Happy for Saints Fans, glad I am a Saint

Great party, great games, always feel for the losers, until I think about their paychecks and lifestyles.

Here is a picture of our Christmas Cactus blooming in February, it takes lots of TLC to get it to bloom.

Preached on calling and election today, a key concept to understanding what church and salvation are, and are not.

Early training in Soccer

Soccer made a big surge into our country when I was in High School and College. The fact that we had lots of Brazilian missionary kids aided us at Belhaven. I played when I was in elementary school as well, living in upstate NY which had a more progressive view of soccer in the late 50s.

I enjoyed photgraphing these kids going through their paces today at Tumbleweed.

Buy this, not that

I am sure most of you have seen this innovative new set of health books that help you make better choices at the grocery story. We just got our copy of Cook This, not That. which contains product recommendations and warnings and a lot of recipes for low calorie eating. Full of pictures. Its a great idea.

Performance Anxiety

I would like to know the cause of performance anxiety. Last week as I warmed up for my golf outing I hit about 15 perfect drives on the practice range....went to the course and could not duplicate the swing for the rest of the day? What changes in my heart, and muscles between the range and the course. What causes the tension? How can I relax and repeat the swing?

I practice with the flute and whistles and get wonderful tone and control and when I play in front of people I go dry in the mouth, cannot be consistent. How does one control the nerves to perform before an audience?

Our nightly date with renewal

Sleep is something we all need, all do, all enjoy, and occassionaly have problems engaging. Last night I watched a bit of "Lost" on tape, since I have a Tuesday evening meeting. In bed at 11, get all relaxed, prepare to drift off to sleep.....and slowly realize its not happening. Then try harder not to try, offer prayer, change positions. Nothing. Up at 2:30 and try to finish a movie I have been watching, thinking it will help me doze off. finally at 3:30ish I get some fitful sleep and pay the price all the next day.

When its deep and good, there is nothing better, when you toss and turn, all is affected. This is part of the human condition.

Thoughts on Lost, Atlantis?? Reincarnation, alternate lives?? Who knows, I just enjoy these characters and that wierd island.

The Conundrum of Paul's Roman Letter

Last week my copy of The Deliverance of God came via Amazon Books. It has been a while since I tackled a 1000 page book,(with small print, mind you). Douglas Campbell has written his life work after 20 years of thinking about Pauline Theology.

As an amateur Pauline Theologian who has himself been rethinking the essential questions of the Gospel for the last ten years I feel that I have been invited into the presence of a very gifted, and very patient scholar to discuss a very essential issue. ie. justification theory. He draws you into the conundrum with careful building block arguments, and I am loving it, have gotten through 100 pages with very many highlighted sentences and comments.

Richard Beck at Experiment Theology is way ahead of me in the book and in his ability to write a cogent review. I am indebted to him for interesting me in this scholarly research.

What is the issue? That reformation Theology has built a Justification Theory from Romans 1-4 that is fundamentally different the the Transformation Theory of Romans 5-8. We have read into Paul some concepts not from Paul's heart but Luther's experience. We have a hell bound guilty mass of humanity whose only hope is to move under Christ's atoning work through a process that involves declaring our inability to be saved by works, yet requires the rationality to believe and exercises our faith to be saved. Sinners are saved by deciding to follow Jesus, Hell and eternal punishment are the just end of a retributive God who will give everyone, Jew and gentile the just desert for their sin. Christ pays for the sins of those who ask.

Romans 5-8 posits a helpless humanity trapped in sin and unable to break out, thus God in Christ identifies with us in his incarnation and life and performs the first essential to the deliverance of helpless and hopeless sinners through His death, resurrection and life giving reconciliation of sinners while they were in that lost condition, God elects the helpless, not rewards the good responder. So God has compassion on the lost, and so do the saved since they received grace unconditionally. Evangelism and a whole lot of things change to balance out Paul's essentially inclusive and more positive and universal hope of Christ's complete restoration of Adam's fallen race.

Just getting started but that is his trajectory and it has been mine for a while.

A magnetic phenomenon?

I occasionally wear a magnetic ionic bracelet sold by a multilevel marketing company.The sales presentation claimed to increase the strength of your muscles and they have a resistance test after which they ask you if it worked. Of course I thought it was psychosomatic or suggestion.

Today while beginning my seventh month of regular work outs, I came to the biceps machine. After so many weeks I sometimes feel stronger or weaker but the progression of exhaustion is fairly predictable and the same each time. Yet, today, I found myself breezing through the second to the third set with ease....and then realized that I had the bracelet on, and.....I wondered about the invisible power of magnets.