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Being a fan of Facebook, I admit to being very hesitant whenever I come across lists that people make about random factoids of their lives. Sometimes the things they list tend to fall into the “TMI” category; the writers are really writing particular graphic factoids to boast themselves. Mostly these lists are created so that people get to know each other better. I have found that if I try to tolerate what people are willing to put on their lists, I get to know some deeper shades of color in their life stories for conversing with them.
One problem I find in Valentine’s Day is the over-saccharine expressions of romance and love that are to be advertised for men and women. I don’t mean that romance is unimportant or bad for married couples. Romance is a very good thing and something to cherish between a husband and his wife. Rather, what I mean is that these expressions of romance tend to be expressions of idolatry between men and women. Men and women love their marriages apart from God; they love good things as their substitute gods. Valentine expressions tend to be expressions from the fall of Adam and Eve.
What do you do when your heart is broken by someone you fell in love with? I’ve had to ask this question myself in discerning the grace of the Gospel for my heart, and in discerning the grace of the Gospel as a good grace for men and women’s lives, in my walk with the Lord. One of the tragic realities of the fall of man is that as men and women seek each other as soul-mates in romance and marriage, the bond of marriage isn’t as attractive between men and women as it once was. Men and women get more attached to emotion and physical beauty than to united intimacy of a husband and wife. And the result is that men and women fall apart from each other in disillusion, and in divorce and remarriage.
A couple of weekends ago I went to see the indie-rooted and mass released movie “Slumdog Millionaire” (Fox Searchlight, 2008). The movie was fairly good, and made very effective use of IMAX colors and effects to go along with the direction of the main character and a main scene interweaved with little background stories to the main character. “Slumdog” also was a good implied statement on Muslim-Hindu conflicts and the new urbanization and gentrification movements in India, and on Indian urbanites’ epistemology shaped by these conflicts and movements.
I enclose a blog article link from Dr. James Galyon of “2 Worlds Collide,” on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the graphic reality of abortion, and a church child’s poem for the future. See the article here.
Following up on my earlier article today about the Obama inauguration, especially regarding Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I was studying from the book of Genesis in a quiet time this morning with the Lord, and I came across the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac and its ramifications for the nations. Two things that struck me from this story of Genesis were Abraham’s reluctance toward his son, and the LORD’s telling to Abraham about the future sons he would inherit by faith in the LORD.
One of my favorite lessons from 1 Corinthians is Paul’s teaching and distinction on the levels of spiritual maturity in the Gospel through the symbols of milk and solid food. The Christians in Corinth were largely spiritual babies. This was partly because of their lack of interest in the Gospel. But more so it was because Paul, who founded the church in Corinth, was interested in guiding the church along to spiritual maturity in the Gospel. And Paul wanted to point the Christians to the perfect obedience of Jesus on their behalf as the foundation for their faith and their growth to wisdom in His name. Jesus offered perfect obedience to the cross before God the Father for the sake of Christians. And Jesus offered this perfect obedience from the helplessness of His infant status at His virgin birth to His more mature diligent work in His adult ministry.
