Mark's Views, Perhaps — from behind my eyeballs
I got to Psalm 88 in my Spanish Bible reading this morning.
Wow! Talk about a shoe that fits!
Here are just the first three verses:
| 1 O LORD God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee:
2 Let my prayer come before thee: incline thine ear unto my cry; 3 For my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. |
As usual, I made a wallpaper to go with it:
Amazing Images of Shuttle and Hubble Transiting Sun
| No, these aren’t sunspots finally appearing on our currently quiet sun. Check out these great images taken by NASA photographer Thierry Legault. The “spots” are actually the space shuttle Atlantis and the Hubble Space Telescope transiting across the sun! Legault’s website says these are the only images ever taken of a transit of a shuttle and the HST in front of the Sun. Legault was in Florida at the time he took this image, about 100 km south of the Kennedy Space Center on May 13th 2009 12:17 local time, several minutes before grapple of Hubble by Atlantis. |
For further perspective, consider this. The two man-made objects are roughly 375 miles away. The God-made object — 93,000,000 miles!
| When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? (Psalm 8:3,4) |
Oh, and here you can see Space Shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station against the Sun.
What’s your hope anchored to?
What’s hope you can believe in?
And what’s the fate of that hope?
The hope of so many folks is coming apart:
If your hopes are built on anything or anyone less than Jesus Christ, you’ve got to move your anchor!
“Why does God want us to do good works?” asked the preacher yesterday morning.
I had a “new” answer pop into my head. But before that, another photo from the Mother’s Day excursion Ruby and I took the day before Mother’s Day.
Food banks are a great way to do good. And when they have coffee at interstate rest areas, they do even more good! If Hubbard (Oregon) has no food bank, perhaps our congregation (Hopewell Mennonite Church, two miles distant) should start one.
Anyway, may God bless and prosper the Jefferson-Scio-Crabtree Food Bank as well as those who make it work. And thanks for the good coffee!
Now, back to the question: “Why does God want us to do good works?”
And what popped into my head: Because He wants us to have faith!
| “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone” (James 2:17). |
Furious Berlusconi demands apology from wife
Now, which emoticon should I use?! 🙄 😯 😥 😆
I don’t know if either of the Berlusconis are Christians, but I suppose one could also wonder who the real Christians are in this next story.
| U.S. denies letting troops convert Afghans
The U.S. military denied Monday it has allowed soldiers to try to convert Afghans to Christianity, after a television network showed pictures of soldiers with bibles translated into local languages. General Order Number 1 from the U.S. military’s Central Command forbids active duty troops — including all those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan — from trying to convert people to their religion, considered a crime in many Muslim countries. […] “The translated bibles were never distributed as far as we know, because the soldier understood that if he distributed them he would be in violation of general order 1, and he would be subject to punishment.” |
No man can serve to masters, Jesus said once upon a time.
Besides, those soldiers are there to kill people, not save them. Or am I missing something?
Other reading: Kosovo and Serbia: A Case Study Regarding Christians in the Military
![[Peace (1 Thessalonians 1:1)]](/pantinghart/wp-content/peace2-b.jpg "Peace (1 Thessalonians 1:1)")
In my Bible reading this morning, my troubled heart grabbed at that single word in that verse.
Then in casting about for a background to use for it, I remembered a photo my friend and minister Peter Turner took last week while we were in Mexico with several other Mission Board members.
Beautiful flowers on a thorny saguaro (aka sahuaro) cactus — peace in the storm.
Maybe it will be just what you need as well.
(Thank you, Lord, for that reassuring promise: peace.)
Not Pink Pearl. Not…well, I don’t remember any other brands. But that’s OK since this is about God’s eraser.
I read the print version of Our Daily Bread this morning and was blessed.
So I looked up the online version and present to you the closing portion thereof:
| You may not be able to forget your past. But the Lord offers to blot out, “like a thick cloud, your transgressions” (Isa. 44:22). — M.R. De Haan
No human eye may trace; But Jesus sees the broken heart, And can its woes erase. —Bosch The best eraser is honest confession to God. |