The wonder of it all

We are situated in the Milky Way, a galaxy of at least 100 billion stars and 100 billion planets. The nearest star is so far away that it takes its light four years to get here. Some stars you can see with the naked eye are so far away that it takes 4,000 years for their light to reach us.

The Milky Way is so big that it would take light, travelling at 186,000 miles a second, 100,000 years to get from one end to the other. 

Beyond the Milky Way are at least 170 billion other galaxies. Some of them we only became aware of after the Hubble telescope was launched in 1990. Before that, they had functioned for thousands of years without mankind even being aware of their existence. When the Webb telescope is launched in 2018, scientists expect to be able to see even further into God's creation. 

We are just a few of seven billion individuals living on a tiny planet in the middle. Yet God sent His Son to die in agony so that I might be forgiven, because He loved me and wanted to have fellowship with me.

I find it a little bit difficult to know how best to describe MIchael Wenham. I suppose the best thing to say is that he is a former vicar. He is still an ordained Anglican minister, but he suffers from a variety of motor neurone disease and spends most of his time now in a wheelchair. You may have seen him campaigning against assisted suicide.

Michael tells a story about Lee Bramlett and his wife Tammi. The couple work for Wycliffe Bible Translators, whose job it is to translate the Bible into languages that do not have the Scriptures.

They were working in West Africa, translating the Scriptures into Hdi with the help of a few native-born community leaders. They knew that verbs in that language end in "i," "a" or "u," but that the verb to love ends only in "i" and "a."

"Could you dvi your wife?" Lee asked. Yes, they said. That would mean that the wife had been loved, but the love had gone.

"Could you dva your wife?" Yes, they said. She would be loved as long as she remained faithful and cared for her husband well.

"Could you dvu your wife?" They all laughed. Of course not, they said. If you said that, you would have to keep loving your wife no matter what she did, even if she never got you water or never made you meals. Even if she committed adultery, you would be compelled to keep on loving her. "You would never say dvu. It just doesn't exist."

Lee sat quietly for a while, then asked "Could God dvu people?" 

There was complete silence for three or four minutes. Then tears began to trickle down the faces of these elderly men.

"Do you know what this would mean?" they said."This would mean that God kept loving us over and over, millennia after millennia, while all the time we rejected His great love. He is compelled to love us, even though we have sinned more than any people."

God, says Michael, loves you with a "u."
       

How a Muslim found peace

"I grew up in a Muslim family. I became a very, very strict Muslim, because of the thirst and hunger I had for the Creator. I used to think that His name was Allah. In my wildest imagination, I couldn't imagine that that's not true."

This is the remarkable testimony of a young Muslim.

"I always had a love for God. I really wanted to get to know Him. They told me if you read Koran over and over and over again, you get extra credit. If you wake up early in the morning and read Koran over and over, that really will give you extra credit. That never made me closer to God. I was always so hungry and thirsty and desperate to know God.

"For 12 years I was pursuing God, but I couldn't have a close relationship with Him. I gave up. I was so angry.

"I went to this hotel in Cyprus. I saw a Bible. I said 'Can I read it?' He said 'You can have it.' I began to read the Bible. Jesus was popping out of the Bible. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. I think it was the third night I was reading the Bible. I read that Jesus was the Son of God. That made me so angry. I threw the book at the wall. 

"I didn't touch the Bible for three years.

"I went to this school and my teacher started to talk to me about Jesus. I couldn't believe that God is love because I never received love from God. I was a slave of God.

"I felt that I need to pray to Jesus. I asked a friend of the teacher's how can I pray. She said 'I receive you as Lord of my life. I accept your forgiveness. I accept you as the Son of God.'

"I said 'Jesus, I don't believe that you are the Son of God. I really don't. But if you are the Son of God I want you to come to my life. I don't believe your blood has any power to forgive my sin at all, but if your blood has any power to forgive my sin, I accept it.'

"I went to church. I went to church as a Muslim, but as a Muslim who was so disappointed. The pastor was preaching. I couldn't understand his preaching because I didn't have any knowledge of Bible.

"I saw a man standing behind pastor. I asked myself 'Who is this?' A voice inside of me said 'Jesus.' He walked inside me physically. Fire came all over me. My whole body was on fire. This hand came and touched my heart.

"She said 'Do you believe Jesus is the Son of God?' I said 'No, I don't. Now I believe that Jesus lives and He came to me personally. But Son of God? You need to convince me.' And I saw Jesus in heaven and He was standing on the right hand of the throne.

"He started to pour His Spirit all over me. He convinced me without saying anything. My heart knew He was the Son of God. I ran to the hotel and got to my knees. It was the most wonderful, the most beautiful moment of my life. I never had peace before. It was like I was swimming inside peace.

"If you don't have peace, if you have never received love from God, try Jesus. He will give you love. He will give you joy. He will give you peace.

"If I die today I know He is waiting there for me. I am going to jump into His arms. I am going to dance with Him. He is my closest friend. If you don't have peace, let Jesus come and turn your world upside down, and introduce Himself to you - as Love."

You can see the full testimony on video here.
   

Love is not soft

The love of God is greater far
  Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
  And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
  God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
  And pardoned from his sin.

 Oh, love of God, how rich and pure!
  How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure -
  The saints' and angels' song.

 You might find the words above a blessing. Or they might be just words. But one thing is sure: the love of God is a marvellous thing.

You may remember the Prodigal Son. He persuaded his father to give him his inheritance. although his father wasn't dead yet. Then he went off and blew it in. Destitute, starving and repentant, he came home, intending to ask for a servant's job. But his father saw him coming, ran to meet him, embraced him, ordered the fatted calf to be killed and proclaimed a party.

That's my Heavenly Father - unconditional forgiveness for the repentant sinner. But we sometimes have a strange idea about His love. It doesn't mean that He turns a blind eye to everything about us, or that He will ignore the foolish things we do.

My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord,
  Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by him,
For whom the Lord loves he chastens. 
                                                                   Heb 12:5

He chastens us because He wants us to grow up straight. When we're chastened by the Lord, it hurts. But remember two things. First, if we're chastened by the Lord, it's evidence that we're His sons. Second, He does it because He loves us.

He's our Father, and there's no better father than He.
    

Why respect and dignity matter

John Wyatt's mother had dementia.

"To begin with, the changes were subtle," he says. "Unexplained anxiety and tearfulness, episodes of uncharacteristic blankness, irritation and anger with medics and their pointless tests. As the dementing process continued, my mother tragically changed and aged before our eyes. Her confusion increased, she was frequently distressed by terrifying visual hallucinations. Her limbs became permanently flexed and distorted. Visiting her on the acute psychogeriatric ward, I remember being overwhelmed by grief at her obvious distress and fear. I wept in the consultant's office, powerless to do anything to alleviate my mother's anguish.

"Thankfully that dreadful period passed. Quetiapine had a remarkable effect in improving the psychotic symptoms, and compassionate and skilled nursing and medical care transformed my mother's condition. She became peaceful and relaxed. Although she could not communicate, she enjoyed holding hands with my father, listening to music, sometimes even singing along, especially to old hymns from her childhood in the Christian Brethren.

"My father was tireless in visiting her, spending hours every day at her bedside. It was very important to him that the staff knew about her past, knew the sort of person Grace used to be. He put photographs on the wall - this is what she used to be. Grace with her children, Grace at the nursery school she pioneered, Grace laughing delightedly with a little child. . . 

"It mattered that the staff treated her with respect and dignity, because of who she really was. She was so much more than this little aged, distorted, pathetic being appeared to be. . .

"But as our family spent time with my mother we were sometimes reminded that this was not the end of the story. As the family met at her bedside, in those occasional but special times of prayer and singing, although my mother could not speak and sometimes did not even recognise us, we knew that we shared in the Christian hope. This was not the end of the story."

In an article in Triple Helix, John says that caring for people with dignity, respect and love is always important. The worst of people can be transformed and enter into the new creation. With his mother, they had an assurance.

"By God's grace, those who were round her bedside will meet my mother again. And together we will walk and laugh and sing in the new heaven and new earth. The love poured out years ago has not been lost or forgotten."

You can read the full article here.
  

It's love that makes the difference

Anglican ministers and lay leaders, concerned at the falling away from biblical orthodoxy in parts of the worldwide Anglican communion, met in Jerusalem in 2008 and formed the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans.

The second GAFCON conference is in Nairobi this week. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, was unable to be present because of prior commitments. (No, that isn't the subject of this blog post.) He sent a videod message to the conference. One of the things he said was this:

The gospel has to be proclaimed by a church that is in unity. That's really tough - I don't underestimate the difficulty of that. It doesn't mean being unanimous, all saying exactly the same thing in exactly the same way. It means that, as Jesus prays in John 17, that we demonstrate by our love for one another that Jesus is the Son of God and therefore people are drawn to believe in Him. We've got to find ways of doing that and I don't underestimate the challenge that is to all of us. 

I pray. . . that you will find the determination, together with all other Christians, in passionate unity and love for one another, expressing disagreement graciously yet with powerful truth, to proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord and there is no other.

"My word," I said, "he's got it."

Christianity isn't a religion so much as a relationship: a personal relationship with a living Saviour. May those who have this relationship show such a love that the world cannot fail to be moved.

Einstein, intellect and little children

I was reading the other day that Einstein's "God letter" is going up for sale.

On January 3, 1954, a year before his death, Einstein wrote a letter to philosopher Erik Gutkind in which he said that "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change this."

The letter, bought by its present owner from Bloomsbury Auctions in London in 2008 for $404,000, is going on eBay with an opening bid of $3 million. A representative of the agency handling the sale said it could fetch double or triple that amount.

Mind you, you don't just get the letter. For that amount of money, they throw in the envelope as well.

Einstein once believed the universe had always existed. The discovery of scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning was, he said, "irritating." In his later years, he evidently had not discovered a personal relationship with the Cause behind the beginning.

Jesus said: "Unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matt 18:3).

So here we have Einstein, whose intellect was perhaps a barrier to a personal faith; someone who is going to spend a fortune for a letter doubting the existence of a personal God; and some people like little children who can have fellowship with their Heavenly Father at no cost to themselves.

It cost something, of course, to make it possible. It cost the Son of God a life of rejection, the torment He suffered after His arrest, the agony and shame of  crucifixion and the loss of fellowship with His Father for the first time ever as He hung on the cross.

The other day, I was talking to an old lady about Christ's sacrifice. "He didn't have to do all that," she said. Indeed He didn't. What caused Him to do all that was love.

Love is something you can't reduce to a mathematical formula. But it's real, so real, nevertheless.

Love never fails?

American preacher Dr Michael Brown heard there was going to be a homosexual protest a week last Sunday outside the local church where he worships.

The leader of the protest wrote on Facebook: "We will meet just before the service begins, and protest as they gather, we will have a silent protest as service is going and let them have it as they leave for the day. Remember we will be peaceful and respectful, something they don't understand. We are going to STAND TOGETHER AS A COMMUNITY to show that our love is stronger then their hate."

In reponse, Brown wrote on his blog: "On behalf of FIRE Church, I want to extend to you the warmest welcome and let you know that we are thrilled that you are here with us on Sunday. We have been praying for you for a long time!

"As always, you will only meet with love, kindness, and respect from the FIRE leadership and congregants, and we proclaim to you once again the amazing grace of God. Jesus died to save us from our sins, heterosexual and homosexual alike, and only in Him can we find forgiveness, redemption, and transformation. Jesus alone is the Healer, Savior, Deliverer, and Transformer."

On his radio show, he encouraged them to come in good numbers so they could greet them.

Scott Volk, one of the church leaders, posted a note on the local homosexual website: "As the pastor of FIRE Church, I just want you to know that you'll be greeted with the same love and compassion as we always endeavor to show anyone. . .You make mention of the 'hate' that we show. Yet, in all our years here we've only desired to reach out with love to everyone in the local community here. . . Hopefully you'll see that love demonstrated on Sunday as you protest."

His note provoked some hostile responses, including one which said: "You can fool yourself, Mr Volk. You can fool your parishioners. But you can't fool God. He knows what's in your heart, and it isn't love. It's hate."

Volk responded by explaining the love of Jesus and inviting them to his home for dinner with him and his family. He explained that "to call someone hateful without ever meeting them, seeing them or hearing them speak, is an indication of a heart that needs love. I make myself available."

One replied: "I want to hear more about this Jesus," and another: "Even I would be welcome there? It would be an honor to meet Scott Volk and Dr Brown. I'm beginning to see light as very attractive."

On Sunday morning about 10 protesters showed up. Some of the church leaders met them, offered them water and snacks, shared God's love and truth with them and invited them to the service. After a few minutes they left, saying the church people were too nice and loving to deserve a protest.

The following day the leader of the protest telephoned Dr Brown's radio programme to apologise publicly for the protest, explaining that their anger was "aimed [in] the wrong direction." Then he said: "Once we got there Sunday morning we were greeted with absolutely perfect love. I mean, it was fantastic."

After the broadcast, Brown and the protest leader shared contact details, and are looking forward to sharing a meal together - and sharing their hearts.

Dr Brown suggests that the church leaders have not compromised their beliefs. The protesters, he said, have heard his radio broadcasts and read his writings, and recognise how strongly they differ on many issues.

Can it be that love is always the answer?

What would have happened to Beethoven?

American bioethicist Wesley J. Smith, for whom I once had the privilege of hosting meetings in Manchester, points out that a maternal blood test now being perfected will enable technologists to map the entire genome of the developing foetus. Which means parents will have plenty of notice of undeveloped flaws in the unborn child to enable them to arrange abortion.

He writes on his blog:

Unlike amniocentesis, which requires the insertion of a needle into the womb to obtain amniotic fluid, the test would come earlier in the pregnancy and put the fetus at no risk - unless that is, it reveals unwanted genetic conditions or propensities. In such cases, the fetus's very life would suddenly be at material and immediate risk.

In a culture in which all people are valued equally regardless of their health or capacities, fetal genetic testing would be a splendid way to reveal the need for prenatal treatments or to allow parents time to prepare for a child with special needs. That's precisely how Todd and Sarah Palin reacted when they learned their youngest child Trig has Down syndrome. Long before he was born, they absorbed the emotional shock and then joyfully welcomed their son with open arms. But such unconditional love cuts against the current cultural zeitgeist. Consider: About 90 per cent of fetuses testing for genetic conditions such as Down and dwarfism are terminated to the moral support, if not outright cheering, of much of society. It may seem harsh to say, but it is true nonetheless: We are in the midst of a great eugenic cleansing in which diagnosed imperfection often favors abortion.

Can anyone deny it?. . . Increasingly people not only believe they have a right to a baby but to the baby they want.

But our quest for perfection, had the technology come a few hundred years earlier, could have come at a terrible cost. . . 

Beethoven might never have been born, considering his destined deafness. If Lincoln was bi-polar or had the genetic condition known as Marfan's syndrome, as some have speculated, he might well have been "selected out" in the hope that Tom and Nancy Lincoln's next baby would have a less troubled nature. For that matter, the embryonic Winston Churchill might have been terminated when his genetic screeners warned his parents that he would have a predisposition for alcoholism. Similarly, Mother Teresa might have never been born had her parents known she would be diminutive and plain. Ditto Toulouse-Lautrec. . .  

If I were to pick one human attribute to extol above all others, it wouldn't be high intelligence, good looks or athletic prowess - the usual targets for human improvement. Rather, I believe the most crucial human attribute is our capacity to love.

Nearly 2000 years ago, St Paul wrote, "And now abide faith, hope, and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love." Who among us exhibit a greater unconditional love capacity than our brothers and sisters with Down syndrome? To the extent that they and other "defectives" are unwelcome among us can be measured our own deficiency as a society.

Technology isn't the problem. We are.

Discovering the depth of love

I commented two weeks ago on Terry Pratchett's appalling programme on assisted suicide on BBC TV. I'm sorry that I only just got round to reading the Rev Michael Wenham's comment on the programme in the Guardian's Comment is free.

Michael lives in Oxfordshire. He has motor neurone disease. You might think he would be a candidate for assisted suicide. But no. He doesn't want to die; he wants to live. ("Why is the universe so beautiful?" he says on his blog.) His comments on the programme are worth reading.

When he wrote them, he'd just had a visit from old friends Jill and her husband Dan. Jill, a keen horsewoman, was left a paraplegic after a motor cycle accident 52 years ago. Dan was given six months to live because of leukaemia more than 20 years ago and is still here. Both are living a full life and full of fun.

"They actually enrich you in knowing them. I expect that they would say that, having determined to live, their experiences have enriched them. It might have been so different."

And the programme? Pratchett's comment about one of the men who opted for suicide - "I've been in the presence of the bravest man I've ever met" - "left a bitter taste in my mouth," says Michael, "as if we'd been served a cocktail of death disguised as an elixir of life."

The candidates for suicide on the programme might have wanted to spare their families the pain of caring for them, but that didn't seem to be their motive.

"The repeated refrain. . . was 'It's my choice,' 'It's his choice'. . . My individual choice is sovereign. I want my kingdom. And the rest doesn't matter. The individual is the ace, trumping all else.

"Well, that's a pretty impoverished world. In fact, interdependence is the secret of society. We are dependent on each other, and that's something for celebrating, not fearing, for embracing, not avoiding. Perhaps the city is an image of heaven because community is the heart of human existence. The best thing in life is to experience the extraordinary depth with which one can be loved. It's to discover the utter disinteredness of those who love you, to find out when you can give nothing back, literally nothing but distasteful work and pain, they still want to look after you; they still care for you; yes, they still love you.

"The tragedy of Peter Smedley and Andrew Colgan [the men in the programme who chose assisted suicide], it seems to me, is that they didn't trust themselves to the journey their loved ones wanted to travel with them - because if they had, the road might well have been rough, but they would have discovered, hand in hand with them, beauties of the human spirit few of us ever glimpse."

Read the whole thing. To see it, click here.

Losing the one you love

Jessica Council was a beautiful redheaded American girl. She was 30 years old, with a husband and a two-year-old son. She and her husband Clint worked for a Christian charity, mentoring children.

She was always extremely healthy, took care about what she ate and exercised regularly.

Last August, she developed a sore throat. When it was still sore two weeks later, she saw a doctor. He had a test done, and said it was nothing to worry about. He had misread the results of the test.

In November, Jessica was having trouble breathing, and wound up in accident and emergency. The following day her throat closed up so tightly she couldn't breathe. Doctors managed to get a tube down her throat and put her on a ventilator.

The following day, they told her she had cancer. By then, she knew for certain that she was pregnant. Two days later, the hospital's obstetrician offered her an abortion. Jessica refused. For her, that was not an option.

Surgery for the cancer was not possible. The oncologist said chemotherapy would likely kill the baby. The obstetrician said the baby would probably survive, but would probably have brain damage. Radiotherapy carried similar risks. Jessica thought for a few seconds, then declined treatment.

One night in February, Jessica went to sleep and didn't wake up. Clint gave permission for a caesarean section.

The doctors thought Jessica was 25 weeks into pregnancy. When little Jessi was born, they realised she had been only about 23 weeks, the very limit of viability for the baby. Jessi weighed 1lb 3oz.

"Jessica knew she was going to die anyway," said Clint. "She didn't share that with me until almost when she died. . . But I think she knew, and she was going to give this baby every chance she could.

"I did struggle," said Clint, "because in the Bible the one person that we're commanded to love more than myself, this was her. Sometimes it's easier to be selfless as far as whatever happens to you, but when it comes down to losing the one you love more than anything else, it's very difficult."

For about a month after Jessica died, says Clint, "I could not - and I mean that as a literal inability - I could not read my Bible, I could not pray.

"I knew cognitively that the relationship was there, I knew [God] loved me. I accepted all these things from a mental standpoint. . . but the delight in God was gone for about a month. I was functioning solely on what I knew to be true from a mental standpoint."

Now he's busy working, caring for his two children - the doctors say the baby, though still in hospital, is doing well - and praying once more.

Less than two weeks after Jessica died, Clint wrote: "God is to be praised, my friends. Do not doubt God; do not be angry with Him for me.

"I am privileged to have had a wife who was so full of the love of the Father. Rejoice with me. . . God has blessed Jessica in taking her to a place of perfect peace and no pain. I must be thankful for the time that I had with her rather than ungrateful for all the things we never got to do together. We must give thanks in all things for this is the will of God in Jesus Christ.

"Grace and peace to all."

You can read the full story at LifeSiteNews.

Words to remember

The royal wedding is over. Prince William and Catherine Middleton, now Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, are man and wife. The rain stayed away. The dress was beautiful. Everything went well.

On reflection, one of the day's most evocative moments was the Bishop of London's advice to the couple, in the words of Catherine of Siena:

"Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire."

Could there be better advice to the newly-married pair than that?

Love is the difference

According to tradition, John, the disciple who wrote John's Gospel, spent his last days at Ephesus. When he was very old, the disciples there used to carry him into their meetings. When asked if he had anything to say, he would say "Little children, love one another."

In John 13, that same disciple wrote "Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come that he should depart from this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end."

The thing about Jesus is that He will love you to the end. His love is without conditions. Nothing you can ever do will make Him love you more, and nothing you ever do will make Him love you the less.

The same chapter tells how He washed the disciples' feet, including the feet of Judas Iscariot, who He knew would betray Him.

Later in the same chapter, Jesus told His disciples "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

That's what makes Christianity different from everything else. And Christians - true Christians - different from all others.