Author: Allan (Page 354 of 492)
Of all the really cool stuff in Isaiah — the servant songs, the allusions to Christ, the prophesies about the Messiah, the comfort passages — the words at the end of chapter six about preaching to people who refuse to listen are the most quoted in the New Testament.
Jesus uses Isaiah’s words in Matthew 13 after telling the parable of the four soils. Same thing in Mark 4 and Luke 8. Jesus says, man, this is how Isaiah must have felt.
In John 12, right after Jesus predicts his death, God’s voice thunders down from heaven for the benefit of the people in the crowds. But they’re not listening. They don’t understand. They refuse to change. And, again, Jesus uses the Isaiah 6 passage to account for the blind eyes and stubborn hearts.
Paul’s near the end of his life in Acts 28, under house arrest in Rome. And he’s failed to make a dent in the sight or the hearing or the hearts of the religious leaders who’ve come to hear him preach. Nothing. And he quotes the Isaiah 6 passage. Same thing in Romans 11. “It’s still happening!” Paul says, “To this very day!” Paul’s a failed preacher in pretty good company.
The point of the last half of Isaiah 6, and the reason the passage is repeated so many times in the early history of God’s Church, is that we are called to be faithful to our Father and to his mission, regardless of where it takes us. No matter how bad it gets, no matter how many people reject the truth, we are called to keep preaching the truth.
The point of Isaiah 6:8-13 is that if we trust God, if we’ll remain faithful to him, he’ll do something with those closed eyes and plugged up ears. Those stumps (Isaiah 6:13). Isaiah and Jesus and the apostles are reminding us that God does his best work in the middle of a desolate field of worthless stumps.
God created the universe out of nothing. He raised a mighty nation out of a 90-year-old barren womb. He pulled a young boy from the bottom of a well and made him a powerful ruler of the most important nation in the world. He uses the death of a preacher and the persecution of his Church to spread the Good News of salvation from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. He delivered forgiveness and righteousness to all mankind through a cruel wooden cross.
There’s more happening in horrible situations than we ever realize. These awful circumstances are holy. God does holy things with faithful people in a field full of stumps.
“The holy seed is its stump.” ~Isaiah 6:13
Peace,
Allan
At 4:07 Texas time this afternoon C. J. Wilson will hurl the first pitch to Sean Rodriguez at the beautiful Ballpark in Arlington to open up the postseason. I know you’re as excited as I am. I know you’ve been counting down the days, and now the hours, to the start of this five game series. I know you’ve decorated your cubicle at work with red, white, and blue postseason bunting. I know you’re wearing your Rangers gear today. And I know you’re cruising the internet and reading the papers and listening to the radio and watching the TV, getting more and more excited about what everybody thinks are really great chances for Texas to actually win their first ever World Series. To help you pass just a little more time between now and first pitch, allow me to direct you to a couple of articles.
On ESPN’s Page 2, David Schoenfield has given us “100 Reasons to be Excited About the Playoffs.” The list has a decidely NL flavor. It’s also East coast heavy on Yankees and Phils. There are only eight Rangers mentions that I noticed. But it’s good and clever and funny and smart. It’ll get you caught up if you haven’t been paying attention. You can get to it by clicking here.
ESPN’s Jayson Stark is actually predicting a Texas-Phillies World Series, with the Rangers coming out on top. You can find his prediction and his reasoning behind the pick, including lots of breakdown from MLB managers, GMs, scouts, and players by clicking here.
Over at Sports Illustrated, Albert Chen gives a pretty good preview of Rangers-Rays and picks Texas in five. Click here for his assessment of the pitching matchups, some interesting stats about Tampa’s overrated baserunning abilities, and some glowing reviews of Beltre, Holland, and the Texas bullpen.
Here’s the link to the official Texas Rangers website. There’s tons of good stuff here, including some video highlights of last year’s World Series run.
In case you’re interested, the coolest Texas Rangers wallpaper I’ve ever found is right here. I’ve got this on my laptop, my desktop at home, and my phone. I’d put it on the wall in my office if I could figure out how. I love this image. Install it right now. Dude, I’m serious. At least look at it.
Of course, your Opening Day for the playoffs won’t be ready to go until you’ve read Jamey Newberg’s report.
Finally — and this is for only the truest of die-hard, hard core, bad to the bone baseball fans — I present to you a heavy, yet inspiring, analysis of the great game of baseball from famed author and theologian David B. Hart. It will
take you 30-minutes to read this article. Some of it is difficult. But if you really love baseball — I mean REALLY love baseball — you’ll be glad you did. It’s called “The Perfect Game: The Metaphysical Meaning of Baseball.” It’s from a 2010 edition of the theological journal First Things. Let me entice you with a couple of selected paragraphs.
In describing the eternal truths of the game, Hart points to the exactness of the 90-feet between bases, the 60-1/2 feet from the pitching rubber to the plate, and the one-third of a second a batter has to decide if he’s going to swing. “Everything is so perfectly calibrated that almost every play is a matter of the most unforgiving precision; a ball correctly played in the infield is almost always an out, while the slightest misplay usually results in a man on base. There are Pythagorean enigmas here, occult and imponderable: mystic proportions written into the very fabric of nature of which we were once as ignorant as of the existance of other galaxies.”
“And surely some account has to be given of the drama of baseball: the way it reaches down into the souls’ abyss with its fluid alternations of prolonged suspense and shocking urgency, its mounting rallies, its thwarted ventures, its intolerable tensions, its suddenly exhilarating or devastating peripeties. Even the natural narrative arc of the game is in three acts — the early, middle, and late innings — each with its own distinct potentials and imperatives. And because, until the final out is recorded, no loss is an absolute fait accompli, the torment of hope never relents. Victory may or may not come in a blaze of glorious elation, but every defeat, when it comes, is sublime.”
Certainly, Hart also spends a great deal of time on the religious and spiritual dimensions of the great game of baseball. Among my favorite sections of this article is the passage on the “undeniable element of Edenic nostalgia” that’s found in baseball’s many stadiums. While reflecting on the innocence and paradise of the ballpark, Hart also observes:
“…evil does occasionally come, whenever the Yankees are in town, and this occasionally lends the game a cosmic significance that would not be improper to call ‘apocalyptic.’ This, in fact, is why that dastardly franchise is a spiritually necessary part of the game. Even Yankees fans have their necessary role to play, and — although we may think of them as ‘vessals of wrath’ — we have to remember that they, too, are enfolded in the mercy of providence.”
You get the idea. If you think you can handle it, you can find the full article right here.
Go Rangers!
Allan
I vividly remember as a young teenager, after spending a Sunday afternoon at my friend Todd’s house, showing up to church that evening in blue jeans, a Huey Lewis and the News concert T-shirt, tennis shoes, and extra-wide sweat bands on my wrists. Upon entering the half-empty/half-full worship center I was notified that I was on the list of those who were supposed to serve communion. (This was back in the day when, if you weren’t at church that morning, we made you raise your hand or stand and the rest of us watched you commune. By yourself.) So, I stood up there, feet shoulder-width apart, hands firmly clasped in front, praying and passing the Body and Blood of Christ.
And, man, I got it when we got home. I was not wearing church clothes! I was waiting on the Lord’s Table and not wearing church clothes!
Of course, I know now what I did not know then. In all actuality, I was wearing my church clothes. You are right now wearing your church clothes. The place where you are sitting or standing right now is holy ground.
Scripture holds that everything — absolutely everything — takes place on holy ground. God has something to say about every aspect of our lives: the way we feel and act in the so-called privacy of our own hearts and homes, the way we make and spend our money, the politics we embrace, the entertainment we enjoy, the wars we fight, the tragedies we endure, the people we know. Nothing is hidden from the sight of our God. And nothing is exempt from his rule. The ground is holy, the folks are holy, the words we speak are holy.
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory!”
Not just in the worship center on Sunday morning, but everywhere you walk is holy ground. Everywhere you go is a sacred place. Everybody you meet is a holy opportunity. Everything you do is a sacred activity. Everything you wear is church clothes!
It’s all governed and ruled by God and set apart by him and acknowledged by his children as holy and set apart for his divine and eternal purposes. All of it.
“As God has said, ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people…’ Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.” ~2 Corinthians 6:16, 7:1
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The Texas Rangers are smoking hot heading into their second straight postseason. While clinching the title in the AL West, the Rangers won six in a row, ten of their last eleven, 14 of their last 16, swept the Halos, and notched a club record 96 victories. The only team hotter in the American League is the Tampa Bay Rays.
Come 4:00 tomorrow afternoon, I will be planted on the microfiber couch, in front of the tube, with Whitney, some ice-cold DDP, an ample supply of chips and hot sauce, and enough popcorn to make Orville Redenbacher blush. You can text me tomorrow afternoon after 4:00. But don’t call.
This is the most complete Rangers team ever assembled. Kinsler and Napoli are smashing the ball. Josh and Beltre are clutch. Michael Young is MVP-calibar. Ceej and Holland and Harrison are in a groove. Feliz has found his stuff. And Mike Adams is this year’s Cliff Lee.
Rangers in four.
Allan
If I were Skip Bayless, I’d write this morning that the “Cowboys O-Line Almost Costa Game!”
I detest the way Jon Gruden was wanting to ship Tony Romo’s cleats to Canton for immediate induction. But I give a 
lot of credit to the Cowboys’ quarterback for last night’s never-say-die, gut-it-out win over the Redskins. Romo was like a rookie catcher behind the plate with Charlie Hough or Tim Wakefield on the mound: just wait for the ball to stop rolling and pick it up. He had no help from his line or his receivers. He really is playing with a cracked rib. And the long scramble and throw to Dez on that late third-and-forever was a clutch play.
Still, that line is going to be the end of this team. If the secondary doesn’t kill ’em, that offensive line will. And I keep waiting for somebody to put out the over/under on when Rob Ryan goes all “Buddy Ryan punching out Kevin Gilbride on the sidelines” when Jason Garrett’s offense blows another first-and-goal at the two yard line or fumbles in the red zone after a tough defensive stand. Will that happen before, during, or after the November 20 game at Washington?
This is an 8-8 team that’s going to miss the playoffs again. But, as always, it’s a whole lot of fun to watch.
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The Bible makes some pretty bold assumptions that we would all do well to recover. Scripture envisions the world as a much different place than the one we see and experience every day. The Bible calls us as children of God to live into the world differently than everybody else does, to challenge it, to change it. The Bible says that the world as it is right now is broken, it’s messed up, it’s not right. God wants it to be right, he’s working every moment to fix it. And as his agents of reconciliation, we are commissioned by him to live in such a way that moves things along in the right direction.
The Bible is a scandalous document. If you read it correctly, it can’t be ignored. And it calls us to be radically different from all that’s going on around us. We don’t conform to the culture; we convert the culture. And that’s tough.
In her book, An American Childhood, Annie Dillard asks why in the world her parents wanted her to read the Bible. She can’t understand why her mom and dad wanted her to study and memorize Scripture:
“If they had really read it themselves, I thought, they would have hid it from us. They didn’t recognize the vivid danger that we would, through repeated exposure, catch a case of its wild opposition to their world. Instead, they bade us study great chunks of it, and think about those chunks, and commit them to memory. And ignore it.”
Scripture is challenging. The words of the Bible shatter all our assumptions about life. They command us to seek justice, not just order; they demand that we show respect, not just politeness; they mandate that we act in love, not just friendliness.
God does not validate governments and power structures and the establishment the way we see it. The Bible calls us to question those structures and live lives of contrast to the values that sustain those structures and make sure those worldly values and structures never become a part of God’s Church.
That’s dangerous. It’s like quoting from the Declaration and Address — one of the Church of Christ’s founding documents — to a Church of Christ congregation. We don’t realize our faith and practices and traditions originate from such powerful words. Words that still challenge today. Words that call us to be different. Words that call us to partner with God in changing everything that’s wrong with his world. Words we cannot ignore.
Peace,
Allan
Our God shows his glory to Moses in a burning bush in the middle of the desert. God reveals his holiness to Isaiah in a throneroom vision in the middle of a desecrated temple. God shows his glory to John in a similar vision in the middle of a prison island. In the midst of national trial and personal hardship, God reveals himself to be the One in charge. He is holy and righteous and sovereign. He is surrounded by eternal beings. The air is filled with holy songs. The Creator of Heaven and Earth is revealed to be almighty and everlasting, faithful and good. Very good.
And these scenes show us very clearly that the only appropriate response to these visions of God’s glory and holiness is worship. The creatures who see the glory of God, the heavenly beings who witness the greatness of God, they give him never-ending praise and worship. And we are invited by Holy Scripture to join in.
We cast our crowns daily before our God. No reservations. No holding back. We give our God everything we have and we submit fully to his holy authority. We recognize our own unworthiness in his gracious presence. And we fall to our knees in gratitude and thanksgiving. We remember who he is, what he has done, what he promises to do, and how truly worthy he is of our praise.
Holy worship. Today. Every day. Not just on Sunday.
“I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God — this is your spiritual act of worship.” ~Romans 12:1
Peace,
Allan
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