Our holiday trip to England is getting a little more drama than we bargained for. A volcano outside of Eyjafjallajokull (the paper says it’s pronounced ay-yah-FYAH’-plah-yer-kuh-duhl … yeah sure it is! ) in Iceland is throwing up enough ash in the air over the Atlantic that they have canceled flights in and out of England until Saturday. We are supposed to leave late Monday so unless things calm down in the next day or so we could be out of luck.

Yes, I have insurance on the flight and the first three days hotel. We would only be out of pocket hundreds instead of thousands of dollars for train tickets, etc. that are non refundable.

Talk about something you can do nothing about. We have decided that:

• I’d rather be stuck at home than crashed in the Atlantic,
• I’d rather be stuck here than stuck there,
• I’m so grateful that I can afford to be inconvenienced by International Travel.

Julie and I haven’t had the opportunity to travel much. We haven’t been on a holiday of any kind since the time we flew out to PEI in 2001; September of 2001. We were flying home on September 11, 2001. That was an awful, unforgettable plane ride to be sure. We were very nearly stranded in some small town in Maryland for three days.

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In <a title=”Biblegateway.com” href=”http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2014:%2066%20-%2072&amp;version=NIV” target=”_blank”>Mark 14: 66 – 72</a> Peter denies Jesus, and breaks a promise made to Jesus made earlier in the chapter. Peter had boldly proclaimed that he loved Jesus more than any of these other disciples and Jesus replied that before dawn he would deny that he even knew Him.

Our identities are formed by the promises we keep. Without promises there is no lasting sense of identity and no sense of community. This is why Peter is so destroyed by this betrayal: he has lost his identity. Who is he really? Is he the Peter of v. 29 and 31 who will die with Jesus or is he the Peter of v. 71 who curses Jesus and claims to not even know him. Peter is devastated by this failure and is a broken man because in failing like this he has lost his identity.

People today like to define their identities not by their commitments but by their passions, and their feelings. What do people say when facing a challenge to their identity? “I want to go find myself.” How do they do that? By releasing themselves of every obligation, every commitment and chasing a vivid and intense emotional experience.

The problem is that it doesn’t work. I have never heard of a person returning from one of these personal odysseys with a clear sense of self and a plan for going forward. The reason it doesn’t work is that you are basing your identity on your feelings which are both constantly changing and contradictory. How can you define yourself by an emotional response when that response could change by tomorrow? Instead, your identity needs to be centered in something that doesn’t change.

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First let’s review; the gospel is: Jesus was born, lived a sinless life and died in order to satisfy the wrath of God for my sin, and to remove it once and for all. 1 John 2:2; 4:10 By absorbing the punishment for my sin Jesus has preserved God’s honour as being truly just and totally righteous. When God looks at my sin how can He just ‘let it go’ if my sin has wounded someone else? How is that just or fair to them? My selfish heart wants grace for me and my sin, and justice for everyone else.

Jesus has also entered the world and bears the shame and the pain we cast on each other. In the Peasant Princess Study we are doing, Mark Driscoll says, “Someone in your marriage is going to be crucified: either you let Jesus be crucified for the sins in your marriage or you will spend your married lives trying to crucify each other for their sins.”
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Tim Tebow, quarterback of the Florida Gators has been making headlines this year with his passionate witness for his faith. He routinely writes Bible verses on his eye black patches (he’s even promoting my blog!)

The Toronto Star featured an article today about a battle brewing on the horizon. Tim Tebow and his mother Sam will be featured in a 30 second commercial during this year’s Super Bowl; not one with bikinis or beer, horses, or hamsters being shot through a cannon. This ad is paid for by a Pro-life group in the US and supporters of the Pro-Choice movement are furious that CBS is allowing this ad to be shown during the Superbowl.

“An ad that uses sports to divide rather than to unite has no place in the biggest national sports event of the year – an event designed to bring Americans together,” Jehmu Greene, president of the Women’s Media Center, said in a statement this week. “This un-American hate doesn’t have a place in this all-American pastime,” Kierra Johnson, executive director of Choice USA, told Fox News.

Here we see the great paradox of the Postmodern Western Culture: The only thing we can’t tolerate is intolerance.
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A wise man once said,“Brothers in error are the only kind of brothers I have.” There are often two problems with abandoning fellowship with a fellow believer in Christ with whom we have doctrinal differences.

The first problem is that if you are of the opinion that your ‘brother in error’ should be delivered over to Satan (1 Tim. 1:20), you are likely operating with a mistaken definition of what false teaching really is.

“Teacher,” said John, “we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”
“Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us. I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward.

Mark 9: 38-41

The disciples are operating with the assumption that if you are with us you are O.K. ‘Affiliation makes you right’, but Jesus does not agree. In this case Jesus commands a policy of non-interference. “Do not stop him.” A good deed done in the name of Christ cannot be used for evil.

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Last night when we got home from Kids Night Out at church the kids were noticing the stars and that got me started. Mars is out right now in the early evening (look east for a red steady looking ‘star’) This led us to my favourite constellation right next door: Orion the hunter. We looked at Betelgeuse, the top left shoulder of Orion which is a massive red giant about 640 light years away. It is so large that if it were placed where our sun is it would envelope the orbits of the first five planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter)!

Everything I know, and have ever seen rotates in an orbit that would drop into this star without even noticing. And then there are other stars in our galaxy that make Betelgeuse look like a runt. We could go on and on with this idea so I’ll stop there.

Betelgeuse is nearing the end of its life. Anytime time in the next few thousand years it will lack the density to hold it’s mammoth surface up and collapse in on itself triggering a colossal supernova, and leaving behind a tiny neutron star smaller than our moon but so dense that a teaspoon of it would weigh hundreds of tons! I could go on with this idea too. (It may have already happened!)

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In Mark 12 a woman is noticed by Jesus putting two small copper coins into the treasury. These coins are called a lepton and represent the smallest denomination of currency possible (like throwing in one cent). Jesus says that she has put more into this treasury than all the heavy hitters who have paraded by dropping in their big donations.

“They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”

Mark 12: 43

The way this text is traditionally preached in churches is, ‘Look at that good old lady. She was trusting in God and gave even though she had nothing left. You should be like the little old lady.’ The problem is that if you look at the context, Mark seems to think that there is more going on here than just that. Jesus warns against the teachings of the Pharisees in v. 38 – 40 saying, “They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely.”

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The claims of the Bible are not actually exclusive at all! Anyone who trusts in Christ alone can be saved! The offer of salvation is open to all, but not open for redefinition. In this time of nativity scenes and plastic icons, here are three verses about Jesus that seem to get missed as we celebrate His birth:

1. Col 1: 19 “… in Him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell…”

The thought that the fullness of the Creator that made the Grand Canyon was contained completely in the form of a homeless urchin, lying in a feed trough absolutely blows my mind. We often revel in the humble form of Jesus but the reciprocal statement is also true: How profound is it that this humble baby was, at the same time, in full form, lacking nothing, God Almighty in the flesh. Jesus was that humble but at the same time he was that Majestic! Col. 1: 19 reminds me of Jesus’ undiminished holiness.

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This picture completely blows you away if you just give it a little thought. Virtually every speck in this picture is a galaxy. Click on it to get a high resolution image and see. An average size galaxy has 150-200 billion stars. How many is that? Consider the following:

There are approx. 5 000 Cheerios in a 575g box. How do I know this? Thank OCD and the Internet. Sobey’s in Beamsville has 38 boxes on the shelf tonight but imagine if every shelf on every aisle in the store had only Cheerios. Sobey’s in Beamsville would have just less than 50 000 boxes of Cheerios. (24 aisles x 5 shelves x approx. 12 boxes deep x approx. 32 boxes wide) So one Sobey’s has 250 million Cheerios. (5 000 Cheerios per box x 50 000 boxes = 250 000 000 Cheerios)

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