I am deeply deluded into thinking that I can overcome those things if I just keep trying hard enough.  And I think if I can just understand the causes of this bad nature that are hidden away in my subconscious, then maybe I can then master myself and prevent that type behavior.  I have exerted much energy in this futile exercise over a major part of my lifetime.

And Lovelace puts his finger on the very reason I hang on to this misconception: “…we do not want to face the despair of having to live in conscious helpless awareness of [sin's] tyranny, [afraid of] abusing the grace and forgiveness of Christ.”  In reality it hurts my pride to think I have to keep getting help from Jesus.   Gratefully I have experienced his grace in forgiveness for past sins in order to be reconciled to God.   To me it seems unfair to have to lean on him to also get rid of the bad behavior to which my new conscience has been made sensitive.

I want to say that I have been traveling this fruitless path for at least 50 years, always making an excuse for some bad behavior (for example, yelling at my wife unjustly), then repenting and resolving never to commit that offense again.  And I can report that this striving to conquer my bad nature on my own does not work.  I accomplish very little toward changing my old nature;  I can only temporarily tame it.

There is only one way out of this “maze of twisty little passages all alike” ¹.”  And that way is found at the same place that our salvation was found: at the cross where Jesus died for us.  Only Jesus has the power to destroy the tyranny of sin over our lives.  As Lovelace says, who is quoting Paul,  “…we have died with Christ, and have been raised up together with him in newness of life.   Therefore we are not to set the estimates of our power to conquer sin according to past experiences of our will power, but are to fix our attention on Christ and the power of his risen life in which we participate: for we have died and our life is hidden with Christ in God.”

At least one more thing needs to be said about this sanctification process:  it is an on-going, daily decision that I must make.  Will I this day allow the power that is in the life of Jesus Christ do its work in me?  Or will I be foolish to think I can walk alone without faltering today?  Again, from experience, I can bear witness that every time I decide not to trust Jesus for my source of strength, that I soon find that I have “wandered into desert wastes, hungry and thirsty, my soul has fainted within me” (Psalm 107, paraphrase).  My joy is gone; I retreat into my “shell” and wallow in self-pity, wondering what went wrong.

“Wretched man that I am!  Who will deliver me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:25 ESV). As soon as I “cry to the Lord in my trouble, he delivers me from my distress”(Ps. 107). One more chance to learn not to go it alone.

I think that this verse describes my goal in life, and, by faith, I say I believe that I belong to another kingdom other than this earthly one; I agree with Ephesians 2:6: “God… raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,”, that I am truly seated with Christ in the heavens.

But do I really practice this? Is this real to me? I would say for the most part I do not live in the reality of this. Why not? The problem is that this heavenly kingdom is not visible; I cannot know it with my 5 senses of seeing, touching, smelling, tasting, or hearing. This reality is sensed only spiritually, and that sensing is not easy for us earth-bound creatures. If I ask myself, “How much of my time am I aware of God’s kingdom, or, how much of my mental processes are focused on the Lord Jesus?” I find myself coming up with a low score on this scale.

What can change this condition of not living in the reality of the heavenly kingdom? Notice that I am trying to avoid the question, “What can I do about it?” Unlike Yoda’s advice to young Luke in Star Wars, it is not about trying, nor is it about doing something. Jesus was asked this in John 6:28-29 “Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.””

Because the work has been finished, and it is complete, there is nothing more that I can do to add to what Jesus has done. Paul said, “The fullness of the Godhead bodily dwells in our Lord, and we are complete in Him.” (Colossians 2:9-10). I simply need to abide there, live in Jesus. But, how do I abide in Him instead of mostly living elsewhere?

Paul says earlier in Colossians 2:6-7, (from The Message) “My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you’ve been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. You’re deeply rooted in him. You’re well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you’ve been taught. School’s out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving.”

I need to see – more than see, but know – in my heart that this is where my deepest need and fulfillment is found. It is what I was created for. The ancients asked: “What is the chief end of man? Answer. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever” – And this is true. There is no real living, real fulfillment, real happiness elsewhere.

I can find a hint of this way of living when I recall every time I been surprised by one of those sweet times of joy, those almost painful longings of my soul for something of beauty, of love, of peace, that have come suddenly before me in my walk down the path of life. Isn’t there something eternal in those times? I declare, “yes, there is.”

Maybe it is seeing something beautiful in the sky, or in the garden, or in an act of kindness that someone does for another person. Or it can be in the sudden understanding of a verse of scripture that has never opened up before. These events surely are arranged by the Holy Spirit – He is whispering to my heart how great is His love for me and you.

And when I acknowledge this in glorifying Him, I find true happiness pours out upon me in blessings – this is enjoying Him forever. It does not have to be just for a rare occasion; this is what Jesus found at all times, and longs for us to find – “that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.” (John 17) and “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” (John 15)

I just need for my heart to be convinced and frequently reminded that this place of real joy and happiness is found only in Jesus. If my heart is convinced in that truth, I will quit wasting time chasing the things of the world that only bring false and temporary pleasure.

C. S. Lewis said, “Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

What Lewis says is true – I mostly stumble through my day, indulging in one of my favorite pastimes, or maybe trying to achieve something, striving after some goal that will bring some sense of achievement, maybe, but, alas, I find its reward is so shallow and fleeting.

On the other hand, when I am able to “practice the presence of God” throughout the day, I finally start finding real peace and fulfillment. I suggest that this starts by deliberately setting aside a time each day to enter into my prayer closet and like Mary, linger at the feet of Jesus for a little while, learn who He is, what His aroma is like, what His tone of voice sounds like, what He is feeling, learning how can I serve Him, asking in what way can I join Him in serving others. And then afterwards arising and going out in that knowledge which strengthens me.

And I can sing to Him. I find it easy to think of Him by worshiping in music with my voice or playing keyboard for Him. I can write love letters to Jesus – it helps to keep a prayer journal, jotting down my requests and following up to praise God for the answers, which may come only years later, but brings a thrill when I realize the answer came.

I also find great help in memorizing scripture – this keeps on feeding the soul and spirit for days and years afterwards. I was able, at the peak of this practice, to memorize 18 or so complete Psalms – this totally surprised me because I have never been able to memorize anything before, at least, not without great effort. Many a night have I been able to get rid of insomnia by rectiting Psalm 1, Psalms 8, 19, 23, and 27. (For a blessing, watch John Piper quote from memory for some 20 minutes many passages of scripture: http://tinyurl.com/johnpiperquotes)

One thing that is not easy for me is to seek friendship with others – I am a loner by nature; but when I spend real quality time in conversation with another believer, and if it is centered on Jesus, I find that there is a third person always there – Jesus, Himself. It reminds me each time it happens that 2 or 3 together in His name is a natural gathering where He promises to be in a special way.

So, these are some practical ways of starting to seek the kingdom of God, of living in the reality of the eternal life with which God has gifted us. It boils down to living, abiding in the vine which is Jesus, and letting His life flow through me.

May the Lord teach me to be sensitive to those many times I tend to hurry away from the abiding because I suddenly have an idea of my own of something more worthwhile that I need to do, or because something happens to me to take my eyes off of His glorious face; or, more typically, of reacting to something that offends me and I grab my old defensive weapons to protect myself instead of trusting Him.

And gradually, He changes me, molds me into a true citizen of heaven, one who abides there and greatly desires with my whole heart to stay there forever.

May the Lord gently, but firmly turn my eyes away from myself and focus on Him. Amen.

There are four things on earth that are small but unusually wise ( Proverbs 3:24 – New Living Translation)

The writer of Proverbs goes on and talks about the ant, the rock badgers, the locusts, and the lizards, but he could have included the beetle as well.  Our Father, the designer and maker of all the wondrous creatures on the earth, shows His care for tiny details in the amazing insects spoken of here.

Have you wondered about all the twigs and small branches that fall to the ground under a hardwood tree this time of year? The ones I am talking about are those that look like they have been cut and not just broken off. An older friend explained this annual event to me several years ago, and I was reminded about it this year – our new home has a large deciduous tree in the backyard with dozens of these cleanly pruned stems lying on the ground under the tree. Here is a photo of some of the twigs that I gathered:

twigs pruned by twig girdlers

I think the scientists call this symbiosis – where one biological species helps another. And, as always, I think it was God’s intent for these arrangements to be made, not, as many think, an accident of the survival of the fittest.

He made at least two insects that prune these trees each year: twig girdlers, and twig pruners. They are both small beetles, but do the pruning in significantly different manners. The girdler adult beetle selects a small limb to crawl out on, goes near the end – typically 1 foot from the end – and girdles the twig by cutting the bark all the way around. Then she lays one or more eggs in incisions made on the rim of the cut on the side away from the trunk of the tree. This is usually in the early fall season. About a month later, the egg will hatch, and the larva will start eating inside the bark.

The larva would die in a healthy limb, but does well in the damaged tip. Eventually the end of the limb will break because of the wind or other weather affects (sometimes the limb will stay attached, but hang down by a “thread” of wood fiber). The larvae  continue eating several months inside the dead twigs and emerge as an adult beetles in the late summer. Then the cycle begins again.

The photo on the left shows an adult twig girdler at work: (from University of Florida) The one on the right is a photo of an adult twig pruner (from Rainbow Treecare).

Twig girdler adult cutting the groove

twig pruner adult

In contrast to the girdler beetle, for the pruning beetle, it is the larva that does the cutting. The adult female cuts a hole in a twig near the end, doing this in the spring. When the larva hatches, it begins eating the wood, and finally tunnels around near the peripheral, making a circular cut around the twig, but from the inside, leaving the outside layer of bark uncut. But, again, the wind will cause the weakened tip to break off later in the year. The only difference in the broken twig’s appearance between the pruner is that the outer bark will have a ragged edge where it broke off compared to the girdler – which leaves a clean cut. The diagram below shows the difference – you can click here for more information, and thanks to University of Missouri for supplying the diagrams and for how to control the infestation when it gets out of hand.

Twig girdler result

Twig pruner result

Again, the mysteries of creation, speak of the wonderful creativity, and may I say, it also tells of the sense of humor for the variety of funny looking creatures by our wonderful Father in heaven, and His Son, Jesus, through Whom the creation was made. “For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth” (Colossians 1:16)

The princess Ariadne offers Theseus a thread to unravel as he explores the dark maze so he can escape if he survives the quest. That scene stirred my memory of Mark Twain’s story about Tom Sawyer and Becky being lost in a cave.

The tender love of the two toward each other described in that tale made me long to be as Tom in comforting his friend. I think this was the first time that romantic love arose in my young heart. In the words of C. S. Lewis, I was surprised by joy.

And now some 60 years later, some of those expressions of rapture in my heart are opening afresh, better and more vivid than ever before. The poem by Francis Thompson, The Hound of Heaven, for me captures the essence of the ongoing pursuit for joy that I thought was initiated by me, but indeed, it is I who was being pursued.

The source of this fountain of joy, this welling up within my soul, is none other than my heavenly lover, the Lord Jesus Christ! Blessed be His Name!  Sometimes I feel like my heart might burst if I cannot share these feelings with others.

Someone asked, “Do you know that He loves you with His whole heart?” That question brought me up short. How can that be? How can the creator and king of the universe care about me, about each one of us? What is it about us that is worthy of love, of His trying to capture our hearts? Finding that answer is also part of the unfolding mystery of this marvelous love.

Oh how I wish I had the words to describe these experiences. How I long to bring others into the same gallery of riches and glory, to the place that Paul described, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways…For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things, To Him be the glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 12:33-36)

…I fled Him, down the labyrithine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him…

Halts by me that footfall:…
…His hand, outstretched caressingly…
“…I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.”

–Francis Thompson

A little while later I discovered that several of my “heroes” of the faith had posted statements about why they had not signed it. These included R. C. Sproul, Alistair Begg, and John MacArthur, all of whom had good explanations, and their explanations helped convince me to withdraw my signature.

Since the promotion of this declaration has arisen again, this time on Facebook, I have studied the Manhattan Declaration to try to explain in my own words what bothers me about it. It gradually dawned on me how to respond to the document.

The Manhattan Declaration says many good things, and I agree with the analysis of the awful problems of abortion, euthanasia, attacks upon marriage, and the threat of losing religious freedom. However, it leaves out the most important part of pointing the way to the solution. It refers to the gospel of Jesus Christ without ever talking about what that gospel is and how it can cure the sickness of society. And it points out great Christians of the past that helped correct some of these ills without explaining what enabled them to persist in the fight.

A non-Christian reading this document would conclude that Jesus was a great teacher and promoter of wonderful ideals, and followers of His ways can be model citizens. But there is nothing about the transformation in our hearts that come from responding to the gospel, that is, the rebirth from our death that has come into our lives because of sin. In fact, I find it a glaring omission that there is no reference to sin or the fallen nature of man in the document. How can this “cancer” be eradicated without identifying its source?

According to the Declaration, it seems that the authors are attributing the evil abuses and bad ideas to lack of mankind’s adherence to our good traditions and heritage. There is no implication that the ills stem instead from evil hearts, from greed, selfishness, and hatred. There is no mention of our adversary, the evil one. Instead, the authors imply that these wrongs in society can be minimized by such things as re-education, good laws, strict enforcement, and good leadership, in other words, by human will.

To say that this is a Christian declaration, I think it should state what the gospel of Jesus Christ teaches: people are born in sin, they are lost and in a hopeless condition; they are dead spiritually and are slaves to sin in their natural state; but the good news is that Jesus has provided a way out, a transformation, a metamorphosis of the person that brings life, and life that will last forever.

This free gift is offered to all people. The price for that gift was paid by the death of Jesus who lived a sinless life, and therefore, was enabled to pay for all our sins.  It lets God, our righteous judge,  cancel the sentences of death against us by nailing them to the cross (see Colossians 2:13-15). The acceptance of this gift and the commitment to live in Him creates a rebirth of that person, and this transaction occurs by faith in God’s power to do just that.

The proof that this is all true was demonstrated by the resurrection of the body of Jesus after being dead for three days, and then 40 days later ascending into heaven. This good news, this gospel, is the only hope of changing peoples hearts, of bringing truth and righteousness into the nation and our world.

In conclusion, the Manhattan Declaration misses the whole point of how to correct these evils of society. It does a good job of describing what has happened and how mankind has gone against the traditions and norms of society. But it falls woefully short of providing a way out of the mess or of even giving hope that change can occur. It declares that if Christians will stand together to fight the evil that maybe we can sway the drift of society back to the righteous ways of living. I think the sad history of mankind proves this false.

Without the empowering of God in our lives, there is no hope for a cure. Where in the document is there a call for repentance, for falling on our knees to pray to our Lord for help, for wisdom, for strength? The cure put forward by the Manhattan Declaration is like suggesting that if everyone in New Orleans had used their leaf blowers the course of Hurricane Katrina could have been altered.

It seems like hours; she has been gone four minutes.  Flying to a nearby limb, hopping to the brim of the nest, she peers down at open mouths on wobbly necks.

Motionless, she checks the surroundings, then starts to nourish each baby out of her innate maternal provisions.  She pokes her beak into eager mouths. After each is fed, she nudges the nestlings deeper into the cradle of straw. She fluffs her feathers, spreads her wings, and they nestle under her to get warm and dry.

Ten minutes pass before there is a stirring in the nest.  A head pokes up, again with open beak, then another appears.  The mother slowly moves upward, and from her resources feeds them a bit more.  They settle anew, this time a bare two minutes.

As the babies assert themselves again, she stirs herself. After carefully checking the environs, off she flies.  The Creator rejoices as the life-sustaining choreography continues.

The eyes of all wait upon Thee; and Thou givest them their meat in due season. Thou openest Thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing. (Psalm 145:15-16)

Thanks to Tony Northrup for permission to use photo. http://www.northrup.org/

Click Link to hear wonderful rendition of The eyes of all wait upon thee by Jean Berger

And then it has all the other delicate parts that make up a flower’s ability to make a seed.  It must be tiny insects that fly into them to collect the pollen.  The “wonder of it all” as the song goes, is beyond my ability to describe.

I truly believe with my whole heart -and with vastly increasing portion of my head- that God created each tiny detail of this flower on the third day in which He spoke the creation into being. And ever since, faithfully and untiringly, basil has reproduced its own kind.

The photo of the periwinkle flower also from our sunny deck displays a glory all of its own.  The rose family has 5 regular petals in the single form of those flowers, so this may be of that family.  Notice how it is unfurling (I have been watching this one – this photo is about 6 hours since it first started opening.  Again “I see such beauty there, none other can compare” as another poem says, although the poem is about the one through whom the flowers came into being: the Lord Jesus,  Blessed be His name.

I looked at an open periwinkle bloom and wondered where the pollenating parts were.  Could they be in that tiny center hole?  I carefully opened up the stem of the flower, and there were those tiny parts.  They were not really clearly visible until I put the stem under a microscope – there were the parts and some particles of pollen as well.  What complexity on such a small scale that is replicated millions of times each day!

Used by permission from WikiPedia

However, the event that inspired me to write this happened in the preparation of dinner last night.  I stepped outside to shuck some fresh ears of corn bought from our local fruit stand.  And I was struck by that very different form of procreation.  Each kernel of corn has attached to it a delicate strand of the silk which extends inside the shuck protection up to the end of the ear to the outside elemnts.

When the wind blows, that strand of silk catches a tiny bit of the pollen which is then somehow propagated down the strand to the kernel area to germinate and form the seed of sweetness that is so pleasing to us.  And this happens hundreds of times within each ear of corn on each stalk.  Such a wonderful, fantastic design!  Who could have imagined it?  I know who: our Father and His Son and His Holy Spirit – they very much enjoyed producing such infinite variety.  Cannot you sense the humor in much of it as well as the beauty?

To the old question,  ”What is the chief end of man?”, the ancients declared,”To glorify God and to enjoy Him forever”.

Amen.

First if all, I do believe the Bible chronology to be true: the 6 day creation, the flood, the young earth and universe. But I don’t think we can prove it scientifically. I think the Creator, our Lord Jesus and His Father God, and the Holy Spirit did it almost instantaneously – maybe our triune God purposely stretched it out to last for 6 days to set the example of the 7 day week with a day of rest as the climax of the week. (Since I first wrote this, I have found that the church fathers and theologians long ago said this.  A good source of that history is in the book, Coming to grips with Genesis, by Mortenson, et. al.).

And because of the way the creation was done, being spoken out nothing I believe, then the flow of what we observe as natural processes could not be normal.

I say this because as far as I understand the “natural” laws, it is physically impossible to put into place all the molecules, atoms, nuclei, and sub-nuclear particles of the universe in the short interval of time if one is working within the restrictions of those laws. So, it seems to me, the whole process of creation had to have been done miraculously, maybe outside of time (except for the 6 days x 24 hours/day = 144 hours of elapsed time)  [Note: I am not rigid about the 144 hours, but I have no reason other than to choose the way the Bible describes it in its literal form.]

So, for example,

• God also created the photons in place (in situ) in their travels from the distant galaxies to the earth so the sights could be enjoyed by man at the time of his “birth;”  otherwise the stars would have to have been made years before the earth, and the 6 days of its creation. [Note: the only method used to measure stellar distances that I trust as "proven" is the parallax method.  And this method has thus far extended out to about 1600 light-years (click here for the link on this method).  All the other methods of measuring distance of stars are based on statistical theories, and the "evidence" that the furthest stars are something like 15 billion light years away, is based on somewhat shaky assumptions ]

• God made the isotope mixtures, for example, just what He wanted to give the balance needed for the limited radiation from nuclear fission;  so why try to explain the percentages, for example, of Uranium 238 and its decay chain of isotopes?  If God created the U238 in the first place, why not create at the same time all of the daughter isotopes?  [Note: by "balance needed" I mean to keep the radiation from being too strong or too weak for His purposes.]

• The properties found by physics, geology, biology are what God wanted and needed in order to pronounce about creation, “It is good,” reasons about which we may be able to partially discover , but certainly not completely.

Therefore, it seems a wasted effort to bend over backwards, for example,  to make the radiological evidence to conform to our theory of the chronology, or to how the living creatures “evolved”. [The creationists have said that maybe the radioactive nuclear decay was speeded up in the past to account for the evidence that seems to point to millions of years of elapsed time. But why is that necessary when God could have more easily set the mixture of isotopes like He wanted to in the first place?]

I don’t mean it is a waste of time to try to understand it all – the research in the fields of the physical and biological sciences is good, I think – and the efforts by most good scientists are motivated by the search for knowledge of how it is put together and the dynamics of it all, not to find or prove how it got started.  The origin of things, how and where they came from, is outside the realm of science, I think, since there is no way to test the theories of those that try to answer the questions.  Outside of experimentation, science is not real science, in my opinion. To believe a non-testable theory is based on faith, not science.

Since it requires faith, I chose to put that faith in the story as related in the bible.  Anyway, those are some of my thoughts about this vast topic.

If you have studied the problems of keeping a satellite in orbit around the earth, you know that there have to be periodic adjustments made to its speed and direction. Otherwise the orbit will degrade so that a satellite can no longer perform its function. The adjustments are usually made by commanding small jets to eject a precise amount of compressed gas that is stored on the satellite. The ground controllers call these adjustments “burns.”

And this problem is prevalent no matter where you would try to place a space object in the solar system except at some very special points in space called Lagrangian Points. They are labeled L1, L2, … L5. There are 5 L points for each pair of orbiting bodies, like the Sun-Earth system and the Sun-Mars system as well as for the Earth-Moon pair of bodies, as seen in the diagram that is in the Wikipedia: Lagrangian Point article.

Lagrange points for Earth-Moon

The two points, L4 and L5, are the best choices for a stable location because if the satellite drifts away from the point in any direction, the effects of gravity plus momentum will keep it close to the Lagrangian point. The blue arrows show the limits of the “safe region”.

On the other hand, L1, L2, and L3 only have temporary stability and a satellite at those positions has to have periodic adjustments to keep it there. Drifting any amount toward or away from the earth or moon will produce instability. Thus, though it takes less “fuel” to keep a satellite at those points, the “burns” are still required.

I just chatted on-line with my friend Chandra in India – he worked on a version of this problem in college. It was called the 3-body problem discussed by Newton in 1687 and by Euler in 1767, and then by Lagrange in 1772.( ref: Wikipedia article: Three-body_problem)

For only 2 bodies in space, the prediction of their orbits around each other is easily calculated. But add a 3rd body and their orbits become unpredictable except in restricted circumstances. Outside those restrictions, the motion is chaotic – in fact, the academic field of Chaos was established to deal with this kind of motion.

I find it amazing that our Lord Jesus, who was the one through whom the universe was created (Hebrews 1:2), is also the one that made the laws by which it behaves. He knows all about the chaos that it is all heading for, and provides for us a safe, stable resting place in Him.

Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
(Matthew 6:29-30)

The moon and its splendor

Holograms & the gospel

• Takes special light to illuminate it, otherwise looks like random pattern
• Every part of the film shows the complete subject in 3-d, but only from a limited angle – all the pieces are needed to see all sides of the subject.

Share about Brahms Requiem and its libretto – so moving to me.

Rods and cones and seeing color under moonlight.

Mössbauer effect in nuclear physics

Millikan oil drop experiment

Atomic structure and energy transitions

Radiological dating

Colors (Mr. Land’s demos – the founder/inventer of Polaroid)

Solids, liquids – states of matter

Superconductivity, superfluids

Lagrangian points (note grav of moon vs grav of sun:  57 x 10^3 sun/moon ratio)

Bear constellations & new star

Circular motion

Details on meteors

Details on comets

Here’s a wild idea: write a story of what heaven will be like – seeing the glory, the wonder, the friendships, the great “library” where everything ever written worthwhile has been kept, where the history of man is fully recorded for playback (time travel?); A music library with every song ever written that glorifies the Lord and His creation;  He equips the saints also with an unlimited workshop for new creations; the beauty of a perfect, non-dying world; a river whose waters make glad the city of God – not just a small, trickle, but a vast source of water – not pouring into a dead end of an ocean, but into living pools of clean, clear water for boating, swimming, for enjoyment; a light that is better than sunlight, yet does no damage or cause discomfort;  and on and on….