What Makes "Good" Soil Good?

(from Sunday's teaching on Mt. 13, btw)


farmers & scientific types tell us that soil good for growing crops (often called "loam") contains a mixture of

1. clay (40%)
   
2. sand (40%)
   
3. silt (20%)
   

clay helps retain moisture;
sand helps release moisture;
silt is the result of water or rock grinding out just about everything but the really fine flour-like particles of soil ("dust in the wind" - thank you, Kansas).

our lives likewise must retain (hold fast) certain things, release (turn loose) certain things, and mix in certain things.

what i see the Scripture telling us to hold fast to (retain) is:

1. the Word (1 cor 15:2)
   
2. our Hope (1 tim 6:12)
   
3. His Name (rev 2:13)

what i see the Scripture telling us to turn loose of (release) is:

1. the early stuff (heb 6:1)
2. every weight (heb 12:1)
3. the sin (heb 12:1)

what i see the Scripture telling us about mixing in is

1. it's all good (rom 8:28)
2. He's making something out of us (1 pet 2:5)

ok, that's my $.02. what else do you see the Lord telling us to lay hold of, turn loose of, & mix into our lives?


chime in!

Susan Boyle - Loving Mercy

perhaps you've already seen the clip of susan boyle, the 47-year old singer who stunned the audience & judges (notably simon cowell) on "britain's got talent" - the UK version of "american idol."

she was getting zero love from the judges & audience until she began to sing - jaws dropped, eyebrows were raised, and soon the audience was on its feet.

here's the clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk

i'm struck by a couple of things...

first - human nature is so piggish - no one cared about her until they saw what she could do. it's as if she really wasn't a person of worth until people saw she had great vocal talent. then, and only then, was she "worth" something. i'm so glad the Lord is just the opposite, aren't you? he values us, sees us as worth something - not because of what we can do, but rather, in spite of it.

second, Micah 6:8 tells us that God wants us to "love mercy." oh, we all love mercy when we are on the receiving end (as in when the officer says he/she is letting us off with a warning!). but giving out mercy (the Bible often translates the same word as love) is another story.

when susan boyle stepped out on stage, she got no love - no mercy from anyone. i'm not sure any of us would have been any different had we been in the audience. i'm sure most of us would have been rolling eyes & shrugging shoulders with simon & the audience.

the point is this, growing up in the Lord means that we need to grow in loving to show mercy - just get it. how to do that? 1) ask for His help & 2) go out & practice it!

"Crown of Thorns" Galaxy - (Hubble Picture)

the hubble space telescope has just given us this image - called, appropriately, the "Crown of Thorns" galaxy...



from foxnews (article here):

An unusual large galaxy with a shape bordering between spiral and elliptical has been spotted by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

NGC 7049 sits in the southern constellation Indus, and is the brightest of a cluster of galaxies, a so-called Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG). Typical BCGs are some of the oldest and most massive galaxies, which provide excellent opportunities for astronomers to study the elusive globular clusters lurking within.

The halo, a ghostly region of diffuse light surrounding the galaxy, is composed of myriads of individual stars and provides a luminous background to the swirling ring of dust lanes surrounding NGC 7049's core.

Small faint points of light sprinkled throughout the galaxy represent globular clusters, which are gravitational groupings of several hundreds of thousands of stars. They contain some of the first stars to be produced in a galaxy.

NGC 7049 has far fewer such clusters than other similar giant galaxies in very big, rich groups. This indicates to astronomers how the surrounding environment influenced the formation of galaxy halos in the early universe.

Hubble captured this image using its Advanced Camera for Surveys, which is primed to hunt galaxies and galaxy clusters in the remote and ancient universe. The space telescope recently imaged a group of colliding galaxies chosen in an online voting contest.

Psalm 19:1-3 "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork.

Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard."

jonah found a boat

jonah found a boat to take him the opposite direction the Lord had asked him to go.

isn't that always the case? any time we run away from God, it's amazing how a boat (ie, a relationship, a substance, an activity) will be waiting to take us there.



but jonah also found something else: there was a price to be paid for hiring that vessel. running away from God always comes with a price. relationships fail & bring heartache, substances imprison, activities become expensive & empty.

haven't we found that running to God is always better than running from Him?

learning to fly...

...but i ain't got wings...

comin' down...is the hardest thing."

that would be Tom Petty, folks. And speaking of doing dangerous things (see previous post), how 'bout this vid of B.A.S.E. Jumping w/ a wing suit...hold your breath - it's better than disneyland!

(*sorry - there is some brief profanity at the end that i didn't catch when i posted this - mute if needed.)

i think we've all had dreams of flying - to wake up grabbing the bed to break our fall.

something tells me God embedded that in our dna - to long to fly, to experience life above terra firma. i'm just about fully convinced that in our heavenly bodies we'll be equipped to explore the cosmos at very very fast speeds - but without the need for wing suits...or parachutes! just think: perhaps being free from the gravity of the world will apply to us in more ways than one!

dangerous things we should let our kids do???

so....what do you think???

what can wash away my skunk?

so, my brilliant dogs (at least two of them - the german shepherd & the golden retriever) had the brilliant idea last week to chase a skunk out of our yard - after all, it was an intruder. good news: they succeeded! the bad news is so obvious that it hardly needs mentioning: but yes, they got a face-full of skunkage nastiness!


since this happened at o'dark thirty, i simply quarantined them to our outside kennel to be dealt with by my lovely wife amie the next day. after all it was mother's day & no mother's day would be complete without removing skunk odor from a couple of large dogs? no way was i going to rob her of that blessing!

i then promptly went to google to search for skunk odor removal options. here's what i found: the standard tomato juice approach is largely a myth - it only masks the smell, and only for a short time; it can't actually remove the stench. so, you end up with a dog that smells like skunk & tomato juice. bonus!

the problem is that the skunk oil is not water soluble. it requires a chemical agent that can metabolize the oil & then carry it away. tomato juice simply doesn't have what it takes - no offense to any and all tomato juices out there reading this.

here's what does work (and it actually did work on our dogs, btw): baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, and dawn dish soap.

you can read about the recipe here:
http://www.aaanimalcontrol.com/skunksmellremovalrid.htm

and here:
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/gaston/Pests/skunks.html

apparently (i'm no chief scientist like my friend chris wagner), the combination of the hydrogen peroxide and the baking soda oxygenates the oils & then the soap carries (washes) it away. tho' i can't fully explain the science of it i can attest to the effectiveness of it. it just plain worked! happy dogs - happy humans living with the dogs! (and no, i didn't have my wife do this on mother's day - i had my kids do it!)




i couldn't help but make the connection between the stench and stain of a skunk and the stench and stain of sin. people have been trying for millenia to deal with the ever-lingering effects of sin. all attempts to do so in essence amount to the tomato juice approach: masking it, hiding it, making up for it. cultures have looked to animal sacrifice, human sacrifice, even self-flagellation to attempt to remove the lingering effects of sin.

the question is obvious: what can wash away the stench of sin? well, as the old hymn says, "nothing but the blood of Jesus." our attempts to remove sin are impotent because we simply do not have what it takes to neutralize it! only the blood of Jesus can do so.

to drive this point home, God instructed the israelites to day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, century after century to bring the blood of a sacrifice to "cover" sin - knowing that those sacrifices couldn't actually remove sin. the writer of Hebrews puts it this way in chapter 10:

For the law [all those animal sacrifices], having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. ^2 For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. ^3 But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. ^4 For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins...

...And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. ^12 But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, ^13 from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. ^14 For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.

only the blood of Jesus can neutralize the potency of sin! i am so thankful for a God so gracious that He has provided the antidote for the stench and stain of sin. He knew we could never muster the power needed to effectively deal with sin. so, He took upon Himself to provide the recipe: once and for all time! it's His blood and His blood alone that can remove the stench of sin.

so, rejoice and be glad this day - for the stench is gone! it's the essence of happiness! tho' i can't explain the intricate technicalities of how it works - i am just so glad it works!!!

blessings!