We had a very nice family time - we didn't do much (we played Life and Apples to Apples and Phase 10).  We had a wonderful dinner and gave (and opened) the last of our Christmas gifts (yes, it's odd but it works for us).

Yesterday I set off on a little walk (how difficult can it be to walk around the block).  There are no blocks, just twisty-turny streets that go off in odd directions.  I was on the phone while I walked (the weather was turning cold at this point) and when I reached Dundee Street (or Ave) I asked Phil to please google map the home address so I could figure out how to get back...

He said, "uh...you have well over a mile to get back"  So I walked back (the whole walk was over 6,000 steps, or estimate around 3 miles).  I earned the wedding cake cookie.

And the dinner...when my in-laws were alive and still in ministry, they enjoyed this restaurant.  They serve a one-pound pork chop and Judy has the recipe; it's wonderful. (the chops are cut to 2" thick - click on "history" and you can download it)

We expected nasty weather so we left early in the day and the roads were clear and dry - all in all, we were very blessed.

a quick trip to Chicago (complete with absolutely blowing the diet - I'm planning on it)

We're getting together with my husband's sisters - who are very, very good to us.  I cannot tell you all how much I appreciate the love and acceptance that flows from these two women.

This is a repost of a "page" that I'm making into a "post"

I ended up reading it a couple of times, front to back. It would have been easy to simply look for the time period that I needed and stick the book on a shelf - but it's a better book than that.

The book begins:

Christianity is the only major religion to have as its central event the humiliation of its God.

Shelly truly does start at the beginning - before the birth of Christ, describing Palestine in that time period, and then covering Christ's ministry on earth.

My class spent a lot of time on the "Holy Roman Empire" and I did learn a lot - both from the class, supported by this book. Especially interesting to me was the time spent on the "Age of the Reformation". Shelley doesn't shy away from writing about both the good points, the bad points or the excesses of all of the "major players".

The list of chapters:

1. The Age of Jesus and the Apostles
2. The Age of Catholic Christianity
3. The Age of the Christian Roman Empire
4. The Christian Middle Ages
5. The Age of the Reformation
6. The Age of Reason and Revival
7. The Age of Progess
8. The Age of Ideologies

From the back of the book:

In this new edition of the classic text, Shelley explores contemporary phenomena such as the Religious Right, mega-churches, and user-friendly worship services as well as some of the leading personalities behind these movements...

"Wherever you are spiritually
whatever you have been through emotionally,
you are already wrapped in the Lord's embrace.
Held close by nail-scarred hands."
~ Liz Curtis Higgs~

There was a time in my life when I felt battered by the world, abused by life. My father-in-law had heart problems, we knew, but was very stable. My mother-in-law had breast cancer, but with chemo and radiation was in remission. I was younger than my husband and we anticipated that in three years he (and I) would retire.

Within the space of a year, my husband was diagnosed with cancer, his father passed away in his sleep, his mother's cancer returned with a vengeance and killed her within two weeks. In the six months that follows that terrible year, my dad had a close call and major open heart surgery and only six weeks after that, my husband's own cancer took him away. All of that between November of 1990 and June of 2001.

And yet it was during that time that I felt more like a wife - a helpmeet - than I ever had before. I was wrapped in the arms of my Savior and my church family. My brother returned to the church after many years. My husband, for the first time, truly embraced God.

And even in that comfort, there was more. It was later that I grew to understand that God is truly in control. All of these things happened for a reason. Art was ready to die and there was a purpose in that. His mother always said that her prayer was that her husband die first, because she didn't really trust anybody else to take care of him. That prayer was answered. My grandmother once said that a parent should not have to watch their adult child die before they do. God granted that to my in-laws.

I said yesterday that I belong to a God who is in control of the universe. There is a purpose in everything He does, everythign that happens. Sometimes we don't or can't see that until long afterward. Sometimes we never see it. But the purpose is there.

What I know is: my savior holds my future, my life. I am held close.

When I hear
this song, it speak to my heart.
I've written about "Soli Christi" - Christ alone.
There is no other mediator, no other salvation,

No other name by which we can be saved.
strength and my shield, my song of songs.
The Cornerstone that cannot be moved,
my Solid Rock.

Lover of my soul, giver of peace.
In Him only there is peace.

Here, I stand.

There are few
humans more helpless than a newborn,
yet that's how He came to us - fully God and fully man.
Totally sinless, so that He could be the final and only
complete sacrifice to pay for His people's many, many sins -
their sin.

Oh...they hated Him and what He has to say. When you
have lived under a system where your salvation depends on
your following the rules, your sacrifices, your works, it
strikes at your pride to hear - Look upon me and live.
When He died, Christ paid. There is no condemnation for
those who are in Him.

Here, I live.

How His followers
must have felt. They had been so sure
that He was to rescue them. They didn't understand
what He was rescuing them from.

And the new day - the eighth day. Victory over the grave;
for all who believe in Him. I am not cursed. I am my Beloved's
and He is mine.

Here, I am bought and paid for.

Stem cells found in embryonic fluid.

Predectably - even though stem cells can be gotten this way, Dr. George Daley, a Harvard University stem cell researcher, said that finding raises the possibility that someday expectant parents can freeze amnio stem cells for future tissue replacement in a sick child without fear of immune rejection.Nonetheless, Daley said the discovery shouldn't be used as a replacement for human embryonic stem cell research (who began work last year to clone human embryos to produce stem cells), says that this is "not a substitute for human embryonic stem cells."

No, no...of course not.

goals for the week:  Saturday will be the "magic marker day" - we'll be in Chicago with my sister-in-laws.  Other than that, sticking to 25 points per day (with 30 flex points).  Also, walking 30,000 steps (which might be hard, because I have a new pedometer that sits on my belt wrong and I keep resetting it to "0").  And 10 miles of Walk Away the Pounds.

My daily eating will be posted (as usual) on my weight loss blog.

Last week was my first "perfect" weight watchers week.  Right on points, right on exercise.  I gained 1/2 pound.

So, today I had what I affectionately call a "magic marker" day - in my food journal I just take a magic marker and put an "X" through the day and move on tomorrow.

Believe it or not, it sort of shakes up my system and I start losing again...

anyway...the official number is:  today I weigh exactly 2.5 pounds less than I did on the first Saturday of December.

(This is cross-posted on "Laced with Grace"...

I'm writing on Friday night...today I had the pleasure of seeing and hearing N.T.Wright speak at Calvin College's "January Series". The topic was "Simply Christian", also one of his book titles.  He said that his goal with this book was to do for our century what C.S. Lewis did with "Mere Christianity".  Either the man is incredibly arrogant and he'll be found out...or he's incredibly good and will do just what he set out to do.  My guess is that he will do what he set out to do.

He reminded me of a lot of things.

1- All human beings are created in the image of God.

Even though, after the fall, that image is distorted and imperfect, the image is not entirely erased.  It is to these reflections of God that we are to live out the life of the Gospel.

2- Staring at the sun/staring at the Son.

Wright said, "The more you look at God, the more you should expect to be dazzled. Most of the time when I am working my little heart out, what I should be doing is looking at God - and letting Him dazzle me.

3- We live where heaven and earth meet.

In the Old Testament, God met His people in two places: in the Torah and in the Temple.  In the New Covenant, WE are the temple of the Holy Spirit.  God speaks to the world today through His Word and through his people.  For some, we will be the only "Bible" they ever meet.

4- We become like what we worship.

If we worship a stone idol, a bit of us dies as we take on the image of the stone.  If we worship before the TV, we take on the image of what it is showing us.

If we worship the One, True, Living God, we will become more like Him.

I want you all to ponder the last paragraph of the book:

Made for spirituality, we wallow in introspection.  Made for joy, we settle for pleasure.  Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance.  Made for relationship, we insist on our own way.  Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment.  But new creation has already begun.  The sun has begun to rise.  Christians are called to leave behind, in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and imompleteness of the present world.  It is time, in the power of the Spirit, to take up our proper role, our fully human role, as agents, heralds, and stewards of the new day that is dawning.  That, quite simply, is what it means to be Christian: to follow Jesus Christ into the new world.  God's new world, which He has thrown open before us.

When a Baby Dies, by Ronald Nash.

Baptismal Regeneration.

A number of denominations teach baptismal regeneration - Nash puts it like this:

According to this teaching, God uses the means of water baptism to produce the inward change in the human heart that theologians call regeneration. Children or adults who have not been baptized are not saved, they are not born again, and their sins are not forgiven. Water baptism is a necessary condition for the new birth.

If baptism is necessary for salvation, that leaves us with the obvious conclusion that there is no hope for the millions of babies (born and pre-born) that have died without being baptized over the centuries. So we need to look at the question of whether or not baptismal regeneration is taught in Scripture.

One of the things to keep in mind: when a Scripture passage can be read in two different ways, and one of those ways is in conflict with the rest of Scripture, then the interpretation that leads to the conflict must be discarded.

Read John 3:16,18,36.

Regeneration is a matter of the Holy Spirit and the heart of man.

John 3 is a passage that some use as a proof text for baptismal regeneration.

"I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit (...)"

Use of this passage assumes that

1. being "born of water" is identical to the baptism that Jesus would institute after His resurrection (Matt 28:19)
2. it is the baptism that produces regeneration.

Looking at the historical context of the encounter, we can ask, "what would Nicodemus have understood Jesus to be saying?"

1. Would he have understood Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist to be identical with "born of water?" (no, the New Testament is clear that the baptism of John is different than the Christian baptism - Acts 19)
2. Would Nicodemus have understood Jesus to be speaking of the Christian baptism? (no, that had not been instituded yet)

On the other hand...

Charles Hodge, (19th Century, Princeton Theological Seminary) argued that John 3:5 sets up an analogy between the way water cleanses the body and the way that the Holy Spirit cleanses the soul. In other Biblical passages, the sign and the thing signifiec are often united (Isa 35 and 55, Jer. 2:13, John 4:10). It is CHRIST that is the water, not baptism.

So we have two conflicting interpretation: 1) born of water = baptism 2) born of water = born of Christ.

The Bible never "waters down" the gospel of grace: we are not saved by anything we DO, our salvation is based on God's unmerited favor; grace. Regeneration comes about through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Since the passage never specifically refers to baptism let along baptismal regeneration, we can come to the conclusion that Nicodemus would not have understood "water" to be physical baptism and that "water" (as used here) can be understood as an analogy for the soul-cleansing work of the Holy Spirit.
Conclusion: the doctrine of baptismal regeneration is not the basis of hope for the families of babies who have died. It gives false hope to those who believe that they or their children are fit for heaven because of a ceremony that happened sometime in the past and it (of necessity) entails the belief that unbaptized infants are in hell because their parents did not participate in a sacramental ceremony of a church.