Pond dwellers swimming in a cold mountain stream, for a time.
It must be the preacher in me. So often things in nature, in life, in movies or a show, reach out to me with the Truth of God’s Word. At church, before the sermon, someone may put something in ‘The Mystery Bag” and I am challenged to preach a 4 or 5 minute impromptu sermonette to the children about whatever it is I may find there. The kids seem to love it. The principle is that since God is the Creator, everything created must tell His story. I find that is true in all of life.
This spring there was a high water occurrence do to heavy spring rains. We have been blessed with a small creek in the back yard, running down the middle of the property , normally home to striped minnows, crayfish, and the occasional frog. This spring the high water brought some unexpected guests. From the pond at the top of the hill came some Bluegills. Some of you may know them as blue-gilled Sunfish, or bream. They had been swept down stream, over a 12 foot waterfall past the rocks and downed trees, and ended up in a small dammed area in the back yard.
Blue gills are not native stream dwellers. They live naturally in ponds and lakes, where the water is warmer and still. They are not streamlined like trout, which are designed by the Creator to cut through currents and live in cold moving water. Their color helps them to blend with the weeds and grass of a shoreline, but betrays them in a free stone stream. If my wife and I did not feed them they would never survive, and if we did not protect them the Great White Herons would have had a wonderful meal. I’ll not soon forget the image of a 3 to 4 foot high bird in a larch tree giving my wife dirty bird looks, as she scolded it for trying to get its lunch at stately Willohroots Manor. They have grown on their diet of bread and scrambled eggs. I guess we could eat them, or ignore them and let the high water or ice take them to their doom, but they have given us much pleasure this year, as we have enjoyed watching them through crystal clear water as they fed and swam around. Abandoning them now would be very out of character for Dawn and I. This weekend we are going to scoop them up and give them a car ride back to the pond where they belong, so that they can live with their fellow pond-dwellers in safety and security, safe from the ravages of winter.
Do you see the sermon in this yet?
This world is not our home. It is a cold place where we are buffeted with the currents of the stream of things far beyond our control. We are for a time in a damned place, damned by our disobedience to to merciful God, living in a place where the adversary prowls like a roaring lion waiting to devour us, where ravenous birds of the air prey upon the seeds of the Gospel that have no firm root in good soil.
Were it not for the protection and provision of a kind and loving Creator we would perish. This Creator so loved us that He walked among us, being for a time, a little fish in a great pond, not choosing to rule, but to teach and guide us to repentance and love. We have grown, even in this hostile environment, by his provision, and he who has started a good work in us would never abandon us to the flood and the chilling cold of a time when His warming love is absent from the stream of history. We hope we have given him pleasure with the sacrifice of our Worship, and our feeble attempts to imitate Him. He has promised to gather us up, all of us, the living and the dead, and take us to a place of warmth and eternal provision, where we can be with others of our kind in a place protected from all assault and deprivation. He will not do this because of what we have done, but because that is His Nature, and His promises are sure.
Somehow that fish symbol means a bit more to me today.
He will gather us up , the whole school!
Filed under: Crazed Thought, Uncategorized | Tags: banned, Crazy Christians, Jesus, nut bag, UK
One of 22 banned from entry to United Kingdom
On more than one occasion Fred Phelp’s behavior has caused me to wish Baptists had a Bishop in the hierarchy, or at least a hierarchy. Baptists love and support the independence of the local church, so there is no one who has the authority to defrock the disguisting, or remove the tinfoil hat wearing idiot as long as there is some sort of group willing to gather in front of the pulpit.
Fred is the guy with the “God Hates Fags” signs. He is the guy that takes a crowd of like-minded [? mind?] folk to protest at the funerals of soldiers who died in service to our country. He is the guy some folk think of when you say,”Baptist”. Fred founded the Westboro Baptist Church where I am told a bunch of his relatives and a few odd ducks manage to miss the whole point of the greatest teacher of love the universe has ever seen.
So the United Kingdom bans this guy, his daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper, a hamas terrorist , and nineteen others from entry. Here it is fron The National Post>>
Britain has blacklisted 22 people from entering the country, accusing them of fomenting hatred, glorifying terrorism or being capable of inciting ethnic violence in the country.
A list of 16 of the people was published yesterday to “name and shame” them, according to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.
The list included U. S. conservative talk-radio host Michael Weiner — also known as Michael Savage–Fred Phelps, a U. S. anti-gay activist, Hamas lawmaker Yunis Al-Astal, Jewish extremist Mike Guzovsky, former Ku Klux Klan leader Stephen Donald Black, neo-Nazi Erich Gliebe, and several Islamic preachers.
The frustrating part of the story is that Fred gets international publicity. Isn’t that the way it goes? Some guy like Jeofurry who preaches his heart out and works for flood victims, and spreads the love of the Gospel will be known by a few of us, Fred gets mega multi- media press. Where is the Baptist Pope when you need him!? Can the name Baptist be copyrighted so there is a brand name recognition issue? If you were trying to pass kookie-cola off as Pepsi a team of lawyers would have your lunch and the brown bag it came in. Mr. Phelps can use the name baptist and we have no recourse , and don’t get me started on that title Reverend that he uses.
Fred will not land at Heathrow
Free speech is to be supported. Mr. Phelps is entitled to every wacko thought in his head, and to open up his mouth to speak such drivel. My issue is that to use the name of the historically most tolerant religious denomination as he does, to speak for my Lord Jesus as he claims to , and to call yourself a minister of God as you are the world’s worst witness of His Love, does damage to the Kingdom that surely makes the devil smile. Those of us who claim to speak for God as prophets, or speak the Word of God need to tremble in fear that not only what we say, but the way we say it, is pleasing in His sight . There are far more glorious places than England to be banned from.
