Eutychus Catchers

I've decided, by the way, that life would be a lot more interesting if screens on windows were now just called "Eutychus Catchers."  I think there's really a slogan opportunity in there.  Perhaps one of the big companies can use the idea for a nifty slogan?  Pella Windows, undoubtedly, would appreciate the suggestion.  I mean, think of how much more fun it sounds!

I, for one, am going to train myself to put on the Eutychus Catchers in the spring, and take then off in the fall whence cometh time for storm windows.  I keep my Eutychus Catcher in my closet in the winter, so it's easily found come spring.

I just like to say Eutychus Catcher, really.  A tad longer than "screen," but entirely worth it, I'd say.

Oh, Euty

Last Sunday we were talking about Eutychus in our Sunday School class, and I was talking to the girls about being examples.  I brought up Euty because I was reading the story the other day and it made me ponder more about examplehood.  Not that that's a word.  But what's interesting to me about the story of Euty is that he wasn't paying attention to Paul, or got tired, or whatever happened, and fell asleep and ended up taking a tumble into the yard.

How this relates to examples:  So, say Eutychus had a younger brother or something who saw the severity of what happened to Euty (whether or not Eutychus actually died or was just presumed dead was a matter of some debate at the breakfast table this morning, interestingly enough) but then thought, "Hey, it's okay, he ended up alive.  I'm going to sit in that window sill where I can breathe some fresh air and I'll just make SURE to not fall asleep, since I know what could happen if I did, but even if I did, obviously nothing too horrible happens if I get all Humpty Dumpty."  All good in theory, but what happens if said younger brother actually does have a great fall and can't be brought back up alive again?  What then?

That's the thing.  God in His graciousness gives second chances, and sometimes someone takes a fall, as it were, and it works out fine, but sometimes things don't work out so well for the faller.  And that's why Christians have to be careful to not be the ones to make it seem like it's okay to fall in the first place.  Because the guy who follows (FALLows?)  after might not escape unscathed.

I don't think my Sunday School class necessarily got what I was saying, but hey, they got the gist of it.  I think.  I hope.

Also, I call Eutychus by his way-cooler nickname "Euty" because when I was a youngster I used to have a book of Bible poems by someone named John Knapp, and it's AWESOME.  Seriously.  You slash your children slash any person would love it.  He writes poems about several obscure persons from the Bible (Ethan the Ezrahite for one) and writes ditties to help you remember the lineage of Abraham's offspring, the churches of Revelation, and why Miriam got leprosy in the Bible instead of being turned into a pillar of pepper.  Trust me, it makes sense.  Anyhow, in one of his poems it references Eutychus and endearingly calls him Euty.  Ever since I first read that I've taken to also calling him Euty.  It has a much nicer ring to it.

By the dozen

I won't bore you with my regular introduction of "we have the best family dinners ever," but last week we had a particularly funny episode that I'll recount in part.

So, we were were talking about the old-timey way of hanging people (throwing them up on stakes on a wall, just in case you were curious), and other random things like why my brother and I long misunderstood Ezekiel 4, and eventually we started talking about clocks. This is because we have a heinous clock that chirps, hoots, and makes other bird noises ever hour, on the hour. It's awful. I took the batteries out one time, but my mom actually likes the clock, so she found new batteries and now the clock is as loud as ever. This is fine, as we say, because what makes her happy makes us happy, but during supper we kept hearing it (it ended up being a long supper, so we heard the clock at least twice, and possibly even three times) and it was quite the topic of conversation.

That brought us to the thought that we should manufacture a clock with the twelve disciples on it! By the way, this may seem like a confusing train of thought to you, but we were talking about clocks, and we'd been talking about hanging people, and Judas was a disciple, and he hanged himself... well, somehow this made sense to us.

So anyhow, we had great discussion about how the clock would look. Would it have sounds for each disciple? Like Matthew, being a tax collector, would have clinky money sounds, and John would have some angelic sound, and Peter and the fishermen-type guys would have... fish sounds. Well, we decided that maybe the disciples wouldn't get sounds after all. But then there was the discussion of where we'd put the disciples. Who would get the 12:00 spot, right at the top of the clock? I voted Peter, but there was significant pull for John. Then we questioned if Judas should even get a slot. Maybe we could stick Matthias instead of Judas. My brother, of course, thought that perhaps we could have Judas at the 6:00 slot, and the clock could show the rope hanging him.

My mom wasn't impressed.

After a while we thought maybe we should just skip the disciples (too much drama!) and just do the twelve tribes. Of course, then there's the discussion about which tribe you should leave out (remember, Joseph got two tribes), and then we started all over again.

I Googled "twelve disciples wall clock" later, sure I'd find that somebody had already invented it, and to my surprise, didn't find anything. I looked only casually, but the closest I could find was a Last Supper clock and an old clock in Prague with the twelve on there, but it's an old clock, and not for sale. Also, there's a rock formation in Australia called The Twelve Apostles, and you can get clocks with the rock formation on the face, but that is, in fact, no help at all.

So one day if you wander into a Christian bookstore and see a twelve disciples clock, well, perhaps it was I, who somehow managed to finagle a deal to design clocks. It could happen!

Speak

In the Bible, when the Lord spoke to all those folks in the Old Testament, do you think He spoke aloud? We know that there are times when He came in person form, or when an angel came to send the message. Those times, I'm pretty sure there was audible stuff going on. In those cases it's easy for us to think, "Well, of course they obeyed!" or, better yet, "That was silly of them not to do what He asked--He spoke it plain as day!" But what about when He spoke to Elijah--could Elijah hear it as if someone were speaking to him, or was it more like we hear the Lord today, a knowing in our souls?

When God came to Samuel, we know Samuel heard it aloud. Well, if he didn't, he heard it clearly enough to have thought it was aloud, as shown in the fact that he kept on running to Eli to see why he was calling for him.

In the New Testament we know that while the Lord was on the Earth, He certainly spoke to people, but once He went back to sit down on the right hand of the Father, I think that when He spoke to people, it was in words spoken to their ears alone. Like the passage where Paul begs the Lord to take away his thorn in the flesh, and the Lord simply tells him that His grace was sufficient for Paul. But when Paul was converted on the way to Damascus, I'm guessing Paul heard that voice aloud. Even the other people heard a voice (though it doesn't say what those people heard, exactly).

What I'm getting at is that I don't know if those in the Old Testament had it "easier" than we do in terms of hearing the Lord speak. Bottom line, it's something we have to listen to. His words are there for us to read, every minute, in the Word of God. And if we'd spend a little time being still enough to hear what He has to say, I think we'd hear a lot more. What matters is what we do with the words once we hear them. If we ignore them, as we are apt to do, then what are we accomplishing by listening in the first place? The best idea? Listen, and do. He's got it all mapped out, if only we'll follow His directives.

PS, that's easier said than done.

She said yes

I recently read The Martyr of the Catacombs for the first time in maybe a dozen years or so, and it was way better than I'd remembered it being. Honestly, when I was younger I read it and thought, "Wait, why does my mom like this so much?" but this time around I was absolutely captivated. I'm hoping it's because the story was that good, and not just because (wait for it) I'll be seeing the catacombs for myself in about a week.

(YYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!)

Sorry.

But since I've been reading that book, I've been thinking a lot about persecution and martyrs and the such, and I ended up discussing this with my Sunday School class on Lord's Day. We started by talking about Stephen, how in doing his humble work of serving the widows, he attracted enough attention to be killed for his faith. Then we talked about Antipas, who didn't deny the faith. It was here that the conversation got really interesting.

One of the girls knew about Columbine, and Cassie Bernall, so we started talking about that. The girls were interested when I told them that Cassie had been asked, point blank, if she was a Christian. At the reply (which was a Yes), she was fatally shot.

"But... did she have to say yes?" asked one of the girls, "Wouldn't she have still been a Christian even if she'd said no?"

It was interesting to me that she asked this, because I'd been trying to make the same point earlier, in discussing the catacombs and the book, The Martyr of the Catacombs. In the book (and in real life, obviously), the choice was given to some of the under-trial Christians--either sacrifice to the gods of Rome, or be killed for your Christian faith. I had been trying to talk to the girls about what that meant, and whether it was "wrong" to sacrifice to the pagan gods if you didn't mean it. We never got too far with that, until Cassie came up.

Now all the girls had questions. Several of them said that they would always say YES, because it's like a lie to say otherwise. I tried to bring it to more practical terms, asking if they'd feel comfortable speaking up as a Christian among friends, even if you knew you were going to lose your friends (the girls said no problem, they could do that), or speaking up in a job situation, if you knew you would probably lose your job for being a Christian (they're young, but they'll probably do the summer job thing sooner rather than later, so I thought I might as well mention that problems like this don't go away because you grow up).

Most of them kept saying that yes, yes, they'd absolutely say yes, stand up for their faith in Christ. Most.

One of the girls seemed a little more hesitant. "Would it be wrong, do you think? Wouldn't God just forgive you, and you could keep on living for Him?"

There's where it got sticky. Yes, God would forgive you, He's always willing to, but defy His name in preference for something else? Why would you?

"You know... to live."

Another girl kept on saying that it was wrong to even think about saying that you weren't a Christian (even if you knew you'd be forgiven), because then you're not really doing any good for God.

Interesting, but that was one of the points I was trying to make. I asked the girls what being martyred accomplishes. They thought it didn't do anything, nothing but kill people. Then I started talking about the outward display of devotion to the Lord and I think I saw some little light bulbs turn on. We rounded out the class with a discussion of what it meant to be a Christian--what good we could be for the Lord, what our lives even mean if we're not doing anything for Him.

Not bad for a thirty-minute Sunday School class!

That was a scattered bunch of words, but I just wanted to share. The girls seemed so interested, which was really cool to see, since they're frequently easily bored with subjects like not punching each other or something else so "lame." I have an odd bunch.

Anyhow, if you haven't read that book, I would highly recommend it. It was most excellent, and food for thought. Plus, who knows? Maybe you'll get a chance to make it food for thought for those around you, as well!

That's a wrap, Acts

So, I was corrected about my erroneous Acts assumptions. Apparently I missed the part where the ship didn't crash until they cut away from those awesome four anchors.

So, disregard my rant. Though... I still find it somewhat intriguing that those anchors carry such weight amongst us all. I mean, why don't we wax eloquent on the 153 fish that the disciples counted after the night they did all that fishing with Jesus?

Apparently smaller numbers are easier to interpret...

Asking about Acts - Part II

Let's talk for just a minute about Acts 27. Great chapter, truly it is, but there's one thing I always hear about it that sort of gets to me. Which is to say, Acts 27:29. "Then fearing lest we should have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors out of the stern, and wished for day."

The romantical side of me just likes to hear about a ship full of people wishing for day. Sounds cool (especially since you know they all survived at the end, phew), but it's the four anchors I hear a lot about. I'm not sure if any of the rest of you hear about these four anchors, but I highly recommend that if you're not familiar with a good sermon or two on the subject, that you head over to Google and, well, google it. "Acts 27 four anchors" is all it takes to come up with dozens of thoughts on these anchors.

I hear all sort of thoughts about them. Article number one on that Google search says that the four anchors are representative of Paul's steadiness in the storm. 1. He was in the presence of God, 2. He was God's possession, 3. He had a sense of purpose, and 4. He had a positive confession of his faith.

Well, these things are all good and right, but is that really what those four anchors represent?

Another article (also in the top ten Google listings under the search for "Acts 20 four anchors") says that the four anchors were that Paul 1. Prayed, 2. Had the Word of God, 3. Obeyed God, and 4. Had the hope of salvation. Once again, great things, but is that what those anchors mean?

I've heard other things. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, if you'll believe it, were once referred to as the four anchors. In Acts 2:42 mentions new Christians continuing steadfastly in 1. The apostle's doctrine, 2. fellowship, 3. Breaking of bread, and 4. prayers. That's pretty popular from what I've personally heard.

Anyhow, there are more, which doubtless I'll remember in the middle of the night tonight, but you get the idea.

Now, I'm not trying to be contrary (although I realize I come off as sort of contrary sometimes), but I'm trying to be practical, I guess. My hang-up with this whole situation is this: why are we comparing things to these anchors, anyhow? The anchors sure didn't help the ship, did they? This was a ship that, if we're trying to compare apples to apples, wouldn't even be qualified as a Christian ship (re-read the chapter, I'm sure it'll make sense in a moment!). So the illustration is already a little flimsy, in my opinion.

So, like I say, we have a ship who'd been trying, on its own merit, to reach land, cast these four anchors into the sea, and, well, that didn't work either. The ship broke in pieces, much like Humpty Dumpty, I imagine, only with less yolk.

May I reiterate: why do we like this illustration so much? These four anchors gave those sea-sick people not one ounce of help, and I'd like to keep viewing prayer and obedience to God as something that'll help me, thanks for asking. I once decided that I was going to sermonize all on my own, and started telling people that I thought that the four anchors referred to Jacob's four wifely things. Moral of that story? Have just one wife. For some reason that doctrine never really caught on, funny... =)

This really solved nothing, I suppose, but it felt nice to spit it all out.

Asking about Acts - Part I

So here's a good question: how do we know that Luke wrote Luke and Acts? I've been pondering this recently, and have been doing my best to look it up, but everyone just says that "it's generally acknowledged" Luke wrote them. We know the author was a traveling companion of Paul, and that he uses "we" starting whenever he jumped aboard Paul's journeys, but Paul had lots of companions.

No seriously, why are we all so certain that he wrote the books?

DV

First of all, I have to make note of the fact that I can never remember how the full version of "DV" is actually pronounced. Domnus Vet....something. I remember it easily as "da Lord 'Villing" with a weird sort of German accent or something. Can't say I didn't try.

But I was just thinking about that the other day. When I say "the other day" I mean "yesterday" because I happened to be reading up on some Paul (practicing for my order of the Corinthian nun, no doubt) when he was talking about this. He was visiting somewhere--Ephesus, I think?--and they were all sad, and he told them that he'd see them again, Lord willing. Well, in actual fact I believe he did see them again--it talks about sailing through Ephesus a few chapters later--but what this set me to wondering was this: is it always legitimate to say "Lord willing?"

Here's the deal. James says that we ought to say "if the Lord will" etc. but what if we say that, the Lord does will, and we fall down on the job? The Lord knows what's going to happen, obviously, but a lot of times we say Lord Willing as sort of a way to get out of things we don't want to do. "Well, I'll come to the hospital to clean up vomit later, Lord willing," and then when it doesn't happen, we feel justified because we didn't have time. That's a bad example, because I don't think very many of us have had that experience.

But should we really be throwing that around all the time so casually? I know that I personally qualify just about every third sentence with a "Lord willing" because I never know when I'm going to get raptured and not be able to do something, or hit by a car, or kidnapped by a mad scientist or something. Am I leaving for California tomorrow? Lord willing. I hope to, but I may not. But if I just don't get on the plane in the morning, but choose rather to hang out at the airport for a week and a half, is it going to be because the Lord willed it, or because I'm a moron?

The Lord is willing to do a lot of things that don't happen. The Lord is not willing that any should perish, for instance, and last I checked, people are still perishing.

I'm not trying to suggest that anybody stop saying Lord Willing, by the way. I for one would have a really tough time cutting it out of my vocabulary, and I'm fine with that. But I think what I'm trying to say is that we should examine our own actions more, perhaps. I don't know. I guess it can sort of boil down to the fact that in the garden the Lord Jesus said that if the Father was willing, then could He remove this cup from Him? And the answer to that was no. So maybe it's not so much about what our actions do and don't say about us, but rather that we show ourselves willing to follow the Lord's directives.

But this whole when-to-say-it-and-when-not-to-say-it thing still gets me. For instance, what if I planned to rob the bank later this afternoon? Would I be as apt to say, "well, I'm going to head over to the bank and rob it, Lord willing" as I would be to say, "well, I'm going to head over to Drug Mart and buy some post cards, Lord Willing"? But when I'm saying the deal about the post cards I guess what I usually mean is "time permitting." Obviously I guess I'd stop if the Lord showed me that He wasn't willing to buy post cards, which I guess would mean I would stop robbing the bank if He didn't want me to do that, either. But if I'm going to say Lord Willing about stuff that I think is kosher (buying post cards, going to California, making pizza for supper) then I guess it means I shouldn't do anything I'm not willing to tack a Lord Willing onto. Is that it? If you're not comfortable saying "Lord Willing" after something, then you're maybe not supposed to do it?

I don't know. Maybe next time I'm trying to make a decision I'll test-run a few sentences with a Lord Willing after it. I'm going to Europe this summer, Lord Willing.

See, but sometimes you just like the way something sounds, even if maybe the Lord still doesn't will. Who doesn't want to go to Europe this summer?

Anyhow, this got convoluted and off-topic, but it was just something that crossed my poor tangled mind. This much I know--I'm going to keep on saying "Lord Willing," Lord willing.