1000 Miles

Wednesday 5/29/2013 5:43 AM

I love to run.  Over the course of the last year I have run about eight hundred miles.  In my younger years I ran over one thousand miles per year, running with a colleague each day or training for races.  I have been running for almost thirty-five years so I imagine I have run over thirty thousand miles during the course of my lifetime.  Thankfully, my knees and hips are still healthy in spite of the years of abuse from running on asphalt.  I will keep running until my body gives out.

I love to sing.  The lyrics to a song can be very moving but mostly I enjoy the music.  I love to listen to the notes dancing with each other, choreographed by the composer, using meter, timbre, pitch, etc. to affect emotion in the listener.  My sister, Ruth, composes music, a talent I covet.  For her it is therapy.  I covet the gift but God has given me but two tunes in my lifetime and only one of those tunes came with lyrics.  So for now, I will sing the songs of others.  I will sing until my voice gives out.

I love life.  A few weeks ago a lifelong member of my church, Johanna Vander Sys, passed away.  She was 103 years old.  She loved life too and she lived it in such a way that others were blessed by having known her.  Long ago she made a commitment to live her life for God and she was faithful to that commitment to the end.  I want to live like that.

This morning I changed the playlist on my iPhone before I ran.  I usually have a list of songs I listen to that are my favorites from different artists.   Today I chose to listen to the album Broken and Beautiful by Mark Shultz.  The lyrics of one of the songs, 1000 Miles, started me thinking.

Oh, I would walk one thousand miles; a thousand miles, it’s true.  Oh, I would walk one thousand miles just to be with you.  Cause you’ve got my heart and you’ve got my soul now you’ve got this promise too: Oh, I would walk one thousand miles just to be with you.

And if I write ten thousand songs, ten thousand songs, it’s true.  And if I write ten thousand songs I’ll sing them all for you.  Cause you’ve got my heart and you’ve got my soul now you’ve got this promise too:  If I could write ten thousand songs, I’ll sing them all for you.

And if I live one hundred years before my life is through.  And if I live one hundred years I’ll spend them loving you.  Cause you’ve got my heart and you’ve got my soul now you’ve got this promise too.  If I could live one hundred years, I’ll spend them loving you.

The refrain of each verse makes me think.  God has my heart and he has my soul.  This is not because of what I have done but because of the work of Jesus on my behalf.  But I also have a decision to make with respect to my relationship with God.  God does not force himself upon me; I can choose to pursue a close relationship with him or not.  Each day I have a choice of how I spend my time.  I pray that I will have the commitment to run one thousand miles, sing ten thousand songs and live one hundred years just to be with him.

Reconciling Science with Faith

Thursday 5/30/2013 9:01 AM

I recently read the book Quantum Leap, the story of John Polkinghorne, a nuclear physicist and Anglican priest who has reconciled his life of faith in God with his work in science.  I have also read the books Coming to Peace with Science by Darrel R. Falk, a biologist, and The Fourth Day by Howard Van Til, an astronomer.  As scientists they, too, attempted to reconcile their scientific endeavors in their respective fields with their faith in God as creator.

There are many in both the scientific and the Christian communities who would suggest that the realms of science and faith have nothing to say to the other.  Scientists find Christians to be misinformed ignoramuses who need to leave their noses out of science and Christians feel threatened by theories of evolution, be it stellar or biological, thinking somehow that would eliminate the need for God.  There are strong feelings on both sides of the issue and vitriolic language and behavior spew from both sides.

 I believe that God reveals himself in both the Bible and in his creation.  In Reformed circles, of which I am a part, these are called God’s special revelation and God’s general revelation respectively.  It seems to me that if God is revealing himself to mankind through both means there should be a common message rather than a divided one.  As Christians, I believe we should do all we can to inform ourselves with regard to both the Bible and the sciences so that we can wrestle intelligently with whatever paradoxes seem to arise.  Unfortunately, too often Christians are ignorant of both what the Bible and what the sciences say.  We need to search for the truth of God wherever it can be found and not shy away from the difficulties that may arise as we seek to reconcile any discrepancies.

In 1 Corinthians, Commentary, William F. Orr and James Arthur Walther suggest a similar tack.  They write, “One who participates in the life of the Spirit in the Christian fellowship examines all things, is free to investigate all things pertaining to God.  Paul proposed that there should be no censorship nor obstruction to the systematic search for truth.  This implies that the spiritual person is capable of evaluating properly the good and evil he confronts, of estimating what things are worthwhile and what things are not.”  I wish the Christian community, as a whole, would be less defensive of God and less offensive to the scientific community and have the courage to engage in reconciling the findings of science with their knowledge of God, as Polkinghorne, Falk and Van Til have done.

Resuming Workout 2

Tuesday 5/28/2013 6:16 AM

Yesterday I wrote about my Nike app on my phone that kept malfunctioning saying “resuming workout”.  Today it started doing the same thing so I turned my phone off and restarted it.  That seemed to do the trick and it worked normally after that.

As I ran this morning I thought about working out and the verse about working out one’s salvation came to mind.  When I got back I looked it up and found it was Philippians 2:12.  My devotional theme for the week is the mind of Christ and as I looked at my assigned passage for today I discovered it was Philippians 2:1-11, the famous passage about having the same mind of Christ, that of an obedient servant who considers others better than himself.  That passage is followed immediately by verses 12 and 13, “Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed – not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence – continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”  These verses seem to imply that God works his salvation into me, causing me to want what he wants and informing me of the actions he desires for the building up of his kingdom.  Then I need to work that salvation out by following the advice of the next few verses, “Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, ‘children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.’  Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life.”

If I am to be effective in bringing about the kingdom of God I need to work out what God works in by the power of his Spirit.  My daily motto as I begin each day should be, “Resuming workout.”

Resuming Workout 1

Monday 5/27/2013 8:35 AM

The Nike running app on my phone helps keep track of how many times I run, how far I run and the time it takes to run.  When I start the app it gives a countdown of three seconds before a voice says, “Beginning workout.”  After that I usually turn my phone off and listen to music as I run.  Every mile the voice reminds me of the distance, the total time I’ve been running and the time per mile for the last mile I ran.  At the end of the run I turn the app back on, hit the pause button and then hit the end button when the voice tells me the final results of my workout.

This morning I turned the app off before the countdown ended.  Instead of saying, “beginning workout,” the voice said, “resuming workout,” as I began to run.  When I turned the app back on after my run the screen of my phone still had “3” showing and I could not pause or end the workout.  I tried leaving the app and starting it again but each time the voice would say, “resuming workout.”  Finally after about fifteen minutes I was finally able to end the workout but the total time was over 52 minutes long and my average time was nearly 13 minutes per mile instead of the 9:45 per mile it was when I finished.  I deleted the run from my history because I didn’t want to screw up my statistics.  This is the second time this app has done that.  It is almost like it gets stuck in a loop that can’t be broken.

The theme for my devotions this week is the mind of Christ.  Two lines from my hymn for the week caught my eye,  “I have one deep, supreme desire.  That I may be like Jesus.”  While this is my desire, when it comes to living it out in real life I feel more like the Nike app on my phone, stuck in one spot and constantly saying, “resuming workout.”  Oswald Chambers reminds me of God’s claim upon me and of my responsibility in the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.  He writes, “By sanctification the Son of God is formed in me, then I have to transform my natural life into a spiritual life by obedience to Him. … I have the responsibility of keeping my spirit in agreement with His Spirit, and by degrees Jesus lifts me up to where He lived – in perfect consecration to His Father’s will, paying no attention to any other thing.”

I have a long way to go when it comes to the obedience and staying in agreement with the Spirit of God part of things.  But, according the Chambers, even when I am doing that part well, Jesus lifts me to where he lived by degrees, not all in one fell swoop.  In nature God does things slowly, over long periods of time.  Evidently my sanctification is achieved through lots of practice too.  God doesn’t give up on me so I shouldn’t either.  Rather than becoming frustrated when I seem to be going through the same steps repeatedly perhaps I should embrace the phrase, “Resuming workout.”

SILENT-LISTEN-ENLIST

Thursday 5/23/2013 7:14 AM

I have always been fascinated by anagrams.  So much so that I have taken the letters of my name, MARK ALAN HUGEN, and, with apologies to the grammar police, rearranged them to form a self-description, A HUGER LANK MAN.  When I see words in print I automatically rearrange them to see if there are other words that can be made from the letters or if there are any plays on words or puns that can be made.  I’m certain there is help for people like me but, since I don’t see it as a problem, I am not interested.  I believe the first step toward recovery is the acknowledgment that one has a problem.

My theme for my devotions this week is silence.  I noticed long ago that one of the anagrams of SILENT is LISTEN.  I find it interesting that the prerequisite for being able to listen to someone is that one must be silent.  Today I read 1 Kings 19:9-13 as part of my assigned reading.  It is the account of the Lord revealing himself to Elijah after he complained to God that he was the only one left in Israel who feared God.  There was a strong wind, an earthquake and a fire that would certainly seem to indicate the presence of God, but God was in none of them.  Instead he came to Elijah in a still, small voice that caused Elijah to pull the cloak over his head.  Elijah was looking for power and might but God came so quietly that Elijah had to be silent in order to hear his voice.  When God finally spoke to Elijah he gave him a new mission and Elijah went from that place to fulfill that mission.

I noticed that ENLIST is another anagram of SILENT and LISTEN.  First Elijah was silent before God.  Then he listened to what God said.  Finally he obediently enlisted in the new endeavor God laid before him.  I would do well to follow the example of Elijah, SILENT-LISTEN-ENLIST.