Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Above the Clouds


If blue skies, spring flowers, and a warm breeze put a song in your heart this week, you’re not alone:

The sun is singing, too.

Jeanna Bryner, a staff writer for space.com, writes that “astronomers have recorded heavenly music bellowed out by the Sun’s atmosphere.” (And we thought it could only shine!)

Hmmm... shades of Job 38:7, when God queries Job, “Where were you at the creation of the world, while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?” Or Psalm 19:1-2, “The heavens declare the glory of God... Day after day they pour forth speech.” Or Isaiah 44:23, “Sing for joy, O heavens, for the Lord has done this”...

At the University of Sheffield’s Solar Physics and Space Plasma Research Center, scientists Robertus von Fay-Siebenburgen and colleagues made the discovery. Explosive events on the sun’s surface appear to trigger sound waves that bounce back and forth between the Sun’s looping magnetic fields, a phenomenon known as a standing wave – similar to a simple guitar string. “These energies are plucking these magnetic strings...which set up standing waves – exactly the same waves you see on a guitar string,” says von-Fay-Siebenburgen.

But don’t pull your lawn chair out into the back yard just yet. The frequency of the sound waves is well below the human hearing threshold. We won’t likely catch any heavenly performances in this life!

It’s said, though, that just in our own Milky Way system there are billions of suns such as ours. Billions of singing stars? It appears that the music of heaven just might be backed up by a much larger orchestra than we realized! I’m sure the Creator has them each tuned in perfect harmony, and the music is out of this world. And I wonder if He might have composed a special background score for the Rapture?

I also wonder if the scientists might like to go on to investigate the rest of Isaiah’s speech... “Shout aloud, O earth beneath. Burst into song, you mountains, you forests and all your trees.”

For all we’ve yet to discover, this just might be a gloriously melodious world. As the Bible says, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. Right now, we don’t – but we can fully expect to some day.

In the meantime, remember that above the clouds, the sun is still singing!

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Acts 12, updated...

And so it was that Iraq was a country of great violence, and many were kidnapped and killed. And many more stayed in their homes for fear of the insurgents. But Fadi, youth pastor of Baghdad’s Evangelical Alliance Church and known and loved by everyone in Baghdad, journeyed to Kurdistan to minister there.

Now it happened that in the fourth month, on the sixth day, as Pastor Fadi was returning from Kurdistan to his home to Baghdad, militants seized him. After kidnapping him, they held him with little water and no change of clothing, and put him up for ransom for a large sum of money.

So Fadi therefore was kept in hiding, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him. Young people prayed at Fadi’s church night and day, as did people in all the Evangelical churches of Baghdad. Indeed, word went out throughout all the world, and messages came back to Baghdad: believers were praying earnestly for the release of their brother in Christ.

And, behold, while the church prayed, the kidnappers came to Fadi with a large bag. In the bag were identification cards belonging to people they had killed. They ordered Fadi to look for his own card. “We don’t know why,” they told him, “but we will not kill you.”

And in the fourth month, on the thirteenth day, Fadi was released by his kidnappers. He went to his home, where family and church members gathered with shouts of joy to sing and praise God.

And the church throughout the world was strengthened, and gave glory to God.


Hear it again: The God of Acts has lost none of His power. He still keeps watch over His own. He still hears and answers prayer. He’s still in charge, no matter how tangled the mess our world has gotten itself into.

If He can do it in Iraq, He can do it anywhere.

Remember that when you pray today.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Praying God’s Sovereignty


The sovereignty of God.
We were reminded of it again this Easter season as Jesus’ resurrection demonstrated God’s power over sin, hell and the grave.

So is that what sovereignty means? That God won at the cross and He wins in the end – that by the book of Revelation He sorts everything out, throwing Satan off the premises for good, and setting everything eternally right?

Well, partly. But I don’t think that in between the empty tomb and Armageddon God lays down His power and right to rule. Sure, there’s room for a lot of mystery as I wonder how that fits in with free will and man’s power to make sinful choices... but I should never lose hold of what I do understand about God’s sovereignty, because it’s not just a dry theological fact. It matters when I serve the body of Christ and when I interact with unbelievers, and it matters when I pray.

That’s because Easter demonstrates that God can redeem anything at any point. No matter how far off track things have gotten and how dismal the prospect of anything ever being right again, God has a way back. He did it for the whole world at the resurrection; He offers it all the time in each of our daily lives. There’s never a point at which He shakes His head and says, “What a mess. It’s beyond Me.” He may choose to back off and let consequences occur – but He’s never bewildered or not quite strong enough or low on resources or caught without a plan.

Faith in God’s sovereignty makes a huge difference in the way I pray for myself or for my family or for my world. It’s the difference between little, wishful prayers and prayers as big as God is, as deep as His passion for restoring people to Himself, as powerful as the resurrection dynamis.

How can I grasp this in a practical way? I can pray Psalm 139 - that discourse on God’s sovereignty – and apply its truth to:
• myself... “Lord, you have searched me and known me... see if there is any offensive way in me”
• those I love and am concerned about... “Lord, I know You are familiar with all ---‘s ways... Where can she go from your Spirit?”...
• the unsaved I pray for... Their “darkness will not be dark to You... for darkness is as light to You”
• persecuted Christians, our military, our missionary families... “You hem them in, behind and before; You have laid Your hand on them”...

Psalm 139 is one way to bring God’s sovereignty into our prayers – and into the lives of those we pray for. Try it.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Easter All Year Long

You hear it in holiday songs and read it in Christmas cards; it’s the plaintive subject of Christmas sermons and children’s pageants and December devotionals: “Why can’t it be Christmas all year long?” Singers and writers and speakers often suggest ways to carry the aura of joy and celebration and general goodwill on into the coming New Year...

At Easter, we don’t have to work so hard at finding a way to turn once-a-year into a year-long observance. It’s already been done. While researching Easter symbols recently, I came across the following sentence on annieshomepage.com: “Sunday is an Easter symbol that is also observed the year-round. Christians traditionally worship on Sunday because that day is associated with the Resurrection.”

Maybe that’s one reason why Easter is my favorite holiday. It doesn’t come and go like the others. It’s always here, the first day of every week, the “Lord’s Day.” It’s just that once a year we stop and look at it directly, and see it afresh for what it is – a victory celebration in honor of Jesus Christ, Lord over sin and Satan and death and the grave, Lord of life and power and truth, Lord in you and in me, Lord alone and forever. And every subsequent Sunday morning worship service is its own “resurrection” of that celebration.

So come to FAC this week and we’ll celebrate Easter. Come the following Sunday and we’ll celebrate it all over again - because every Lord’s Day we praise a living Savior and hear in the strain of a hymn or a confident prayer or an encouraging Scripture something that echoes those final words spoken by Easter:

“It is finished... Christ is risen... Death is conquered... Satan is defeated... We are alive forevermore!”