I am glad I am not Marian Hossa:

• First he’s got a Girl’s name.  That’s tough, especially in hockey circles, but…
• Used to play in Ottawa ouch!  Talk about finding no lasting success. He signs and plays for Pittsburgh last year and loses in the Stanley Cup finals to Detroit.  He looks at his options and signs for less money with Detroit (the team that beat him) in the off-season.  This year he loses in the Stanley Cup finals again!  He took a pay cut in order to make sure he didn’t win.

But I am really glad I am not  Michel Therrien,

• the coach of Pittsburgh Penguins for the last 3 plus seasons, was fired in February. He was replaced by the minor league affiliate coach, Dan Bylsma.

• They were in 10th place at the time, five points out of the playoffs
• They go on to win the Stanely Cup.  Pretty tough not to take that personally.  ‘With you we can’t make the play-offs.  Without you we are Stanley Cup winners!  You are so bad as a coach.  We could trade you for a minor league coach and become the best team in the league.  That’s brutal!

I have been working like crazy lately to get a paper done for a course I finished last month.  It is late but I almost have it done.  It is about worship and I have been reading a lot of books on the subject.  One of my favourites that I would like to reread when I can actually dwell in it is The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God’s Call to Justice by Mark Labberton.
It is a book that totally surprised me with where it went.

I already had this idea of how worship can be viewed as dangerous but this book stunned me.  Worship, rightly practiced, is recognition of the one we are worshiping.  Labberton quotes one of my favourite authors Annie Dillard who says,

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs sufficiently sensible of conditions.  Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?  Or, as I suspect does no one believe a word of it?  The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, making up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.  It is madness to wear ladies’ hats and straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.  For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offence, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. (Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (NY: HarperCollins, 1982) p. 40.)

We sing, ‘all hail the power of Jesus name let angels prostrate fall.’  Why not us?  Why aren’t we bowing to the ground in humility?  Why do we have the nerve to invite God to join us (one of my favourite sacrilegious comments that people begin worship with)?  Labberton adds later, “The church in the safest nation in the world so often clings to its obsession with safety rather than risks investing in the cause of Christ in the World.”

Worship fully practiced will changes us. “To worship is to change.  If worship does not propell us into greater obedience it has not been worship.” (Richard Foster) Worshiping God will complicate our lives.  Whether in the whirlwind or in the still small voice (1 Kings 19) meeting God is no small incident.  God is engaged in the recreation of all things in the image of Jesus Christ including you and I (Col. 1: 13 - 20). If we can leave a time of worship unchanged then we have actively defied the will of God in worship.  It would have been better had we not been there.

I heard this week of a guy named Joel in Spokane who was looking out his window at the downtown Sterling Bank.  He had watched a duck,  two weeks before build a nest in the awning of the bank 10 feet above the sidewalk and later lay 9 eggs.  Two weeks later the eggs all hatched and, just like ducks always do, the mom flew down out of the nest to the sidewalk below and encouraged her ducklings to jump down.  Joel saw one jump and ’splat’ hit the sidewalk.  He couldn’t stand to watch the rest of them do that so he ran outside and started shagging ducks, one after the other.

Once they were all down he escorted them across the road to the Spokane river.  That was one year ago.  A couple of weeks ago the duck came back and laid 12 eggs.  Joel was there again on Tuesday this week to catch them and escort them to the water. (looks like you’ve got yourself a job now buddy.)

What would make a grown man leave his office to catch ducks?  I think it is because, no matter who you are, we are all image bearers of the one who made us.  God loves and God delivers.  God saves and deep down we can’t seem to help wanting to do that to.  Many of us have hidden this tendency, more…

Yesterday’s National post had a story about how a new fossil has been discovered that scientists believe (hope or wish) serves as the missing link on the evolutionary chain between monkeys and man.

Before I go any further I want to be clear where I stand on the evolution debate. There are, in this debate two fanatical opposite extremes (#1 Slime crawled out of a randomly occuring sea fifty quazillion years ago, yea evolution,  take your god talk and stuff it! and #2 On April 11th, 6771 BC God popped off every form of life that ever existed in exactly 6 days never mind that there wasn`t a sun until day three) I am on neither one of those teams.

As a science teacher I have seen that life on earth is in a constant state of adaptive change. I believe in structural and adaptive change in individual species but no one has ever explained to me how a species with 18 pairs of chromosomes can become a species with 23 pairs of chromosomes.

For example, Arctic Hares are rabbits like Buddy here that have small ears, big feet, and are white and they have adapted to be well suited to the environment in which they live. Arctic hares that have long ears are more likely to die from infection caused by frostbite. Arctic Hares who have small feet cannot evade predators as easily on snow covered surfaces. Arctic Hares like Bullseye down below with black stripes are going to be picked off easily and will never have a chance to reproduce. I believe that a population of rabbits in the Arctic will adapt certain traits and characteristics that will give them survival advantages in the environment they are in. Where the modern application of Evolution breaks down for me is in the conclusion that species come into being through random genetic mutation. I cannot see any scientific evidence that a species of field mouse will eventually become a species of squirrel through evolution, no matter how long you give it. Random genetic defects for the most part do not give an animal a survival advantage. Usually they give an animal cancer! more…

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As ‘Fun, Watchable’

In 1917 Einstein suggested in a research paper that it should be possible for a ’stimulated beam of light’ to be produced under the right conditions and after much research, in 1960 Theodore Maiman invented the ruby laser, considered to be the first successful optical or light laser in the world; but there is some debate on the matter.

Two years previously, in 1958 Gordon Gould, then a doctoral student at Columbia University was the first person to use the word “LASER”  (said with the Dr. Evil/Mike Myers voice) and he claims to this day that he was inspired to build a laser but didn’t file a patent.  After Maiman’s research was released Gould’s patent was rejected and it wasn’t until 1977 that courts in the US reversed the decision giving Gould credit for the discovery.  Let me guess his dog used to eat his homework too.  For more on the history of this colossal blunder click  here.

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Today a highlight of the time our church family spent together was with my friend reading from the words of a beautiful song called New Again by Brad Paisley & Sarah Evans that was inspired by the movie The Passion (maybe you’ve heard of it ) Click the link above to listen to the song.

New Again
by Brad Paisley and Sarah Evans

Mother - do not cry for me
All of this is exactly how it’s supposed to be

I’m right here. Can you hear my voice?
My life, my love, my Lord, my baby boy

As they nail me to this tree
Just know the Father waits for me

God how can this be your will?
To have your Son and my son killed?

Whatever happens, whatever you see
Whatever your eyes tell you has become of me
This is not, is not the end
I am making all things new again

I remember when you were born
In that manger where I first held
You in my arms
So many miracles and lives you’ve changed
And this world repays you how?
With all this pain

As they nail me to this tree
Just know the Father waits for me

God how can this be your will?
To have your son and my son killed?

Whatever happens , whatever you see
Whatever your eyes tell you has become of me
This is not, Not the end
I am making all things new again

Whatever happens, whatever you see.
Whatever your eyes tell you has become of me
This is not, Not the end
I am making all things new again

The word ‘atonement’ means the payment in exchange for a wrong suffered.  The Atonement is the satisfaction for an offense.  When a wrong has been committed and a price must be paid, the Atonement is the price.

Under the Jewish Law, only the one who had been hurt can forgive and when you think about it this makes sense:  Say your friend took your cell phone and broke it.   I can’t forgive your friend for what they did to you.  It is you who has suffered not me and therefore only you can release that debt.  Whatever is exchanged between you and your friend is the atonement for this offense.  To forgive is to dismiss the debt.   In a profound way, Jesus is the atonement.

Only the one who has been hurt can forgive, and at Calvary God chose to be hurt.

16 I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.
17 For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

Romans 1: 16 - 17

Coming down off of a very heavy week of study, I was dealing with an adrenaline crash Friday night (Adrenaline is my drug of choice I must confess) so I watched the movie Luther after the hockey game. I had borrowed the movie a couple of months ago from a friend while I was taking history and I never got around to watching it.

Martin Luther was a brilliant Catholic monk who had the equivalent of two Doctorate degrees and was, of course, instrumental in the beginning of the Reformation. It was Luther who, on October 31st, 1517 nailed 95 points of protest against the Catholic church to the Wittenburg church bulletin board (so to speak).  They were (unknown to Luther) immediately translated into German and widely distributed, thus beginning the Reformation. He was fluent in ancient Greek and Hebrew and would eventually translate the entire Old and New Testament into German, against much opposition from the Catholic Church. He was a furiously passionate man and I love the passion he brought to Bible study. In writing a commentary on Romans, he says:

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