Getting Ready for Christmas

With Thanksgiving over and December beginning tomorrow it is time to start thinking about Christmas. This year I am reading beginning December by reading the Prophets, I started Isaiah this morning. I usually read the beginnings of the Gospels during December, which I will still do, but I think it’s interesting to begin the Christmas season with a different perspective. By that I mean that a lot of the aspects of Jesus’ life were predicted hundreds of years before He was born. Also you get a hint of the plans God has in store for Israel, plans for salvation and grace, one of my favorite images comes from the first chapter verse 18 “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” That, I feel, is one of the best pictures of what God’s forgiveness is like and what Jesus came down here to do. Colors like “scarlet” and “crimson” seem bright, loud, they stand out for all to see, yet God can wash those sins away and give us a clean slate. Coming from New England I know what a fresh snow looks like, and what it looks like after a week of getting dirtied; imagine if we could clean the snow, make it pure again, as if all those things that unpurified it never happened. It’s the same with forgiveness, God washes us clean so we are pure, as if it never happened.

Red Sox Frustrations

Here’s a short tirade about the Red Sox. Here’s what I do not get, John Henery is the owner of the Red Sox, yet at a time when ratings are going down and the Sox become less popular by the day he goes out and buys a soccer team in England. John Henery said in an interview that he knows nothing about soccer – so why buy the team? The answer is to make more money. So the Red Sox are just another toy in the NESV chest for John Henery – is anyone else a little upset by this? It reminds me of the 1920’s when Harry Frazee sold the whole Red Sox team to the Yankees to make a profit. I know that the soccer team will not take money away from the Red Sox, but it will take time and attention. Instead of John Henery worrying about losing fans he’ll sit back and relax on the revenue from Liverpool soccer.

Thanks

I missed Thanksgiving by a few days, but here are my thoughts on the past week. You can’t go through Thanksgiving without being asked what you are thankful for, but instead of saying the usual list “my home, family, health…” I’m really thinking about it. In light of reading Ecclesiastes, I’ve realized that in the end all we have comes from God, in fact, if it weren’t for God I wouldn’t even be here typing this. Everything I have, and even the intangible gifts like joy, strength, and perseverance come from God. And with the oncoming Christmas season I cannot help but think of the greatest gift of all, Jesus our Savior. To think that I, who constantly fall short of God’s standards, am saved by His grace and love – it’s amazing. So what am I thankful for? Well, of course I am thankful for my family and friends, for the comforts I have in my life, but my praise goes to God who gives this things to me and more despite the fact that I do not deserve them.

Hot Stove

Under the sub title of things I find hard to believe is that Theo Epstein the “boy genius” gave Victor Martinez away to the Tigers. In the game of dollars and cents the Red Sox did not lose, the Sox can compete with any team, other than the Yankees. No, for some reason Theo thought that Saltalamachia (is that the spelling?) should be the full time catcher (at age 25) instead of Martinez. “Salty” was a great prospect initially, until he got hurt and went through severe mental issues when he couldn’t throw the ball back to the mound (but he can throw to 2nd base better than anyone). Anyway, currently we are looking at “Salty” as the starting catcher and Varitek as the backup – wow that’ll really work. The thing is this, not only do the Red Sox lose a good catcher; they lose a number 3 hitter. Assuming they do not sign Beltre that means they lose two of their best hitters, leaving the job of pulling the team’s weight to Youkilis, Pedroia, and Ortiz. Last year the Red Sox had one of the best starting lineups, even when people were hurt they still managed to score runs, but to keep that up they will need some big-market players which means years and dollars that Epstein seems to have trouble with. If this is the way things are going then I do not know how 2011 will play out, but all I can say is it doesn’t look much better than 2010.

Meaningless?

First off, sorry for the lack of posting, I went into November telling myself I would write a lot, but I’ve been loaded with work and sick the past couple weeks. But to cheer everyone up I have a post on Ecclesiastes, one of the few books (other than the prophets) I have not yet written about. I haven’t read Ecclesiastes for a while, but it really is a great book once you get to the heart of the meaning. It was supposedly written by King Solomon, and is sort of the “anti-proverbs” in that it lacks the upbeat messages and pithiness. The opening lines are “Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” My first reaction is “wow, why do I want to read this?” It really is depressing; Solomon main message is that we wake up, work, sleep, and die and that is all there is to life. However, a closer look shows that Solomon does acknowledge God in his despair as the only source of meaning to our lives. When you take a long hard look at life, Solomon is right in his claims, without God life is meaningless; today I woke up, ate breakfast, went to school, talked to friends, took a math test, did my homework, will eat dinner, go to bed, only to do it all over again. Imagine if that was my life, if that was all there was to my existence. If I was jumping from pleasure to pleasure searching for that “one thing” only to find it doesn’t exist. There is a ton to write about Ecclesiastes in detail which I probably will do, but for now, I’m clearing its “bum rap.” While it is depressing to read the message is true, a life without God and dedicated to this world is worth nothing in the end, a life spent every minute in devotion to God is priceless.

New Toys

I realized that I use this title often for new gadgets (the apps on the sidebars), but here is my latest addition. I added a "popular post" gadget which lists the top ten posts over the last 30 days. That way if you're new to the blog and want to see what's good or just want to know what the most popular posts are you can. Enjoy.

Hot Stove

Well it looks like it’s time to heat up the hot stove. I know I made many predictions in the past, which I will have to look over to see how (in)accurate I was, but here is my round of (hopeful) predictions for this off-season. First off is I can guarantee the Sox will be looking for either a first baseman or a third baseman. The easiest option is a first baseman because they have Youkilis to play third and a power hitting first baseman is not hard to find. As to who, possibilities are Adam Dunn, Adam Laroche, or Adrian Gonzalez. Next, I think they’ll go for an outfielder as the idea of Ellsbury, Cameron, and Drew never worked out. Third bullpen help, the Sox bullpen has been the biggest problem for the past two years and it will not go ignored. I think the guys we can expect to stay are Bard, Papelbum, Atchison, Doubront, and some other people I am forgetting. But they will (or should) get a couple middle relief pitchers who are actually good, some possibilities are Scott Downs or Kerry Wood. Last is catching, it doesn’t look like Martinez will stay so “Salty” is most likely the starting catcher with either Varitek or someone else backing up. One part that is omitted is starting pitching and that is because the Red Sox have the best rotation in baseball (while it didn’t look like it in 2010). Lackey had adjustment issues, Beckett was hurt, and Dice-K was well, Dice-K. But imagine a rotation with Buchholz, Lester, a healthy Beckett, Lackey, and Dice-K – that can’t be beat. It will be interesting to see how the off-season goes, so far the only move was to keep Ortiz, but there will be more.

He Made it All

A lot of people feel that God and science but heads on all issues, and some claim one disproves the other. However, I have found that not only do God and science work together they magnify each other. I was reading Stephen Hawking’s book A Brief History of Time and was struck by the fact that it was almost as much science as philosophy and religion. He mentions God several times throughout the book, but my favorite quote is “It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings just like us” (131). At first you feel like it is a little…out of place, like religion and science are two separate subjects, but when you think about it, God created science. God was the mastermind behind gravity, galaxies, thunderstorms, and elements; not only that be He created mathematics, art, and literature. When people say God buts heads with science they fail to realize God created science, as complicated as our universe is God made it that way. All the weird stuff about black holes and relativity was God’s idea. Isn’t that cool? I mean, if I had one question (well, maybe one of a long list) it would be “how?” Another thing people tend to have issue with is the concept of miracles. People say “Miracles go against science, therefore they are not real.” My answer is that if God is the creator of science, can’t He “change the rules of the game” a bit, if He is the mind behind it He has the right to intervene when He wants to. C.S. Lewis wrote a book called Miracles which I do not remember enough of to post now, but I’ll make a point of rereading it and posting later.

A Little Philosophy

I am going to change direction a little bit and write a little philosophy. Normally my blog posts are based on my thoughts on the Bible, well here is a little theology and philosophy thrown into the mix. I’ve heard a lot about morality, how it can be described as a set of laws, how each culture has different laws, how each culture has the same laws, even that ethics do not exist! Well I believe that ethics do exist, and here is my reasoning. We all feel a certain way about the way the world should be run, I don’t know how many times I have heard someone say “That’s not fair.” We all have a sense of fairness, and ideal that we feel should be kept. Theft, murder, cheating, and lying are all “wrong” things to do. Well if there is no such thing as ethics why can’t I steal a few dollars from my parents, or cheat on my exams, if there are no ethical standards there is no reason to be “good” whatever that means. But our world is different; we live in a society where we must obey the rules of “fair play”, where when someone breaks them we get upset, thus showing we all feel that there is some sort of ethical system whether we admit it or not. In this case our own words betray us. Now to the next part of the question, where did this ethical system come from? Well many people say it comes from laws passed down through the ages, modified through time. But here is the problem, if we assume ethics were just a genetic mutation, or a prerequisite for civilization how do we know they are right? How do I know the laws I am following are the right ones, could you imagine a world where cowardice, dishonesty, and cruelty were admired? The answer is no because something inside of us, not outside, abhors those values, we have such a strong reaction to the evil acts of others that it cannot possibly be forced upon us, it is inside of us. That makes it seem more like ethics is a personal taste, but that is not true as every civilization (as far as I know) has the basic outline of ethics that we have today, if you look at the Romans, Buddhists, Hindus, various African societies, Judaism, and Christianity, we all have the same sense of justice. Thus this ethical law system did not come from us, unless everyone in the world got together at one point in time and decided this is how it would be. So I come to the conclusion that our ethical laws had to come from God, now, did morality begin with the Ten Commandments? No, but that is an outline which leads to God’s law in full. But even without the law we still have a sense of justice and fairness that is instilled in us in our creation. Note, a lot of this is based off of C.S. Lewis’ book Mere Christianity, I can’t take credit for all of it.

Thank You?

I was reading Psalm 119 the other day (which translates to last week), I realize that I wrote about writing a “series” on Psalm 119, but I can’t confine my posting to a specific series of posts, so this is one of my many infrequent posts about Psalm 119. It seems like every time I read this Psalm I walk away with something new, I walked away with a lot after reading 119:75 “I know, O Lord, that your laws are righteous, and in faithfulness you have afflicted me.” Wait a minute, hold the phone, did I read that right? “In your faithfulness you have afflicted me.” Okay I guess I did; I don’t know about you but that is a powerful and initially strange statement. Synonyms for faithfulness include trustworthiness, care, devotion, and loyalty. If you were to substitute one of those words it would sound a little strange, I never really stop to think about the devotion and care of God when I am afflicted, more often than not I say “Why me?” But that’s pretty narcissistic, because it takes the focus of what is wrong with the world and pins it on how I feel. When God created the world He called it good, and to have God call it good it has to be really good. But sin entered the world and spoiled this goodness making it imperfect. Because of this imperfection the world has gone wrong; outbreaks of diseases kill millions of people, massive storms destroy homes and lives, corrupt people take power of nations and on a more personal level, we treat each other poorly. I finished reading the book of Job and the message his friends keep telling him is “Job the reason you’re losing everything is because you did something wrong” but that is not always the case, because the true reason Job lost everything he had is because of the devil and the imperfections of the world. I’ve been thinking a lot about suffering, not to find one answer, but to find a reason in it and the conclusion I’ve come up with is that God is good, and sadly, the world departed from that goodness. The psalmist isn’t saying “God, I love these afflictions” he is saying “God, I know you are good, and that you will not leave me alone in my suffering.” Although things go wrong in life we mustn’t forget that God is always with us and is devoted to us, despite the pain that afflictions in life bring, they often draw us closer to God and make us stronger because of them.