So Thankful

Feeling so amazed by God's kindness this week...

Thankful moments for: 

The first snow 

(enough for a snowman and some fabulous all-family sledding!)

A fun, creative, sacrificial hubby 

who is a great lover of children (our own and others')

Special times with our extended family

An unexpected delightful "exploration walk" finding hidden Blue Oxen at Lebanon Hills

And, not pictured:

Cinnamon rolls, spontaneous family photos, a "Black Friday" outing to Menards, Grammy and Grandad coming to visit, chubby baby knuckles, and 5 days in a row with Daddy at home.

There are so many moments of grace each day. 

But beyond all those, I am so grateful for a grace that fills all those other kinds of moments as well. I took the boys to their first funeral this week--for a tiny baby, who lived just a bit over one hour. 

Deep loss like that, plus the daily rhythms of inconvenience, frustration, sorrow, and testing, finds its meaning in the universe-shifting gift of Jesus. What a Savior, who knows our sorrows, carries our burdens, was crushed for our sins, and rose triumphant to forge our open access to God! 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Pep Talk: Reasons to Exercise

[In case there was a question, the person I'm preaching to here is me. If someone else is helped, good.]

This morning I ran 2 miles on a treadmill. It was horrible. I forgot that running on treadmills always leaves me feeling nauseous and woozy. (I think it's because I always spit all. the. time. when I run, and on a treadmill I have to just choke on that nasty phlegm the whole time...) Anyway.

After recovering from that, here are 5 reasons why I should not and (hopefully) will not quit pushing to get some form of physical exercise in my life. 

1. Good decisions tend to beget good decisions. As witnessed by the fact that this morning I had a bowl of cereal and a fruit smoothie for breakfast. Instead of a huge cinnamon roll. Speaking very pragmatically, when I realize the amount of physical exertion required to burn 208 calories, it makes me a little more sensible about what I pop in my mouth on a whim. And getting in the habit of making wiser decisions ... that's helpful in a lot of ways.

2. You are more likely to pray, memorize, and review Scripture while you exercise. I may not have derived too much deep spiritual insight from my rough review of Colossians 1-2 this morning, since I was basically just desperate to take my mind off the horribly slow progress of blinking lights around the loop on the treadmill, but nevertheless those words are fresher in my mind than they were before. And normally when I'm outside and moving, it's a great time to pray, since I have to focus my mind anyway to keep pushing forward.

3. When you are stronger, you have more energy to love your family and others. When I'm tired, low energy, and feeling weak all over, it's an extra hurdle to putting others' interests ahead of my own and jumping into loving people around me. I've had long seasons when I just haven't gotten enough sleep at night to muster the strength to exercise during the day. But when I'm at a pretty "normal" rest level, then working to get consistent exercise has definitely been a big energy and strength booster. And even when I'm too tired for an intense workout [intense = 2 mile run, ha!], even getting some fresh air for a short walk is a good boost.

4. It's a good reminder that the flesh is a good servant and terrible master. When I'm on the homestretch in a run, often the words that come to mind are, "Therefore, I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave, so that after I have preached to others I myself will not be disqualified for the prize." There is something in exercise that reminds me not to coast in the rest of life.

5. If you exercise, you may live longer. As Paul says, "That will be fruitful labor for me."


And 3 points to balance the perspective:

1. Exercise can take too big a place.
2. Your body is a temple. Worship God with it, and not body image, physical victories, or acseticism.
3. All things are created by God and good, when received with gladness and prayer. Even huge cinnamon rolls, thank You Jesus.

The Astonishing Miracle of Life

The chapter "Creation" in Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology has some awe-inspiring points.

Considering the scientific difficulties of the evolutionary theory, he writes:

Probably the greatest difficulty of all for evolutionary theory is explaining how any life could have begun in the first place. The spontaneous generation of even the simplest living organism capable of independent life (the prokaryote bacterial cell) from inorganic materials on the earth could not happen by random mixing of chemicals: it requires intelligent design and craftsmanship so complex that no advanced scientific laboratory in the world has been able to do it. Johnson quotes a now-famous metaphor: "That a living organism emerged by chance from a pre-biotic soup is about as likely as that 'a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.' Chance assembly is just a naturalistic way of saying 'miracle'"...

In fact, some attempts have been made to calculate the probability of life arising spontaneously in this way. Kofahl and Segraves give a statistical model in which they begin with a very generous assumption: that every square food of the earth's surface was somehow covered with 95 pounds of protein molecules that could mix freely, and that are all replaced with fresh protein every year for one billion years. They then estimate the probability that even one enzyme molecule would develop in each one billion years of the earth's history. The probability is 1.2 times 10 to the eleventh power or one chance in 80 billion. They note, however, that even with the generous assumptions and starting with fresh protein every year for a billion years, finding one enzyme molecule--for all practical purposes an impossible task--would not solve the problem at all:

The probability of finding two of the active molecules would be about 10 to the 22nd power, and the probability that an active enzyme molecule, once formed could find its way through thousands of miles and millions of years to that randomly formed RNA or DNA molecule which contains the code for that particular enzyme molecule's amino acid sequence, so that new copies of itself could be produced? Zero for all practical purposes.

Kofahl and Segraves report a study by an evolutionary scientist who formulates a model to calculate the probability for the formation, not just of one enzyme molecule but the smallest likely living organism by random processes. He comes up with a probability of... one chance in 10 with 340 million zeros after it!...

One only hopes it will not be too long before the scientific community publicly acknowledges the implausibility of evolutionary theory, and textbooks written for high school and college students openly acknowledge that evolution simply is not a satisfactory explanation for the origin of life on the earth.

(Grudem, Systematic Theology, p. 284-286)

"Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things, and by Your will they existed and were created" (Revelation 4:11).