The Lutherans

Those who embraced [Martin] Luther's teaching called themselves "Evangelicals" (from the Greek euaggelion, "good news"); their enemies simply called them "Lutherans". Evangelicals themselves later adopted the name Lutheran, despite Luther's own protests:

Who is this Luther? My teaching is not my own, and I have not been crucified for anyone. Why should it happen to me, miserable stinking bag of maggots that I am, that the children of Christ should be called by my insignificant name? I am, and will be, no one's master. With the one Church I hold in common the teachings of Christ, who alone is our Master.

Success is Costly[1]

Success in any field is costly, but the man who will pay the price can have it.

The concert pianist must become a slave to hi instrument: four hours, five hours each day he must sit at the keyboard. The scientist must live for his work. The philosopher must devote himself to thought, the scholar to his books. The price may seem excessively heavy, but there are some who consider the reward worthwhile.

The laws of success operate also in the higher field of the soul--spiritual greatness has its price. Eminence in the things of the Spirit demands a devotion to these things more complete than most of us are willing to give. But the law cannot be escaped. If we would be holy we know the way; the law of holy living is before us. The prophets of the Old Testament, the apostles of the New and more than all the sublime teachings of Christ are there to tell us how to succeed.

If we would progress spiritually we must separate ourselves into the things of God and concentrate to the exclusion of a thousand of things the worldly man considers important. We must cultivate God in the solitude and silence; we must make the Kingdom of God the sphere of our activity and labour in it like a farmer in his field, like a miner in the earth.

[1]A.W. Tozer. We Travel an Appointed Way.

True Worship

True Worship

He who prays must speak to God as though he were in God's very presence, for the Lord is everywhere, in every place, in every person, and especially in the soul of the righteous. Therefore let us not seek God on earth, nor in heaven, nor anywhere else, let us seek Him in our own hearts, as the prophet says, “I will pay attention to what the Lord shall say to me” (Psalm 85:8). In prayer, a person may pay attention to his own words, which I merely outward thing; or he may pay attention to the meaning of his words, which is study rather than prayer, or he may fix his thoughts on God, and this alone is true prayer. We must not consider the words or the sentences, but lift our souls above self and almost lose self in the thought of God. When the believer has attained this state, he forgets the world and worldly desires, and has a kind of foretaste of heaven's joy. The uneducated as well as the learned can just as easily rise up to this height. Indeed, it often happens that someone who recites the Psalms without particularly understanding what they mean, prays more acceptably than a scholar who can interpret them. Words are not essential to prayer. On the contrary, when a person is really caught up in a spirit of devotion, speech becomes a hindrance, and silent mental prayer should take its place. This shows the great error of those who tell us to work our way through a set number of spoken prayers. The Lord takes no joy in a multitude of words, but in a fervent spirit.

No doubt those whose only concern is to defend the Church's ceremonies and outward rituals will attack me for saying this. My answer is the words of the Saviour to the woman of Samaria: “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth” (John 4:21,23). This means that the Lord desires inward worship, without so many outward worship-practices. This was the custom in the early Church, when people could raise their thoughts to God without any need of being stirred up by organ music or singing. But when fervor grew cold, rituals came in like medicine to sick souls. However, in our day, Christians have become like a man who is so sick tat all his natural strength has vanished, and no medicines can help him. All fervor and inward worship are dead, and outward worship-practices become ever more numerous, although they have no sanctifying power. Therefore we proclaim to the world that outward worship must give way to inward, and that rituals are nothing unless they enable the human spirit to worship truly.

From Girolamo Savonarola, Concerning Mental Prayer.[1]



Girolamo Savonarola was regarded by Luther and others a a forerunner of the Reformation for two reasons. First, Savonarola was a strong Augustinian in his understanding of God's sovereign grace in salvation. Second, he defied the papacy, and paid for his defiance with his life.











[1] N.R. Needham. 2004. 2000 Years of Christ's Power, Part Three: Renaissance and Reformation. London, England: Grace Publications Trust.

Renaissance and Reformation

I will start a new thread of blog but this time I'll be writing on the very interesting topic of Church History with emphasis on the Renaissance and Reformation.

"The Renaissance (from French Renaissance, meaning "rebirth"; Italian: Rinascimento, from re- "again" and nascere "be born")[1] was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historic era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not uniform, this is a very general use of the term."--Wikipedia

Whenever I hear the word "Renaissance", the first thought that comes to my mind is art, and of course the famous artists who flourished at that time. We have Donatello, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian. Although, one cannot deny the fact that there was an artistic revolution during the Renaissance. But the true nature of the subject of Renaissance is still an on-going debate today. On the perspective of the Church history, only few can doubt the role of Renaissance as the fore-runner of the great Reformation. Renaissance is the same name given by the historians to a cluster of important developments within Western culture at the close of the Middle Ages.

My main reference material in this thread (I must confess) is the book by N.R. Needham: 2000 Years of Christ's Power. Part Three: Renaissance and Reformation. Actually, I will be lifting most of my topics and discussions from this very valuable book. This was given to me by a highly-esteemed preacher-teacher reformer, Noel A. Espinosa.



Nick Needham is a Londoner by birth and upbringing. He studied theology at New College, Edinburgh University, where he specialized in Church History. He also taught a course at New College on the life and works of the Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli, at the same time completing his Ph.D. thesis on the nineteenth-century Scottish theologian Thomas Erskine of Linlathen. He then taught Systematic Theology at the Scottish Baptist College in Glasgow for several years before spending a semester at the Samuel Bill Theological College, where he taught Church History. After a period as assistant pastor in a church in north London, he moved to the Highland Theological College, Dingwall, where he teaches Church History. He recently accepted a call to a pastorate in Inverness. --from the back cover of the 2000 Years of Christ's Power.

an exceptionally simple ToE

From TED.com



About this talk
Physicist and surfer Garrett Lisi presents a controversial new model of the universe that -- just maybe -- answers all the big questions. If nothing else, it's the most beautiful 8-dimensional model of elementary particles and forces you've ever seen.

About Garrett Lisi
Physicist Garrett Lisi has proposed a new "theory of everything" -- a grand unified theory that explains all the elementary particles, as well as gravity. More about Garrett Lisi at TED.com.

On Wikipedia: An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything

a wet book

I went in to my room late tonight. I still have a report to prepare and a pile of lecture notes and hand-outs to read through for an exam tomorrow. Beside my bed were my recently bought reference book and a C.S. Lewis Signature Collection. Since I will be having an exam tomorrow, I grabbed the reference book first. Goodness! It is wet and sticky; and the Signature Collection is a bit wet also. I learned that one of our housecats, Batman, earlier went in to the room. Oh well, oh well. Batman was still kind that it left my other books untouched (or should I say unsprinkled with its pee). It just sprinkled the books with a mist of musk! My books are my civilization; and those are very dear to me.

Nice men or new men?

from the Mere Christianity, pp 212-213.

...

Do not misunderstand me. Of course God regards a nasty nature as a bad and deplorable thing. And, of course, He regards a nice nature as a good thing--good like bread, or sunshine, or water. But these are the good things which He give and we receive. He created Dick's sound nerves and good digestion, and there is plenty more where they came from. It costs God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert rebellious will cost His crucifixion. And because they are wills they can--in nice people just as much a in nasty ones--refuse His request. And then, because that niceness in Dick was merely part of nature, it will all go to pieces in the end. Nature herself will all pass away. Natural causes come together in Dick to make a pleasant psychological patter, just as they come together in a sunset to make a pleasant pattern of colours. Presently (for that is how nature works) they will fall apart again and the pattern in both cases will disappear. Dick ha had the chance to turn (or rather, to allow God to turn) that momentary pattern into the beauty of an eternal spirit: and he has not taken it.

There is a paradox here. As long as Dick does not turn to God, he thinks his niceness is his own, and just as long as he thinks that, it is not his own. It is when Dick realizes that his niceness is not his own but a gift from God, and when he offers it back to God--it is just then that it begins to be really his own. For now Dick is beginning to take a share in his own creation. The only things we can keep are the things we freely give to God. What we try to keep for ourselves is just what we are sure to lose.

by Clive Staples Lewis.

the pieces are moving

Abraham Lincoln:

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.

Oh my God, thou has changeth not.
Thy compassions, they faileth not.
Be with us, O, Great One.

profession and creativity

"the best situation for a creative scientist is to have a menial or unintellectual job that allows some free time for research, rather than a traditional university position requiring teaching, service to the institution, and campus politics."
-Albert Einstein

Affection as told by C.S. Lewis

"...But Affection has its own criteria. Its objects have to be familiar. We can sometimes point to the very day and hour when we fell in love or began a new friendship. I doubt if we ever catch Affection beginning. To become aware of it is to become aware that it has already been going on for some time. The use of "old" or vieux as a term of Affection is significant. The dog barks at strangers who have never done it any harm and wags it tail for old acquaintances even if they never did it a good turn. The child will love a crusty old gardener who has hardly ever taken any notice of it and shrink from the visitor who is making every attempt to win its regard. But it must be an old gardener, one who has "always" been there--the short but seemingly immemorial "always" of childhood.

Affection as I have said, is the humblest love, It gives itself no airs. People can be proud of being "in love," or of friendship. Affection is modest--even furtive and shame-faced. Once when I had remarked on the affection quite often found between cat and dog, my friend replied, "Yes. But I bet no dog would ever confess it to the other dogs." That is at least a good caricature of much human Affection. "Let homely faces stay at home," says Comus. Now Affection has a very homely face. So have many of those for whom we feel it. It is no proof of our refinement or perceptiveness that we love them; nor that they love us. What I have called Appreciative love is no basic element in Affection. It usually needs absence or bereavement to set us praising those to whom only Affection binds us. We take them for granted: and this taking for granted, which is an outrage in erotic love, is here right and proper up to a point. It fits the comfortable, quiet nature of the feeling. Affection would not be affection if it was loudly and frequently expressed; to produce it in public is like getting your household furniture out for a move. It did very well in its place, but it looks shabby or tawdry or grotesque in sunshine. Affection almost slinks or seeps through our lives. It lives with humble un-dress, private things; soft slippers, old clothes, old jokes, the thump of a sleepy dog's tail on the kitchen floor, the sound of a sewing-machine, a gollywog left on the lawn."

--from the "Four Loves" pp. 33-34.

Excellent Intelligent Design Video

Below is an excellent intelligent design video with cell animation. I got this video from The County Shrink's blog.



"This is absolutely mind-boggling to perceive at this scale of Science such a finely-tuned apparatus that bares the marks of intelligent design..."

Subliminal Messages Work, at Least Sometimes

Photo by Walter Daran/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

from the AFP


Aug. 28, 2008 -- Attempts to manipulate consumers with subliminal messages, flashed onto movie or TV screens, once thrilled advertisers and panicked the public, but the furor faded when the technique failed to work.

But a study published on Thursday has given what is claimed to be the first evidence to the contrary -- that our decisions can, in fact, be influenced by subconsciously perceived cues.

An unusual experiment, recounted in the British-based journal Neuron, could go a long way to explaining the mystery of what is often called intuition, its authors say.

"Humans frequently invoke an argument that their intuition can result in a better decision than conscious reasoning. Such assertions may rely on subconscious associative learning," said lead author Mathias Pessiglione of University College London.

For example, a poker player who somehow always knows when to fold or call a bluff may be picking up on telltale signals from his opponents, using a part of his brain unrelated to conscious thought.

Previous studies have shown that people, like rats or dogs, could be conditioned to respond to unconsciously perceived stimuli. A subliminal image linked to an electrical shock, for example, will -- after repeated jolts -- cause a person's palms to sweat with anticipation.

But these are so-called "automatic" responses that do not involve conscious thought.

The new study is the first to show that such cues can influence deliberate choices too.

In the experiment, 11 men and nine women aged 18 to 39 were repeatedly exposed to one of two symbols sandwiched between a pair of abstract images.

The symbols flashed for only 33 or 50 milliseconds, not long enough to be consciously perceived.

After seeing each trio of images, the volunteers -- told to "follow their instincts" -- had the option of pressing on a button, knowing that one of the symbols corresponded to winning money, and the other to losing one.

About half way through each "learning session," which consisted of 120 decisions, most volunteers began to earn money, which they had been told they could keep.

On average, they made the "right" choice 63 percent of the time, though some individuals scored far better than others.

Pessiglione used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to find out what part of the brain was activated during the experiments and found that a region called the ventral striatum responded to the subliminal visual cues.

"Even without conscious processing of contextual cues, our brain can learn their reward value and use them to provide a bias on decision making," he said.

The study implies that humans may not be immune to the kind of subtle, below-the-threshold-of-awareness marketing that, in the 1950s, fired the imagination of advertising executives.

Provided they were reinforced with simultaneous rewards, subliminal advertising could probably influence some of the choices we make, Pessiglione said.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/28/subliminal-message.html

Attending an Opera the classical way

from daily@delancey.com


In today's excerpt--audiences at a classical music
performance:



"The modern classical-music performance, as
audiences have come to know it and sometimes to
love it, adheres to a fairly rigid format. ... The audience
is expected to remain quiet for the duration of each
work, and those who applaud between movements
may face embarrassment. Around ten o'clock, the
audience claps for two or three minutes, the
performers bow two or three times, and all go
home. ...



"[However], before 1900 concerts assumed a quite
different form. ... Here is [James] Johnson's evocation
of a night at the Paris Opéra in the years before the
French Revolution:



" 'While most were in their places by the end of the first
act, the continuous movement and low din of
conversation never really stopped. Lackeys and young
bachelors milled about in the crowded and often
boisterous parterre, the floor-level pit to which only
men were admitted. Princes of the blood and dukes
visited among themselves in the highly visible
first-row boxes. Worldly abbés chatted happily with
ladies in jewels on the second level, occasionally
earning indecent shouts from the parterre when their
conversation turned too cordial. And lovers sought the
dim heights of the third balcony--the paradise--away
from the probing lorgnettes.'



"In other words, the opera served mainly as a
playground for the aristocracy. The nobles often
possessed considerable musical knowledge, but they
refrained from paying overt attention to what the
musicians were doing. Indeed, silent listening in the
modern sense was deemed déclassé. ...




'Public concerts didn't become widespread until after
1800, and well into the nineteenth century they took
the form of "miscellanies"--eclectic affairs at which all
kinds of music were played before audiences that
seldom sat still or quieted down. ... Applause usually
erupted after
movements, and at times during them, if the audience
heard something it particularly liked.



"What changed? ... To some extent, these changes
can be explained in anthropological terms: by
applauding here and not applauding there, the
bourgeois were signalling their membership in a
social and cultural élite. As Johnson points out, they
felt obliged to reconfirm that status from year to year,
since, unlike the aristocrats of yore, they lived in fear of
going back down the ladder. 'The bourgeoisie isn't a
class, it's a position,' the Journal des Débats
advised. 'You acquire it, you lose it.' Attending
concerts became a kind of performance in itself, a
dance of decorum."



Alex Ross, "Why So Serious?" The New Yorker,
September 8, 2008, pp. 79-80.


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Double Standards

Here's a forwarded email to me from Nancy Walls of P3 Music, Ltd. about the latest album of Martin Taylor: the "Double Standards". Martin Taylor is dubbed as "the Europe's finest acoustic guitarist" by JAZZTIMES, New York. Martin Taylor has been my favorite since I was introduced to acoustic jazz.

Greetings!

We all know that there are two sides to every story, but in the case of Martin Taylor's new video, both sides of the story bear a striking resemblance. The video to "Drop Me Off At Harlem" , taken from his forthcoming album "Double Standards" features Martin performing a guitar duet with the only guitarist he could find that could match him in both style and texture...
someone who could even wear the same shoes and glasses as him, and, who had exactly the same guitar. He won't tell us the name of this ultra-talented newcomer, but there is something very familiar about his face. The video is exclusively available on YouTube right now, so take a peek and let us know if you can identify the second guitarist!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQEWJpBBJMQ


It has taken more than thirty years for guitarist Martin Taylor to feel that the time was right to record an album he always planned to release. 'Double Standards' is Taylor's first solo album in five years and his most personal and expressive album to date. Featuring two separate, overdubbed guitar tracks, Taylor has created a guitar duo album consisting only of himself.
'Double Standards' highlights why Taylor has been described as "THE acoustic guitarist of his generation" and collaborated with a diverse range of artists including Stephane Grappelli, Chet Atkins, Jeff Beck, Joe Pass, Bill Wyman, Dionne Warwick, Bryn Terfel and Jamie Cullum. The album will be released by The Guitar Label in North America on the 9th September, Europe on the 20th October and by Sony Jazz in Asia on the 26th November.

The tracks on the album are all very personal to Martin and were chosen by taking great memories and key points in his career. Some tunes like "Drop Me Off At Harlem" and "Jive At Five" date back to his earliest performances in 1978 when, at twenty two years old, he performed alongside his guitar mentor Ike Isaacs as the first ever resident musicians at the now legendary "Pizza On The Park" in London.

"I've recorded duets before using overdubbed guitars, I even did it once with 22 (guitars), but I am so pleased with the way this record has turned out. This is the record that I have wanted to make for ages and it's even better than my expectations." - Martin Taylor 2008


Track Listing:

1 Triste
2 Bluesette
3 Young And Foolish
4 Drop Me Off At Harlem
5 Alfie
6 When I Take My Sugar
To Tea
7 Someone To Watch Over
Me
8 Alice In Wonderland
9 Estate
10 Jive At Five
11 I Fall In Love Too Easily
12 Just Friends

He's indeed absolutely inspiring.

Duck stamp number sends callers to sex line

Story Highlights
Phone number was written in letter and number form
The number listed in all numerals led callers to 1-800-TRAMP24
Card did also correctly list number as 1-800-STAMP24
The Fish and Wildlife Service, in charge of program, printed 3.5 million cards

WASHINGTON (AP) -- People calling a federal phone number to order duck stamps are instead greeted by a phone-sex line, due to a printing error the government says would be too expensive to correct.

The carrier card for the duck stamp transposes two numbers, so instead of listing 1-800-782-6724, it lists 1-800-872-6724. The first number spells out 1-800-STAMP24, while the second number spells out 1-800-TRAMP24.

People calling that second number are welcomed by "Intimate Connections" and enticed by a husky female voice to "talk only to the girls that turn you on," for $1.99 a minute.

Duck stamps, which cost $15 apiece, are required to hunt migratory waterfowl. The government uses nearly all the revenue to purchase waterfowl habitat for the National Wildlife Refuge System. In 2006-2007, the latest figures available, duck stamp purchases brought in nearly $22 million.

This year's stamps, which feature a pair of northern pintail ducks, went on sale July 1 and are good through June 30 of next year. The error will not be corrected until next year's duck stamps.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers the program, printed about 3.5 million duck stamps attached to cards with the wrong number. An agency spokeswoman, Rachel Levin, said it would cost $300,000 to reprint them.

"I don't know that it would be worth it to do a reprint," she said Thursday. "That's a lot of money we can be using for wildlife conservation. With all of the needs for conservation, it doesn't make sense to divert money away from an important cause." For those people who like to dial by letter, the card does include the proper 1-800-STAMP24.

"As best we know, it was a typographical error that was not caught," Levin said, stressing that the stamps are still valid.

The agency first learned of the mistake a few days ago, when a duck stamp owner informed them about the glitch. Levin said the agency has not received any complaints.

The error, which was first reported Wednesday by Denver TV station KUSA, is limited to self-adhesive versions of the stamps. The moistened version, which is printed in much smaller numbers, does not come with a carrier card.

The government uses a contractor, Ashton Potter Security Printers of Williamsville, New York, to print the duck stamps. Levin said she did not know whether the error was made by the government or by the company.

Ashton Potter's president and chief executive, Barry Switzer, said that the company was provided with the wrong telephone number.

"We reproduced the wrong number correctly," he said. "We regret this whole situation happened, but we did our job properly."

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Links referenced within this article

The Fish and Wildlife Service
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/U_S_Fish_and_Wildlife_Service
Associated Press
http://edition.cnn.com/interactive_legal.html#AP
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/U_S_Fish_and_Wildlife_Service


Find this article at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/09/04/duck.stamps.ap/index.html

And yes somewhere over that rainbow...

there I find...

Good things come

To those who wait.

My all-time favorite acoustic guitarist, Mr. Tommy Emmanuel.

Down by the Sally Gardens

A truly beautiful, albeit sad Irish song.

It was down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with her little snow-white feet.
She bid me take life easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
In a field down by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take love easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

Clive Staples Lewis

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
"Is Theology Poetry?" (1945)

(1898-1963), was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably the most influential Christian writer of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English literature at Oxford University until 1954 when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. His major contributions in literary criticism, children's literature, fantasy literature, and popular theology brought him international renown and acclaim. He wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include The Chronicles of Narnia, Out of the Silent Planet, The Four Loves, The Srewtape Letters, and Mere Christianity.
Above text is from the Mere Christianity back cover.

References:
www.cslewis.com
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Clive Staples Lewis".
C.S. Lewis photo from wikimedia

Trilemma

Jesus Christ, who He is to you? Perhaps you might say He is a good man; or a great prophet; or a great teacher; or a miracle worker; or God Himself; or an out-of-his-mind man. But the great Christian apologist C.S. Lewis had something to say about this question. I got his answer from his book 'Mere Christianity'. Here are the choices:

a. He is God Himself
b. a lunatic
c. or the Devil of Hell

and his answer:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [Jesus]: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

"My Lord and My God!", says Thomas after seeing Jesus Christ and having felt Jesus' wounds, hands and side after His resurrection (John 20:28); and the testimony of Jesus of Himself: "You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, FOR SO I AM. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet." (John 13:13-14).

[Indeed]"...Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." (John 20:29).

Fervency of prayer and faith

In this post, I will talk about the fervency of Agur's prayer and faith.

Proverbs 30:7-9, the Prayer of Agur, son of Jakeh.

"Two things I ask of you;
deny them not to me before I die:
Remove far from me falsehood and lying;
give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that is needful for me,
lest I be full and deny you
and say,"Who is the LORD?"
or lest I be poor and steal
and profane the name of my God."

First of all then, this kind of prayer or petition is against the presumptuous, excessively forward type. We are warned by the Preacher in Ecclesiastes against this kind of prayer. This is not also a prayer wherein we require God of His service for us, we demand Him to do something for us, as if we are the master and God is the servant. Such blasphemous prayers are now widespread as we see them on our television put forward by false ministers and evangelists, on the radio, and even hear them from other people acting as if they can put God in a box and order Him to act according to their selfish whims and wishes, gratifying the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. Such are not of humility but of pride, not of faith but of presumption, uttered not for the glory of God but for the proud rejoicing of men. Then let us be warned that God abhors and hates that kind of prayer lest He judge us by His righteous judgment and be found uttering meaningless, vain repetitions glorifying the selfish desire of the flesh. Though at times God might grant them their demands but this is not as blessing to them but as His righteous judgment. And who can forget the chosen nation of God, Israel, when they demanded that God would give them meat to eat in the wilderness. "Now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving. And the people of Israel also wept again and said,"Oh that we had meat to eat!"", says in Numbers 11:4. This is not that God seemingly heard and gave in to their desires, but He, in His righteous and holy anger, gave the children of Israel quail meat to eat as they were sick to eat the manna from heaven. But as they eat of this, they are consumed with it while the meat is still in their mouths. Far be it from us that we utter a prayer like this.

But how did Agur pray to the Almighty? Agur pleaded his request to God confidently for he knew that he was praying accordingly to the will of the Almighty. In the New Testament, the Apostle John tells us of the same confident as that of Agur in 1 John 5:14, it says, "And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.". If we are really asking God according to His revealed will in the Scriptures, we can have the confidence, the same as that of Agur, to bring our request to Him. Our Heavenly Father is delighted to hear our prayers to Him, to bring our praises and thanksgiving, and yeah, our requests and desires unto Him. This is not because our Father is ignorant of our needs and desires but because this declares our submission to Him, even our faith and hope in Him, and He delights to meet our needs in His appointed time, means and grace. We are even invited by our Lord to come unto Him in prayer with our requests. In Matthew 7:11 we read, "If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!". Oh the Blessed Mercy of the Father! God will give us good things--those which are befitting of us as He sees it. Then it follows that if we are going to ask Him things not good for us, He will not give us. But that which He gives to us is screened through His love, grace and mercy. In Psalm 84:11, it says,

"For the LORD God is a sun and shield;
the LORD bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does he withhold
from those who walk uprightly".

No good thing will He withhold if only we will ask rightly, accordingly and live uprightly. Even so, we are dearly encouraged to come unto Him. "We do have not because we ask not!", says James in James 4:2. God will indeed provide and will not delay only if we come to Him with all our lawful desires in faith unto Him.

However we are warned by the Preacher not to rush our words unto the throne of grace, we should not be afraid to come to our Father if we ask accordingly and befittingly. Are we going to be afraid to come to our Lord and King in prayer for the removal of every sin and error inflicting and dividing us, and to abolish every false religion? Just as God was delighted in Gideon's 300, He may find delight in our prayers if this is accordingly and appropriately His will.

God also teaches us to be persistent and persevering in our prayers to bring our requests unto Him. In Luke 18:1ff, Jesus told us about the Parable of the Persistent Widow who asked continually of an ungodly king to give her justice. He would not hear her. But even so, she did not stop in asking and begging for justice in a particular area. Here we see that even an ungodly king would eventually hear her plead after persistently and perseveringly asking for it. How much more our Heavenly Father who cares for us and love us would hear our cry and hear our pleas and give good things to us! Another biblical example is the perseverance of the Canaanite woman who had a dying daughter and begged Jesus to have mercy on her and heal her daughter (Matthew 15:21-28). The disciples of Christ kept on getting in her way and discouraging her and even Jesus Himself told her that "[He] was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel". Oh what a great discouragement was this if only the Canaanite woman had so little of faith in her! But she begged for even the crumbs that fall under the master's table, as a dog, she would have and eat. Oh what a great faith! Then Jesus answered her, "O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire." And her daughter was healed instantly.

As Agur, may we have a great and persevering faith in our prayer. Like Agur, may we have an appropriate prayer unto our God.

Poverty and Riches may not be good for you

In Proverbs 30:7-9, Agur, the son of Jakeh, spoke of these words about poverty and riches and the temptation related therein:

"Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die:
Remove far from me falsehood and lying;
give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that is needful for me,
lest I be full and deny you and say, "Who is the LORD?"
or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God."

I have been meditating on this text for weeks now. These verses are striking to me. It is warning me against the vanity of pursuing wealth, honor, and power in the expense of forsaking or denying God and His works. Also, it tells me about the temptations of suffering in poverty as this may lead to stealing, thus, profaning the name of my God. Both extremes--riches and poverty, are bad for me.

Agur knows what he is asking of God. Two things he ask of Him. I learn that we must be certain on what we are asking of God. We must be aware of the things that we have to ask of God, what does our case require? and what do our hearts desire? But let our words be few for we are asking in the presence of the Almighty God. In Ecclesiastes 5:1-2 the Preacher says, "Guard your steps when you go to the house of God... Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few." (ESV). I think, knowing what we have to ask of God is to be careful in our words also, though our God is an omniscient God.

We can also plead our case or request to God. Agur pleads to God that He would not deny him his two requests before he dies. This is of the same tone as with the pleas of King David in Psalm 28:1-2, it says, "To you, O LORD, I call; my rock, be not deaf to me, lest, if you be silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit. Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy, when I cry to you for help, when I lift up my hands toward your most holy sanctuary." (ESV). Jesus, in the New Testament, taught us through a parable in Luke 18:1-8 to plead our case before God and be persistent in our prayers, exercising much faith that God would hear our pleas.

On the matter of exercising our faith, we can be one with Jacob as he would want to see Joseph, his son, alive before he would go and see death. We pray to God that we would want to know and see God's answer to our pleas.

These are the two things which Agur, the son of Jakeh, asked of God, as Matthew Henry had them:(1) that grace will be sufficient and (2) that food would be convenient. In this entry, I will discuss first Agur's first request to the LORD--grace sufficient. The other request I will discuss on my next blog entry, which is, Lord-willing, soon.

He starts with his plea for the divine grace of God in his first request. He says, "Remove from me falsehood and lying..". Indeed, it is only through and by the grace of God that our falsehood and lying be removed and washed. We cannot do anything about it for we were dead in our trespasses and sins. There is nothing a dead can do but to be dead, unable to accomplish anything, unable to do anything that could help his state. The Bible teaches that man, by nature, is dead (Rom. 5:12), bound (2 Tim 2:25f), blind and deaf (Mark 4:11f), and uninstructable (1 Cor. 2:14), . "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved." (Eph. 2:4-5, ESV). In Romans 6 and the preceding chapters, Apostle Paul argues about the power of the said grace of God in calling to salvation and justifying the dead-in-trespasses-and-sins inidividuals and in mortifying the flesh and its desires in sanctification. Job asks, "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?" and he says, "Not one!" (Job 14:4). "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?", asks Jeremiah the Prophet (Jer 13:23). Only God, by the richness of his grace and mercy, can change that thing. Salvation, by its very nature, must be 'of the LORD'.

Sulfur Dioxide and Vog from Kilauea

In late April 2008, Kilauea Volcano Volcano on Hawaii’s big island continued its pattern of increased activity, including elevated seismic tremors and emissions from the volcano’s Halema‘uma‘u vent. Two NASA satellite sensors observed different aspects of the volcano’s activity on April 26, 2008. As Kilauea emitted ash and steam, the sensors recorded both the visible volcanic emissions, and the concentrations of one volcanic pollutant not visible to human eyes.

Sulfur dioxide is a common volcanic pollutant, and it can pose health hazards, especially for people with preexisting breathing difficulties. The top image, acquired by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s Aura satellite, shows metric tons of sulfur dioxide measured in the lowest 5 kilometers (roughly 3 miles) of the atmosphere around Hawaii. Lowest amounts appear in lavender, and highest amounts appear in red.

The greatest concentration appears over Hawaii’s big island and immediately west-southwest, but lower concentrations spread both toward the southwest and the northeast. Sulfur dioxide mass is scaled from 0 to 30 metric tons in this image, although some of the highest concentrations were actually greater than the top end of scale used for this image. Two days after this image was acquired, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory continued to warn residents nearby of elevated sulfur dioxide levels, and they indicated that closure of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park might be necessary.

When sulfur dioxide and other volcanic pollutants mix with oxygen and water vapor in the presence of sunlight, the result is a volcanic smog known as vog. The bottom image, acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, shows the vog, which is visible to human eyes. The vog in this image appears as a pale blue-gray haze, thinner and with more diffuse outlines than the nearby white clouds. The same day MODIS acquired this image, the U.S. Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) issued a bulletin describing vog extending roughly 280 kilometers (150 nautical miles) from the island.

Hawaii’s most active volcano during recorded history, Kilauea is a shield volcano, meaning it resembles an ancient warrior shield with its low, broad shape. The volcano overlaps the eastern flank of the Mauna Loa Volcano. In 1983, a long-term eruption began at Kilauea, producing lava flows, adding to the coastline, and destroying homes.

NASA OMI image courtesy Simon Carn, Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET), University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). The OMI instrument is a Dutch-Finnish Instrument, provided to the EOS/Aura mission by the Netherlands and Finland. NASA MODIS image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response team. Caption by Michon Scott, with information from Simon Carn.

from: NASA Earth Observatory