Just a Moment

  Next month at this time, my oldest son (18 years old) will be in college.  He will be sitting under the teaching of people I do not know, learning from them I don't know what, reading books that I have not read, and hanging out with people for whom I know nothing of their backgrounds or current trajectory.    Now people who have sent their children off to school may have had similar trepidation, and you and your child have survived.  And I have faith in the Lord that we too will survive this transition.  Nonetheless, it is new to his mother and me.  This is our firstborn, a gift from God to us when we were young and inexperienced as parents.  I pray that we have done all that we should have and could have done to prepare him for life as an adult.  Have we modeled for him a life of devotion to and reliance upon the Lord our God?  Have we modeled before him the way to treat other people?  How to stand for your convictions?  Ha...

This is a big question, yet a simple question too. "Big" in the sense that God is sovereign, that He knows all things, that His will shall be done, that He is not frustrated nor is He ever surprised.  He is omnipotent; He doesn't need anything - from us nor anyone else. So if God already knows all things, all the outcomes -- then why should we be praying? Does it really do any good?  Are we going to change God's mind? I believe there are several ways to answer - and more than discussed here, I am certain.   I stand on the sovereignty of God.  If He is not sovereign over all, then He is not God.  So in one sense I believe that He calls us to pray, not that we will change His mind -- but so, as C. S. Lewis is said to have argued -- but that we will be changed.  Prayer doesn't change God, it changes us.  In prayer we surrender to His will -- Jesus taught us "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" -- and we align our stubborn will with His p...

  Encountered a friend today that is facing a real trial in his life.  I will not go into detail, but it is genuine pain that he is feeling.  Pain of wondering, "Where is God in all of this?"  In fact he told me he had cried to God, "My God, my God why have You forsaken me?"    No doubt, we may have been where he is now.  If not, we will be.     I was reading, thinking about Jeremiah 29:11 -- a verse that is used a lot, especially when young people are graduating from school -- but the verse says "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you  and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."   Now originally the Lord gave this message to the exiled Hebrews in Babylon.  They had been captured by God's instrument, King Nebuchadnezzar, and taken as exiles into a foreign land.  Many were scheming up plans to rebel and revolt against Babylon.  But God says, "Hold up....

"Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the schemes of the devil." - Eph. 6:11 (CSB)   Have Christians surrendered the fight?  Have Christ's followers forgotten that we are engaged in a battle, a war -- not with other human beings, but with "evil, spiritual forces in the heavens"?  Are we just "happy" to go along and hope for, look for, believe that that we can live our best lives now?  That "hey . . . I signed a card, walked an aisle, got wet in a pool, had a preacher declare that I'm a Christian now, and became a member of so&so church - so everything is a-ok."  And the war rages, and many lose, and zero fruit for the glory of God is produced, and the church grows weaker and weaker. We should not be OK with the present state of affairs.  Most churches are happy if they survive week to week -- financially, and a few folks show up.  We measure health all too often with man-cantered numbers -- number of building...

The name of this blog is "Just a Moment" and the reason I chose that is because we are really here, on planet earth, for just a moment. The Bible tells us in James 4:14 "Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.  You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away." I will probably write things on this page that speak to current affairs.  And though they may have lasting effects -- political policies, world events -- my comments will not have lasting effects, most likely.  Things that often concern us "most" are usually momentary.  The world is passing away, though we don't like to think like that.  But there is an eternity that awaits everyone of us -- sadly we don't think about that too much.  We get too caught up in the momentary, and not the eternal. So hopefully this forum will allow me to muse on the momentary and the eternal.  Soberly.