Baptism

Here are a few pictures from flying.I am getting dangerously close to being able to take my test (and hopefully pass), which means, I need to hit the books hard because I have been neglecting that more than I should. We will see how long it takes, but hopefully in the next month or so, I'll have my private pilot's license.

On a different note, in the past month, our church has baptized several little children. I kind of like it when the baby cries. :) I don't say that to be mean or anything of that sort, but isn't that what been washed by the blood of Christ is? Pain. In the Heidelberg Catechism, which is a great tool, it says that, "as surely as water washes away the dirt from the body, so certainly his blood and his Spirit wash away my soul's impurity," and then goes on to describe the washing of Christ's blood as atonement and to be washed by Christ's Spirit means that "the Holy Spirit has renewed me and set me apart to be a member of Christ so that more and more I become dead to sin and increasingly live a holy and blameless life." (Heidelberg Catechism, Q.A. 69-70).

Both of those describe pain. Christ suffered and died to give us atonement and send his Spirit. Now, we are dying to the sins in our lives, which is much more than scrubbing ourselves in the shower. It is a daily act of asking God to cut a piece of flesh from my sinful heart.

I love the description C.S. Lewis gives in "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader." In the story, Eustace finds a treasure and his heart desires to hoard it all for himself. Well, he falls asleep and when he wakes up, he has become a dragon. "Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself." To keep the long story short, Aslan comes to him and takes him to this pool to ease his pain but Aslan points out that he must undress Eustace before he could enter the pool. So, Eustace started scratching at his flesh and scales would come off until he could crawl out of his dragon skin, only to find, he was still covered by scales. He did this three times, but still was a dragon. Aslan said, "You will have to let me undress you."

Here, C.S. Lewis describes baptism of the Spirit, or sanctification, marvelously...

"I (Eustace) was afraid of his claws, but I was pretty hearly desperate now. So, I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it. The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure ofeeling the stuff peeel off...Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off and there is was, lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch...Then he caught hold of me...and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment...I turned into a boy again."

This short passage is chucked full of great stuff to bring out, but I wanted to emphasize the pain Eustace felt when Aslan was cleansing him. He clawed and tore at his very flesh until there wasn't a scale left on him and this is what we all need to allow Christ to do to us every day until we are clean. This is living a sanctified life. Sure, the baptism of Christ's blood instantly removes sin, but the baptism of the Christ's Spirit is a battle cry coming from the lungs of a crying child.

Story

Here is a little story in one of our church newsletters a while back... I liked it.

This is a little story about four people: Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody.

There was an important job to be done, and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.

Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

a whirlwind journey: in more ways than one!

Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
I just had about a page written out and decided against it. So, you are getting the condensed version of a good weekend. A friend and I traveled to Chicago to visit some great friends. We spent the weekend talking, watching movies, going to garage sales and Bass Pro Shop, playing guitar hero, dominating in bags, playing volleyball, eating and through the baseball around. It was a great weekend of fellowship and I thank you for it and can’t wait until we do it again!

Also, on Friday, I traveled to Michigan to visit a mission aviation school and also Calvin Seminary. If you want to know more, ask or email me. I ask for your prayers in my decisions about the future and where God’s kingdom needs me more. Actually, I would very much like to hear your thoughts as well, so feel free to email me.

On the way home Sunday, we enjoyed great times of conversation and listening to sermons by John Piper, but when we got west of Albert Lea, we came across something. We could see ahead that some very heavy rain was falling and sure enough, in a matter of minutes, rain pummeled the Blazer. With the windshield wipers on high, water flew everywhere as we exited the interstate and found a place to park. The monsoon continued. In 2 or 3 minutes, an all to familiar sound was heard: the high pitch wine of tornado sirens and also with that, the rain stopped.

I decided not to sit and wait for the storm and we left and only a few miles down the road, we saw the culprit. There, on the left side of the interstate, a funnel cloud slowly descended towards the earth, rotating as it went. Pulling over, we watched it come all the way to the ground and rotate in a leaning spiral out into the fields and within a few minutes, the tornado dissipated as quickly as it had come down. All in all, a sweet sight.

Here are a few pictures!

Wish you were there...

No words or descriptions except sunset at the tail end of a thunderstorm. Enjoy.









A picture is worth a thousand words.

Yet, it is nothing like being there... thunder rumbling, colors changing second by second revealing a new painting at every glance.

I wish you could have been there.

Rebuilding

God truly is the great craftsman. With the warming temperatures, I decided it is time to get the Goldwing fully fixed up. So, I have been hacking away at it taking bolts and screws out and sanding down the parts in order to get them repainted.

Above is a picture of the Goldwing with various parts and pieces scattered on the floor of the garage. It's amazing how big the pile gets and what a mess it makes when you start taking things apart. The statement is true that things get worse before they get better.

This Goldwing used to be a complete, well working machine. The paint matched and all the pieces were in the right place. Then, there was an accident, causing much damage to the vehicle. Fiberglass shattered, metal bent and paint chipped. Now, as the owner, I have the task of pulling off the bad parts and replacing them with new; taking a hammer and beating bars back into place; sanding and grinding pieces until they are ready to be painted and put back where they belong. One day, the Goldwing will look the way it did before, but it can be a long process.

While working on this project with my dad the past few days, I thought about humans and I think I understand Jeremiah's picture of the potter and the clay a little bit better, except in a different concept.

We (as a human race) were at one time right with God, created good and full of beauty. Then, there was an "accident" and we are now damaged and broken, yet God saw us as valuable enough to take us and work on us as a craftsman fixing, say, a motorcycle. Throughout our lives, God takes the broken pieces of us and rips them off. A few screws loose here; brackets to bend back in place there; sanding, scraping, bending. It, this thing we call life, can be a painful process where, during years of our lives, God may be bending us back into shape. He may be scraping dirt out of our flesh or he may be sanding scrapes and gouges off our hearts. It hurts, but the end product will be so much better. Each day, each year, piece by piece, we will be shined up more and more as God removes our bad parts and replaces them with shining beautiful pieces. In the end, we will all be full and complete again, the way God wants us to be; shining as we stand in the glory of the Son.

The best part is, we are all works in progress and we will all hit the "paint shop" at the same time. On that last day, when the trumpet sounds, and the sky rolls back and the Son of Man descends from the heavenly throne room, I picture him holding a paint gun, smiling and saying, "are you ready for your final clear coat?"

Holiday

Moon over the lake- 5:15 a.m.






Sleeping by the fire


Sunrise


The biggest holiday in Minnesota happened today: The Walleye Opener. It is a day where every angler of any age heads out to a local lake to try their hand at catching Minnesota's most prized fish. There are many fanatics who will be out on the water at midnight hoping to catch the first fish of the season. Well, we didn't get out that early because of some other details.

Last night, some friends and I helped chaperon the high school after-prom party here in town. It was a lot of fun to hang out with friends, talk with people I hadn't seen for a long time and meet some new people. At the after-prom, there are a bunch of different games for the students to play and we were in charge of running those games and the party lasted from about midnight until 3 in the morning. Since we were up at that time, we decided to go and fish. So, at 4 a.m., we piled in the pickup and headed for the lake.

Above are some pictures from the day. It was a long, but fun day. After all was said and done, we were up all night, with a few naps around the fire.

The worst part: no fish. I did catch a clam though.

Nature amazes me.

Yesterday, I watched as a Robin bounced across the lawn, taking a break here and there to cock his head and listen. He stood as still as a statue and then one more bounce... listen. With a quick jab into the grass, his beak came out with a nice, juicy earthworm. This process was repeated several times.

On the Discovery Channel, I watched part of a show telling about animals and spring time. Two bear cubs rolled around in the grass, wrestling as brothers. One pushed the other over and ran off into the brush, quickly persued by his brother. Two bears so innocent and cuddly eventually will grow up to be one of the most feared beasts in the U.S.; and best fishermen.

Driving home from Bible study, lightening lit up the night sky. All would be dark, then a flash and the texture of height of the clouds would be illuminated for a split second, only to be lost again. More energy is stored up in those clouds than an atomic bomb.

Along with this, the fresh smell of rain. In my opinion, one of the best smells on the face of the earth. I'm convinced that fresh rain smell, is what God smells like.

I long for the day to hear the robins secret, to wrestle those bears, to understand lightening and to smell the fresh rain in the clothes of God Almighty.

Oh what a day that will be!