The news is officially public: my sister is having another baby! I am thrilled. Spent the evening walking through Barnes and Nobles trying to search out a few birthday presents for friends. The price of new books and my own inability to pick out gifts made it a long evening. In the end I stuck with a few classics and only one book for myself which I thankfully did not have to take out a loan to cover the bill. Stay tuned if any are interested, there may be a book club started up with a few old friends from Pullman. I suspect that it will be more of a time to gather and drink in shared memories along with perfectly steeped tea, but a book in hand can surely add a nice flavour. Hope in Christ Ministries is poised to receive a hefty grant from the state to fund more workers to pursue relationships with youth. Pray that we will find skilled and anointed workers that will work the field of Bremerton. The 90+ degree days in Bremerton are bringing more kids in the in afternoons so please double your prayers for the staff that are always "available."
In the evening I have had the opportunity to spent an hour each night on my deck reading and praying. It is time that I would not trade for ten thousands loud moments. My companions have been two new books: The Journals of Jim Elliot and a new book written by the most established academic atheist of the 20th century Antony Flew. Then a chapter of the Bible to lift my eyes beyond my railing and to appreciate the world beyond my mind. Then I breath and praise and think of lovely things--all made available by the One who loves me and gave Himself for me. I read a quote in the second book concerning the late philosopher Bertrand Russell, author of the book Why I Am Not a Christian, written by his daughter, Katharine Tait. She writes, "I could not even talk to him (Russell) about religion...I would have liked to convince my father that I had found what he had been looking for, the ineffable something he had longed for all his life. I would have liked to persuade him that the search for God does not have to be vain. But it was hopeless. He had known too many blind Christians, bleak moralists who sucked the joy from life and persecuted their opponents; he would never have been able to see the truth they were hiding...his life was a search for God....Somewhere at the back of my father's mind, at the bottom of his heart, in the depths of his soul, there was an empty space that had once been filled by God, and he never found anything else to put in it." She also commented that he "had a ghostlike feeling of not belonging, of having no home in this world." And Betrand personally wrote this, "nothing can penetrate the loneliness of the human heart except the highest intensity of the sort of love the religious teachers have preached." Open your mouths and do not close your hearts, dear Christians. Stopped running after the world and realize the hope that is within you.
"I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at the right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way." - Ephesians 1:17-23
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