Quiet Song

Psalm 42:8

A lot of mornings when I wake up early, I have Christian music in my mind.  One of those mornings, the quiet song was “Starry Night” by Chris August.  I don’t know all of the words to the song, but the calming phrase of “…giving my life to the only One who makes the moon reflect the sun” replayed softly in my mind.

When a Christian song plays in my mind, I feel that God is close, and I feel peace like the following psalmist surely felt.  In Psalm 42:8, a psalmist said, “⁸ By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life.”

Shields

1 Chronicles 12:8, Ephesians 6:10-18, Psalm 84:11-12

My family and I miss watching The Mandalorian.  One day earlier this month, I was half-listening to a DJ on a Christian radio station in the car.  It sounded like she said, “You are my beskar.”  For those who haven’t watched The Mandalorian, beskar is the strong metal he wears to protect him, kind of like a shield would.  Chances are very slim that’s what she actually said, but it reminds me of a few verses.

1 Chronicles 12:8a says, “Some Gadites defected to David at his stronghold in the wilderness. They were brave warriors, ready for battle and able to handle the shield…”, and Ephesians 6:16 says, “..take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.”  And Ephesians 6:13 says, “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”

The above verses speak about how people on God’s side can use a shield.  But Psalm 84:11 says, “For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor;
no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless.”  For our spiritual battles, the Christian can look to God and say, “For the Lord God is a sun and shield…”.  A Christian might also say, “God is my beskar.”

God is There

Hebrews 13:5

One day earlier this month, we were experiencing a morning thunderstorm.  I checked my phone and the weather app showed “partly cloudy” with an icon of a white cloud accompanied by the sun peeking from behind it.  At first I laughed at the contrast of what the phone said the weather was like and the actual intensity of the weather outside our windows.  Then, I thought that the weather app wasn’t really wrong.  True, we could just see 100% cloud cover, heavy rain, lightning flashes and hear thunder, but behind all of that, we knew the sun was there.  So it is with God.  We can know that in our storms, God is there.

God’s Solar System, Part 2

Genesis 1:1

Isaiah 40:26

On 12/16/12, I did a post on the dwarf planet, Ceres and said, “NASA’s Dawn spacecraft plans to be in its orbit in 2015.”  I closed the post by saying that God already knew what they’d find since He created it.

Since it’s 2017, there is news to report on Ceres (the biggest object found in 1801 between Mars and Jupiter in the asteroid belt) on this link (warning:  not a Creationist view!):

https://theconversation.com/after-eight-years-nasas-dawn-probe-brings-dwarf-planet-ceres-into-closest-focus-49274

Here are some of their findings (Viewed 240 miles from Ceres, which is closer than Earth’s International Space Station is):

• has a “crater chain”
• Occator Crater is 55 miles wide
• possible salts (Watch the rotation video)
• The diameter is about 600 miles which is about the size of Texas
• has ice and rock, mountains (one more than 20,000 ft. which is close to North America’s highest mountain, Alaska’s Mt. Denali at 20,310 ft.) and valleys
• Some scientists think there was an ocean underground.
• The mission director thinks the streaks on the mountain slopes could mean an unknown substance used to flow down it.  He invites the reader to imagine “an eruption of some strange combination of water and other chemicals on this cold, distant world.”

They want to get within 120 miles from Ceres.  They don’t want Dawn to land on Ceres because they want to avoid bringing contaminants.  The mission has been extended and the director thinks Dawn can keep working until the latter half of 2018.

Dawn’s mission director confidently said, “But the ship (Dawn) will remain in orbit around Ceres as surely as the moon remains in orbit around Earth and Earth remains in orbit around the sun.”  Ceres has a pummeled surface with a collection of craters, so God will decide if Dawn remains in orbit.  Also, Isaiah reveals that God calls planets by their name.  I’m guessing that includes dwarf planets.  Ceres was named by man for a Roman goddess of agriculture and grain.  I don’t know what God would call this dwarf planet, but it sure wouldn’t be Ceres.

 

 

Heaven is NOT Boring

John 14:2-3, Isaiah 11:6-7, Revelation 21, 22, 4:3-5

My family has a habit of reading the devotional, Our Daily Bread each day.  Recently, one writer wrote about someone who assumed Heaven is boring.  The writer quickly mentioned that when they went to the Grand Canyon, they were in awe at one part of God’s creation.  The author concluded that Heaven would not be boring.  I would like to add reasons I think Heaven will not be boring:

1. Jesus will be there!
2. Wolves, lions and bears can reside there (like a beautiful zoo with no cages).
3. The sun is not needed because God Himself provides all of the light with no night.
4. The River of Life is in front of God’s throne.
5. Lightning and thunder come from God’s throne.
6. There is a rainbow encircling His throne (no more waiting for the weather conditions to be just right for a rainbow).
7. The main street is made out of GOLD.  God doesn’t have to mine for gold, since He can just make it.
8. New Jerusalem’s walls will be decorated with jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, amethyst (my favorite), etc.  Is that enough precious stones for you?
9. There are lots of mansions in Heaven.
10. Jesus said He’d “prepare a place for you” which implies individual things might be included, like your favorite wild animals.

Will Heaven be boring?  Maybe one day’s highlights would be strolling down the golden street, hugging a lion, and doing a backstroke in the River of Life while watching lightning shoot out from God’s throne.  That sounds exciting to me!  Why would God make Himself a boring place to live?  That’s an insult to Him.  God is GOD and everything will be perfect.  Trust Him to provide eternal entertainment.

Cloudy Days

Genesis 7:4

It’s cloudy today.  When I was a teen, I was working at a Mexican restaurant when a customer approached me saying, “Do you know how long it’s been since we’ve seen the sun?”  Expecting an order for softshells or something else, the question surprised me.  The weather had been cloudy for awhile, and obviously, this man had been keeping track of the overcast days.  He looked distressed and I don’t remember the number of days he had counted, but I’ll never forget his question.

Today, I was curious about cloudy places.  I found out Seattle, WA is a very cloudy city with about 226 cloudy days every year.  https://www.currentresults.com/Weather-Extremes/US/cloudiest-cities.php

When Noah was in the ark, there were forty days of raining and forty nights of raining, meaning of course that the sky would have been cloudy for a long time.  If Noah could have had a smart phone with a weather app, he could have seen many images of clouds with rain in the forecast.

My family plans on going to the Ark Encounter in Kentucky soon.  I’ll be glad if it’s a cloudy day when we get there so I can feel like I’ve been transported back to Noah’s time.

 

Falling Leaves and Stars

Obadiah 15, Matthew 24

Where I live, there are more and more trees with no leaves left to fall.  What if there was one leaf left to fall?  I looked at a few poems about one last leaf falling and they were about death or loneliness.

What if you saw a tree with one leaf left and you knew that if it fell that would mean the day of the Lord had come? How would that make you feel?

In Matthew, we read that in the end times, there will be unequaled distress, then a darkened sun, a moon without light, stars falling, and the, “heavenly bodies will be shaken.”  Then, Jesus will come on the clouds, sending out His angels to gather those that are His.

Jesus let us know that He’ll come when we don’t expect Him.  He said, “Therefore keep watch…”

 

 

 

Our Amazing God

Psalm 104:19

When I read this verse about God being in charge of the sun, it reminded me of the song My Redeemer Lives that says, “…and Who showed the moon where to hide ’til evening.”  Even if you’ve seen it before, watch this touching video that accompanies My Reedemer Lives: