day no. 17,444: did Adam bring about death or did death bring about Adam?

“There is also a deep theological problem with the view that death antedated mankind. The Bible teaches that Adam produced death. The opposing view has to say that in some manner death produced Adam.” — Douglas Wilson, Concise and to the Point

Darwinian evolution assumes that death is not an enemy, but a friend, who helped God produce people, but that also presupposes that death came before the Fall. We are told that the Fall of Adam led to the introduction of death for all men and the world around him. Even the ground and that which grew out of it was changed as a result of Adam's sin. As Pastor Wilson points out, either Adam's sin lead to death as the Bible says or many deaths led up to Adam as Darwinian evolution says. Death is either an enemy to be defeated or it is a savior to be praised. Death either delivers man into the presence of God or it delivers man out of nonexistence. It either takes him out of this world or it brought him into it. That is the chasm between the Biblical creation account of the world and what followed versus the atheistic, Darwinian account of existence and what follows.

day no. 16,920: making a mess

Genesis 1:31

And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

The creation of the world was not the downgrade of the cosmos. Creating matter didn’t ruin the perfect immaterial ether anymore than Jesus was ruined by becoming fully man. Making something doesn't always make a mess of something else.

John 1:1, 14

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…  and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The stuff did not ruin the spiritual. The material did not tarnish the meta. Grace and truth are not worse for having been embodied. They are not pure as concepts, but compromised as actions. They are pristine in the packaging and devalued by being played with. Love is not worse for being displayed. Holiness is no less high for bending down low.

2 Corinthians 5:21

For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

Jesus became a man in a crib. This was not a sin.

He became sin on a cross. This saved us from ours.

day no. 16,819: recreative acts

Exodus 12:1-2

The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you."

The Exodus of Israel was a recreative act. It remade the world. Time itself was reorganized as a result. The history of the world was now going to be set to Exodus Standard Time with the Passover being the new linchpin of all history. Anything before was now measured by how long it occurred prior to the Exodus and how it advanced the narrative to that point. Everything that came after was now referred to by how long afterwards it took place and how it was influenced by it. The world was now B.E. and A.E. (before Exodus and After Egypt).

The import of the Passover required a new calendar. Time bent and bowed to the gravity of this event so that history pointed ahead to it and the future referenced back to it. The Exodus constituted a new orientation and consummation of all time, establishing a new arche and reference point. In modern parlance, the Passover was "A Great Reset."

This event then set precedence and established the example of God in defining His world by punctuated points of divine interference. Only a new world could justify a new calendar and the Exodus redefined the world. This recreation was its new reference point.

That is until Christ entered the chat.

The Resurrection is the ultimate reset. It not only began a new month or year, but a new creation all together, so much so, that the Lord’s Day is now the Sabbath. To put it in perspective, Easter morning is so potent it eclipsed the Exodus. It surpassed it in glory and fulfilled it in substance of which it was only a shadow. And that is saying something considering how earth shattering and time altering the Exodus was. The resurrection of Christ does not diminish the import of the Exodus; the import of the Exodus highlights the reach of the Resurrection. A new world and new times require a new reference point.

Easter is the end of the world.

The Resurrection supersedes the Passover as the event upon which all times before are by  it consumed and all times going ahead are defined by it. It is the standard by which everything is measured and the reference point from which all progress is established. Easter brought the former things to an end and in its Resurrection established the end to which all things now advance.

Isaiah 9:7

Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.

When Christ came out of the grave, He pulled a new world through with Him. B.C. and A.D. are the final statement on all time and history. Every event before and since is in reference to the Resurrection and the entire future is being determined by it.

Habakkuk 2:14

For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.

day no. 16,813: current events are conceived by origin stories and eschatologies

"We deny that there can be any true Christian impact on culture if there is not absolute faith in what God teaches in His Word about human origins. This is because the progress for which we labor is a species of sanctification, not a form of evolution." — New Saints Andrews College, Thirty Theses on Culture Building

Current events are shaped by competing origin stories and eschatologies. They are conceived by what is believed about where we came from and where we should be going.

Sanctification presupposes both the Edenic perfection and the Fall into sin as well as justification and ultimate glorification of those in Christ. Where you think we came from and where you think we should go will determine what you try to promote and what you seek to penalize.

If you imagine we are the product of millions of years of chance happening and headed toward a future utopia built by human merit, it will come out your fingertips here and now. It will season the words that cross your lips and color the cares that cross your mind.

"We affirm that genuine cultural engagement is a long term inter-generational endeavor, and requires those who participate in it to do it with an intelligent grasp of eschatology. Cultural endeavors that are not supported by an eschatological vision either will be drudgery, trying to eke out a living, or will be characterized by an attempt to get excitement from somewhere, which will usually be the kind of excitement that comes from the latest and hot new thing." — New Saints Andrews College, Thirty Theses on Culture Building

If you are not anchored in an ultimate telos, you will be subject to the whims of contemporary froth and bubble. Eschatology keeps a man from fads and keeps his head down in his labors with a legacy to fuel him rather than the fanfare of his contemporaries.

"We deny that an optimistic eschatological expectation requires us to adopt false optimism of the kind promulgated by the left wing of postmillennialism, whether of the social gospel sort of a century ago or the social justice nostrums that are being peddled now. Neither should we fall into the trap of an over-realized eschatology. We believe that our labors in the Lord are not in vain (1 Cor. 15:58), but at the same time we understand ourselves to be playing the long game. It may well be that future generations will consider us to have been part of the early church. The yeast expands slowly. The mustard seed grows into a plant slowly." — New Saints Andrews College, Thirty Theses on Culture Building

We don't work hard because failure is impossible, but because good work is hard. We labor with the promises of the Lord in our hearts and the perseverance of His saints as our example. We endure difficulty for the sake of the joy set before us. That joy is guaranteed. The path there is sometimes a steep ascent and other times a dramatic plunge, but it always advances up that mountain of God.

"We seek to educate future cultural leaders, which means we are equipping them for that role, which is not the same thing as determining the will of God for their lives. If an individual graduate is led by the Spirit of God to labor in an obscure corner, the last day will reveal the cups of cold water that he gave to others in the name of Christ, and we do not in any way consider that a failure of our mission. It is, rather, a striking success. At the same time, if after graduating scores of cultural leaders, no culture actually gets led or shaped in biblical directions, we might want to consider changing our mission statement." — New Saints Andrews College, Thirty Theses on Culture Building

Christendom comes through homes where men and women married in the Lord raise their children in the Lord. That home will be productive and will export its goods to the its neighborhoods, cities, etc... Culture will be shaped and nations will be taught the commands of Christ. If Christ is Lord between your ears, that will come out your mouth and through your fingertips. If Christ is Lord of your home, it will exit your doors and pour out your windows. Where Christ is Lord, He is Lord of all and anywhere He is held in high esteem, He goes with those, wherever they may go.

Matthew 28:18-20

And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen."

We do not merely go, we therefore go. We go because all authority in heaven and earth belong to Christ. He is our God and we are His people. We go knowing His kingdom will come and His will will be done. We go knowing He goes with us. We go knowing He is where we are going. We go because He sent us. The beginning and the end is always Jesus. World without end. Amen.

day no. 16,800: simago dei

Genesis 1:26-28

And God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."

Man is made in the image of God (imago Dei). 

He now, however, imagines himself to be a god of his own design and makes machines in what he imagines to be his own image (simago dei).

Artificial Intelligence is a simago dei. It is the imagined excellent of man created to bear witness to his glory.

But man is radically corrupt and his best achievements are not without some sin or error somewhere. A.I. then bears witness to the folly of Babel. It is our best foot forward and yet so insignificant that Christ would have to stoop just to see it underneath His footstool.

day no. 16,799: nothing is impossible

Genesis 1:1-2

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Nothing is impossible with God.

He can do anything.

In the beginning there was God and nothing else.

Once He made something, however, it became impossible for nothing to ever exist again.

Nothing is now an impossibility.

Nothing can no longer exist.

Gnosticism was never possible.

Before God made anything, He was perfectly content. So, during the only period of time where it was even possible to prefer the spiritual to the material, the spiritual God was perfectly happy without it, but not, as evidenced by creation, committed in principle to preferring its absence. In fact, its creation dispels the idea of the material being the problem. For God looked upon the material world He had made and said, "Very good!"

Everything is now becoming something and sooner or later it's going to get there. But it can never go back to being nothing. It must conform to Christ or be condemned by Him, but there is no way to avoid Him.

In the beginning, God put an end to the nothing.

Genesis 1:1-3

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

That which was without form and void was powerless against the form and substance of Christ. Once God initiated the material world, a spiritual snobbery became possible, but not capable of eradicating the material.

Luke 1:37

For with God nothing shall be impossible.

God could undo everything, but it would then be a "used to be," not a "never was."

day no. 16,788: recreation

I recently listened to "Ode to Sea Monsters and Such" by Gregg Strawbridge on Canon+ and learned some new concepts.

First, I learned that Psalm 104 is structurally based on the Genesis 1 creation account. It follows the same pattern of light (vs. 1-4), air/sea (vs. 5-13), land (vs. 14-18), constellations (vs. 19-23), birds/fish (vs. 24-30), land animals and man (vs. 31-35).

Secondly, I learned that the creation account itself follows a pattern:

Day 1 - light            

Day 2 - air/sea       

Day 3 - land            

Day 4 - light dwellers

Day 5 - air/sea dwellers

Day 6 - land dwellers

As you can see:

Day 1 pairs with Day 4

Day 2 pairs with Day 5

Day 3 pairs with Day 6

In this way, Days 4-6 are a repeat of Days 1-3, where the creatures that inhabit the respective realms are created in the same order as their respective kingdoms were during the first three days of creation. The kingdom of the heavens, the kingdoms of the air and the sea, and the kingdom of land are made by God and then filled in the same order with creatures to rule them: sun, moon, and stars rule the heavens; birds rule the air; sea monsters rule the waters; beasts rule the land; and man rules them all. The man's throne is on dry land and foreshadows in Messianic type the Son of Man who becoming flesh would rule the world from the land on which He walked (when He wasn't walking on water). Everything is defined by its relation to His feet. The world is Christ's footstool and all authority in heaven and on earth are His. All things are under His toes.

Additionally, there is a chiastic component to the bookends of Day 0 being God and nothing else and Day 7 being God and everything else. In the beginning there was only God and in the end there is God and everything else.

Day 0 - nothing but God

Day 7 - everything and God

There is a distinction between God and His creation. He is not a created thing and not part of the created world. Prior to creation, it was just Him. After creation, it was uncreated Him and crated everything else. He is not a zero sum entity. He is not less because creation came from Him. He is not God minus what He gave to make everything else. He is uncreated. Creation is not divine in se. It is divinely created, but it remains distinct in its creatureliness just as God remains distinct in His divinity. Man alone is the image of God and that because God took special care to impose that distinction upon him alone. The dirt is not made in the image of God, but the man made from the dirt is. That dirt made by God's Word and animated by His Spirit.

On Day 0, there was only the immaterial. God is spirit (Jn. 4:24). On Day 7, there is still the immaterial, but now there is a material world distinct and apart from it.  The material world was created by God upon completion He rested from His creative endeavor. All creation is completed by the end of Day 6. Since then, all creativity has been a matter or manipulating existing material, not the creation of new material.

day no. 16,564: nothing and matters

Hebrews 11:3

Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

Everything we see is made up of things we don't. Every single thing is made out of nothing. God made the world and everything in it out of nothing. Nothing possesses life or existence in itself other than God. Only He is essential. He holds all things together. Nothing needs nothing except Him. He wants for nothing. He is inexhaustible and indefatigable. He does not tire or wear out. He causes all chemical breakdown. He is the Author of every atom. He is the Shepherd of every flock of particles.

The air is made of molecules we can walk through; chairs of ones we can’t. Some nothing can be breathed while others bang against our skulls. Some nothings bruise our shins while others absorb through our skin. Some nothings taste better than others and some are tasteless and poisonous. Some nothings disintegrate under water while others lick up water with light rays from millions of miles away.

God is the Author of a magical world where none do everything, most do something, some do anything, and all are made of nothing. All the matter is made of nothing. In other words, nothing really matters, but only because God really does.

day no. 15,945: one of the last bastions

"I do not believe that God created an egalitarian world. I believe the authority of parent over child, husband over wife, learned over simple, to have been as much a part of the original plan as the authority of man over beast. I believe that if we had not fallen Filmer would be right, and patriarchal monarchy would be the sole lawful government." -- C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, Membership

Hierarchy is not inherently sinful. It is not an accident of the Fall, but the essence of Creation. Authority is not a consequence of rebellion, but a precondition of reflection. The creation bears the marks of its Creator and none more than the one created in His own image, man. In other words, patriarchy is not a bug of an imperfect system, but one of the last bastions of the perfect one.

day no. 15,802: better ignorance

“'I see it well,' said Ransom. 'Though in my world it would pass for folly. We have been evil so long' and then he stopped, doubtful of being understood and surprised that he’d used a word for evil which he had not hitherto known that he knew, and which he had not heard either in Mars or in Venus."

“'We know these things now,' said the King, seeing Ransom’s hesitation. 'All this, all that happened in your world, Maleldil has put into our mind. We have learned of evil, though not as the Evil One wished us to learn. We have learned better than that, and know it more, for it is waking that understands sleep and not sleep that understands waking. There is an ignorance of evil that comes from being young: there is a darker ignorance that comes from doing it, as men by sleeping lose the knowledge of sleep... Maleldil has brought us out of the one ignorance, and we have not entered the other. It was by the Evil One himself that he brought us out of the first. Little did that dark mind know the errand on which he really came to Perelandra!'” -- C.S. Lewis, Perelandra

Adam and Eve were born ignorant of evil. They partook of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and became a deeper kind of ignorant. Before they were naive, afterward they were numb. The knowledge of good and evil had been for them like a language they didn't speak, but afterward it become like a language they'd forgotten. You can be ignorant to the intoxicating effects of alcohol through tee-totaling or through drunkenness, either will suffice. Whether your lips have never had a sip or you've have too much to sip, your lips cannot add an intelligible word to the discussion. The abstinent and the indulgent share the same ignorance. Neither one is capable of describing intoxication, albeit for different reasons. The sober, however, can be made to understand drunkenness. There is more hope for the clear-headed to comprehend than for the drunk. The good man, in the end, understands good and evil better than the wicked. It is not that the good understands goodness and the evil understands evil. The good understands both better than the evil understands anything for there is a knowledge of evil that is lost by participating in it.

The ignorance of evil, then, is not eradicated by experience, but obedience.

Adam and Eve were born ignorant and never gained knowledge. They did not, as promised by the serpent, become wise to good and evil by breaking God's good rule. They learned something, but it wasn't something good; and it didn't make them wiser. It taught them a deeper ignorance than they had previously known. It educated them in sin, which is not an advance in knowledge, but a corruption. Had they but held out, they would have perhaps, like Tor and Tinidril in Lewis' Perelandra, gained a knowledge better and wiser than ignorant innocence and better than experienced indulgence.

day no. 15,712: 8 out of every 24 and 1 out of every 7

"God planned for normal fatigue when He put the lights out on earth every night. He also set one day aside out of every seven for additional rest." -- Jim Wilson, Weapon and Tactics: A Handbook on Personal Evangelism

Rest is so important to God that He hard-wired it into the regular rhythm of our lives: our days are punctuated by laying ourselves down to rest and our weeks are predicated upon an entire day of rest. We rest seven to eight hours a day and one full day out of seven.

Rest is a rhythm given to us by God to teach us how much we need Him, how much we rely on Him, and how quickly we deplete whatever resources we have. We cannot hoard strength. We must use it daily and be refreshed nightly. We must spend it weekly and recover it on the Sabbath. We were meant to be spent and we were meant to seek rest.

Rest is not doing nothing, it is doing something. It is not simply passive, it is active. Rest is not something you reluctantly do once everything else is done. It is something you do on purpose in order to prepare to do other things.

Rest is intentional care that prepares us for our day's and week's worth of good works that God has prepared for us beforehand to do in Christ. We are His workmanship, created to work by a Worker who gives us the night to recharge and the Sabbath to refresh.

So, get some rest; and get to work!

day no. 15,671: ungardened

Genesis 3:16-20
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

God made man from the dust of the garden. He breathed His Spirit into the dust He had formed and it became a living being. God then made woman from the side of the man. He removed his rib and formed it into a woman. In the woman, He planted a garden. So when He led her to the first man, He was presenting the man with a fruit of the garden that had in itself another garden. The man was made from garden and so the woman was made from man who was made of garden, but in her He planted another garden.

As a result of sin, all the gardens of earth were cursed. All the gardens were ungardened.

The garden inside the woman would now be full of the thorns and thistles of labor and delivery. The sorrow and pain of bringing forth fruit from her garden would be multiplied. Making and multiplying disciples would now be a much more painful endeavor. 

The garden itself would now be full of thorns and thistles. The ground would not gladly give up its yield without producing prickly reminders of what went wrong in refusing to walk in covenant faith and obedience with God. The ground was cursed and the garden suffered.

The garden that was animated man would now sweat and toil and labor with great exhaustion to bring forth fruit from the soil. He was Spirit-powered garden and his land was now cursed and would respond to his poor leadership with poor followship. And the garden of life where abundance was created by God would now end in death. Where fruit and life and vigor and joy and glory once grew, death and evaporation and sin would fight for real estate. Weeds would now crowd out the wheat where it could.

day no. 15,648: morality is a daring conspiracy

A friend of mine asked me to read over Chesterton's A Defense of Detective Stories paying particular attention to the final paragraph. A friend of his had sent him a snippet from this implying that Chesterton was opposed to morality and that social justice could cure temptation to sin.

"There is, however, another good work that is done by detective stories. While it is the constant tendency of the Old Adam to rebel against so universal and automatic a thing as civilization, to preach departure and rebellion, the romance of police activity keeps in some sense before the mind the fact that civilization itself is the most sensational of departures and the most romantic of rebellions. By dealing with the unsleeping sentinels who guard the outposts of society, it tends to remind us that we live in an armed camp, making war with a chaotic world, and that the criminals, the children of chaos, are nothing but the traitors within our gates. When the detective in a police romance stands alone, and somewhat fatuously fearless amid the knives and fists of a thieves’ kitchen, it does certainly serve to make us remember that it is the agent of social justice who is the original and poetic figure; while the burglars and footpads are merely placid old cosmic conservatives, happy in the immemorial respectability of apes and wolves. The romance of the police force is thus the whole romance of man. It is based on the fact that morality is the most dark and daring of conspiracies. It reminds us that the whole noiseless and unnoticeable police management by which we are ruled and protected is only a successful knight-errantry.
 -- G.K. Chesterton, A Defence of Detective Stories

Here was my response:

I think Chesterton is saying the opposite of what your friend wants him to be saying in his "defense of detective stories" essay. From what I can tell, and taking into account what I've read in Chesterton's other writings, I believe he is turning things on their heads (in typical Chesteronian fashion) to make a larger point. He is employing the terms in the opposite way we're accustomed to them being used. In other words, he's saying that we think of the world as "moral" and the outlaws as "immoral," so criminals are the "abnormal" and police forces the enforcers of "normal." But he's saying the world since the Fall of Adam is in actuality predicated on sin and immorality as "normal." Thus, criminals are the "norm." No sin has overtaken them which is not common to all men (1 Cor 10:13), and so the police officer is the "rebel," the "outlier," the one imposing this foreign thing called order and reason and morality. He is picturing the detective as the renegade because morality is abnormal in our world where sin and darkness are the norm. Morality is a conspiracy to overtake the immoral ruling elite. Law and order are a plot to assassinate the presiding darkness which casts itself in certain lights as the enlightened.

In other words, morality (in this scenario the detective/police) is the conspiracy against the immoral ruling elites. We experience the detective story confused and in the dark; we sit back in awe of the criminal who pulled it off, but the detective knows something we don't and proves to be wiser than either the criminal's or our own ideas of reality.

day no. 15,643: very good

"Here finish'd Hee, and all that He had made view'd, and behold all was entirely good.” -- John Milton, Paradise Lost

Genesis 1:31
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.

Each and every single thing that God made was and is good and the sum total of all that He made was and is very good. In that good world there was a tree whose fruit was deadly, yet it was good for that tree to exist. And not merely good, but very good. God defines goodness. We may very well ask, "How could it be good to even have a tree like that around?" because by our definition of good, God would have some explaining to do. But if we begin by assuming that God controls the definitions, then this world containing that tree is very good because He said so. There are, of course, details to be worked out in response to this fact, but the fact of it simultaneously being there and being very good cannot be questioned. It must be believed.

Hebrews 11:3

By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

day no. 15,613: bet they didn't do the foundation like that

Hebrews 11:3

Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

Everything, strictly speaking, is made out of nothing. In the beginning, there was God and nothing else. And out of nothing (ex nihilo), God made everything. So underneath everything is nothing. Nothing possesses existence in itself. It is held together and continually upheld by the power of the Word of God.

Hebrews 1:1-3

God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power.

I recently heard Doug Wilson retell an anecdote regarding a visiting professor who was being driven around a campus where he was to speak, and in the course of the tour they went by the art museum. This museum was designed as an attempt to match the same kind of nihilism that they would hang on the walls inside — doors that didn’t open, staircases that didn’t reach the top, columns that didn’t go all the way. The visiting professor made a comment that went right to the heart of matter when he said, “I’ll bet they didn’t do the foundation like that.”

Firm foundations provide the opportunity to build sturdy structures or playful absurdities. But the chaos requires a consistent base if it wants to throw shade at consistency. The only way to be free to be haphazard is if someone else submits themselves to securing the cornerstone. 

Freedom of speech is not a value obtained by neutrality. It is built upon the bedrock of Christian dignity. You cannot have a world where people are free to say whatever they want by elevating a religion of believing whatever you want. Advocates of this version of universalism are notoriously intolerant of concrete statements of faith. Freedom of speech turns out in their economy only to be the freedom of certain speeches. Those taking advantage of their freedom to speak now do not realize that they have been afforded this privilege as a product of the Christian faith. The Christian bedrock makes the chaos possible. A world founded in chaos cannot have freedom from anything because it cannot stand on anything. A world built on mist is like a world that does not exist.

As we continue to attempt to recreate the world in our own image we are gradually spending the last few cents of our Christian inheritance still left in the bank. In violating the first commandment by seeking another God, we have naturally moved on to violating the second commandment by seeking to build a world better to our liking, one that better reflects our image and values. And this kind of thing cannot go on forever. And things that can't go on forever... won't. Insanity, as it turns out, doesn't work in the long run.

day no. 15,611: He leads me by still waters

Silence, ye troubl'd waves, and thou Deep, peace,
Said then th' Omnific Word, your discord end
-- John Milton, Paradise Lost

God in the beginning silenced the troubled waters over which His Spirit hovered. He spoke into their liquid discord and brought order into chaos.

Genesis 1:1-3
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

We know that this Word of God that spoke Light into the darkness was the second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God, Jesus pre-incarnate.

John 1:1-5
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

So when in the days of His flesh He found Himself again in the presence of stormy waters, He recalled His previous word and put an end to its tumult.

Matthew 8:26, Mark 4:39, Luke 8:24
(Jesus) got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.

The disciples despaired when they considered what kind of man they might be sharing a boat ride with. But they would have despaired even more if they had realized that this wasn't the first time this one had silenced the raging seas. This reality would have answered their inquiry as to what kind of man this might be. What kind of man? The God-man who created the world they were currently floating upon.

day no. 15,446: because He said so

"The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal.There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man." 

-- G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America

Men are either equal because God said so or they are unequal because no one said anything.

day no. 15,425: just as Eve was taken from Adam's side, so the church was taken from Jesus'

"Just as Eve was taken from the side of Adam, so also the Church was born of water and blood, straight from the side of the Lord Jesus." -- Douglas Wilson, Bone of My Bones

John 19:34
But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.

The church was born from Jesus' side. Out of the blood and water that came from His side, God fashioned the church. Just as Eve owed her existence to Adam's rib, so the church owes it existence to Jesus' blood poured out of His rib cage.

John 20:27-28
Then (Jesus) said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see My hands; and put out your hand, and place it in My side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”

Thomas was invited to investigate the site from which the church was birthed and in coming face to face with it cast away all doubt and worshiped the risen Lord. Thomas in touching Jesus' side became part of the church that issued from it.

day no. 15,396: out of nothing... everything

Hebrews 11:3
By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

The doctrine of God's creation of the world is summarized in the phrase creatio ex nihilo, or creation out of nothing. In other words, out of nothing came everything. God did not build the universe out of pre-existing stuffs. Before the world, there were no stuffs. The very things the world is made of had to first be made. 

All that to say, strictly speaking, everything is made out of nothing.

2 Corinthians 4:18
We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

All that we see is made up of things which cannot be seen. There is an essence of things which cannot be observed under a microscope. Underneath the atoms and particles are the substances out of which those things are made... which is nothing.

Hebrews 1:3a
(Jesus) is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power.

Everything is made out of nothing. Adam was made from the dust, which came from the earth, which was made by the Word of God. So in that sense, everything hangs on and comes from and continues on by the Word of God. If not for God's Word, there would still be absolutely nothing. So while in one sense, everything is made out of nothing, in another it is more precise even to say that everything is made out of God's Word.

Colossians 1:16-17
For by (Jesus) all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

God is everything. In Him are all things. Anything that is, came from Him. Without Him, there is nothing. Out of Him came everything.

John 1:1-3
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made.

day no. 15,385: the way, the truth and the life of the party

Psalm 16:11
You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

God is not an ol' fashioned fuddy, duddy, fun-hater. He is the life of the party. Quite literally. You may have seen the classic church billboard saying, "No Jesus, No peace, Know Jesus, Know Peace." That is true, but it is also true enough to say, "No Jesus. No party. Know Jesus. Know Party!" 

The path of life leads back to God.
The presence of His person is fullness of joy. (Acts 3:19)
The place at His right hand overflows with everlasting pleasures.

And who sits at God's right hand? 
Jesus.

(Matthew 22:44, Acts 2:33, Acts 7:55-56, Romans 8:34, Ephesians 1:20, Colossians 3:1, Hebrews 1:3, Hebrews 8:1, Hebrews 10:12, 1 Peter 3:22, Revelation 3:21)

Jesus is the life of the party in whom all things were created and all things are sustained. He gives life and sustains life and the life He produces and upholds is abundant, vibrant, enjoyable to everlasting.

Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life of the party.