A Day in Selfies

So, yesterday, we hung out at ye olde Family Fun Center, Wahooz. Couldn't get any good action shots, so went with a collection of selfies to commemorate the day.

this one is sort of a meta-selfie. I should try to post the one that Samwise took here.

Thought for the Lord's Day - #55

That Christ should love man when he was most unlovely, that man's extreme misery should but inflame Christ's affections of love and mercy -- this melts the believing soul. That Christ should leave the eternal bosom of his Father; that he who was equal with God should come in the form of a servant; that he who was clothed with glory, should be wrapped in rags; that he whom the heaven of heavens could not contain should be cradled in a manger; that from his cradle to his cross, his whole life should be a life of sorrows and sufferings; that the judge of all flesh should be condemned; that the Lord of life should be put to death; that he who was his Father's joy should in anguish of spirit cry out, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' that that head which was crowned with honour, should be crowned with thorns; that those eyes which were as a flame of fire, which were clearer than the sun, should be closed up by the darkness of death; that those ears which were accustomed to hear nothing but hallelujahs, should hear nothing but blasphemies; that that face which was white and ruddy should be spit upon by the beastly Jews; that that tongue which spoke as never any man spoke, yes, as never any angel spoke, should be accused of blasphemy; that those hands which swayed both a golden scepter and an iron rod, and those feet that were as fine brass, should be nailed to the cross -- and all this for man's transgression, for man's rebellion! Oh! the sight of these things, the believing of these things, the acting of faith on these things, makes a gracious soul to break and bleed, to sigh and groan, to mourn and lament! That faith which accompanies salvation is more or less a heartbreaking, a heart-melting faith.

 - Thomas Brooks

Heaven on Earth

(haven't done one of these in forever, need to get back to it)

Food for Thought

Started this like a month ago, got distracted and busy, and just now made the time to finish. Sso it's not actually current, but I haven't really had time to finish it up . . . really should've waited til life was a bit calmer before trying to start this blog up again.

I don't particularly have time to write a post on any of these ideas, but the cow's stomach that is my brain has been regurgitating and re-chewing on this stuff lately.

• Blogger Kirk Miller highlights some of Carl Trueman's rumination's on his essay, "What Can Miserable Christians Sing?" The historic answer (not that anyone cares about that kind of silliness anymore) is: The Psalms. Having shoved aside the psalms in our worship, what have we done? Truman writes:
  

  By excluding the cries of loneliness, dispossession, and desolation from its worship, the church has effectively silenced and excluded the voices of those who are themselves lonely, dispossessed, and desolate, both inside and outside the church. By so doing, it has implicitly endorsed the banal aspirations of consumerism, generated an insipid, trivial and unrealistically triumphalist Christianity, and confirmed its impeccable credentials as a club for the complacent. In the last year, I have asked three very different evangelical audiences what miserable Christians can sing in church. On each occasion my question has elicited uproarious laughter, as if the idea of a broken-hearted, lonely, or despairing Christian was so absurd as to be comical . . .

• Richard Gaffin on the Historicity of Adam. Short, sweet, to the point. (see also Jared Oliphint's 20 Resources on the Historicity of Adam)
  

  if Adam is not the first, who subsequently fell into sin, then the work of Christ loses its biblical meaning. If it is not true that all human beings descend from Adam, then the entire history of redemption taught in Scripture unravels. The result is no redemptive history in any credible or coherent sense and so the loss of redemptive history in any meaningful sense.

• John Calvin gives us a good rule to follow:

  So then, let us remember that whenever mention is made of [Christ's] death alone, we are to understand at the same time what belongs to his resurrection. Also, the same synecdoche applies to the word "resurrection": whenever it is mentioned separately from death, we are to understand it as including what has to do especially with his death.

  (for the quotation in context, click here)
• Gaffin agrees (from Resurrection and Redemption)

  Inseparability, however, is not indistinguishably. Plainly Paul thinks of Christ's death and the resurrection as different events on the same plane of historical occurrence. The resurrection is not an aspect or component part of the death. Rather, as Calvin's statement itself reflects, each has a meaning of its own, which is suppressed at the risk of seriously distorting Paul's gospel.