Extra-Terrestrial Life

Does life exist elsewhere in the universe? One of Philip's friends once asked us to add our computers to a nation-wide project that searches for patterns or messages that may be coming to earth as other life-forms attempt to communicate with us. At first I thought he was joking. As much as we may have fun with Star Trek and Babylon 5 and other science fiction, there is no complex life anywhere but on Earth.

But how do I know? What if I'm wrong? Maybe there is, and I'm just close-minded.

Last month, we had a movie night at church, watching a documentary, The Privileged Planet. It wasn't from a Christian perspective, or even a religious perspective. It was simply the science of Earth's unique characteristics: the iron core which gives us the magnetic field we have; a location in a particular belt around our sun, not too hot and not too cold; our location in the Milky Way; the chemical make-up of our atmosphere; the abundance of liquid water to moderate the climate; gas-giant planets to help protect our solar system from cosmic junk; etc. These things (and many more) are necessary to sustaining life.

But how do we know whether --in the vastness of the universe-- there might be other places with intelligent life? Or if life there might look very different from life here, and not need the same support system?

Does theology tell us what science can only guess at? I think so.

1. Either there is life elsewhere or there is not.

2. If there is life elsewhere, it is similar to human life, or it is not.
2a. If it is not similar to human life, then it is not made in the image of God. Seriously, do I care if there's life elsewhere in the universe if it's an amoeba or a speck of fungus?

3. If there is life that we'd recognize as "like us," then they are sinners or they are not.
3a. Is it possible for there to be life without having them be sinners? Romans 8 tells us that the whole creation has come under the curse and is waiting to be released. Luke 15 tells us that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 just persons who need no repentance. Is it theologically conceivable that there could be life out there that has continued since creation without sinning on their own, and without being sunk into sin by Adam's fall?

4. If there is life out there, and if they are sinners, then they were saved or they were not.
4a. God left them to be damned? Um. No.


5. If God saved them, how could this happen?
5a. God saved them through Jesus' work on our earth. But how would they hear? As Luke 24 shows, it's not enough that Jesus die for sin. It must also be preached.
5b. God saved them through another Savior. Impossible. There is only one Son of God.
5c. God saved them through Jesus' work on their earth. But Scripture tells us His sacrifice was once and for all. This would mean He had to be in two places at once, with His life, suffering, death, and resurrection happening there in those other worlds exactly at the same time as He dwelt among us.

It's looking to me like a little logic, in combination with what the Bible says, rules out every option except "There is no intelligent life-form elsewhere in the universe."

Cooking While You're Otherwise Occupied

The food I'm cooking these days doesn't taste as good as it used to. It's because I'm not home as much.

I used to keep an eye on the food. If it was cooking too fast, I'd turn down the heat. If it needed to speed up, you turn up the heat. You use a lid on the pot (or not) depending on how brown the food is or how wet the food is. You snitch a taste here and there to see if the dish needs more garlic or more salt or a splash of wine or a dose of hot peppers. Fabulous food requires attention and tweaking. But what happens when you have to throw it all in a crockpot in the morning and can't adjust and tweak throughout the day? What happens when you have to make hurry-up food? What happens when you have to leave dinner half-done and let the kids try their hand at the tweaking? The food still has nutrition; the food still tastes decent. But where's the deliciosity??



It crossed my mind as I was writing this that the same holds true for raising kids. You need to be there. You need to pay attention. You need to tweak and adjust what you're up to.

A Sign for Ahaz

Pastor pointed out last week in Bible class (studying Isaiah 7) that God told Ahaz to ask for a sign. God said He'd defeat the Assyrians for the country of Judah, but He wanted to offer King Ahaz something to see that would assure him God was for-real about this rescue. Ahaz pretended to be too pious to request a sign. Pastor asked what an obvious answer might have been -- it probably would have something to do with soldiers or the outcome of the first battle or something else to do with war.

So God says, "Fine, you won't ask even after I told you to ask. I'll give you a sign anyway." And then He says that the virgin will conceive and bear a Son, and He will be named Emmanuel. That always seemed pretty darn non sequitur to me. But Pastor explained that it's not. Ahaz was told that God would fight off the Assyrians. Ahaz couldn't do it on his own. He couldn't do it with the help of neighboring countries. All Ahaz could do was to be still and see the salvation which the Lord his God would accomplish for him. No man could fight the enemies and rescue him.

And isn't that the same thing that God's sign would demonstrate? No man would cause the conception of Emmanuel; He would be born of a virgin.




Seek whom ye may to be your stay,
none can redeem his brother.
All helpers failed. This Man prevailed --
the God-man and none other.
Our Servant-Lord did help afford.
We're justified for He hath died,
the Guiltless for the guilty.

Meal Plans

1. salmon, green bean casserole, cantaloupe.
2. broccoli/sausage quiche, lettuce salad.
3. chili, bread, canned fruit.
4. shepherd's pie, steamed carrots.
5. rotini with crab & California-blend veggies & Parmesan, pumpkin pie.
6. baked beans
7. going to Alia's birthday party (spaghetti)

(Some of these are things we haven't gotten to from my last set of meal plans.)

Sun Chart

Short days.
Long nights.

If there are too many dark, cloudy days in a row, a person with Seasonal Affective Disorder will become sad. A few years ago, I started keeping a sun chart. It doesn't change the weather, but it can change my expectations of myself.
A big "S" on a day means sunny. A "1/2 S" might mean a sunny morning or a sunny afternoon. A dash equals a cloudy day. I might write "minutes of sun" if there were a few times during the day when it was bright enough that trees left shadows.

This is not a chart about weather or my neighborhood or even reality. This is a chart about my own eyeballs. If it's a sunny day but I'm locked up at an all-day meeting in a windowless room, that day gets marked as No-Sun. If it's snowy and dark at home but I'm under sunbeams in central Illinois, the day is marked with a big fat S.

I can take Vitamin D3, but I can't shoo away clouds for the sun to shine through. I can, however, respond to lack of sun. If we've had three days of darkness, I can look at the chart and know that the first time Mr Sun peeks out, I better toss myself outdoors or at least plunk myself down in the big bay window. If the darkness persists and there's no sun to be had, I have to lighten up on the pressure of the to-do list. This translates into asking kids to clean the bathrooms, ignoring cobwebs, buying instafood for supper, and finding some hilarious movies to waste time on. It's the mental equivalent of a thermometer: a person might feel tired but be unable to tell whether it's sinful laziness or a viral infection. The thermometer clues you in. If it's viral, several naps might help. If it's sinful laziness, indulging oneself probably isn't a good plan. The sun chart can show me when it's a physiological weakness from sun-deficiency.

Fall Break for Paul

Lift Up Your Heads

I have long struggled with what Psalm 24 is talking about. "Lift up your heads, oh you gates, and be lifted up, you everlasting doors, that the King of glory may come in. I noticed this week that the next psalm opens with "To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul." And then, in Psalm 27, we pray, "Now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me; I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the Lord." I wonder if that means anything.

Old Fashioned

On one of those blustery days earlier this week, we tellers were frequently chatting with customers about the chilly weather, the grayness, turning on our furnaces or not. One customer said, "We didn't turn on the furnace yet. This is good weather for cuddling up with the old woman."

"The old woman." Gary has never called me that. I don't think Dad ever called Mom that. I don't think Gramp ever called Nanna that. I don't think I've ever heard one of my friends refer to his wife as "the old woman." Maybe "my better half." Maybe "my sweetie." Often "my wife." But never "the old woman." I find that a rather offensive moniker.

The gal that I was working with said after the customer left, "Wow, I didn't realize he was so old-fashioned." I was puzzled. Why would she call him old-fashioned? I racked my brain to come up with something he had done or said that would peg him as "old-fashioned." When I asked, she said she didn't much care for it when a man calls his wife "the old woman."

Huh.
I agree with that.

But where did she get that that was "old-fashioned"?

I guess I tend to think that "old-fashioned" is generally a good thing, whereas my co-worker must think it's a bad thing.

A Prophet Like Moses

In our Bible story for today, we hear that God will raise up for His people "a prophet like Moses" from among their brethren. The word in the Septuagint for "raise up" is the same word used in John 6 ("I will raise him up at the last day") as well as the same word used to describe Jesus' resurrection. So God isn't merely saying that He would turn Jesus into a well-known teacher or a famous prophet. He was saying that He would resurrect a prophet like Moses.

Old Pans

I bake our bread.
It is delicious bread.
With fewer people in the house, I usually make bread only once a week now (four loaves at a time).

I started making bread 27 years ago. It was too hard to find time to go to the grocery store to buy bread. Baby's naps never coincided with Toddler's naps, so I had a booger of a time leaving the house. Talk about being grounded ... that's what happens when it's easier to bake your own bread than buy it from the store that's only a quarter-mile away. (Come to think of it, my parents never grounded me. It was my children that did that.) Anyway, the point is that my pans are old.

About 5-10 years ago I bought new bread pans. The old ones were ugly. I mean seriously ugly, even rusting. But those new bread pans didn't bake the bread nicely. After months of trying, I admitted that I'd wasted the money and relegated those pans to meatloaf or non-bakery type of food.

I hunted online for bread pans that might work. What I found was $20-35 per loaf pan. That's a hunk o' cash even if you know the pans are good. But what if they were no better than my last set of new pans?

Recently my aunt offered me my grandma's pyrex loaf pan. Hunky-dory! But you know what? The bread sticks to that one too, no matter how much I grease it. She also gave me some metal ones that she needed to shoo out of her cupboards. The bread sticks even worse to those.

So now I'm back to my trusty old (old old old) bread pans. A couple of times each year I may have to scrub with steel wool to remove rust spots. The pans may be ugly on the outside too. But the bread bakes evenly and nicely. And I can remove the hot loaves from the pans!!

If any of you have advice about how to find reasonably-priced kitchenware that works properly, I'm all ears. But I suspect I'll be going to my grave with those bread pans still in my kitchen.

A Faithful Saying

Our Bible verse for the week is from 1 Timothy 1: "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief."

Now, I am no Greek scholar, but I know a little (enough to tutor beginners). And there's something I find odd about this translation. The word translated "a saying" is the same word that John uses for "the Word," as in "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Also, the word that's translated "that" frequently indicates a quote, as it is in most translations of this verse. But another common translation of that word is something akin to "because" or "for" as it shows the purpose of what came before.

So it seems to my simplistic mind that the verse could be saying, "The Word/Logos is faithful and worthy of acceptance, for Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." Why do we know that He (the Logos/Word) is faithful? Why should we desire Him? Because He saves sinners. Because He saves me.




I suppose scholars might know something about translations and why all the Bibles translate "the Logos" here as "a saying" instead of the way it's translated in John's Gospel. Did they think it didn't make sense to translate it "the Word"? It sure makes sense to me ... and is even prettier than the way it's normally translated!

Homeschooling Camelot

In short, there's simply not
a more congenial spot
for happy-ever-aftering
than here in Camelot.

Kate Fridkis writes about going to college after a lifetime of homeschooling. My heart melted over this article. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry or shoot HOORAY. One tidbit about "the real world":

For my whole life, people have been telling me that I must not know what the real world is. People always think that home-schoolers live these small lives in a constricted little world. I don’t know how to explain my life to them. I don’t know how to clarify the open-ended world of my childhood, in which the rules made sense and I worked hard because it was fun to be productive. What world is that? It isn’t normal. There are no grades.

Kate also blogs, and I'd love to delve into everything she's written there. Let's just say that the parts I've read really resonate with me! But it probably would mean even more to my kids and some of their homeschooled friends, like the article about not being "for" homeschooling but being it.

I'm not suggesting that homeschooling is a bed of roses. (Well, maybe it is, but that means it comes with some thorns, right?) I'm not suggesting there is a one-size-fits-all decision about where to send your child to school -- or not. I'm not saying that people can live in that lovely World Of Unschooling for decades upon decades.

But for one brief shining moment -- the moments that make up a childhood, the moments that are so influential in how we see ourselves, how we view work, how we view family, how we view our peers -- there can be joy and freedom, there can be learning for the sake of the sheer joy of learning, there can be a life for a child that is lived in the here-and-now and not merely in preparation for the some-day.

It may not be perfect.
But honestly, I really don't think there is a more congenial spot.

Who Is "You"?

Our Bible story for the day was the second giving of the law -- Deuteronomy 5. It's getting time to go into the promised land. The Israelites have been wandering around in the desert for nigh onto 40 years. Moses calls them all together and says, "Listen up, I'm going to tell you what God said when He made the covenant with us back at Mt Sinai."

What I find most intriguing is verse 3: The Lord did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us, those who are here today, all of us who are alive. The Lord talked with you face to face on the mountain from the midst of the fire.

Except for Joshua and Caleb and the then-kiddos who are now the old folks, everybody who was there at the first giving-of-the-law is now dead. The people who are hearing Moses on this day might have been teenagers or little kids when the Israelites left Egypt, but most of the people listening hadn't even been born yet. Moses doesn't even start in with "Hey, guys, this is what God tells His people." He starts by telling them that God made this covenant with them --even before they were born. With THEM. Not their parents. YOU, the ones who are alive today, whose bodies didn't die in the wilderness (as God had told them would happen when they hated Caleb's advice about going into the promised land 40 years earlier), YOU are the ones with whom God spoke that day at Sinai.

This is beautiful.
It means what God did in those stories of the Bible is for ME and not just the people that it happened to: the healing of the lame and the blind and the deaf, the preaching to the hard of heart, the absolution for Mary Magdalene.
And I think this verse in Deuteronomy 5 also says something about election, and how God chose us to be His own before the foundation of the world.

Cheese

It's bad enough that I have had to avoid milk for the last couple of years. No cold milk with warm cookies. A pot of coffee to go with cookies or coffeecake might be good, but not nearly as fantastic as cold milk alongside warm baked goods.

But now it's looking like cheese might be a problem too. I've had to give up potato soup and clam chowder and sausage-gravy with biscuits. But pizza? Cheese-and-tomato sandwiches? Nachos? Pizza lentils? Cheese & salami & crackers?

Please, NOooooooooo.....


We're due to go out for pizza at Tony's on Thursday night. I hope -- I hope -- I hope -- I hope I feel okay on Friday morning!

Mark 10:18

In the story of the rich young ruler, John Mark came to Jesus and asked what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus asked him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, and that is God."

Looky there -- even Jesus preaches and catechizes from the Scriptures. "No one is good" comes straight out of Psalm 14 and Psalm 53. God Himself sticks to the texts once given. That is amazing to me.

Private Confession and Absolution

From a discussion between Dr Korby and Todd Wilken:

We are accustomed to confessing our sins to God in privacy, and then we remind ourselves of His love and forgiveness. We think, "Who needs to go to a pastor?" However, God doesn't need us to tell Him about our sins; He already knows. But there is a humiliation in confessing to the pastor or to the Christian-brother instead of confessing to God in the privacy of our minds. (Don't let the word humiliation put you off. Even though it is indeed humiliating to be humiliated, remember that's what it is to be "humble." The words are related.)

What is the point of confession? So that we might hear the absolution! How does forgiveness come to us anyway? By the word of forgiveness!

We have it backwards when we are confessing sin for God's sake and then applying forgiveness to ourselves. We need to confess for our sake, so that we are ready to hear the word (from God's spokesman) which forgives us and which creates and vivifies faith.

Timeline

Teachers "do" timelines in different ways. Some teachers don't consider it important enough to bother hanging on the wall. Some buy a pre-made timeline. Some have the students develop a timeline.

None of those worked for me on a regular basis. Occasionally I'd have the kids build a timeline. But after many attempts at keeping timelines, I settled on one simple plan. I made a bare-bones timeline. It was a pair. The timelines were about 5-7' long each, made of adding-machine tape or something similar, about 4-7" wide. One timeline covered the years 4000 BC to the present, with an inch (or 1.25") per century. The other zoomed in on the final 8% of the first timeline, covering the years 1500-2000, on a scale of 1.5" per decade.

Few events were listed on the timeline. On the full timeline, we listed creation, flood, Abraham, Moses, David, Israel's fall to Assyria, Judah's fall to Babylon, Jesus, fall of Rome, Columbus. On the more detailed, modern timeline, we included the Reformation, Pilgrims coming to Massachusetts, Revolutionary War, Civil War, Laura Ingalls, birth of great-grandparents, WWI, birth of grandparents, WWII, birth of parents, and birth of the kids. This was our skeletal framework. We might pencil in other events: the 7-Years War or the Wright Bros' airplane or Alexander the Great. Even when the timeline wasn't used to record events, it was essentially our map through time. We repeatedly go to the world map to get a feel for where something is happening, be it in a story or in current events. We used the timeline the same way: it was a framework to locate something in history. Because it was a simplistic timeline, it was easy to whip out a replacement when the current timeline was too worn or scribbled too full of additional events. We never had to be without our little map of time.

Meal Plans

I used to cook out of the pantry. With fewer people I can't keep well-stocked the perishable parts of my pantry (particularly the produce). With a part-time job, I can't start cooking a real-food supper at 6:30 in the evening. Partly due to my own failures and partly due to inspiration from Erin, the last few weeks I've been trying to refine the meal plans so that I can make sure to buy the necessary ingredients and to prepare in advance for days when I'm not around to cook. This is what we've got for the upcoming days:

1. Lasagna, lettuce salad, pumpkin muffins.
2. Ham & beans, cornbread, fruit salad.
3. Split pea soup, bread, fruit salad.
4. Pizza, broccoli salad.
5. Gumbo, rice, pumpkin pie.
6. Fish tacos, cole slaw.
7. Baked beans, steamed carrots.
8. Barbecued pulled-beef sandwiches, green bean casserole.
9. Quiche, pineapple.
10. Enchilada soup, tapioca pudding.
11. Crab and California-blend veggies with rotini.
12. Shepherd's pie and a yet-to-be-determined side dish.
13. Salmon and other stuff.
14. Pork & veggie stir fry.

Lunches are
African peanut soup,
tuna salad,
hummus
guacamole,
lettuce salads,
baked potatoes,
deli meat sandwiches,
pbj's,
grilled cheese,
but mostly leftovers.

I like the feel of having this planned out. The question is, "Will I plan again in two weeks?"

I Could Use This

"I could use this."
"I need this."

Those are not the same thing. [Surprise!!!]

I have such good intentions. So few of them are fulfilled. What I have a hard time with, though, is letting go of repeatedly unfulfilled good intentions. There are realities that I just don't want to admit. Cleaning the basement, the attic, the garage, are times when that truth whops you anew.

"I should start roller-blading. I need to keep those skates around. Maybe I could use them." Yes, I do need to get back to exercising. No, I'm not getting around to it. And if I do, will my aging body take well to roller-blading? Seriously? Roller-blading? On hills? Good golly, last weekend I could barely go up and down the stairs to the basement. The injury that precipitated that difficulty would be a mere foretaste of what I'd bump into [hee hee hee] if I took up roller-blading.

For your information, the roller-blades all went to Goodwill.

But I play this game over and over. I lose weight; I gain weight; I keep clothes around in various sizes. Same thing goes for yard tools, kitchen tools, sewing tools, workshop tools, etc. "I should keep those German resources around for when I have time to get back to studying the language."

The best luck I ever had with decluttering was when I removed everything from the living area of the house. I brought back in only the furniture, decorations, entertainments, etc, that we needed. I didn't weed out. I got rid of everything (but only into the garage) and then started afresh. That showed me what I needed. Then everything else had to be disposed of.

How many times are we weighed down by "I think I could probably use this" instead of "I need this"? As important as the nostalgia may be to me, the bigger dragon to slay is how I'm not ready to let go of the ideal in my mind, nor the goals of my heart. Sometimes getting rid of "stuff" means admitting that I cannot or will not ever do that thing I've been meaning to do for ever-so-long. It's admitting defeat. And that is hard.

Mustard

You know that bright yellow mustard that people slap on hotdogs? When I was a kid, I couldn't stand to eat a fast-food burger unless it was made fresh and decorated with ketchup only. I didn't want to know that my mom put a smidge of mustard in the deviled eggs and potato salad.

When I became queen of my own kitchen, I had mustard. I might buy a big ol' bottle of bright yellow mustard once every few years.

Until recently.

When my friend Janelle moved to Nevada this summer, she needed to dump all her refrigerated goods. We ended up with a big pile of bottles that had been decorating her fridge shelves. Lots of different bottles of hot sauces and mustards. My first thought was that we were all set for mustard for a long time. But Janelle's mustards were different. There was a Jack Daniel's mustard. Oh... yummy! There were others too that tasted delicious. My favorite, though, was a chipotle mustard. When I finished the hand-me-down bottle, I had to buy another to revel in its tastiness.

Janelle, I think you just made me a mustard-snob.
And I'm loving it.