R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 98

India to Mars

On November 5, 2013, at 4:08 a.m. EST (0908 GMT) the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota launched an ISRO Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle carrying India’s Mars Orbiter Mission. The Mars Orbiter Mission, also known as Mangalyaan (Hindi for “Mars Craft”)is scheduled to reach Martian orbit on September 24, 2014. If successful, India will become the fourth country to successfully deliver a spacecraft to Mars (the others being the United States, the former Soviet Union, and a consortium of the nations that makeup the European Space Agency). Going to Mars is difficult. Out of the fifty-one attempts to reach Mars, about two thirds have ended in failure. It should be noted, however, that most of those failures were from the USSR. USSR/Russia has made 19 attempts and succeeded twice. Japan has so far tried once and failed. The European Space Agency has tried once: the orbiter succeeded and is still functioning, but the lander failed. The United States has made twenty attempts with fourteen successes. It should also be noted that the United States remains the only nation to have successfully landed spacecraft on Mars (a total of seven times so far. Four were rovers and two of those rovers are still operating)–unless you wish to count the Soviet’s 1973 Mars 3 mission: the craft successfully landed on Mars but only returned data for 20 seconds.

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

Why Should He Care?

This week my youngest daughter is studying poetry for her English class. She is on independent study (due to her mental health issues), and goes to the high school only for her tests. Therefore, I have to prepare her study sheets and help her with her work. I have enjoyed and appreciated poetry for most of my life and I’m trying to instill the same enjoyment in my children. Thus far, however, only my oldest shares my enjoyment. In fact, when she was barely in kindergarten she had already memorized one of Edgar Allen Poe’s poems, Annabel Lee and announced to her teacher that Poe was her favorite author. I don’t think many kindergartners would pick Poe for that honor.

The poetry my youngest daughter is reading this week are all classics and generally well known: such poems as The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, a sonnet by Shakespeare, and poems by Poe, Neruda, and e.e. cummings.

Much of the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, is poetry. Semitic poetry differs from the poetry most people are accustomed to. Rather than rhyming sounds, Semitic poetry rhymes ideas, repeating the same concept but using different, synonymous words, thus making biblical poetry sound repetitious. Besides the obvious book of Psalms, most of the prophetic books of the Bible—Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, the twelve minor prophets—are all written in poetry.

Poetry appeals to the intellect; it also, more strongly, appeals to the emotions. One passage from the Bible that particularly affects me and put me in a thoughtful mode is one that forces me to consider my place in the universe—and the place of the human race as a whole:

When I consider your heavens,

the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars,

which you have set in place,

what is mankind that you are mindful of them,

human beings that you care for them? (Psalm 8:4)

The science fiction author Vernor Vinge wrote a book with the title, A Deepness in the Sky that won the Hugo award in 2000. Today, scientists speak about “deep time” and “deep space.” The two concepts are related. It is generally believed that the universe is about 13.8 billion years old, while the most distant object visible from Earth is about 13.42 billion light years away. That these two concepts of deep time and deep space are related becomes obvious when one considers that distance in space is also distance in time. Light travels about 186,000 miles per second (or if you prefer, about 300,000 kilometers per second). The moon is about 240,000 miles away; thus, when the astronauts on the moon talked to mission control in Houston, their words took more than a second to reach Earth. If you listen to transmissions of the Apollo astronauts, you’ll hear mission control and the moon walkers occasionally talking over each other as a result. If you’ve ever made an international phone call, you may have experienced something similar if your call was routed through a satellite. The geosynchronous communication satellites are about 25,000 miles above the surface of the Earth. When you make a call, your voice is routed up 25,000 miles to the satellite, then goes down 25,000 miles to the person you’re chatting with. Your caller’s response must make the same trek in reverse. So, a bit less than a third of a second passes between your speaking and you being heard, and another third of a second or so passes before the response can reach you if it comes immediately. You can easily notice those sorts of delays.

It gets worse the further you travel. Light from the sun, traveling 186,000 miles per second requires about 8 minutes to travel the 93 million miles to the Earth. Voyager 1, which just passed the edge of our solar system and is now in interstellar space, is more than 13 light hours from Earth, meaning a radio signal from the spacecraft takes more than 13 hours to get to us.

Sirius, the Dog Star, and the brightest star in the night sky, is about 8 light years from Earth. That is both distance and time: light from that star requires about 8 years to reach us. What we see in the sky now is how Sirius looked when George Bush was still living in the White House. Telescopes become not just portals to distant realms in the sky, but are also time machines reaching back into history.

If you look north tonight, you’ll see Polaris—also called simply the North Star. The light you see now left that star before the Pilgrims left England for Plymouth Rock. The universe is enormous, beyond our comprehension. It is deeper than the deepest sea, higher than the highest mountain, older than human history. The Psalmist wondered in an era before anyone understood just how deep the sky and deep was time, how it is that God would notice us. Our greater understanding of the universe today, makes the Psalmist’s question even more profound. Not only am I insignificant beyond comprehension, the entire human race, from its beginning to future end, is a droplet of water in an endless ocean. And yet, the Psalmist tells us that God is mindful of us, and cares about us—each and every individual.

Love is the Answer If You Ask the Right Question

One of the religion scholars came up. Hearing the lively exchanges of question and answer and seeing how sharp Jesus was in his answers, he put in his question: “Which is most important of all the commandments?”

Jesus said, “The first in importance is, ‘Listen, Israel: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.’ And here is the second: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ There is no other commandment that ranks with these.”

The religion scholar said, “A wonderful answer, Teacher! So lucid and accurate—that God is one and there is no other. And loving him with all passion and intelligence and energy, and loving others as well as you love yourself. Why, that’s better than all offerings and sacrifices put together!”

When Jesus realized how insightful he was, he said, “You’re almost there, right on the border of God’s kingdom.”

After that, no one else dared ask a question. Mark 12:28-34)

Right after watching a movie, if someone asked you what it was all about, you probably wouldn’t have too much trouble giving an answer. What if someone caught you living your life and asked you that same question?

Loving God and loving people is the theme of the entire Bible and what life is all about. But what is love? Too often for the Israelites, they imagined that God could be manipulated in the same way they manipulated everything else in life. They were nice to their neighbors who were nice to them, and they expected kindness in return. So they thought God worked the same way. Rather than understanding their sacrifices and religious rituals as an expression of their love for God, they saw them as merely payments rendered in exchange for the stuff they wanted. Rather than a relationship with God, they had a superstition.

But the sort of love that Jesus was talking about means being nice to people regardless of how they respond and giving without expecting anything back. It is the sort of love we have for our babies. We change their diapers and feed them at three in the morning, yet they never offer to mow the grass or wash the dishes. But we love them all the same.

God’s kingdom is near to those who understand the centrality of love. And far from those who don’t.

Sweet Little Lies

Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, ‘You will become free’?”

Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham’s descendants; yet you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you. I speak the things which I have seen with My Father; therefore you also do the things which you heard from your father.”

They answered and said to Him, “Abraham is our father.”

Jesus said to them, “If you are Abraham’s children, do the deeds of Abraham. But as it is, you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God; this Abraham did not do. You are doing the deeds of your father.”

They said to Him, “We were not born of fornication; we have one Father: God.” (John 8:31-41)

What we think we already know often blinds us to the truth. When a teacher teaches, three things can happen to his words. First, and most commonly, his words get tucked into an already existing box where they can be safely ignored. Second, the words may just go in one ear and out the other. Third, and most rarely, the words are really heard for the new and radical thing they are and a life is forever changed.

Jesus’ audience was made up of those who had accepted his teaching. But they were missing his point to such an extent that he had to tell them that rather than acting like the children of Abraham, they were acting like the children of the Devil.

When Jesus told them that the truth could set them free, they thought he was talking about slavery. Since they were not slaves, Jesus’ words seemed pointless. But Jesus meant that the truth could set them free from sin. How so? Sin comes from believing lies: like the lie that God doesn’t want what is best for us, or the lie that makes us believe today’s pleasure matters more than tomorrow’s consequence.

The truth can free us from all the lies that bind us to misery.

But It’s Impossible

When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?”

The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.”

Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.” And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked.

And that day was the Sabbath. The Jews therefore said to him who was cured, “It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your bed.”

He answered them, “He who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your bed and walk.’ ”

Then they asked him, “Who is the Man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” But the one who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, a multitude being in that place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.” (John 5:6-14)

Jesus asked a disabled man a simple yes or no question. But instead of answering Jesus’ question, he told Jesus why he couldn’t get healed.

Too often we respond to God exactly the same way: rather than saying yes to him, we explain to God why what we most need is impossible to get.

Remarkably, Jesus did not wait for the poor man to say the right thing in the right way before he would help him—any more than he expected anything from the man at all. Jesus knew what the man really needed. Even if the man didn’t understand it himself.

Only after healing the man did Jesus warn him to stop sinning. Jesus’ intervention was not dependent upon the man’s repentance, but rather upon his need. And Jesus criticized the Pharisees for imagining that doing the right thing should be allowed to stand in the way of doing another right thing. Keeping the Sabbath was good; but using it as an excuse to let suffering continue was inexcusable. The religious establishment had allowed concern with legalities to obscure the reason the legalities existed: love. They had missed the whole point to the commandments and saw them as an end in themselves, rather than what they were: a means to an end. The means to doing the loving thing.

Meeting Jesus Changes Everything

He entered Jericho and was passing through. There was a man named Zacchaeus who was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but he was not able because of the crowd, since he was a short man. So running ahead, he climbed up a sycamore tree to see Jesus, since He was about to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, He looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, because today I must stay at your house.”

So he quickly came down and welcomed Him joyfully. All who saw it began to complain, “He’s gone to lodge with a sinful man!”

But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, I’ll give half of my possessions to the poor, Lord! And if I have extorted anything from anyone, I’ll pay back four times as much!”

“Today salvation has come to this house,” Jesus told him, “because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:1-10)

Jesus did not worry about looking good. Jesus was concerned only with doing good: with loving his neighbor as himself. Sometimes that neighbor was a genuinely evil person, like a tax collector. A tax collector gained his job by bidding for it from the Roman government. Whoever promised the Romans the most money got the contract for the district or town. His pay came from whatever he could get above that promised amount. So tax collectors got rich by ripping off their neighbors. No one liked them. Their greed, their rapaciousness, their essential graft and legalized embezzlement branded them as sinners in the extreme.

It was such a man, and those like him, that Jesus sought out and spent most of his time with. When Jesus saw Zacchaeus in the tree, Jesus did not tell him to give up his line of work. He did not tell him to change his lifestyle or to give back the money he had stolen. And yet Zacchaeus did just that: he accepted Jesus’ invitation to lodge in his house and responded by changing his life.

And that’s the way it works for you today: you can’t have God take up residence with you without it having profound implications. You’ll never be the same afterwards, any more than Zacchaeus could be the same after having Jesus in his home. Meeting Jesus changes everything.

Sinners

Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach. This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such sinful people—even eating with them!

So Jesus told them this story: “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders. When he arrives, he will call together his friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’ In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away!

“Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she will call in her friends and neighbors and say, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost coin.’ In the same way, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels when even one sinner repents.” (Luke 15:1-10 NLT)

Jesus did not worry about what the neighbors thought. Instead, he simply did what was best for them. Reaching out to the sinners of the world was what was best for those sinners—and it was also best for those nosey neighbors who always criticized him for doing the loving thing instead of the correct thing.

In Jesus’ day, most of the Jewish people were farmers, raisers of sheep or cattle, or fishers. The parables he told, the word pictures he painted, were designed to make sense to such an audience. So he used the way shepherds cared about their lost sheep to illustrate how much God cared about lost people.

The word “Pharisee” means “separated ones.” They believed in separating themselves from sinners, because they thought God hated sinners. Jesus wanted the Pharisees to understand that rather than hating sinners, God loved them and he compared them to lost precious things, hoping to get them to understand how precious every human being was.

It gives us insight into the character of Jesus to note that he made sinners comfortable and enraged the righteous. How many sinners feel comfortable hanging out with most Christians? Perhaps we’re not as much like Jesus as we like to imagine.

Waiting

He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up. But when Jesus saw her, He called her to Him and said to her, “Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity.” And He laid His hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.

But the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath; and he said to the crowd, “There are six days on which men ought to work; therefore come and be healed on them, and not on the Sabbath day.”

The Lord then answered him and said, “Hypocrite! Does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or donkey from the stall, and lead it away to water it? So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound—think of it—for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?” And when He said these things, all His adversaries were put to shame; and all the multitude rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by Him. (Luke 13:10-17)

Would you rather suffer for eighteen years and then get healed miraculously or never suffer at all? An unnamed woman was not given that choice. She merely suffered, so that Jesus could heal her and teach one of Israel’s religious leaders something. For eighteen years, that woman had doubtless prayed for healing. Most likely, so had her family and friends. For eighteen years it seemed like God was ignoring all their pleas.

But God wasn’t telling her or her family or her friends “no.” He had answered her prayer in the affirmative. But it took awhile for her to experience it. The answer arrived in the right place at exactly the right time. It happened both in answer to her prayers, as well as to serve as a teaching moment for a man who had lost perspective. More than one person, perhaps, was healed by what happened.

While Jesus was teaching, he took notice of her suffering. She had not requested that Jesus aid her. But he knew what she had asked God to do. So Jesus simply called her over and gave her what she wanted more than anything.

Her response was to glorify God. The response of the synagogue ruler was something else entirely: he criticized what Jesus had done. Jesus reacted by pointing out the inconsistency in the ruler’s thinking: the law allowed for the care of animals on the Sabbath. Weren’t human beings of greater worth?

In his concern with doing the legal thing, the synagogue ruler had lost sight of the right thing. He’d forgotten the purpose for the laws: to make life better for human beings. If the laws stood in the way of that, then perhaps the laws were wrong—or at least being misunderstood and wrongly applied.

Unwise Giving

“But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ lend to ‘sinners,’ expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. (Luke 6:27-36)

In exchange for random acts of violence, Jesus expected targeted acts of kindness. Jesus asked people to act contrary to their natures, even contrary to what seemed like good sense. Rather than responding in kind to the people around us, he told people to respond always with good, no matter how badly they were treated.

It is natural to return evil for evil and good for good. It is unnatural to do good for those who do us wrong. Jesus argued that genuine righteousness cannot be dependent upon others. Returning kindness for kindness is quite ordinary. Even the worst of people act like that. So what?

Jesus challenged the people listening to him to be like God. When the neighbor who never returns your stuff asks to borrow your rake, Jesus said that you have to let him have it. And you need to do it expecting that he won’t give it back. In fact, any lending, of money or property, is to be done in the expectation of being ripped off. And you’re supposed to be good with that. Because that’s the way God treats us all the time. Mercy takes the place of judgment—and of justice. We shouldn’t give back as good as we get. We should only give back better.

Love The One Who Hates You

You know that you have been taught, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I tell you not to try to get even with a person who has done something to you. When someone slaps your right cheek, turn and let that person slap your other cheek. If someone sues you for your shirt, give up your coat as well. If a soldier forces you to carry his pack one mile, carry it two miles. When people ask you for something, give it to them. When they want to borrow money, lend it to them.

You have heard people say, “Love your neighbors and hate your enemies.” But I tell you to love your enemies and pray for anyone who mistreats you. Then you will be acting like your Father in heaven. He makes the sun rise on both good and bad people. And he sends rain for the ones who do right and for the ones who do wrong. If you love only those people who love you, will God reward you for that? Even tax collectors love their friends. If you greet only your friends, what’s so great about that? Don’t even unbelievers do that? But you must always act like your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:38-48)

Jesus asked for what seems impossible. He asked us to be nice to mean people. “Eye for eye” or “tooth for tooth” are phrases from the Law of Moses known as the lex talionis. That “law of the tooth” was summarized as “do to others as they have done to you.” But the purpose of that old “law of the tooth” wasn’t what most people thought. It was designed to place limits on judicial punishment: a criminal could not be made to suffer more than his victim. But by Jesus’ day, the phrase had become twisted into a justification for vengeance. Jesus explained that sort of thinking missed the whole point of what God was all about.

The way God treats us is how we should treat others. God is good to people who are not good to him or to anyone else. Loving those who love us is easy. God has called us to do something hard: to be like him and to love those who hate us.

God is good to us no matter what. His love is not dependent upon our performance. Jesus wants us to understand that real love is never based on performance. It can’t be earned. And he wants us to treat other people the same way that he treats them—and us. He wants us to love unconditionally.