We've been close to a nuclear World War III more often than you would like to think.
For instance: 1. On the evening of October 25, 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, an air force sentry at a military base near Duluth, Minnesota "spotted someone climbing the base fence, shot at the figure, and sounded the sabotage alarm." As alarms at airfields all over the region were sounded, at Volk Field, Wisconsin, the wrong alarm, the one signaling nuclear war (the "P.S., we mean it, this is not a drill" alarm) went off, and pilots scrambled and headed down the runway, being stopped only at the last second by the post commander. The "intruder" was a bear. 2. Also in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis, only two days later, October 27, 1962, on the same day that an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba: At this point, Soviet submarines were being subjected to depth charges to make them rise to the surface (we were unaware they had nuclear weapons aboard). Despite strict orders not to use their nuclear torpedoes absent authorization from Moscow, the three Soviet officers aboard Foxtrot submarine B-59 had decided to use theirs if under attack and unable to reach Moscow but only if all three officers agreed. They were, in fact, unable to reach Moscow, and in the end, one officer, Vasili Alexandrovich Arkipov, finally made the fateful decision not to start WWIII. 3. In 1983, U.S.-NATO military maneuvers in Europe, called "Able Archer 83," were interpreted for a time by the Soviets as the prelude to a -- not so good -- full-scale nuclear attack. 4. On January 25, 1995, technicians at the Olengrosk early warning radar facility detected an unidentified ballistic missile over Norway which appeared to be heading for Russia. Because the missile was manufactured in the United States, its "signature trail" was therefor identified by Russian computers as hostile and apparently fired from a U.S. submarine in the Arctic Sea, even though it was actually only a Norwegian research rocket researching the Northern Lights. President Yeltsin's "nuclear briefcase" was activated and Russian missile submarines ordered to battle stations. Finally, with three minutes to spare, the missile was correctly identified. Happily, for the human race, this incident took place at a time when Yeltsin was President and not earlier (or subsequent) presidents. But this is the mere tip of the iceberg of close calls known to experts. There have been literally hundreds of false alerts of a nuclear attack in this country alone, triggered by such things as a flock of geese, the rising of the moon, the sun's reflection on a cloud, a strong solar storm, and space debris re-entering the atmosphere. And of course, there have been who knows how many similar or worse incidents in other countries. (From World Peace Through Law, by James Taylor Ranney)
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Truth is...if history teaches us anything, we should know by now that mankind is capable of horrific, and horrifically short-sighted, acts of aggression. Our hope for peaceful coexistence can't reside in the strength of our armaments to deter, or the openness of our hearts to live and let live. Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. (Psalm 20:7 NIV)
When a person goes to a doctor, is that a lack of faith in God? You have heard it said that disease is not from God...it is a result of The Fall (Adam & Eve's/mankind's initial choice to go their OWN way instead of God's way). It is fair to assume that God's ultimate desire is for His creation to be in perfect harmony with Him and itself...for example, no disease. And some folks believe the treatment for all disease should be, therefor, leaving it up to God to restore a person's body to perfect health. So, is it evidence of a lack of faith when someone goes to a doctor in hopes of getting rid of a physical ailment?
I really appreciate an ancient insight I recently read, attributed to Saint Basil of Caesarea (329-379 CE), who is thought to have founded the first hospital (from The First Thousand Years, by Robert Louis Wilken):
When [Basil} was a student at Athens, he had shown particular attentiveness in the study of medicine, not only in its practical side, but also in its theory and principles. He had gained enough experience to know, as he put it in one of his letters, that incompetent physicians often make people's illnesses worse. In one of his writings on the monastic life, The Longer Rule, he addressed the question as to whether relying on the 'art of medicine' is in keeping with Christian piety. Medicine, he wrote, like the know-how of a farmer or the skill of a weaver, is a gift of God. Because the body is susceptible to illness, God has given human beings the skills to heal illness. 'Just as we would have no need of the labor and toil of the farmer if we were living among the delights of paradise, so we would not require the art of medicine for healing if we were immune to disease.' The work of the physician who heals bodies [swells] to the glory of God no less than the work of those who care for the soul. As the Lord used clay for healing (John 9:6), so also it is good that physicians use the things of the earth for the cure of bodily ills.
Truth is...I don't have a definitive answer to the question "Healed by Faith or Medicine?", but as is often the case when presented with an either/or concerning God, the truth probably lies closer to both/and.
I'm pretty sure I've never before tapped into Stephan Pastis' comic strip, Pearls Before Swine, for any kind of life lesson, but this past Sunday's strip, I believe, may have touched on something a lot of people are feeling. It begins with the sweetest, most innocent character in the cast, Pig, as he is bombarded with current events.
Then, we see Pig's unique reaction.
But it's the final panel that plops us right in the middle of SadButTrueVille.
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Truth is...No doubt, plenty of us wish we had a balloon that would float us away from turmoil and conflict. The hard truth is, we have to BE the change we'd like to see. I can be part of the solution, or I can be part of the problem. (Now, let's discuss that pig snout on the front of Goat's face.)
It's dance. It's pantomime. It's performance art. It touches on (at least) competition, cooperation, yearning, loving, separation, community, desperation, and death. It's intriguing. It's fascinating. It's mesmerizing. It's a great effect and it affects greatly.
It's a piece by sculptor/choreographer Yoann Bourgeois titled (roughly translated from the French) "The One Who Falls".
Truth is...between the song, the faces of the performers, the fact that the world keeps spinning no matter what...there's plenty to contemplate here. I long for the hopeful resolution that would surely be added if Yoann were a Christ-follower (making an unfair assumption here), and yet, this piece says a lot about life as we experience it here on Planet Earth.
I'm not a force to be reckoned with on Twitter, but I did recently fall in love with something tweeted by @AshleaDavis, who describes herself as follows: "Wife, raising boys, avid reader & coffee drinker. Breaking rules, loving Jesus, & laughing when I shouldn't. I want a nap." While I don't condone or recommend breaking rules, I do enjoy a nap now and then and really appreciate this quotable quote from Mrs. Davis:
I'm glad the early church isn't now. The book of Acts would be called the book of Thoughts & Prayers.
I've got another story from CASH: The Autobiography that makes me smile at the mysterious ways of Yahweh.
I was walking down 57th Street with June one Sunday morning when we happened on the First Baptist Church of New York, which we hadn't noticed before because its entrance doesn't look like a church's. We saw from a sign outside that services were just about to start, so we went in, and the strangest thing happened. The congregation was seated as we entered, but about halfway down the aisle a young boy was turned around watching the door. He saw us, immediately jumped up, and yelled, "JOHNNY CASH! Johnny Cash has come to church with me!" As it happened, the only free seats were right next to him and his parents, so we took them, and that's when we saw that the boy was mentally handicapped. He was so excited. "I told you!" he kept saying to his parents. "I told you he was coming!" The preacher came over and explained to us that, yes, the boy had told his parents, and the whole congregation, repeatedly that I was going to walk into that church, sit down beside him, and worship with him. And that's what I did. Being next to him was such a pleasure. He was so happy. When the service was over, we walked down to the corner with him and his parents, and they filled in the story. They were Jewish, they said, but their son had decided to become a Christian after listening to some of my gospel recordings. That's why they were in a Christian church on a Sunday morning. They were in that particularChristian church because that's where he knew I was going to walk in the door.
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Truth is...I've got no great lesson to share from this story, other than to be more willing to speak boldly what God whispers in your ear.
Virtues are funny things. Virtues are the fruit of faith and whenever paraded, become parodies of themselves and the worst kind of vanity imaginable. When they are not the fruit of faith they become its greatest obstacle....
Take, for example, wisdom. Wisdom has at its source the "fear of the Lord" - the highest regard and reverence for Him. The tendency among many of us, though, is to confuse wisdom with omniscience and to think ourselves wise in proportion to how much stuff we know. God calls us to be wise and provides us with Christ. We pressure ourselves to be all-knowing and fret over where Cain got his wife and how the earth can be as young as the Scriptures claim when geologists say that it takes millions of years more than that to produce a barrel of oil. We tend to suspect that wisdom lies in the ability to answer imponderables rather than in Christ. And we sometimes end in self-contempt and even abandonment of our faith, not because our faith is false, but because we focused on a wisdom that is not a virtue but a vanity. It is the same way with strength. God calls us to "be strong" and we mistake that for a call to omnipotence. We confuse strength to endure trials with an ability to walk unfrustrated through life. We convince ourselves that if we were strong we would never fail, never tire, never hurt, never need. We begin to measure strength in terms of ease of progress, equate power with success, endurability with invincibility and inevitably, when our illusion of omnipotence is shattered, we condemn ourselves for being weak. God has called us to be lovers and we frequently think that He meant us to be saviors. So we "love" as long as we see "results." We give of ourselves as long as our investments pay off, but if the ones we love do not respond, we tend to despair and blame ourselves and even resent those we pretend to love. Because we love someone, we want them to be free of addictions, of sin, of self - and that is as it should be. But it might be that our love for them and our desire for their well-being will not make them well. And, if that is the case, their lack of response no more negates the reality of love than their quickness to respond would confirm it. Love is a virtue and not a feeling. It is fed and fired by God - not by the favorable response of the beloved. Even when it doesn't seem to make a dime's worth of difference to the ones on whom it is lavished, it is still the most prized of all virtues because it is at the heart of the very character of God. By loving we participate in His Life and Essence. When we stoop to bait and buy good behavior we are no longer loving as God loves. We are manipulating and cheapening the dignity of the person whom we are called - not to save, not even to change - but to love. If real salvation is possible (and we know it is) it is because real love is there. And love that is real, love that is truly a virtue and not just an act - agape love - gushes from God through those who know Him. It is not strung along by those who don't. (Rich Mullins, "Virtue Reality", Release Magazine, July-August 1994)
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Truth is...The more we try to knuckle down hard and produce good fruit like wisdom and strength and love, the more disappointed in ourselves we will be. That's called walking by sight and it's a recipe for depression and disaster. Our call is to allow the Holy Spirit - "Christ in [us], the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27) - to grow His goodness within us...and then let it spill out and drench everyone we come in contact with.
