Fit Bodies, Fat Minds by Alison Thomas

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A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
In his book Fit Bodies, Fat Minds, Os Guinness describes how Christians have "simultaneously toned up their bodies and dumbed down their minds."(1) He connects the contemporary form of Christian anti-intellectualism with Friedrich Nietzsche's prediction of "the last man." Losing touch with transcendence, people would eventually confuse heaven with happiness and happiness with health.

I have been a fitness instructor for five years; it is my favorite recreational activity. How invigorating it is to strengthen and stretch tired muscles after a long day. I am also a romantic optimist, constantly on the lookout for the tiniest glimmer of hope during frustrating circumstances. While there is nothing wrong with exercise and optimism, our challenge as Christians today is to deliberately reflect on our lifestyle and thought-style on a daily basis. How can we live healthfully and joyously without subtly degrading the service of God into the service of self?

If we fail to think critically about the motivating factors underlying our lifestyle choices, our minds will be terribly unfit. William Lane Craig adds, "Intellectual impoverishment with respect to one's faith can thus lead to spiritual impoverishment as well."...Moreover, thinking deeply about matters of faith is not just a purely human activity relying solely on one's own strength; it must operate from the utter reliance on God's Word and Spirit.

Such dependence on God in the midst of discipline should remind us that our deepest motivation to be thinking Christians should not be merely to win arguments, but to captivate the lost with the love of Christ as we ourselves have been captivated. As powerful alternatives to the gospel proliferate all around us, let us prayerfully increase our fitness to fight for the gospel in ways that are persuasive, imaginative, and compassionate.

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Homeland Security by Margaret Manning

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Psalm 46

A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
In light of all the chaos surrounding the days of exile, the writer of this psalm remembers that the real source of security, protection, and solace comes through placing trust in God alone. The psalmist begins, "God is our refuge and our strength who is our ever present help in time of trouble" (46:1). The original language here suggests that God is abundantly available to help us in our time of need by providing a safe refuge, or hiding place from the storms of life. The writer argues that God is our refuge and strength, even if cataclysmic events happen on earth to threaten the very foundations of the cosmos. "Therefore, we will not fear though the earth should change, and though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains quake" (Psalm 46:2-3). Whatever the threat, the writer reminds the people, God is their refuge.

Second, the psalmist locates our true home in God. The psalmist describes the city of God--the place of God's presence--as a heavenly city with rivers of joy, where the streets are safe, and the God of the universe is near day and night. "God is in the midst of this city; she will not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns" (46:5). This city is our real home, our real place of refuge and security, and nothing in heaven or on earth can violate it! When we find our home in God, we traverse the ups and the downs of our lives, ever in the shelter of God's presence, our secure dwelling place.

Third, the psalmist teaches that since God is in control over the earth, we can cease striving and rest. The psalmist reminds us to rest in the promise that God will be exalted among the nations, and God will be exalted in the earth. As we recognize our true home with God, we reveal the rest and security that inhabits a city-of-God kind-of-life even in the midst of the storm. Our refuge and our strength are with God.

Finally, the psalmist emphasizes God's overarching care by repeating the refrain, "The Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our stronghold" (46:7). Jacob wrestled with God and had tangible evidence of God's strong hold upon him. God had a hold of Jacob, but Jacob also had a hold on God. The psalmist doesn't want us to miss this powerful image: God has a strong grip on each one of us, a grip so strong that none of the most potent forces unleashed on us can loose that grip. Yet, we too must cling to God for our safety and security. When we place our trust in other things or people, we lose our grip on God. God will wrestle us out of trusting in anything else, in order to reveal our true, homeland security. "Cease striving and know that I am God" (46:10).

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Faith in the Fog by Jill Carattini

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Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, "I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life." (John 8:12)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush aflame with God.
But only he who sees takes off his shoes.
The rest sit 'round and pluck blackberries.

A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
Trapped beneath the surface of Narnia, the children of C.S. Lewis's The Silver Chair engage in a most frustrating conversation with the witch, the queen of what is called Underland. The children try desperately to describe to the queen the scenes and certainties of Narnia; they speak of the sun and the moon, of the stars--and of Aslan. The witch responds with the cunning deconstructionism of a postmodern wordsmith.

"What is this sun that you all speak of?" she asks. "Do you mean anything by the word? And Aslan, what a pretty name! What does it mean?" Struggling with the weight of what feels like (and is) an enchanted fog over their minds, the children try their best to explain. "The sun is like a lamp, only far greater and brighter..." And of Aslan: "He is a lion--the great Lion...a little bit like a huge cat, with a mane." To this the witch counters with the sweetest of laughs, "You see? You have seen lamps, and so you imagined a bigger and better lamp and called it the sun. You've seen cats, and now you want a bigger and better cat, and it's to be called a lion... Look how you can put nothing into your make-believe without copying it from the real world... Put away these childish tricks... There is no Narnia, no sky, no sun, no Aslan."(1)

I don't believe it is too bold to say (and neither did Lewis) that life as a Christian sometimes feels something quite like this. Amidst the fog of a world that sees moral confusion and bewilderment and recognizes it as freedom, it can become quite exhausting to find the right words to explain that which we know to be true, only to be told that our words have no meaning. “Hope,” "truth," "depravity," and "God" are matters of utmost consequence all too often condensed into word games. It has never been more difficult, nor more important, to be able to defend your faith.

But perhaps the Christian life is like this Narnian scene in another way. The less the children struggled to hold on to the reality of Narnia and memories of Aslan's goodness, the more reasonable the queen's explanations seemed to become: "Well, 'tis a pretty make-believe, but to say truth, it would suit you all better if you were younger."

As people living within a world that bombards us with reasons not to believe, with reasons to accept half-truths as truth and sin as mere psychosis, it is an active task to remain thinking, to keep our hearts and minds continually renewed by truth, beauty, hope, and love as it comes from God's Word. It is necessary to recall the faithfulness of God in our lives, to hold before us the promises Christ has made, to daily keep our eyes sensitive to his presence. For God has called us to worship in spirit and in truth.

Comments:
May we continually encourage each other to dig in. Find a place to be alone with God. He is calling me there. Will you go too?

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Christmas in July by Jill Carattini

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"Away in the manger, no crib for a bed/ the little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head/ the stars in the sky look down where He lay/ the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay."

A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
For is it ever not a jarring story? Does the thought of a God who chose to descend fit any more neatly into the month of December? Whether we realize it among boughs of holly or not, the Christmas story fits into the present moment the same way it fits into Christmas day: uncomfortably.

The striking occasion of an omnipotent Father who relinquishes his power and becomes like the fragile clay He created in order that we might have life rests like a gigantic stumbling block on the face of history. Whoever heard of such a thing? And can such an event ever be constrained to one day, one month, one observance?

The glory of God in a dirty stable is as out of place in July as it is in December. The Christ child in the manger is forever an indication of the great lengths he will go to save us, a savior willing to descend that we might be able to ascend. The star of Bethlehem, the wise men, the shepherds, and Mary are amid the inconceivable markers of a God among us. And the birth of Christ is the timeless gesture that God has chosen to remain.

Comments:
Uncle Jay in Illinois writes: I liked Christmas in July because it shows just how much thought God put into his plan, like Easter , could you imagine it in December without all the new flowers and things spring brings to signify new life as Jesus did by dying on the cross so we could have new life after death, its a beautiful thing,

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Straight Ahead by I'Ching Thomas

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I denied myself nothing my eyes desired;
I refused my heart no pleasure.
My heart took delight in all my work,
and this was the reward for all my labor.

Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done
and what I had toiled to achieve,
everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind;
nothing was gained under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 2:10-11)

Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6)

A Slice of Infinity Snippets:

"Where is the public library?" you may ask a local who is passing by. "Oh, it is straight ahead, hundred meters away," he might say.

And so you walk on, and after 30 minutes and way past that "hundred meters," you realize that the person has given you wrong directions. Then you decide to ask another for what are, hopefully, the right directions. This time, the person whom you ask tells you to go back the way you came from for a hundred meters. "How can this be? I just came from there," you inform her. However, she insists that she is right and that you should trust her. So you retreat a hundred meters and you are back to where you had started, and not any closer to your destination.

You see, none of those whom you had asked actually knew for sure where your destination is. However, in order to "save face," they pretend that they do (and sometimes do a very good job at it!). As they did not want to appear ignorant, they had to convincingly point you towards a certain direction—oftentimes, the wrong one.

Trying to get to your destination on one of these crowded streets is in a lot of ways like how we are trying to live our lives. For most of us, our destination is the place where we will find the answers to our existential questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going?

Then there are those who have taken the route of pleasure by embracing a certain lifestyle that would gratify one in all kinds of sensuous desires. Yet Solomon, the king who possessed so much wealth and denied himself nothing he desired, found only futility in his years of indulgence. He records this poignantly in Ecclesiastes 2:10, 11:

Clearly the route of unbridled pleasure is not the course that will lead us to where our soul seeks to go.

Then there is the relativist's way of taking whichever road one wishes, believing they all will lead home. However, though the roads may seem to head in the same direction, we soon we will realize that they make drastic turns at crucial points that take fellow travelers on other paths farther and farther away from each other. Not all roads lead to home, it seems.

C.S. Lewis rightly observes that this world will offer us all sorts of things or ways that promise to take us to our soul's destination, but they never quite keep to their word.(1) After the fleeting moment of enchantment leaves us, we are back to our starting point.

Unlike most Eastern gurus who claim that they have found the way and that they could show their followers the way, Jesus self-assuredly declares that he is the way, and that only through him will we find true rest at our soul's rightful home.

Which way are you taking today to get you home? Who are you asking for your directions to where you are going? As C.S. Lewis aptly concludes in Mere Christianity, "[L]ook for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in." I would recommend that you take the route of Christ.


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My Flickering Mind by Jill Carattini

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But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.' And they began to celebrate.

"Now his older son was in the field, and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing.

A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
The parable of the prodigal son is typically understood as a story that speaks to us when we have wandered away from God in belief or obedience. It is a story we often apply to a specific time in our lives--a momentous return to faith, a homecoming back to the church, a particular event that caused us to remember God's grace personally and powerfully. It is a parable that at one time or another describes many of us. Perhaps it is also a parable that describes us daily. In the daily struggle to see, the constant battle to be present and conscious of the presence of God in this place, we come and go like prodigals.

The parable tells us that the wayward child had a plan for returning to his father's house: he would confess his sin against heaven and against his father, and then he would ask to be treated as one of the hired servants. He would work his way back into his father's life. But the father doesn't even give him a chance to fully present the offer... With every symbol of restoration, the father who was waiting embraces the son who was lost.

Gripped by the intensity of the massive painting before him, Henri Nouwen found himself becoming "more and more part of the story that Jesus once told and Rembrandt once painted." Yet in Rembrandt's painting we do not find the father eagerly rushing out to greet his wayward son as it is described in the Gospel of Luke. Rather, we find stillness; we find the parable's characters at rest. Rembrandt slows our flickering minds to the scene that captures a thousand words for our daily walk in faith: "Lord, not you, it is I who am absent." In this scene, the son has returned, and he is kneeling before his father in his ragged shoes and torn clothes exactly as he is: the one who insisted upon defining himself apart from his father, the one who was absent. In pursuit of life beyond his father, the child lost sight of life itself.

In the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus bids us to slow down and be present, to taste and see, to be still and know: the Father is near. He is here, though we are absent. He waits, though we put off Him off. He grieves over our wandering hearts and minds, moving in grace to embrace those who long to see. He is the God who runs to greet his wavering child, and it is a sight to behold.

Comments:
Let us outstretch our arms to our Father who is waiting for us. May we not be absent.

Henri Nouwen (Mentioned above) is one of my favorite authors. A Catholic priest, now moved from this life to the next, he devoted much of his earthly time to caring for those whom society may deem as less fortunate, retarded or sick. The book eluded to is called, The Return of the Prodigal; it comes highly recommended from yours truly.

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Taken Up by Wonder by Margaret Manning

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The heavens are telling of the glory of God;
And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. (Psalm 19:1)

God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (Genesis 1:31)

A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
gardening took me up because gardening quickly grew in me a sense of wonder. I suspect my friend knew this when she introduced me to my first, little jade plant. She knew that gardening would introduce me to the extraordinary in the ordinary. You cannot help but begin to pay attention to the tiniest details as you garden, and in turn, begin to notice all kinds of other awe-producing details all around you. The varieties of the color green in the trees, grasses, plants and shrubs, the nuances of blue and aqua hues that shimmer on lakes and oceans, and the little creatures that share the world with us--birds, rabbits, coyotes, skunk, deer, dogs, and cats.

The Scriptures indicate that the natural response to wonder is worship. Indeed, the psalmist suggests that the very detailed elements of creation proclaim the glory and worship of God: "The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of his hands!" (Psalm 19:1). We are drawn into the very presence of God when we wonder in God's creation. We affirm the beauty and the goodness of God as we wonder at creation. As we wonder, we agree with God "that all he had made...it was very good" (Genesis 1:31).

Have you lost your sense of wonder? Has your life gotten too busy, too laden with care that you cannot see God's extraordinary presence in the ordinary details of your life? If so, take time to garden your soul... you'll be taken up by wonder too!

Comments:
G.K. Chesterton said something to the effect of the world being so obviously put together by the hand of a Magician - The wonder of a tree being green because it could just as easily have been blue.

Yesterday, my friend Pat was discerning something regarding the homeless. A spiritual person in his life, without provocation or mention of any sort, began to tell him about how to handle something with the homeless less than an hour after his discerning arose. God is alive and speaks to us. Truly Wonder-Full!

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Explaining Away Light by Jill Carattini

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Ask me and I will tell you remarkable secrets you do not know about things to come. (Jeremiah 33:3)

A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
However accurate or inaccurate our explanations might be, they sometimes have a way of leading us to short-sighted conclusions. They have also led us to outright incongruity. We have now tried with great effort to define humanity as an impersonal product of chance, an adult germ in a vast cosmic machine. We have brusquely described life as a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing, only to claim this should not lead us to despair. We have declared our appetites the gods of a better religion, while insisting both God and religion to be an invention of the human psyche. We scoff at the notion of a savior who frees the captive or restores the fallen, while maintaining we live with every qualification for human dignity, distinction, and freedom. But are these even realistic applications of our own philosophies? Do the explanations warrant the conclusions?

On the contrary, we are undermining our own mines. In the words of R.C. Sproul, we are living on borrowed capital. Why should a product of chance have intrinsic value? Why would an impersonal, cosmic accident see herself as a personal, relational being worthy of dignity? What we are attempting to explain away in one sentence, we are arguing for in the next.

Explanations need not always lead us to the conclusion that all is lost. But neither should our explanations lead us to conclusions that contradict our own accounts! Thankfully, in both cases, there are times in life where we find, like Job, that we have spoken out of turn and discover there may be more to the story. After sitting through the whirlwind of God's 63 questions, Job exclaims: "I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know" (Job 42:3).

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The Magnificent Defeat by Jill Carattini

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John 21

A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
Humbled by the tremors of God's glory, the hope that something was at work beyond them, the disciples were silenced before the life before them; they were surrendered to the truth of God in the presence of Christ. John recounts the common sentiment among them. His words seem almost to bow before Jesus's invitation to nearness: Writes John, "None of the disciples dared ask him, 'Who are you?' For they knew it was the Lord" (John 21:12).

There was a time when I found myself yearning to add my voice to that fireside quietness. Struggling with the God whose persistence I found exhausting, whose very will required me to repeatedly relinquish my own, unlike the disciples, I did dare to ask. "Who are you?" I wanted to shout. "And what do you want from me?"

Yet as French philosopher Michel de Montaigne once wrote, "There are triumphant defeats that rival victories." Along the human road of surrendering to God, the battle seems an unavoidable illustration. And there is truth to the thought that surrendering to God is a struggle that begins again every day as if nothing had yet been done. But it is in this great surrendering where we find, as Fredrick Buechner observes, "the magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God."

In the presence of the one that moved mountains of sin and unawareness and brought them to the feet of God, the disciples found reason to surrender. Might we also be humbled by the God who refuses to leave despite the words we shout in protest, despite our refusal to surrender. Might we be awed by the one who says, "Follow me!" and expects us to trust that he will not leave or forsake us. And might we marvel at the God who, carrying in his body the scars of defeat, invites us to the nearness that is our victory.

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Why Can't I Just Be a Good Person? by Michael Ramsden

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Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?"

Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." (John 6:28-29)

A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
The difficulty here lies in the assumption that is being made in each of these questions--namely, that there is such a thing as a good person. Jesus again offers further clarification in the form of question and answer. He was once asked, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Luke 18:18). The theory of the questioner was clear: Jesus is a good person; good people go to heaven, so what must I do to be in the same group? But Jesus's reply was surprising. "Why do you call me good?" he asked (18:19). He then answered his own question: "No one is good--except God alone."

The simple truth is that the issue is not about good people not getting into heaven. Alas, the problem is much worse! Jesus seems to define goodness in terms of being like God, and on that basis there are no good people anywhere. Thus, the real question is not about who is good enough to get in to heaven. The real question is how God makes it possible for anyone to get in at all. The answer is that we need to be forgiven, and that forgiveness is won for us through the Cross.(1)

In fact, this is precisely why the Gospel is called Good News, and why we do well to declare it. The good news is that getting into heaven is first and foremost about forgiveness. The Christian testimony is, in fact, far from arrogant! Christians can be sure that they are going to heaven, not because they are good, but because they have received forgiveness by believing in Christ.

In other words, if we will trust in and rely on Jesus--his promises, his person, his life, death, and resurrection--we can be sure that we are saved. Christians are not good people because they live morally superior lives to everyone else. They have been made "good" in God's eyes because Christ has made forgiveness possible--because Christ has extended his own righteousness to those who will believe.

Good people will certainly go to heaven. However, the path to goodness lies not in religious observances or respectable acts, but in the forgiveness of a good God, given to us through the Cross of Christ.

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The Cross of the Moment by Jill Carattini

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Afterward Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches. Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches. One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?”

“I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.”

Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!” (John 5:1-8)

A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
Where Christ asks “Do you want to be well?” it is possible he may also be asking, Do you prefer your pain to the possibility of change? Do you want more to see the miracle accomplished your way then to see it accomplished at all? Indeed, do you really want the thing you say you long for? His questions gently pierce the heart of the human condition we all share, bidding us to receive the very thing we ask from the only one capable of giving it.

Where we seek meaning, are we willing to be changed by that meaning? Where we seek help, are we willing to receive instruction? Where we seek healing, are we willing to be transformed? Where we seek true community, are we willing to relinquish autonomy? Where we seek understanding, are we wiling to climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die?

To every cry of every heart, Christ calls out, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). The question he asks as we walk forward is “Do you really want to be well?”

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Being Set in a Broad Place by Margaret Manning

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Psalm 18
2 Samuel 22:2-51

A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
But God’s deliverance is a mighty deliverance! God doesn’t come quietly to rescue. God doesn’t slip quietly through the back door. David writes, “Then, the earth shook and quaked, the foundations of heavens were trembling and were shaken...God bowed the heavens and came down with thick darkness under his feet....The Lord thundered from heaven, and the Most High uttered his voice...the foundations of the world were laid bare” (2 Samuel 22:8, 10, 14, 16). God’s deliverance creates a cosmic earthquake on behalf of “the man after his own heart.” Sent from on high, God draws David out of the many waters of despair and destruction. Even though confronted by powerful forces at work against him, David affirms that “The Lord was my stay. He brought me forth also into a broad place; He rescued me, because He delighted in me” (Psalm 18:19).

If only God would shake the heavens like this in our day and return our fortunes! If only God would save in a way that shores up our financial collapses, and transforms our economic hardships! If only God would deliver us in the same way God delivered David!

If this is the way we see God’s rescue, only as a return to the “way things were” or to a renewed sense of comfort and ease, then we have missed the point of the song altogether. God’s rescue shakes our foundations; it creates cosmic earthquakes overturning and upending all the things in which we place our hope apart from God. David tells us that The Lord was his stay. And David would come to need God’s earth-shaking deliverance again and again, as he lost focus and put his trust in security, and comfort, and the things of this world.

Ultimately, salvation does not come from the things God does for David, or for us. Salvation comes in the Lord as our stay and our total support.

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Like Trees Walking by Jill Carattini

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(Mark 8:11-25)

A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
That we might see, that we might see Christ, is life's great undertaking and the desire of God for every eye. What we see now is like trees walking; God intends more. May we always have the mind to increase our vision, remaining well-focused on the promise before us: “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him.”

Comments:
Kara's uncle, Jay, sent the following comment yesterday-
I just finished reading about being blind and being able to see and being able to see but still being blind, I started every day of vacation in the hot tub at eight in the morning all by myself looking out to sea, at the same time I was seeing water and blue sky and the beautiful sun rise all I could think about was how could anyone see what I was seeing and still not believe, talk about being able to see but still being blind. In God I Trust

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When Theology Becomes Doxology - Jill Carattini

Our Disappointments Matter to God - by Ravi Zacharias

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Mary responded,

“Oh, how my soul praises the Lord.
How my spirit rejoices in God my Savior!
For he took notice of his lowly servant girl,
and from now on all generations will call me blessed.
For the Mighty One is holy,
and he has done great things for me.
He shows mercy from generation to generation
to all who fear him.
His mighty arm has done tremendous things!
He has scattered the proud and haughty ones.
He has brought down princes from their thrones
and exalted the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away with empty hands.
He has helped his servant Israel
and remembered to be merciful.
For he made this promise to our ancestors,
to Abraham and his children forever.” (Luke 1:46-55)

A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
When we come to know the God of heaven, when we see the Father’s character, when we glimpse the goodness of the Son or his merciful hand in our lives, there becomes within us a need to share it, a need to profess it in word and deed. There becomes within us a need to praise God for all that we see and all that we know.

What do you know about God? What have you seen of the Father’s character and known of his goodness? May this become your song. In your knowledge of God and in your knowing of Christ, may you find in word and deed, in prayer and song, your life a doxology to the truth of his holy name.

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Our Disappointments Matter to God - by Ravi Zacharias

Take about 5 minutes to read this snippets version of The previous day's 'A Slice of Infinity'. Follow up by reading TODAY'S SLICE and forward any comments on your faith journey.

Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way. (Colossians 3:15-17, The Message)

A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
Thankfully, our disappointments matter to God, and He has a way of taking even some of the bitterest moments we go through and making them into something of great significance in our lives. It’s hard to understand at the time. Not one of us says, “I can hardly wait to see where this thread is going to fit.” Rather, we say, “This is not the pattern I want.” Yet one day the Shepherd of our souls will put it all together--and give us an eternity to revel in the marvel of what God has done. Our Father holds the threads of the design, and I’m so immensely grateful that He is the Grand Weaver.

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Hem of Grandeur - by Jill Carattini

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It was in the year King Uzziah died^[a] that I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple. (Isaiah 6:1)

Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Matthew 11:28-29)

A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
Isaiah entered the temple with distress and loss, despair and confusion--all very large. And then, Isaiah says, he saw the Lord, and the very hem of his robe filled the temple. The prophet had come to worship grieving a king and in the midst of his pain had an encounter with a throne of far greater caliber. God's kingship was far bigger and grander than anything he had imagined.

Whatever our circumstances, let us not hide from the one who offers to stand beside us and asks that we cast our cares upon him...In the awe-inspiring presence of God our worries are put into perspective. As a friend is fond of saying, worship is an encounter with one who is "always bigger than what's the matter." Yet perhaps it is not that our anxieties are in fact smaller than we perceive them, but that the King of Kings is far greater than we have perceived Him. In the words of Isaiah himself, “From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you” (Isaiah 64:4). And we have yet to see even a hem of the grandeur of his kingship.

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The Path to Straight by Margaret Manning

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Trust in the LORD with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding.
6In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He will make your paths straight.
(Proverbs 3:5-6)

A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
Real trust in the Lord is only forged out of the fires of testing--testing that reveals whether we truly trust in the Lord or in what we want the Lord to give us. In other words, do we trust the Provider, or the Provider's provisions? In my own life, when it seemed that God withdrew the "provisions" and things stopped going my way, my plans failed, or my goals and dreams didn't materialize, I began to realize that my trust was in my own understanding of what was necessary to make my paths straight. So, as God had abandoned my plans, my test of trust began.

C.S. Lewis once wrote in his marvelous book The Screwtape Letters that in order for the believer to mature in faith and trust, God must withdraw "all the supports and incentives" and "leave the creature to stand up on its own legs--to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish." He continues this thought through the character of Uncle Screwtape, the senior demon coaching his nephew Wormwood on the skills of devilry: "It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He [God] wants it to be. Only then, when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's [God's] will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

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Stronger Than Death by Jill Carattini

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Place me like a seal over your heart,
like a seal on your arm.
For love is as strong as death,
its jealousy as enduring as the grave.
Love flashes like fire,
the brightest kind of flame.
(Song of Songs 8:6)

A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
G.K. Chesterton once noted that people who are in love have a natural inclination to bind themselves by promises. One only has to listen to a few love songs to see this truth in human nature; we find a constant flow of promising and vowing.

Love and passion impel us to place such a seal upon our hearts, to bind ourselves to one another. The sheer fierceness of its nature calls for careful boundaries. Yet this is not a verdict meant to be followed simply because it is a good thing to do, a moral virtue we ought to follow. Like Christianity itself, it is good because it is true: Love is indeed as strong as death. Like all of the deepest questions of life, love is something to be reckoned with. “For where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away,” says Paul. But love never fails.

There is no place where this has been exemplified more clearly than in the love of the Trinity and in the extension of that love to you and me--from the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. In fact, the love of God is so perfect and we are in such need of it that the cry of the human heart will not fall silent until it has found that for which it ultimately searches. In the same place where the lingering questions of the meaning of life and the fierceness of the grave are answered coherently, love is exemplified and found fulfilling. The remedy is comprehensive, and it is in the hands of God.


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The Apologists first question - by Ravi Zacharias

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A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
I have little doubt that the single greatest obstacle to the impact of the Gospel has not been its inability to provide answers, but the failure on our part to live it out. I remember well in the early days of my Christian faith talking to a close Hindu friend. He was questioning the experience of conversion as being supernatural. He absolutely insisted that conversion was nothing more than a decision to lead a more ethical life and that, in most cases, it was not any different from other ethical religions. I had heard his argument before.

But then he said something I have never forgotten: “If this conversion is truly supernatural, why is it not more evident in the lives of so many Christians I know?”

The Irish evangelist Gypsy Smith once said, “There are five Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the Christian, and some people will never read the first four.”

One ought to take time to reflect seriously upon the question, Has God truly wrought a miracle in my life? Is my own heart proof of the supernatural intervention of God?

Comments:
How often I get in the way of evangelism. I must rely on God, not my answers about God. It is for freedom that Christ set us free. Therefore, we have not need to be apprehensive when someone questions us. I need to not take offense when someone dogs my faith, but I should see it as opportunity to love. All too often I see it as an opportunity to dog back; when it should be an opening to love - if I truly have a supernatural conversion in my life.

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Hi friends, I had a thought yesterday that I wanted to run past you all. Do you think this is an appropriate analogy for 'reasonable faith'?

When someone tells me that they cannot 'see' God or they have no evidence for God, I often think that they are simply not looking. G.K. Chesterton (and Lewis followed) once wrote about the Sun being something that we cannot look at directly, but it enables us to see everything else.

A blind man may be handsome, but it takes two eyes to see his proportions. Likewise, a spiritually blind person needs help from the outside in order for them to see the spiritual. God must soften their heart and give them the gift of sight (faith). May we be continually praying for our spiritually blind neighbor to receive the gift of sight.

A scientist uses tools to enable him to see things he cannot see with the naked eye; i.e. things like microscopes and telescopes. The spiritualist looks at God through tools as well; i.e. prayer, meditation, scripture reading, worship, communion and ministry. Unlike a telescope which was invented by man at one point in the past, God implanted in us the tools we need for spirituality.

The walking dead (you and me) can use a microscope just as well as the spiritually blind. It takes a resurrected pagan to see that the he is alive in Christ. (Romans 8:10)

Thoughts?

So Many Choices by Jill Carattini

Take about 5 minutes to read this snippets version of The previous day's 'A Slice of Infinity'. Follow up by reading TODAY'S SLICE and forward any comments on your faith journey.

A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
"It's so hard to believe in anything anymore. If it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch, I wouldn't believe in anything." - Comedian Steve Martin

"jesters oft do prove our prophets" - Shakespheare

“We are living in a time when sensitivities are at the surface, often vented with cutting words. Philosophically, you can believe anything, so long as you do not claim it to be true. Morally you can practice anything, so long as you do not claim that it is a 'better' way. Religiously, you can hold to anything, so long as you do not bring Jesus Christ into it." - Ravi Zacharias

“In lecturing to popular audiences I have repeatedly found it almost impossible to make them understand that I recommend Christianity because I think its affirmations to be objectively true. They are simply not interested in the question of truth or falsehood. They only want to know if it will be comforting, or ‘inspiring,’ or socially useful." - C.S. Lewis

The world has changed since Lewis penned those words, but the truth he diligently pointed to has not. Lewis reminds us that if a religion is to be treated with intellectual respect, then it must stand the tests of truth, hope, and integrity, regardless of the shifting moods of history. The remarkable hope of the Christian is that there is a religion that is able to stand the test of time, the swaying of appetite, and the scrutiny of reason. There are indeed countless choices among us; might we arrive at our verdict by means of the unchanging road of truth and light that will not fade away.

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God on the Side of Sinners by Margaret Manning

Take about 5 minutes to read this snippets version of The previous day's 'A Slice of Infinity'. Follow up by reading TODAY'S SLICE and forward any comments on your faith journey.


(Romans 5:1-11)

(2 Corinthians 5:18-19)

A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
C.S. Lewis, the most reluctant and dejected convert in all England, penned this now famous and oft-quoted account of his conversion. Unlike some who decided to follow Jesus with urgency and willingness of heart, Lewis came into the Kingdom of God kicking and screaming! While some of us resonate with Lewis’s dread of conversion, most of us, like the Prodigal Son, gladly pursued the path home.

Lewis’s reluctance fascinates me, but I am even more moved by the portrait of God presented by his conversion story. Lewis reminds us of the love of God that relentlessly pursues even the reluctant prodigal who would turn and run in the opposite direction in order to avoid God’s gracious embrace. The God revealed in Lewis’s account is a God on the side of sinners. Indeed, even the reluctant convert is wooed, courted, and pursued by God’s love. How sadly ironic, then, that the reluctant are often the ones I am quick to reject and judge...

Paul, the “chief of sinners,” knows this great reconciliation personally...

This profound allegiance of God with sinners raises many questions for us. Do we witness to the God who is on the side of sinners as we share the gospel of Jesus? Are we as reconciled sinners proclaiming the message of reconciliation in our words and our deeds? Have we been so moved by God’s alignment alongside us as the helpless, the sinful, and even as enemies that our first motivation is reconciliation, and not judgment, towards those God loves? Miroslav Volf beautifully sums up these questions when he states “God does not abandon the godless to their evil but gives the divine self for them in order to receive them into divine communion through atonement, so also should we-whoever our enemies and whoever we may be.”(3) As we reflect on our own standing before God, may we not be reluctant converts blind to the depths of our own reconciliation. Rather, may our common heritage as sinners move us to pursue others as God has pursued us.

Comments:
If you remember a few days ago, I had written that perhaps many need to hit bottom in order to look up. While this still may hold a truism, I recognize my selfishness and my all too 'eager-to-get-on-with-Other, Greater things' spirit.

Last evening, Kaci and I went out for ice cream. While we were driving away, I saw a couple of Mormon guys. You know the ones, they wore black pants, white shirts and name tags. To a man walking by, I heard one of them say, quite sincerely it seemed, "good evening sir, would you be interested in hearing a message about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?"

Regardless of how much truth the Mormon faith holds, I have to admit I was slightly humbled by the reckless abandon of the question.

I continue to hold the view that relationship is key, but open air preaching has seemed to have much great effect throughout the ages.

May we continue to Love our neighbors and bring to them the message of reconciliation at any opportunity God puts on our hearts.

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A Story to Repeat by Jill Carattini

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Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse (Romans 12:9-14)

The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. (John 1:5)

"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:11-12)

A Slice of Infinity Snippets:
{Sami} Dagher is overseer of the Christian and Missionary Alliance churches in Lebanon, founder of a growing church in Iraq, and director of a humanitarian center that provides aid and medical care to Lebanese and Palestinian refugees. It is the same clinic that was in the news in recent years after one of its volunteer nurses was shot in the head by a militant after answering a knock at the door. Threats have not been uncommon to those who serve Christ beside Reverend Dagher; Christian persecution is a reality of which they are always aware. Yet, after this murder, when many insisted the danger was too much for their doors to remain open, Dagher simply replied, "We provide medical and educational services to a large number of people in addition to a range of spiritual services. Let them come to us and say what mistake we have made. We do not force anyone to come here. As for me, this is my city and I am ready to wash their feet."

The church in Iraq has also been the target of violent threats and vandalism. It began as a small underground gathering with five families holding Bible studies and prayer meetings in different homes. Despite persecution, the church has grown dramatically, and they now meet in a large two-story building, topped by a lit cross. A sign on the building boldly proclaims, "Jesus is the light of the world." Despite daunting shadows or darkened days, with all that is in him, Sami Dagher believes in this hope: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5). The light of Christ is real; the story must be told. "If they want to kill us all," he proclaims, "we are ready to die. But we are not going to close either the clinic or the church."

Comments:
The Voice of the Martyrs is one way to keep up on persecution throughout the world and a great way to give thanks for the freedoms we still maintain in the US.



Prayer Requests:
My mom, Donna, asked for prayer for her sister who is battling alcoholism. After the loss of her daughter in a car accident, Barbara has had an extremely difficult time getting up the courage to give up her dependence on alcohol. Please pray that she will learn to lean on God for her peace and strength. May she mount up with wings like an eagle, may she walk and not grow weary.

We haven't seen any new members pop in for awhile. If you speak to a friend whom you think might be interested, sent them a 'teaser' copy of one of our snippets. When someone wants to join, send me their email address.

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