Frank Hubeny

Sunday Walk 80 – Joy

It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we experience the joy of salvation and are enabled to rejoice even in the midst of trials.
Jerry Bridges, The Practice of Godliness, page 113

I sometimes forget the role of the Holy Spirit in Christian rebirth since many of the fruits of the Spirit I can fake for a short while with my own efforts. Trusting too much in my own efforts leads me to doubt that there even is a Holy Spirit.

Joy is a fruit that is difficult to fake. True, I can smile when events or emotions challenge me, but people looking closely see through it.

What this tells me is there is more going on to make joy possible than my own efforts. Although I might be tempted to refuse to participate in the working of the Holy Spirit, the more I let the Holy Spirit work in me the less I am persuaded to work against Him.

And yet there are many times when circumstances seem overwhelming. Imagine the despair the Israelites felt trapped between the Red Sea and the Egyptian army. And yet God was there for them. Or, imagine what Hagar felt in the desert before God spoke to her. But then He spoke.

Weekly Parashah Readings
Parashah: Ki Tisa 18 Adar, 5782 – February 19, 2022
Torah: Exodus 30:11-34:35
Haftarah: Kings I 18:20-39
Brit Chadashah: 2 Corinthians 3:1-18
Resources: Chabad, Hebrew4Christians, Weekly Torah Readings, Calendar

Happy Question Evolution Day!

Today, February 12th, is Darwin’s birthday and also Question Evolution Day.

The kind of evolution being questioned is biological evolution, not the alleged evolution of solar systems or galaxies, although I don’t think that kind of evolution is possible either. The universe is winding down through entropy. It is not evolving into something more complicated than what we see around us.

Biological evolution is also not the differentiation of a specific kind of animal into new breeds or sub-species. That comes about routinely with either artificial or natural selection. However, no new kind of animal can be formed by this selection process alone.

Biological evolution is a way to go from something simple to something complicated without involving the free will of any agent such as God. The whole point of biological evolution is to do away with God as an explanation.

Since God is not involved, evolution will need some mechanism by which change can take place making a transition from slime mold to ourselves plausible. The current mechanism offered is random mutations. Given mutations over long periods of time DNA is supposedly changed so slime mold can turn into a chicken or maybe a dinosaur and the dinosaur can turn into an ape and the ape can become a human being.

However, it has become apparent that mutations aren’t enough to make that happen.

The reason mutations won’t work is because they are generally deleterious. Rarely do they benefit the species undergoing them. That is why our bodies try to correct them, but they do not always succeed. We pass on some of these mistakes to our children who pass them on to their children with additional mutations. A mutational load builds up generation after generation.

This increasing mutational load is what John Sanford calls genetic entropy. Natural selection cannot stop it. The end result of genetic entropy is not some superior creature, but mutational meltdown. That’s when a species is no longer able to reproduce. It goes extinct.

So, unless there is some mechanism for biological evolution to occur besides mutations to supplement natural selection, biological evolution is not possible. Genetic entropy prevents it.

That’s why I celebrate Question Evolution Day.

Admittedly the extinction part is depressing. However, God said that He not only created a very good world with us in it, but in response to the fall of Adam and Eve, He offered us His Son whose sacrifice almost two thousand years ago would allow for a new heaven and a new earth. Given genetic entropy, we are going to need it.

Rise – Décima

It’s not the sun. It’s not the moon.
It’s not the stars. They serve as signs.
The ordered light they offer shines,
but cannot sing a sacred tune.

He’s coming and He’s coming soon.
We lift our voice. We lift our hands
abandoning our once prized plans.
In unison our praises rise.
In expectation, earth and skies,
are eager, waiting for our stands.

Ronovan Hester offers the rhyme word “rise” to be used in a D-line of a décima having rhyme pattern ABBAACCDDC for this week’s Decima Challenge. Eugenia offers “unison” for her weekly prompt. I am thinking of Romans 8:16.

Sunrise with two birds — Sunrise with birds

Redemption – Six Sentence Story

Timothy was driving to a closing angry at the “idiot” going only 85 miles per hour in the fast lane. To pass the time he was wasting he went through a list of people he felt needed a piece of his mind giving the windshield a spirited round of abuse he wished those on the list could hear.

In particular he scolded his sister who kept bugging him about “repentance” and “redemption”. When she told him the second coming would be here any day now he reminded her that she told him that very same thing forty years ago and so far nothing, nothing’s happened.

Frustrated with the driver in front of him Timothy jerked his car from the fast lane into the middle lane just as another driver from the opposite side of the expressway accelerated without looking into the middle lane aiming for rapid deliverance in the fast lane. Neither knew what hit them as the traffic unfortunate enough to be following collided or braked to a stop.

Denise offers the word “redemption” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean from southern Florida

The Returning of the Light

Dale offers the prompt “the returning of the light” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.

The top photo is yesterday’s rising sun over the Atlantic Ocean from southern Florida.

A few minutes earlier than the top photo, the bottom one shows the sun rising out of the ocean (not literally 🙂 ) cropped to focus on the clouds and waves near the sun.

Yesterday's Sunrise — Yesterday’s Sunrise

Sunday Walk 79 – Thanksgiving

We pray for God’s intervention in our lives, then congratulate ourselves rather than God for the results.
Jerry Bridges, The Practice of Godliness, (page 101)

We pray to God for something to happen. It happens. However, since it is always possible to concoct some explanation for what happened that does not involve God, we forget about thanking Him. Do we think He wasn’t listening? Do we think He wasn’t involved in that event? If we do, why did we even bother praying?

Bridges adds, “Thanksgiving is a normal result of a vital union with Christ, and a direct measure of the extent to which we are experiencing the reality of that union in our lives.” (page 103)

If we are not thankful after something we explicitly prayed for, and we take Bridges seriously, does that mean we may not have a vital union with Christ?

Jerry Bridges, Godliness

Earlier I had no idea what to write for this post. I prayed. Afterwards much of what’s in this post came to mind as well as suggestions for revisions.

Now, finishing the post, I do not want to be thanking some sentimental imitation, some Greek muse, some forest faerie, some earth mother goddess, some pan-psychic cosmic consciousness for what happened. I hope none of them were involved. To the extent any were, I apologize for the results.

I prayed to God, Adonai, specifically, to Yehovah (the Father) through Yeshua (the Son, Jesus,) in Ruach HaKodesh (the Holy Spirit) (Ephesians 2:18). I thank God over and over again with joy.

Even if nothing had come to mind for this post, and none of it did in the ways I expected it would, I would still thank God, because I prayed, grateful that I can pray, accepting responsibility for any mistakes I made.

That’s my testimony of thanksgiving.

Weekly Parashah Readings
Parashah: Tetzaveh 11 Adar, 5782 – February 12, 2022
Torah: Exodus 27:20 – 30:10
Haftarah: Ezekiel 43:10-27
Brit Chadashah: Hebrews 13:10-17
Resources: Chabad, Hebrew4Christians, Weekly Torah Readings, Calendar

Fresh – Décima

The Lord resides within his mind,
or so he thinks, but not his heart.
His wheelchair today won’t start.
The internet goes blank. He’s blind.

He rises standing there to find
rebellion as his mental mesh
is torn revealing fallen flesh.
Knocked down his demons seek the door.
His heart’s been cleaned renewed now for
a will aligned and temple fresh.

Ronovan Hester offers the rhyme word fresh to be used in a C-line of a décima having rhyme pattern ABBAACCDDC for this week’s challenge. I am thinking of Psalm 51:10.

Scribe – Six Sentence Story

Gerald deciphered the script covering the small tablet. The scribe who wrote it did not anticipate that he would have a reader four thousand years in the future. Indeed, given the evils of the conquering lord whose forces had killed almost everyone in his own house, all the scribe hoped for was the world’s imminent end.

At that end, when the real Lord appeared, every tear would be wiped away as praise and thanksgiving joined in an eternal caress. The scribe prayed for mercy, or so Gerald imagined reading now between the lines of the tightly written tablet.

In the meanwhile the currently reigning lord of calamity was busy devouring the land with no time to waste on mercy.

Denise offers the word “scribe” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. And Eugenia offers the word “caress” for her prompt this week.

From My Window

Dale offers the prompt “from my window” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.

In the top view, taken a year or so ago, the water is on the outside dripping down. In the bottom it is condensation on the inside.

After opening the shades in our apartment in southern Florida over the last few days there was enough condensation to write the message below.

Temperatures hit a Florida freezing of 50 degrees Fahrenheit — Temperatures hit a Florida freezing 50 degrees Fahrenheit

Sunday Walk 78 – Autonomy

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6, New American Standard Bible

The opposite of trusting in the Lord and listening for the Shepherd’s voice is autonomy. Autonomy is trusting in my own understanding and goodness. The delusion that I am doing something good is what drives me down the road to hell powered by those good intentions.

As C.S. Lewis pointed out in The Great Divorce, a tale of deluded shades who preferred hell to heaven, either we say to God, “Thy will be done,” or God says that right back to us.

The following video from Answers in Genesis Canada shows how human autonomy pervades our culture, and perhaps even our own personal worldviews, in rejecting the Lord by following our own understanding justified by a belief in our own goodness.

Weekly Parashah Readings
Parashah: Terumah 4 Adar, 5782 – February 5, 2022
Torah: Exodus 25:1-27:19
Haftarah: I Kings 5:26-6:13
Brit Chadashah: 2 Corinthians 9:1-15; Matthew 5:33-37
Resources: Chabad, Hebrew4Christians, Weekly Torah Readings, Calendar