

Prayer for today: Let us truly understand who you are, Lord Jesus, and the worship you are due.

In Matthew 6, Jesus speaks about believers engaging in three activities: giving to the needy, praying, and fasting. Note the grammatical structure of the following passages:

“Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others.” – Matthew 6:2 ESV

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites.” – Matthew 6:5 ESV

“And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others.” – Matthew 6:16 ESV

Indeed, a common thread in the three verses is Jesus’ use of the word “when”. His assumption, it would seem, is that His followers would make it a practice to give to the needy, to pray, and… to fast.

While there are certainly instances where a Christ follower may conduct a fast in private, there also is Biblical precedent for declared, group fasts. The church I attend has embarked on a 21 day fast, the duration being modeled from the prophet Daniel’s fast (ref. Daniel 1), beginning today, 3 January 2010. The fast is a declared fast, yet the manner in which each church member partakes of the fast is dependent on physical limitation and / or desired commitment. Our pastor has chosen to engage in a liquid-only fast. As for myself and my wife, we will be partaking in a “Daniel Fast”, in which we abstain from meat and luxury foods.

The point of this period of fasting is, quite simply, to draw nearer to God – to enjoy the blessing of His presence – to remind yourself that it is He who is worthy of worship. By abstaining from certain foods, one then has the opportunity to delve deeper into prayer and the reading of God’s Word.

Over the course of the 21 days I hope to post progress reports of what transpires, including the downs – and ups.

As for today, lunch was a light salad, with nuts, and sliced fruit. Dinner will be vegetable soup… wonderful in its own right, yet a bit lacking when not paired with the usual fare.

Image – © A. R. Lopez

Today the church remembered the “slaying of the holy infants”, a voice heard crying in Ramah. Today living in as we are in the period of late modernity in the shadow of the great ideological killings of the 20th century (and likely waiting in the lull before the great ideological murders and atrocities of the 21st) this remembrance has no little relevance to our life today.

A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.
– Matthew 2:18 –

Recently I viewed the Polish film-maker Andrzej Wajda’s film Katyn. Like the verse above (and unlike much of the remembrance of the atrocities of the 20th century) the focus is not on the event and the slaying but on the impact on the families and specifically the mothers (and women married to those ) who were killed.

This raises for me a question, to which I will not offer any answer. When we remember the slain would it be better for our remembrance to concentrate our attention not on the specific details of those slain and their particular lives but to focus instead our attention on Rachel, i.e., the mothers and wives of those slain. For example, in our recent US history, the 9/11 monument and memorials to not denote and focus on those who were killed but those who mourn and are left behind?

We had many Christmas music albums growing up.  Every time the Firestone or Goodyear companies put one out, or another compilation hit the stores, my dad (a self-described "Christmas-aholic") would get it.  The first one home each evening would put a stack of LPs on the record player spindle and get it started.

We knew each version of the songs, which song by which artist followed which (we’d start singing or humming the next cut immediately after the previous one finished), and we even knew where to expect a skip in the record.  The pops and crackles became as much a part of the song as the singer, the arrangement and the lyrics were.

We had our favorites, and we also laughed at some of the awful renditions.  (You haven’t lived until you’ve suffered through John Wayne singing "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day".  We love it just for how awful it is.)  One of my dad’s favorite secular Christmas songs from our LP collection is this little-known song done by Bing Crosby, "The Secret of Christmas".  He liked it so much that I remember one afternoon he sat us down in the living room and had us write down the lyrics (one kids listened to the first line and started writing what he heard while the next kid was listening to the second line, etc.).  For a secular song, it really does a wonderful job of driving home the point that Christmas is not just a December 25th thing, and that one of the secrets of Christmas is not just smoothing things over at the end of the year, but it’s what you do the other 364 days that really matters. 

Now, as a Christian, I have my own thoughts on how best to do this (and with who’s help I am able), but Christian or not, this is a song for everyone, and a message for us all. 

It’s not the glow you feel when snow appears.
It’s not the Christmas card you’ve sent for years.
Not the joyful sound when sleigh bells ring,
Or the merry songs children sing.

That little gift you send on Christmas Day,
Will not bring back the friend you’ve turned away,
So may I suggest the secret of Christmas
Is not the things you do at Christmas time,
But the Christmas things you do all year through.

I found out recently that this song was done in a movie ("Say One For Me", 1959).  This is a YouTube clip from the movie with Bing singing the tune.  It’s not the version that was on our LP, but I like the video for this one better. 

The Secret of Christmas

(The LP version is also on YouTube, as well as many other versions including those by Ella Fitzgerald, Julie Andrews, and a fantastic acapella version where one guy sings all 4 parts.)

And, for those of you who know my dad, this is one of the reasons he’ll tell you "Merry Christmas" just about anytime;   Christ came to redeem the whole year.

Merry Christmas!

Earlier this month, the New York Times ran a piece on the slant of the White House’ Christmas decor. From the Times,

But Washington is a city that likes its traditions, and Ms. Rogers has raised a few eyebrows by trying to bend them. When former social secretaries gave a luncheon to welcome Ms. Rogers earlier this year, one participant said, she surprised them by suggesting the Obamas were planning a “non-religious Christmas” — hardly a surprising idea for an administration making a special effort to reach out to other faiths.

A “non-religious Christmas”? Wouldn’t that be like having a Red Sox celebration in the middle of New York City? Hmmm. From FreeDictionary.com, we have, for the word “Christmas”,

1. A Christian feast commemorating the birth of Jesus.
2. December 25, the day on which this feast is celebrated.
3. Christmastide.
[Middle English Cristemas, from Old English Cristes mæsse, Christ’s festival : Christ; see Christ + mæsse, festival; see Mass.]

Christian? Birth of Jesus? Christ? Mass? Certainly seems to be a whole lotta religion going on there.

Well, it seems that Desiree Rogers wasn’t kidding as, per Breitbart, none other than Chairman Mao made it onto a White House Christmas Holiday Tree (as an ornament). And, to top it off (the story, not the tree), the Obama family will not be attending church this Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

Change… you can believe in.

Mr Turk makes an interesting point in the conversation about ecumenical conversations, although I’m not entirely sure it’s the point he wants to make. A week or so ago he offered that those of other denominations, specifically the Roman and Easter churches were right with God only if they (accidentally) held to a Evangelical belief/approach to the Gospel. I think this point of view is held far more often by most people in every church/denomination. That is to say that any Christian church X thinks that members of church Y are in the soteriological pink inasmuch as those members in church Y (accidentally) hold to beliefs that are held in church X. That is, Mr Turk as an Evangelical thinks that the Catholic and Orthodox are saved if they hold an Evangelical understanding of the Gospel and those in the Roman hold that the Evangelical and Eastern are likewise correct when and where they (accidentally) hold to the Roman understanding of Gospel. And so on. Now I had been under the impression that I was “above the fray” in this regard. But on reflection, I am not. Read the rest of this entry

Frank Turk, cf this post, is down on wiggly ecumenism. And in this he is right. But it also seems out that he’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater. For there’s an important, and very difficult, first step toward ecumenism that he is not doing very well, especially regarding the East. Different traditions, as part of their growing apart, develop their own terminology. Even where they use the same words, they don’t often have the same meaning. Thus the first step of any ecumenical discussion is to find a common language for communication. This is one thing that one would hope a platform like Evangel and god-blogging in general can accomplish. Read the rest of this entry

A video from my church’s All Nations Christmas Festival.  This group is from the Eretrean congregation.  It includes their pastor.

That night also included Christmas celebrations from our Spanish, Vietnamese, and Asian Indian congregations, as well as groups that were French African.  That was a great night.

Well, this class I’m taking has a mid-term exam. Next week I’m going to post my answers … the answers are due at midnight Saturday. We have to answer 2 of the 3 questions.

Question 1:

Write a short (3-5 pp., single spaced) presentation or sermon on the Genesis lection for the feast of the Birth of the Theotokos. Be sure to consult the text of the service in your attempt to understand the relation of the text of this reading to the celebration. You may also wish to draw from the larger context of the book of Genesis in formulating your answer.

The reading is from Genesis:

Now Jacob went out from Beersheba and went toward Haran. So he came to a certain place and stayed there all night, because the sun had set. And he took one of the stones of that place and put it at his head, and he lay down in that place to sleep. Then he dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and its top reached to heaven; and there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold, the Lord stood above it and said: “I am the Lord God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants. “Also your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread abroad to the west and the east, to the north and the south; and in you and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you.” Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!”

Question 2:

Write a short (3-5 pp., single spaced) presentation or sermon on the Exodus lection for the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. Be sure to consult the text of the service in your attempt to understand the relation of the text of this reading to the celebration. You may also wish to draw from the larger context of the book of Exodus in formulating your answer.

The reading is from Exodus:

So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea; then they went out into the Wilderness of Shur. And they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. Now when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Marah. And the people complained against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” So he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet. There He made a statute and an ordinance for them, and there He tested them, and said, “If you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you. Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve wells of water and seventy palm trees; so they camped there by the waters. And they journeyed from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came to the Wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they departed from the land of Egypt.

Question 3:

Write a short (3-5 pp., single spaced) presentation or sermon on the 3 Kingdoms (1 Kings) lection for the feast of the Entry of the Theotokos in the Temple. Be sure to consult the text of the service in your attempt to understand the relation of the text of this reading to the celebration. You may also wish to draw from the larger context of the book of 3 Kingdoms (1 Kings) in formulating your answer.

The reading is from 3 Kings:

And it came to pass when Solomon had finished building the House of the Lord, he assembled all the elders of Israel in Zion, to bring the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord out of the City of David, which is Zion. And the priests took up the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, the Tabernacle of the Testimony, and all the holy vessels that were in the Tabernacle of the Testimony.

And the King and all Israel went before the Ark. And the priests brought the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord to its place, into the Oracle of the Temple, into the Holy of Holies, under the wings of the cherubim. For the cherubim spread out their wings over the place of the Ark so that the cherubim made a covering above the Ark and its holy things above. There was nothing in the Ark except the two tablets of the Covenant which Moses put there at Horeb, when the Lord had made a Covenant.

And when the priests came out from the holy place, a cloud filled the house. And the priests were unable to stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord God Almighty filled the house.

Recently I noted textual differences between the MT and LXX text in Isaiah. One other difference noted in our reading recently was in 1 Chronicles (translated as Supplements in the LXX) 21. From the ESV (a MT based translation):

Now the angel of the Lord had commanded Gad to say to David that David should go up and raise an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. So David went up at Gad’s word, which he had spoken in the name of the Lord. Now Ornan was threshing wheat. He turned and saw the angel, and his four sons who were with him hid themselves. As David came to Ornan, Ornan looked and saw David and went out from the threshing floor and paid homage to David with his face to the ground. And David said to Ornan, “Give me the site of the threshing floor that I may build on it an altar to the Lord—give it to me at its full price—that the plague may be averted from the people.” Lord what is yours, nor offer burnt offerings that cost me nothing.” So David paid Ornan 600 shekels of gold by weight for the site.

From the NETS (a very recent LXX translation), which because of DRM imprinting I cannot excerpt here, but go to this link (pdf) and check out 1 Supplements 21:18-27. In the first Ornan also sees the theophany (angel) that David is witnessing. In the second … he is not.

A second feature found only in the LXX  is the interesting banter/exchange passing between David and Ornan in the purchase of the threshing floor. It seems likely that it was possibly traditional in a certain style of bargaining to offer a price, have the seller insist that he would just give it, and the buyer would then pay full price disregarding the formulaic refusal. However in the LXX this passage is altered. David offers a price (in silver). Ornan refuses. David then insists he will pay in silver (which is according to formula) … and then he pays in gold instead of silver, which contravenes what I perceive as the custom via an extravagant overpayment.

This raises two questions … What do we take as meaning of David’s theophany (David it might be noted had less evident and obvious theophanic experiences than his son Solomon). Is there any change to the story or meaning that you might extract if Ornan and his sons do not witness the angel? Is there a connection to the contravention of custom in the following bargain/purchase exchange?