Colors: Orange

March 15, 2009 by Leave a Comment

I’ve never eaten a persimmon, so I can’t definitively say whether I like them or not.

I’m convinced that being a picky eater has kept me away from many tasty foods. And that’s a shame! But I just have this thing about looking at a food and deciding that I don’t like it. No sampling necessary.

Sadly, that approach to food kept me from the joy of pumpkin pie until I was in the 10th or 11th grade. The memory of that discovery is still very vivid for me more than 25 years later.

Anyway, these are persimmons and, for now, I don’t like them.

Filed Under: agriculture, Colors, Family Life, Photography

If You Like Tomatoes . . .

March 14, 2009 by Leave a Comment

If you like tomatoes, we have some really nice ones in the market now. We usually buy cherry tomatoes because they work better in Grace’s school snack, but sometimes the regular tomatoes look so good, we can’t pass them up.

Filed Under: agriculture, Family Life, Life in Israel, Photography

Shabbat Shalom

March 13, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Filed Under: Flowers, Life in Israel, Shabbat Shalom

Tracking Ibex Part 1

March 13, 2009 by Leave a Comment

I recently had a rare opportunity to track an Ibex in the wild. I’m thankful that my students from Boston Baptist College were patient while I stalked this big fellow.

I was surprised at how close I was able to get to him given how nimble these things are in the rocks and how much they dislike human company.

I got a few more good shots of him, and I’ll probably post them as a series.

Filed Under: Family Life, Hunting, Ibex, Life in Israel, Photography

Chosen and Predestined

March 12, 2009 by Leave a Comment

My wife and I have been reading (out loud) through Ephesians together, and my next series of posts will be things that stood out to me during our reading. This is not an attempt to exhaust Ephesians, rather it is intended to highlight one or two things from each chapter.

Ephesians 1:4-6 NIV

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

Here are the same verses in an emphasized outline form:
We were chosen before the creation of the world to:
a. be holy
b. be blameless
in His sight.

In love he predestined us to
a. be adopted as his sons
according to
a. his pleasure
b. his will
to the praise of his glorious grace.

Here are the verses in a summarized fashion:
His adopted sons are to be holy and blameless in His sight, and they were chosen before the creation of the world according to HIS pleasure and will. And all that for the praise of His glorious grace.

Unfortunately, many in the body of Christ will not praise God’s glorious grace when they see chosen and predestined. Instead, they will criticize and protest. Many will try to make these verses unsay what they say.

Why can’t we be more like Spurgeon who said the following in a comment on 1 Timothy 2:3-4?

“My love of consistency with my own doctrinal views is not great enough to allow me knowingly to alter a single text of Scripture. I have great respect for orthodoxy, but my reverence for inspiration is far greater. I would sooner a hundred times over appear to be inconsistent with myself than be inconsistent with the word of God. I never thought it to be any very great crime to seem to be inconsistent with myself; for who am I that I should everlastingly be consistent? But I do think it a great crime to be so inconsistent with the word of God that I should want to lop away a bough or even a twig from so much as a single tree of the forest of Scripture. God forbid that I should cut or shape, even in the least degree, any divine expression. So runs the text, and so we must read it, “God our Savior; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.”

(Source: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit vol. 26, 1880, pp. 49, 50)

Filed Under: encouragement, Ephesians, Sovereignty, Supremacy of God, Thinkers
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