R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 93

Fear Not

While Jesus was still speaking, someone came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. “Your daughter is dead,” he said. “Don’t bother the teacher any more.”

Hearing this, Jesus said to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.”

When he arrived at the house of Jairus, he did not let anyone go in with him except Peter, John and James, and the child’s father and mother. Meanwhile, all the people were wailing and mourning for her. “Stop wailing,” Jesus said. “She is not dead but asleep.”

They laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. But he took her by the hand and said, “My child, get up!” Her spirit returned, and at once she stood up. Then Jesus told them to give her something to eat. Her parents were astonished, but he ordered them not to tell anyone what had happened. (Luke 8:49–56)

Because Jesus is with us, we don’t have to be afraid anymore. Luke repeats the story of Jairus the synagogue ruler, but as usual, puts his own unique spin on things. Writing to a non-Jewish audience, Luke does not bother to insert any of the Aramaic wording that appeared in Mark’s rendition. And when Jesus told Jairus not to be afraid, we discover from Luke that Jesus told Jairus why he didn’t need to be afraid: Jesus promised to heal his daughter.

Jairus had experience with sick people getting well. But when people were dead, it was too late. But Jesus brought something new into the world. As the prophet Isaiah said of Jesus, “by his wounds we are healed.” And what more profound illness do people face than the illness of death?

Why did Jesus tell Jairus to keep the miracle to himself? Because Jesus hadn’t done it for praise or fame. He’d done it out of compassion. And besides, we don’t get excited by the everyday miracles of life. On the first day manna appeared in the time of Moses, people saw it as a miracle. After thirty years of eating it every day, it was no more miraculous than a sunrise—which tells us something about our perception of sunrises. Jesus hoped that we would realize that as unusual as a dead girl coming back to life was, it was really no more special or difficult than the daily miracles of God that we take for granted.

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And as Jesus returned, the people welcomed Him, for they had all been waiting for Him. And there came a man named Jairus, and he was an official of the synagogue; and he fell at Jesus’ feet, and began to implore Him to come to his house; for he had an only daughter, about twelve years old, and she was dying. But as He went, the crowds were pressing against Him.

And a woman who had a hemorrhage for twelve years, and could not be healed by anyone, came up behind Him and touched the fringe of His cloak, and immediately her hemorrhage stopped.

And Jesus said, “Who is the one who touched Me?” And while they were all denying it, Peter said, “Master, the people are crowding and pressing in on You.”

But Jesus said, “Someone did touch Me, for I was aware that power had gone out of Me.”

When the woman saw that she had not escaped notice, she came trembling and fell down before Him, and declared in the presence of all the people the reason why she had touched Him, and how she had been immediately healed.

And He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.” (Luke 8:40–48)

Why do we always assume the worst? The unnamed woman with the hemorrhage appears in three of the four Gospel accounts. When Jesus asked who had touched him, how does the woman respond? With fear. This, despite the fact that the bleeding that had been afflicting her for twelve long years had stopped. She had received from Jesus just what she wanted.

So why was she afraid of Jesus? Because the default setting on human beings is distrust of God and his intentions. In the Garden of Eden, the serpent planted a foul lie in the mind of Eve, the mother of us all: that God did not have the best of intentions for her. She came to believe that God was withholding something wonderful: the fruit that he’d forbidden. Ever since, human beings believe that God’s intentions may not always be good. The woman feared that Jesus would take away the gift that she had snatched from him. She thought that perhaps he hadn’t really been willing to give her that healing and so now he’d take it away.

But God never takes away the gifts that he gives to his children. God’s gifts are irrevocable. Jesus reassured that woman, as he reassures us today, that we can go in peace. We need to always assume the best from God. We need to trust God’s character and good intentions.

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Undeserved

When he had concluded all His sayings in the hearing of the people, He entered Capernaum. A centurion’s slave, who was highly valued by him, was sick and about to die. When the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to Him, requesting Him to come and save the life of his slave. When they reached Jesus, they pleaded with Him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy for You to grant this, because he loves our nation and has built us a synagogue.” Jesus went with them, and when He was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to tell Him, “Lord, don’t trouble Yourself, since I am not worthy to have You come under my roof. That is why I didn’t even consider myself worthy to come to You. But say the word, and my servant will be cured. For I too am a man placed under authority, having soldiers under my command. I say to this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes; and to my slave, ‘Do this!’ and he does it.”

Jesus heard this and was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following Him, He said, “I tell you, I have not found so great a faith even in Israel!” When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good health. (Luke 7:1–10)

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. The Centurion didn’t feel deserving, but he asked anyway. In Luke’s presentation of the story of the Centurion with the sick slave, some elders encouraged Jesus to come to the Centurion based on what a good man he was.

Did Jesus go to heal the Centurion because he was a good man? No. Jesus didn’t heal people based on their goodness. It was only after he healed them that he told them to “sin no more.”

The Centurion told Jesus that a word from Jesus would be enough; Jesus didn’t even have to come to him. In Luke’s telling of the tale, Jesus doesn’t even announce the healing. Instead, we only get Jesus’ reaction to the Centurion’s great faith, followed by the news that the slave was, in fact, healed.

The Centurion didn’t believe himself worthy of Jesus’ presence. But Jesus marveled at his faith. The Centurion, though the builder of a synagogue, remained a Gentile. He had not converted to Judaism. The Centurion’s faith, and Jesus’ healing of his slave, demonstrated that the grace of God was available to the entire human race. The Messiah that was supposed to destroy the Romans healed the slave of a leader in their armed forces.

Jesus is far more than we think. Jesus reaches beyond where we think he would go. Or could go. Or should go. He is not bound by what binds us.

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I have several PDFs on my computer of various ebooks and other publications. I had been thinking about how nice it would be if I could put them on my Kindle, instead of reading them on my computer screen. Of course I knew I could simply hook up my Kindle to my computer with a USB cable, but then, that PDF or other file would be only on that one Kindle. I wouldn’t be able to read it on my phone or the Kindle App on my tablet unless I hooked those up to my computer with a USB cable and transferred them over individually. And even so, the versions on the different platforms would not automatically sync; I’d have to actually remember what page I was on if I happened to leave my Kindle at home and then wanted to read the same text on my phone.

Thankfully, Amazon has a very simple solution for this. It is their Send to Kindle App. As they describe it on their website: “Send Once, Read Everywhere.” All you have to do is download the App (it’s available for either the PC or the Mac), install it, and then you can very easily transfer PDFs, Word Documents, or ebook files to all your Kindles and Kindle Apps all at once. And best of all, it’s free!

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ESA’s Gaia Galaxy-Mapping Satellite

On December 19, 2013 at 09:12 UTC (1:12 AM PST), a Soyuz ST-B launched from the European Space Agency’s Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana carrying a spacecraft called Gaia. Its five year voyage will not seek out and find new civilizations–but it will boldly go where no man has gone before. Gaia is designed to create a three-dimensional map of our region of the Milky Way galaxy by carefully surveying one billion of its stars. While one billion stars sounds like a lot—and in fact is—it is no more than one percent, and probably less than one percent, of the 100 to 400 billion stars in our galaxy.

Gaia will take up a position at L-2, the Lagrange point 932,000 miles from Earth, on the far side of the moon. It should reach L-2 in about three weeks.

Source SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration

No Need for a Pole

While he was in one of the towns, a man was there who had a serious skin disease all over him. He saw Jesus, fell facedown, and begged Him: “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.”

Reaching out His hand, He touched him, saying, “I am willing; be made clean,” and immediately the disease left him. Then He ordered him to tell no one: “But go and show yourself to the priest, and offer what Moses prescribed for your cleansing as a testimony to them.”

But the news about Him spread even more, and large crowds would come together to hear Him and to be healed of their sicknesses. Yet He often withdrew to deserted places and prayed. On one of those days while He was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea, and also from Jerusalem. (Luke 5:12–17)

Sometimes we say “I wouldn’t touch that with a ten foot pole,” but Jesus never let poles come between him and the people who needed him. In India, those of the lowest class were called the “untouchables.” The upper classes would have nothing to do with them. In ancient Israel, lepers were the “untouchables.” People avoided them out of fear of becoming a leper themselves. To be a leper meant losing your friends, your family, and everything that mattered to you. You were, for all practical purposes, dead.

But when an unnamed leper begged Jesus for healing, Jesus wasn’t afraid. Jesus touched him. And he touched him while he was still a leper. He reached out to a man that no one would reach out to. He reached out to him where he was, as he was. And then, after he reached out to him, he healed him of his affliction.

As was so common, Jesus told the man to tell no one what had happened, but to simply follow the law of Moses which prescribed how a leper, who had been healed, could have that healing certified by the religious leaders. Once his healing was certified, he could rejoin the society from which he’d been excluded. He could have his life back.

Jesus is not afraid to touch us, no matter who we are or how worthy we may think we are of being forever excluded. Jesus was willing to touch the untouchable. No matter how big a mess we think we’ve made of our lives, Jesus is always ready to reach out to help us clean it up.

Forgiveness

When evening came, they would go out of the city. As they were passing by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots up. Being reminded, Peter said to Him, “Rabbi, look, the fig tree which You cursed has withered.”

And Jesus answered saying to them, “Have faith in God. Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him. Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you. Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions.” (Mark 11:19–26)

God always gets his way, so if you want guaranteed success, then simply do what God wants. After the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus and his disciples left and went to the nearby village of Bethany. As they approached, Jesus saw a fig tree and thought to get some figs from it. There were none. So Jesus cursed the tree to permanent fruitlessness.

The next day, the disciples discovered that the tree had died. Jesus took the opportunity to teach them something about faith, which of course had been his reason for cursing the tree. Jesus never did anything by accident.

During his lesson on faith, Jesus suggests that God will give us anything we want if we only have enough faith. Does Jesus therefore mean that the only thing standing between us and a new sports car is our doubt? Not exactly.

What could banish our doubts that a particular mountain would fly into the sea? If God came and told us to ask for it. And there is a mountain that Jesus asked us to cast into the sea. Jesus told us to forgive other people. We can pray for the promise he has given us. Praying for forgiveness is bigger than tossing a real mountain into the sea. The prophet Micah wrote, “You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.” (Micah 7:19) That’s the mountain Jesus was talking about.

Future Fear

Within the genre of science fiction there is a common trope: the cautionary tale. Perhaps one of the better known examples is also one of the earliest examples of what came to be called science fiction: Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. In the tale, a reanimated collection of body parts becomes a monster that destroys its creator. Other well-known tales of this sort would be the various stories of run-amuck robots, from the first story from which the term “robot” originates—R.U.R., a Czech play by Karel Čapek. The title of the story is an acronym for “Rossom’s Universal Robot.” It is from this 1921 play that the word “robot” entered the English language: it is a Czech word simply meaning “worker.” The play relates the story of a robot rebellion that leads to the extinction of the human race.

James Cameron’s 1984 movie The Terminator pictures a fearful future, when the robot creations of Skynet run amuck, destroying the world in a nuclear holocaust. They then hunt down and try to kill all the surviving humans, going so far as to send a “terminator” back in time to kill the mother of the leader of the human resistance movement before he was even born.

Thus, when Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos on the CBS news program 60 Minutes recently talked about their idea for speeding up the delivery of packages to their customers, some people immediately commented “sounds like the beginnings of Skynet.” What is Bezos planning? In “four or five” years, pending regulatory approval from entities such as the FAA, he’d like to use autonomous flying drones guided by GPS to deliver packages within thirty minutes of being ordered.

One of the first things to point out, of course, is that R.U.R., The Terminator and its sequels, and various movies and television shows from the fifties are fiction. They are neither documentaries nor prophesies. The connection between Hollywood and reality is generally tenuous at best.

That occasionally something portrayed in a fictional universe may come to pass is the exception, not the rule. Science fiction authors are not prognosticators. They are simply storytellers whose primary goal is to create entertainment. Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 movie 2001 failed to describe the actual year 2001. Pan American was out of business, and was not flying passengers to a giant, rotating space station. There were no moon bases. Self-aware computers like HAL did not exist.

But unintelligent computers are ubiquitous, running everything from your automobile to your washing machine. In your pocket, you probably carry a smartphone that has more computing power than all of NASA had during the moon landings. Do you fear your cellphone? Do you stay up at night worrying that it is plotting world domination?

Science fiction authors of the forties, fifties and sixties never imagined our computer connected world. If you read Clarke, Asimov, or Heinlein, computers were monstrous devices that filled a building or even a planet. No science fiction author ever imagined computers fitting in your pocket. They never predicted that they’d give you instant access to any human being on the planet, or that they’d grant you access to all of human knowledge—which you’d then use mostly to figure out who that obscure actor was in an old movie you’re watching on TV.

The Terminator vision of robots is not the only vision that exists in science fiction. Isaac Asimov postulated a more benevolent future with robots designed to be as incapable of harming human beings as your toaster.

New technologies can be scary. In fact, any change—good or bad—can be unsettling. But we don’t have to let our darkest fears overwhelm the bright possibilities. As with anything in our lives, new gadgets and technologies can either curse us or bless us. But based on history, blessing seems to be the most common outcome.

Think about it. Just about anything can be misused. The knife that cuts your steak could become a murder weapon. Passenger jets can be used for building demolition. Fertilizer can become a bomb. A toaster that browns your bread can electrocute someone if it’s tossed into their bathwater. You could use your car to run down pedestrians. You could use a baseball bat to pummel random passersby. The possible perversion of good into evil is never-ending. Should we allow potential evil keep us from enjoying what is wonderful?

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic according to the science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. Personally, I’d really like to have some more magic in my life. I enjoy the magic that I already take for granted. After all, I appreciate the robots that wash my dishes and do my laundry: the dishwasher and the washing machine. So it’s hard for me to fear the coming robots that might mow my lawn, mop my floor, drive my car, and deliver my packages. And really, wouldn’t you rather send drones instead of eighteen-year-olds to fight Al-Qaeda?

Help Me Believe

He answered [the father of the demon-possessed boy] and said, “O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to Me.” Then they brought him to Him. And when he saw Him, immediately the spirit convulsed him, and he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming at the mouth.

So He asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?”

And he said, “From childhood. And often he has thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”

Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”

Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”

When Jesus saw that the people came running together, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “Deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter him no more!” Then the spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, and came out of him. And he became as one dead, so that many said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose.

And when He had come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?”

So He said to them, “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.” (Mark 9:19–29)

Belief can grow from unbelief. The boy’s father, the disciples, the people witnessing his convulsions all had a problem: they suffered from unbelief. Jesus saw the problem for what it was and marveled at it. Had they forgotten who their God was? Was their rescue from Egypt and the words of their prophets that far in the past?

Demon possession appears only in the Gospels and Acts. No stories of demons inhabiting people appear in the Old Testament or elsewhere in the New. The symptoms of demon possession vary widely, ranging from intensified strength, to deafness, to fortune telling. Here, the demon has taken the child’s speech and seems intent on causing him physical harm.

Facing his child’s suffering, the father of the boy was desperate enough to admit to Jesus what Jesus already knew: that he didn’t believe. And rather than continuing to pretend, the father finally asked Jesus for help. He believed that Jesus could help him believe. Even Jesus’ disciples lacked faith. But unlike the disciples, the father asked Jesus to help him overcome his unbelief—thereby acknowledging that he believed Jesus could cure even a lack of faith. Perhaps granting the father faith was the greatest miracle that occurred in this story.

Certainly Jesus healed the boy and removed the demon plaguing him. But more importantly, God restored faith to a father who had lost it but wanted it back desperately.

Trusting God

Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up a high mountain to be alone. As the men watched, Jesus’ appearance was transformed, and his clothes became dazzling white, far whiter than any earthly bleach could ever make them. Then Elijah and Moses appeared and began talking with Jesus.

Peter exclaimed, “Rabbi, it’s wonderful for us to be here! Let’s make three shelters as memorials—one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He said this because he didn’t really know what else to say, for they were all terrified.

Then a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my dearly loved Son. Listen to him.” Suddenly, when they looked around, Moses and Elijah were gone, and they saw only Jesus with them.

As they went back down the mountain, he told them not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept it to themselves, but they often asked each other what he meant by “rising from the dead.”

Then they asked him, “Why do the teachers of religious law insist that Elijah must return before the Messiah comes?”

Jesus responded, “Elijah is indeed coming first to get everything ready. Yet why do the Scriptures say that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be treated with utter contempt? But I tell you, Elijah has already come, and they chose to abuse him, just as the Scriptures predicted.” (Mark 9:2–13)

Trusting God is not about understanding everything. On the mountain, Jesus became glorious. But Jesus told his disciples to keep it quiet until after his resurrection. They understood about keeping quiet, but the part about “rising from the dead” was a puzzler for them. Which is why they then asked Jesus about Elijah coming “first.” They wanted to know if maybe Elijah had something to do with that “rising” Jesus had told them about. John the Baptist had just been executed by Herod. They knew that John the Baptist was the Elijah that had been predicted. Was he coming back?

But then Jesus asked them a probing question: if Elijah was supposed to restore all things, then why did Jesus have to suffer and be rejected? Jesus wanted them to understand that his death and resurrection would solve the problem of sin; it would restore the broken relationship that existed between God and humanity.

The disciples often didn’t understand Jesus. But they still trusted him. We don’t trust God because we understand everything he does, or because we’ve had all our questions answered. We trust God because we know him. Trust is built on a relationship, not answers to questions.