Busy Nothings

I’d like to share this parable which someone shared with me. It’s found in the book Hammer of God by Bo Giertz.

Imagine you’re a farmer picking up rocks in your field and getting rid of them. At first it seems kind of easy, but the more you pick up the more there are to pick up. As you uncover more and more rocks in your field, you find some that are too heavy to pick up or too deeply rooted in the ground. Eventually if you keep digging up rocks and dirt you get to the point where you hit bedrock which you can neither pick up nor get rid of.
Likewise, it’s easy to “get rid of” tiny sins, but the more you expel from your life the more there are. Some sins are so deeply rooted you can’t pick them up and throw them away, and eventually you will realize that despite your best efforts, original sin cannot be gotten rid of.

I like this illustration to explain original sin because it illustrates that original sin is always there, it’s not something that just “shows up” later. I’ve encountered this philosophy a lot in recent years and this illustration might have helped in those circumstances.

Pastor Voss in his sermon yesterday quoted a survey of 6,400 people done by a Ft. Worth paper. The question was this: Can a good person earn their way into heaven?
Among the statistics were these results:

78% of Mormons said “yes”—not surprising considering their good works theology
82% of Catholics said “yes”—again, not too surprising considering their church doctrine
54% of Lutherans said “yes”—Mequon, we have a problem!

At first I was shocked, but after thinking about it, I could easily see how a Lutheran could come up with that type of faulty thinking. My husband often jokes that I have loads of Lutheran guilt. And thinking of my growing up years, I could identify why Law would take precedence over Gospel. For example, from little on I had Romans 3:23 memorized: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” But why was I never told to memorize Romans 3:24: “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus”?? I remember being taught how to be a “good” Christian but rarely was it backed up with a reference to the Gospel. Now I’m not blaming anyone or any particular church, but this reality of “Lutheran guilt” is pretty common, otherwise why would we joke about its existence in the first place? I can see how the connection can be made between the criteria of being a good Christian and earning God’s favor by doing so. There was one little girl in my preschool class at the LCMS school where I taught who followed up every correction I made as a teacher by saying “because God don’t like it.”
It was refreshing yesterday to hear a message with a reminder of our sinful nature and how it’s impossible to please God, but then followed with a wonderful Gospel message based on the text of Romans 3:21: “A righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known.” Perhaps we Lutherans need to do a better job being Gospel motivators!

The service was great today. First of all, we used the order of Matins (now called Morning Praise in CW) which I have always loved–Matins and Vespers are my favorite liturgical services*, despite the fact that I still like the TLH versions better. Why did they have to change a couple notes? Usually as musicians we edit music to make it better, but changing a few notes here and there in the Te Deum actually does it a disservice. Why take a good thing and mess with it? While we’re on the subject, we also sang “My Hope is Built on Nothing Less,” one of my favorite hymns. But in the third phrase of the first stanza the great WELS hymnal editors changed the words from “I dare not trust the sweetest frame” to “I dare to make no other claim.” What is that??? I happen to like daring not to trust the sweetest frame! It fits with the allegory of building a house using the right materials!!! Even in the methobapticostal version I sang at the Alliance church they kept the original wording.
And while we’re on the subject, why did they change “And take they our life, Goods, fame, child, and wife” to “And do what the will—Hate, steal, hurt or kill”? That’s not what Luther wrote! Honestly, I really wish I could be on the next hymnal committee to change some of this stuff back. Poetry is a powerful thing and some of the changes really weaken the poetic idea.
I’ll save the rest of my thoughts on the service today for tomorrow’s post.

*Note: While this post may sound otherwise, I still give the liturgy probably only a 65% approval rating (sorry, Mr. Geologist, but you’ll just have to deal with that).

I had to blog about this just because I thought it was hilarious. My sister-in-law often calls me Martha since I seem to be blessed with a Martha Stewart gene (minus the criminal activity unless you count original sin which I will blog about later) that often enables me to create something out of nothing. Well, today I had to laugh because I beat Walmart to it about 3 years ago. In the scrapbooking section I noticed they included refill packages of Scrabble tiles (usually found in toy/game dept.) selling for about $6. There have been scrabble tile type letter stickers in the scrapbooking world for quite some time. Anyway, the reason I found this so funny is because when these tile letter stickers first entered the scrapbooking world I went down to my local St. Vinnie’s and bought 3 games of Scrabble for 50 cents each just to use the letters. Ha ha Walmart! I thought of it first! And cheaper than even you! Ha ha ha ha!

Well, it has finally happened. Evolution has penetrated the gaming world. For all you Sims lovers out there, here is the new game due out next summer by Sims creator Will Wright. This is one Sims I won’t be playing.

AiG’s Creation museum isn’t even finished yet and already the media has spun its liberal bias. Here is the full article, but I am choosing to comment on part of the mid-section of the article:

Respected groups such as the National Science Board, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Science Teachers Association strongly support the theory of evolution.

Respected by whom?

John Marburger, the Bush administration’s science adviser, has said, “Evolution is a cornerstone of modern biology.”

Does anyone else find it disturbing that Bush, a Christian, has an anti-Biblical science advisor?

Many mainstream scientists worry that creationist theology masquerading as science will have an adverse effect on the public’s science literacy.

I certainly hope so!

“It’s a giant step backward in science education,” says Carolyn Chambers, chair of the biology department at Xavier University, which is operated by the Jesuit order of the Catholic church.

Interesting. Yet another reason to be disturbed by the Catholic church. Following the Bible (don’t Catholics claim to do that?) evidently makes you backward. A Creationist Hillbilly, if you will. No offense to hillbillies.

Glenn Storrs, curator of vertebrate paleontology for the Cincinnati Museum Center, leads dinosaur excavations in Montana each summer. He said the theory of dinosaurs and man coexisting is a “non-issue.”

Translation: My theory is better than your truth.

“And so, I believe, is the age of the Earth,” Storrs said. “It’s very clear the Earth is much older than 6,000 years.”

And who’s to say God couldn’t create the earth already aged? Can a man limit God?

The Rev. Mendle Adams, pastor of St. Peter’s United Church of Christ in Pleasant Ridge, takes issue with Ham’s views – and the man himself.

Ham says homosexual behavior is a sin. But he adds that he’s careful to condemn the behavior, not the person.

Apparently Rev. Adams considers what the Bible says to be “extroardinary liberties.” He should check out 1 Corinithians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-11 for starters.

I for one hope to be able to visit this museum someday. For me it would be worth a flight down to Ohio.

As I was framing yet another baptismal certificate today, this thought crossed my mind: with all their faults at least the Catholic church gets the infant baptism thing right. It’s interesting that after a year at a Methobapticostal church my focus lately has really been on baptism. I’m still the strong music minister, but at this point in my spiritual life (and probably because my husband and I really want kids) baptism is really important.

Today I was sitting at the bus stop being eaten alive by giant Alaskan mosquitos while waiting for a very late bus, when I heard a rustling in the trees behind me. About 20 feet away was a very large moose chomping away at some leaves. If my cell phone had a camera, you’d be looking at a picture. However, since I didn’t have a camera handy, here’s a detailed description:

It was big, brown, and hungry.

Forgot to post this picture taken when my family was here last week. For the first time a moose actually showed up for our visitors!

Today is the Festival of Pentecost. This morning our pastor made mention of the three big church festivals: Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. Our materialistic world has taken over two of them–Christmas and Easter–but somehow Pentecost never really cought on. So here are some of my ideas for Pentecost materialism:

Holy Spirit torches
Plastic tongues of fire filled with candy
Simon Peter Doll that says “These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! ”

Any other ideas?

Well, fellow Lutheran Bloggers, behold the next generation of blogging. Intolerant Elle spent some time while she was here teaching my nephew how to blog. With his limited vocabulary, his blogs will most likely contain the words “more,” “uh-oh”, “milk”, “graffe”, “uh-oh” a few more times, and, of course, “butt”.

One of my favorite memories of this past week involves beer. Not that I was drinking it, mind you, but that the boys seemed to bond over stout. I believe the boys drank a total of 4 growlers (that’s two gallons!) in about 4 days. That’s not counting the pints they drank at the brewery before bringing the growlers home. Anyway, I want it on record that I support my husband’s drinking with his drinking buddies.

This has been a great month! I haven’t blogged because I’ve been the hostess with the mostess here in Alaska. My sister-in-law and her blogging boyfriend from Wichita decided to both fly to Alaska and meet each other. They stayed here with my husband and I. My brother and his family arrived a few days later and the 7 of us stayed in our apartment with one bathroom. (This sparked some interesting conversation as one particular person habitually left the toilet seat up–see this blog). We all had a lot of fun and I am sorry that the last of our guests left this morning.
I have wanted to blog about so many things in the past two weeks, but couldn’t without releasing some important information. Now that the aforesaid information has been released, I can’t remember what it was that I wanted so much to blog about. Except maybe that, thanks to Dan, I finally got to see Lord of the Rings.

Pastor Voss had a great sermon yesterday. Since I didn’t want to detract from my post about changing hymn stanzas, I decided to save this post for today.
Pastor began his sermon by referring to a survey of about 6,400 taken by a Ft. Worth newspaper. The question was this: Can a good person earn their way into heaven?
I won’t list all the statistics, only those that caught my attention.

78% of Mormons said “yes”. Not surprising—that’s what they teach.
82% of Catholics said “yes”. Again, not surprising—their doctrine of salvation is dependent upon works.
54% of Lutherans said “yes”. Mequon, we have a problem!

At first the statistic surprised me, but considering my growing up years, it now make sense. The survey didn’t specify which brand of Lutheran, but nevertheless it does cause one to think. My husband often teases me about having loads of Lutheran guilt. So much emphasis is placed on what we’re not supposed to do. The Law can really be pounded into us so hard sometimes that it keeps us from absorbing the full power of the Gospel. For example, I’ve been able to quote Romans 3:23 by heart since my grade school days: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” But why was I never told to memorize verse 24: “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus”? We also learned the first part of Romans 6:23—“The wages of sin is death”—but didn’t learn the second part until much later: “but the gift of God is eternal life.”
I have been a Christian since April 13, 1975, and the message yesterday brought tears to my eyes and the feeling of overwhelming joy—comparable to that of a new Christian. I am so thankful and blessed by the reminder!