Prose – Page 9 – Poetry, Short Prose and Walking

Stardust

Our words affirm who we think we are.

Beyond their truth values, they are powerful spells. They bless. They curse. Though others might get in the way, we ourselves are the ones who are blessed or defiled by what comes out of our own mouths.¹

A song written by Joni Mitchell called Woodstock² in 1969 influenced me through the early 1970s. In the final refrain is a declaration of what Mitchell thought we were.

We are stardust
Billion year old carbon

However, as I’ve come to realize, there is no natural way that we could be stardust and as a metaphor the idea is sentimental nonsense.

There are those who fantasize how that stardust to man might have happened, but the only thing they proclaim is their rebellion against a Creator. Dust from a supernova cannot get back together again no matter how often one waves a magic wand – or a professor’s hand – insisting on billions of years of evolution.

And yet, back in the 1970s, I had no problem believing such mythology. I had no more problem with it than an ancient Greek would have had with Zeus or a Hindu with Krishna. Those were the words spoken to me and those were the words I chose to listen to. Today, I repent of that misleading idolatry.

That our bodies come from the earth is true.³ However, the dust of the earth has never been stardust no more than it has ever been pixie dust.

The words we speak and the words we listen to matter. I can testify – first hand – that God is not mocked. What we sow we shall reap.⁴

I can also testify that repentance brings more joy than delusion, rebellion and disobedience⁵.

Matthew 15:17-20 KJV – 17 Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? 18 But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. 19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: 20 These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man. ↩︎
https://jonimitchell.com/music/lyricsprint.cfm?id=75 ↩︎
Genesis 2:7 KJV – 7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. ↩︎
Galatians 6:7-8 KJV – 7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. 8 For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. ↩︎
Luke 15:10 KJV – 10 Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. ↩︎

Biblical Prayer

Matthew 6:10 KJV – Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Biblical prayer is a command spoken to the earth that the Lord’s will be done throughout it.

That includes not merely the problems we face, but ourselves as well.

Matthew 6:7 KJV – 7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

Prayer is not a powerless, showy, vain speaking.

Prayer is our thoughts and words confirmed by our actions conforming only to the Lord’s will, not to our own.

When we get our thoughts, words and actions in line with the Lord’s will we pray effortlessly and without ceasing, because we then no longer know how to do anything else but insist that the Father’s kingdom come and that His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Six Sentence Story: Advice

The plumber watched his apprentice work on a shower faucet. It was old and probably could use more repair than he was authorized to perform.

The apprentice tried to loosen a tight connection. He asked the plumber, What if I break it?

The idea haunted the plumber as well, but he wasn’t particularly worried, because what good would worrying do? The only advice that came to his mind and which he offered while those who owned the condo watched the repair was, Don’t break it.

______

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

Matthew 6:25 KJV – Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

Six Sentence Story: Flakes

As Brian paced back and forth through the park he was unaware that an old man, sitting on a bench in the shade, was listening to him as he complained about some guy he called a “flake” and then whined about some other guy he said needed to get his “head screwed on straight”.

Ya gotta forgive um, the old man finally shouted as Brian wandered past him once more.

WHAT?

They’re idiots.

Ah . . . good point.

And so are you.

______

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

Matthew 18:21-22 KJV – 21 Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?
22 Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.

Holes in the Net

Christian apologists who accept evolution do not realize how huge the holes are in their gospel nets.

What they don’t see is that the Bible offers not only a viable explanation of the universe we live in, but it offers the only viable explanation for it. The others are impossible modern mythologies masquerading as scientific theories.

The problem for the atheist is that one would have to accept the God of the Bible for the biblical explanation to be viable especially with the age of the universe being less than 8000 years.

But isn’t the universe billions of years old?
Under Newtonian physics, perhaps, but not under relativity physics. If relativity is true, distant starlight can no longer be used as a clock.¹
But aren’t there fossils half a billion years old?
Radioactive decay is not a clock either. If it were then all of the rates of decay, including erosion rates and biological decay that we notice today, would have to line up. That dinosaur fossils have soft tissue² still in them suggests – no, it insists – that they are much, much younger than that.
But isn’t humanity hundreds of thousands of years old?
Historical records only go back about 5000 years. Let that sink in. That length of time is what one would expect given a global flood occurring about 3300 BC. Real people leave historical records. The existence and age of these historical records confirm the biblical chronology that the universe is less than 8000 years old³ and that there was a global catastrophe about 5300 years ago.

But that’s ridiculous! Once you realize that it is not, you will start taking the Bible seriously enough to mend the holes in the net.

______

In a 13 minute video Calvin Smith presented arguments every Christian apologist who still accepts evolution needs to hear. Atheists already know these arguments: any god who would use the cruel and destructive means of elimination known as evolution to bring about creation is unloving and morally suspect. Christian morals should make one reject the very god those apologists witlessly try to promote.

Smith described Christian apologists who accept evolution as casting gospel nets with holes in them.

The reason relativity doesn’t allow the speed of light to be used as a clock to measure the age of the universe is due to the conventionality of simultaneity thesis which Veritasium explained rather well. Allen Janis’s article Conventionality of Simultaneity summarizes the thesis in more detail providing additional references. Jason Lisle applied it to solve the distant starlight problem of creationism in his paper Anisotropic Synchrony Convention , Answers Research Journal, 2010. Bottom line: We cannot tell how old the universe is by knowing the two-way speed of light and the estimated distance of a celestial object unless we go back to Newtonian physics. ↩︎
Creation Ministries International provided a one-minute video summarizing the significance of the discovery of soft tissue in fossils: those fossils must have been laid down recently. That soft tissue exists in fossils at all marks the end of the evolutionary worldview unless one is addicted to that worldview much like those who promote a flat earth are addicted to theirs. ↩︎
There are various biblical chronologies because there are multiple manuscript traditions. The ultimate original source is lost, but one can piece it together using parts from each of these traditions. The chronology I currently find most convincing comes from the Associates for Biblical Research. ↩︎

Six Sentence Story: Card

“How did you get here?”

Oh, I don’t know.

“Everybody knows, so what’s your tale?”

Well, I pulled a few strings and played my cards right and some – no, many – many people got hurt.

“I see.”

I was the guy – no, one of the guys – who more or less literally gained the whole world not that it was very much looking back.

______

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

Mark 8:36 KJV – For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Six Sentence Story: Done

“Are you done?” Steve asked after listening to a lengthy complaint.

“No, I’m NOT!” Mark said as the cloud further darkened between them.

Not all that Mark said was true, but all of it was plausible, provided you thought the way Mark did. His thoughts must have echoed through his heart for quite some time for it to flow out so fluently.

Eventually Mark took a second breather and Steve once again asked him if he were done. When Mark nodded, accepting defeat that even he couldn’t run his mouth forever, Steve dismissed him without offering any defense eventually forgetting what Mark said, not that Mark had the peace of mind to do the same.

______

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

James 3:10 KJV – Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.

He Made the Stars Also

If the universe began with an explosion, how did all of that exploded stuff come back together again to form even one star? If a star should explode, how would the mess it made clean itself up to become another star?

Not even gravity can put those explosions back together again.

There’s more truth in the nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty than there is in the mythology of modern cosmology with its big bangs and stars forming from cosmic dust clouds.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
couldn’t put Humpty together again.

One of the blessings of our universe is that things don’t naturally compress through gravity to the point that a thermonuclear reaction starts. If they did, the waters over the earth (along with all of the land) would have collapsed to the center of what once was the earth long ago.

The reason stuff like that doesn’t happen is because of hydrostatic equilibrium. Gravity draws things together. Sure, but an opposing outward pressure keeps stuff from collapsing beyond an equilibrium point. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.

Some claim that if there were a multiverse, an infinite number of universes all starting with explosions, then at least one of them would have to look like ours. Wrong. Blow things up an infinite number of times (or more) and none of those explosions, because of hydrostatic equilibrium, would turn into a universe with planets and stars.

Every one of those exploded verses in that multiverse would remain a mess forever.

______

Six Sentence Story: My Sunset, Your Sunrise

At the end of the day in Tampa, Greg went to Clearwater Beach (latitude 27.9772, longitude -82.8279) to watch the sun set. Earlier that day he saw the sun rise on Miami Beach.

As the sun began its entry below the waters of the Gulf of America, Greg quickly phoned his brother on a boat in the Indian Ocean near the Cocos Islands (latitude -27.9772, longitude 97.1721) to ask him, “Where do you see the sun in the sky where you are right now?”

“Right now it’s rising in the east,” his brother said.

“How is it possible that I’m seeing the sun half-way below the horizon in the west while you’re watching it rise half-way above the horizon in the east?”

“That’s what you get when you talk to someone on the opposite side of a globe.”

______

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

There’s not much to this story except that I have some friends who have been trying to convince me that the earth is flat. This is sort of a rebuttal to their argument.

I was also looking for an opportunity to use the new name, Gulf of America. It took a minute to make the AI tool in the Brave browser admit that the correct name is the Gulf of America considering my current location in Florida although it tried to convince me otherwise.