April 2024 – Grace Notes

The First Word Spoken to Adam & Eve – April 24, 2024

Imagine what Adam and Eve learned about God’s generosity from their first impression of him on their first day. Their first knowledge of God and the world God had made was that rest was not an afterthought — rest was of first importance….

Adam and Eve had accomplished nothing to earn this gratuitous day of rest. Sabbath is, in my estimation, the first image of the Gospel in the biblical story. God’s nature always gives rest first; work comes later. This is reflected in all of our lives. Before our lives in this world began, we got nine months of rest in the womb.

Before taking up a vocation, we get a few years to just play as children. And before our six days of labor, we receive the day of rest. Karl Barth famously pointed out that the only thing Adam and Eve had to celebrate on that first Sabbath was God and His creation:

“That God rested on the seventh day, and blessed and sanctified it, is the first divine action which man is privileged to witness ; and that he himself may keep the Sabbath with God, completely free from work, is the first Word spoken to him, the first obligation laid on him.” Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World, Baker Publishing Group, 2018, Kindle Location 311.

I stumbled across this “clipping” while in pursuit of another line of inquiry, but I thought it was worth publishing here because we don’t really have a “sabbath” anymore. We fully acknowledge that out of the 10 commandments it’s the only one not repeated in the New Testament and we, along with the vast majority of Christian churches, gather on Resurrection Sunday rather than Sabbath Saturday for our day of Worship. We don’t keep ceremonial laws, including those that count steps taken on Saturdays (shabbat) nor work done or fires lit. And we don’t, universally, treat our own day of worship as a day of rest either. I am adamantly NOT trying to introduce a new legalism, but I think every once in a while I need to be reminded that the sabbath wasn’t just part of the decalogue. It was part of creation. We function better if we rest. Amen?

So take His yoke; accept His peace and rest,

Focus Shift – Apr 12, 2024

A man hiking out of the Chugach mountains of Alaska hoped to make it to camp before a deadly blizzard hit. He was too late. The blizzard struck with such a fury that he was unable to see even two feet in front of his face. The windblown snow and ice knocked him off his feet as he struggled to find his way. Although he knew he was only a short distance from camp, he lost his sense of direction and couldn’t determine which way to go. Finally, in the dark of night, he slumped down into a snowbank — cold, wet, and totally exhausted. He could go no further. He resigned himself to die.

As he lay there in the snow, he thought he heard something – a faint cry, like the whimpering of a puppy. He called out to it and tried to crawl toward the sound. Sure enough, it was a dog lost in the storm. The puppy had somehow become separated from its mother and was freezing to death. The man quickly began rubbing the dog’s fur, trying to keep the dog’s blood circulating so that the dog would survive. He warmed the dog with his breath, continuing through the night to try to keep the puppy alive.

The next day scouts from the village found both the man and the dog alive. They discovered that the man, by working to keep the little dog alive during the night, had kept himself alive as well.
Hot Illustrations for Youth Talks. ©1994. By Wayne Rice

A quick Google search just told me that the “self-care” industry has grown 47% in the last 5 years. And yet, the Bible tells us to “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” Not only will this make us more like Christ, but it may also rescue our hearts or even save our lives!

Just a thought,

Pastor Scott

“I Can’t See God” – April 5, 2024

I’m reposting this both for its apologetic value and its devotional value. BOTH serve as good reminders, PLEASE take the time to read this C.S. Lewis piece. ~ Pastor Scott

In February 1963, C.S. Lewis published an essay exploring a number of topics related to space-travel, including the idea of finding God in space (A response to Nikita Khrushchev’s proclamation in 1961, that cosmonauts never saw God in space) He wrote:

The Russians, I am told, report that they have not found God in outer space… Looking for God—or Heaven—by exploring space is like reading or seeing all Shakespeare’s plays in the hope that you will find Shakespeare as one of the characters or Stratford as one of the places. Shakespeare is in one sense present at every moment in every play. But he is never present in the same way as Falstaff or Lady Macbeth. Nor is he diffused through the play like a gas…

Now of course this is only an analogy. I am not suggesting at all that the existence of God is as easily established as the existence of Shakespeare. My point is that, if God does exist, He is related to the universe more as an author is related to a play than as one object in the universe is related to another.

If God created the universe, He created space-time, which is to the universe as the metre is to a poem or the key is to music. To look for Him as one item within the framework which He Himself invented is nonsensical…

How, then, it may be asked, can we either reach or avoid Him?…in our own time and place, [avoiding God] is extremely easy. Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation. If you must read books, select them very carefully. But you’d be safer to stick to the papers. You’ll find the advertisements helpful; especially those with a sexy or a snobbish appeal.

About the reaching, I am a far less reliable guide. This is because I never had the experience of looking for God. It was the other way round; He was the hunter (or so it seemed to me) and I was the deer…

Space-travel really has nothing to do with the matter. To some, God is discoverable everywhere; to others, nowhere. Those who do not find Him on earth are unlikely to find Him in space. (Hang it all, we’re in space already; every year we do a huge circular tour in space.) But send a saint up in a spaceship and he’ll find God in space as he found God on earth. Much depends on the seeing eye.1

If we are Christians, we know and are known by the God who created the universe and have many reasons to give Him thanks. On a cautionary note, however, Lewis’s insight into how easy it is to avoid God has applicability to Christians as well as non-believers. Christians can avoid God by living their lives concentrating on money, sex, status and the like, and consequently remain spiritually immature and experience little of the transforming power of Christ. Let us keep our focus on Jesus as Lord and Savior, and pursue a life of holiness and righteousness.

“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.”

PSALM 19:1 (ESV)

1 C.S. Lewis, The Seeing Eye, from Christian Reflections, edited by Walter Hooper, Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995, pp. 167-169, 171.