The old St. Louis train station boasts some of the most remarkable architecture you’ve even seen. It’s not the biggest station, but close, second only to Grand Central Station in NYC. Majestic, like other stations (shoutout to Cincinnati and Buffalo and even Macon, GA), you just can’t help but marvel at how big the thing was.

​    I say “was” because, like the Chattanooga “Choo Choo” station, it’s now a hotel (and a fair, and a lake, and an eatery extravaganza). But the stained glass window as long as a house still graces the wall above the massive staircase entering the main hall.That, in turn, demands your attention upward towards the vaulted ceilings that soar 65 feet in the air. A painting of the trains arriving at the Mississippi is as big as the side of our church.

​    That train station was the largest train station in the world when it was built in 1894. I can’t imagine what an old farmer, riding to St. Louis for the first time would have thought walking up those grand staircases into that magnificent space. When I walked in, I had just come from a choral Evensong at Christ Church Cathedral a few blocks away.  Aided by the American Guild of Organists that Sunday, it was a glorious hour of divine music. So I walked into that great hall and mentioned to my younger son what that hall would sound like with a big organ. (I even suggested that they should move the Wanamaker organ in Philly’s old Macy’s building there, after all, it started out there!)

​    The idea of a huge organ playing in that hall would be overwhelming. Overwhelming in volume, too; but I think spiritually that hall is a prompt for the imagination to ponder heaven. That old farmer, coming from one world (the farm) into another (the splendor of the station) is a reminder that all of us will board a proverbial train (does the spiritual “This Train” come to mind?), and that what we are headed for is better than what is here. I can’t imagine.

    ​I can tell you that the ticket on that train costs less than what trains cost today (which seems expensive to me) and even less than what the old farmer paid back in the day. It’s free. The invitation God offers for us is free. Not cheap, as we have been reminded by Bonhoffer, but indeed free.

​What train are you on, pilgrim?

Still thinking about the station,

Craig

“The Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.” — Psalm 121:8 (NIV)

                           In a long line of preschoolers sitting on the sidewalk waiting for their parents to come pick them up, a seemingly random (to a bystander anyway) woman walks by the group, stops, puts her hand out, and up pops a little arm and hand to meet hers. Mom tugs a little at her son to get him and his bag up, and hand in hand they walk off to the parking lot. Another successful day at preschool. 

There is something very tender about that moment. Of all the lined-up children, beautiful and wonderful as they may be, this mom picked one. And by reaching out her hand, she claimed this one, this particular one as her own. I couldn’t see it, but I’m sure they first locked their eyes and smiled. And, of all the other women walking by that morning, teachers and aides and other moms, this boy reached out his hand, signaling that she was his mom. As they walked away, they held hands, a wonderful expression (if you can remember this back in your day) of belonging to each other. The mom reached out and said, “this is my son,” and the son reached out, expressing that she belonged to him, too. 

Someday, 10 or so years from now, that little boy will be a teenager, out on a first date, nervous as can be, walking through a crowded County Fair, and will feel this girl’s hand brush up against his. And then again. And by the third time he’ll reach out to hold the young lady’s hand, and a new sensation will run through him. Is it Iove?  Yeah.  But it’s  that same sense of belonging he had when he was a preschooler, now in a very crowded world, and now with a peer. She now belongs to him, or him to her–no matter, they are now boyfriend and girlfriend. In Spanish, it’s called “jalando” which means “tugging.” You can see where the thought came from. 

God wants us to feel that same thing with Him. I suppose the prior imagery is more appropriate than the second with God. God is not our peer, and we do refer to Him as Father. But it’s that sense of security–that you’re not alone, that you belong to someone and they to you, that brings a simultaneous smile and confidence in confronting the world. Holding a hand means that the support has doubled (in the case of a date,) but rather exponentially with God. That support brings comfort and security. And in the case of the little boy going home from preschool, a spring in his step. I suppose at the Fairgrounds, too. 

As Methodists, we are keenly aware that God is the one who reaches out first. Like the young girl in my illustration, God reaches out before we are aware of it. We reach out to a hand already opened wide. We just need to take it. The needs we have for that outstretched hand of God can be as varied as we are as humans. But the outstretched hand of God offers all the help we need. King David put it this way: You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Psalm 16:11 (ESV) 

Smiling at the thought, 

Craig 

For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you,  
“do not fear; I will help you.”  Isaiah 41:13 (NIV) 

             If you go mountain biking, you are going to fall.  It’s just part of it.  Whether hitting roots or missing a landing or getting spooked by a seesaw, you’re going to fall.  When I took my boys riding, the inevitable scrapes and bruises I called “souvenirs,” partly to have them not be overcome by the injuries, but also to normalize the reality.  Whether that was a good thing or not, I don’t know; our younger son sure got some “souvenirs” a couple of years ago.  He lost 2 months of work for the privilege of displaying those.

Last week, it was my turn.  I was riding a mountain bike, but was riding primarily the El Rio Trail, when on the way back, I cut through the back of one of the parking lots at Boca Regional and tried to ram through a long hedge.  Some hedges, low to the ground, you can jump or push through.  Some may resist, but you can bend them.  This bamboo hedge wasn’t quite so compliant, however, and demanded that my right handlebar stay on one side of the hedge and let the other through.  This meant my bike went to the right, and I kept going straight, which sans bicycle, I (with Buzz Lightyear) would like to call it “falling with style” but truthfully it was an ugly example of what Woodie would have called just falling.  Last Sunday, some of you saw the scrapes on my hands as proof of the ugliness.

“Fall” and “ugliness” fit together.  Occasionally somebody will fall with some modicum of grace, but usually a fall ain’t pretty.  Maybe that’s why Christians call the sin that Adam and Eve first committed “the Fall.”  It was ugly.  And yes, like me on my fall, the linear trajectory was downward.  Shel Silverstein notwithstanding, all falls go down.  Adam and Eve’s sin lowered their standing, from a righteous conversational relationship with God to a disobedient distance.  From upstanding innocence to a guilty splat.  From living as eternal beings to the condemnation of being temporal ones.  It was definitely “the” fall, not just “a” fall like the one I took on my bike.

And not unlike the scrapes and bruises that I carry right now, they did not emerge unscathed from their fall.  The wounds of “by the sweat of thy brow,” and the pain of childbearing hurt, but nothing like the deep cut that now separated a perfect God from sinful human beings.

The cuts that I have on my hands and limbs are starting to scab — the first signs of healing.  At some point, one or two of them will not disappear completely, but will become scars, not painful, not a health concern, but a mark of how deep the cuts were.  For Adam and Eve’s fall, it would be a long time till Jesus came, received the bruises Himself, bringing for us the wonderful truth that St. Peter shared: “by His wounds we are healed.”  You and I, because of Jesus, can look at our own sins, our own mortality, and see them not as wounds anymore, but as scars, the healed-by-Jesus wounds that our own falls created.

Sin leaves scars.  A missionary once told me that sin is like a nail that is pounded into a tree.  You can take the nail out, the sin can be forgiven, but there will be a wound left in the tree.  That missionary used that illustration to encourage me to avoid sin altogether.  It was an effective illustration.  What I have learned about wounds becoming scars is that the reminder may stay, but with Jesus’ forgiveness, the scars don’t have to hurt.  We can just look at them and learn.

Which maybe I have to do about bike riding!

Back home,

Craig

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins,

He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:8-9 (NIV)

              Bet you haven’t heard of Joseph McGrail-Bateup. He hails from Canberra, Australia, which I’ll bet you also didn’t know, is the capital of Australia. And even if I told you he held a Guiness Book of World Records title, I’ll bet you couldn’t tell me for what. (A lot of bets here for a non-betting man!)

Anyway…Joseph McGrail-Bateup makes his living in the air-conditioning world. He should come to work for Lindstrom, “I love those guys!”  Air conditioning has won him no medals. Turns out he can shout louder than anyone else. He already holds the honorary title of Town Crier in the capital city, but now the record books show no one can cry better, I mean louder, than he. At a record of 122.4 decibels. Think standing right behind a Spirit jet plane taking off. Oh wait, you can’t do that anymore. OK, like cutting down a big tree with your big old honkin’ chainsaw.

He broke the record by crying out the word “Now,” which wasn’t as funny as the previous record holder, a woman who cried out “Quiet” at 121.7.  Bet she’s a librarian. He has tried six times to break the record; he gets hoarse for a week every time he tries. I can’t imagine.

In these articles, I try to write about something that happens in real life, and try to apply it to Scriptures, or look to the Scriptures for guidance on how to think about that occurrence (in contrast to preaching where I try to go from the Scriptures to real life.)  But this one has stumped me because I think the Scriptures, both teach us to be quiet–think “slow to speak” in James chapter 1; or “shout it from the mountaintops” in Isaiah 40. Which is it? What Biblical application do we find from this?

I think volume implies intensity. On Good Friday, we remember that Jesus cried out in a loud voice “It is Finished” when he died. He also cried out in a loud voice for Lazarus to come back from the dead just a few days earlier. The angels in heaven cry out in a loud voice “Holy! Holy! Holy!” There is room for volume in the Bible. In college (a Christian college) one day, a friend of mine was mad at me, and he mailed me an insult. It simply said, “Job 13:5.”  I’ll bet you don’t know what Job 13:5 says off the top of your head. I didn’t either. I had to look it up. It reads: “If only you would be altogether silent! For you, that would be wisdom.”  I chuckled even though he was fuming.

So, what is it? Nobody likes a loudmouth, Lord Joseph (as he’s affectionately known in Canberra) notwithstanding. And “Silence is Golden” as they say in the movies. But there are times to cry out. Like when somebody is headed towards trouble (think a child running into the street.)  Or when singing praises to God–we can’t sing loud enough for that. Saint James, in that verse I alluded to earlier said: “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. (v.19). There’s something about emotion that matters in this. “Loudmouths” talk at inopportune times and for too many people to hear. A word spoken in anger, regardless of volume, can be destructive. A loud word gets attention, whether good or bad. A good word, on the other hand, can be transformative.

So, let’s choose our words carefully. Now!!!

Says the preacher.

Craig

“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.”  Proverbs 25:11 (MEV)

                 We buried my mom on Monday. (I’ve stared at this sentence for a bit – that’s a big statement! You only write that statement once in your lifetime.)  Spending the day with family kind of meant the whole day was a prolonged service with story after story emerging, different facets of my mom emerging from each person. I will treasure the day as a day of closure for sure, but as a rich day of family connection, of personal connection with the past, a clarifying day of family history.

                      At the end of the day, I took my brother and our wives, to a little beach on a little extension of land that protrudes into Tampa Bay from the banks of the Manatee River. It’s a place where my brother has received many a sunset picture but had never been. The stories of the day continued there as we enjoyed a picnic supper in our beach chairs. God put on a wonderful master’s painting class as we watched the colors of the sun change in rapid succession.

As we talked and watched, mullet jumped here and there, but a lone dolphin stole the show, gently patrolling the beachfront, I imagine fishing for the same food that fisherman way out on a sandbar were seeking. The dolphin came from the left, swam past us, and then almost immediately turned around. Some might suggest that was my mom waving goodbye — I don’t think so, I don’t know that I’ve seen that dolphin before, but dolphins passing by there at that time of day happens often. It’s a thing.

But it was a blessing. I was so happy to have it go by so my brother could see it. There’s something wonderful about the big animal passing by so closely and with such grace. I did thank the Lord for blessing us with that image – like my mother, the people of our lives pass by closely and with grace, and as quickly as they come, so they pass. God’s mercies are new every morning (says Lamentations 3), but they must be savored and given thanks for quickly, because they fade quickly, too. Isaiah 90 comes to mind:

Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death —

they are like the new grass of the morning:

In the morning, it springs up new, but by evening it is dry and withered.

The most significant of the natural signs that evening come in the sunset itself. When there is not a cloud in the sky, the colors change, uniformly, but without much flare. Too many clouds and you can lose the sunset altogether. This evening, many clouds, and different kinds of clouds, enriched the sky. It was a complicated and nuanced canvas that God painted that evening. And full of symbolic meaning for us.

My brother told a wonderful story about a group of kids that came from the US for a missions trip to Costa Rica that my dad and he were helping. At the end of the trip, they took them to the Pacific side of the country, and they watched the sunset. Some pubescent (and not bright) boys loved the sunset so much that they resolved to get up early and watch the sun rise. To their credit, they woke before dawn, sat down at the beach where they had been, waiting for the sun to rise. It started to get bright, they got excited, but they never saw the sun. Until it was visible through the palm trees behind them, that is. You may be laughing, as I was when he told the story. Why?

Because you know that from the beginning of time, until it someday comes to an end, the sunrise is as predictable as the sunset. It happens every day. Without fail. But yes, one in the East and one in the West. And that evening, the evening of the day we buried my mom, the sun set on the life that we knew with her, her presence as regular as the sun’s rising in the morning but not anymore, punctuated by the beautiful sunset. The complexity, and the beauty, of the sunset that evening, and the promise of the sun rising tomorrow (always a symbol of resurrection) put an exclamation point on the day, on my mom’s life, on the grace of God though it all.

Grateful,

Craig

From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the Lord is to be praised.

Psalm 113:3 (NIV)

When you walk the same path over and over, you get to know the terrain pretty well. You know where the path dips, or turns, where a downed tree has been left to rot, what street is coming up, etc. Sometimes you notice something for the first time (like the etching of Glades Rd.); even though it’s been there a long time, sometimes you notice something new (and wonder if it had been there all along).

This sign falls under the latter category. When I go for a longer walk, I aim for Delray Oaks Natural Area Park. Delray Oaks doesn’t boast much acreage, doesn’t offer (I was going to say many) any amenities. Off a small parking lot, a paved path meanders into the woods. And that’s it. Oh, and a slender vertical sign about as tall as I am. You can’t read what it says on this page, so I’ll tell you what it says: No pets, no bikes, no collecting, no fires, no camping, no animal feeding, no drones. Could they have not made the sign longer? It doesn’t say no littering. Can you do that? It’s quite a welcome sign, isn’t it? I carried no pet or bike or drone, intended to do none of things it said I couldn’t, but it still felt off-putting. It almost said No Entrance.

I wonder what kind of signs we post for the world to see. In our personal lives do we have a bunch of “no’s” that people have to penetrate before they get to know us? “No, I won’t meet you for lunch. No, I don’t go out much. No, I’m busy with…” Do our personal lives look like the welcome sign at Delray Oaks? What about our spiritual lives? “No, I don’t have time for a Bible Study. No, reading the Scriptures in the morning doesn’t interest me. No, serving at a food kitchen isn’t my thing. No, church is too early, too long, too hard to get dressed for, too…”  And what about our church? “No, we don’t need any help. No, you can’t sit here, or bring that in or…” What are the invisible signs we post at the entrances of our lives? I could probably go on to wonder the same about our professions, neighborhoods, etc.

I really like Delray Oaks Park. It’s an oasis of shaded walkways in an otherwise completely urbanized concrete and asphalt slab. It gets hot on the sidewalks of Congress Avenue, and Delray Oaks feels great to the urban pedestrian.

Likewise, we, as people, have a lot to offer the world. Each one of us has unique gifts to offer the world if we allow the world in. And God has a lot to offer if we say yes to His invitations to know Him and His will better. And our church, my goodness, our church has a lot to offer to any who might test the waters and come in. In each of these cases we need to be careful to not don the Delray Oaks sign but put on God’s “YES!” sign. God’s grace starts with acceptance, a divine “Yes” for any and all.

Do you want to know God better?

Back from the hike,

Craig

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ.

And so, through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.

2 Corinthians 1:20 (NIV)

In Coral Gables, FL, where Janice and I lived on two different itinerations of our ministry in the United Methodist Church, the street signs are like “L” shaped cemetery monuments.  One side of the monument has the street name, and on the other side the avenue’s.  Interestingly, during the day these white-washed street markers make it easy to know what town you’re in, if not what street you’re driving on.  We kind of had a love/hate relationship with the things.

The other day, while on a long walk, I found the name of the street etched on the curb.  In very elegant etched letters it said “Glades Rd.”  I won’t tell you what cross street this was to see who might be able to identify the location (or locations – I have looked for a couple of days and not replicated this sighting).

Why did they do that?  Does Boca want to compete with Coral Gables for the most illegible street signs?  Do they want to provide some backup when a hurricane blows down all the street signs? (This doesn’t make sense – if you can’t figure out you’re on Glades, you’re not going to find any smaller streets!) This particular location did not seem central enough to merit that.  Somebody took some time and energy to put this very unpretentious name into the concrete of the gutter.   Why?

I think it almost poetic to inscribe the name of the road on the curb.  Amidst the majestic fountains and signs that serve as markers for neighborhoods around Boca, the street that connects many of them pronounces itself with a certain humility, and at the same time permanency.

And maybe not with poetic flair as much as kindness—it greeted me, the pedestrian, in a way that only those who go slowly can receive it.  I’ve crossed Glades many times, and yet only last Friday did I see it.  Have you ever gone unnoticed?

I think the world is full of what (in the car world at least) are known as Easter eggs.  In the car world this idea points to little design elements that the casual observer would miss, but not the enthusiast.  I don’t want to go through this life as a casual observer, glossing over the finer details that our Creator has planted in His creation for the enthusiast, or “devoted” as we would say in religious parlance.  I want to see the smallest flower or the flower that only blossoms in the canopy of the jungle, or the delicate coral that only fish or those with B/C’s can see. Or the homeless guy that nobody has talked to in a week, or…. the list goes on.  These little gems come in as many forms as the creativeness of God allows.

I think that universally I have noticed these little forms of grace when I am moving slowly, or not at all.  It’s when you stand long enough at the edge of the water that the fish start venturing out.  It’s sitting by the side of the woods long enough that the elk come meandering. (Have you been to Cataloochee?)

And the nuggets of the spiritual life can only be found when we take time to notice.  Or inquire.  It is in prayer time that God speaks.  Too often, we have the music, or the sound track of life, blaring so loudly that we miss the smell of the roses.  We miss the spiritual nudges.  We miss the voice of God.

Take time to listen and to watch this week.  And let me know what you find.  Including the etching on the curb.

Back home,

Craig

“For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him.” 

Psalm 62:5 (NIV)

     You learn something new every day. I recently learned (I’m sure you already know this from science class in Middle School) that Mars has polar ice caps. I simply don’t remember learning that somewhere along the way.

So why this, why now? Well, a couple of weeks ago a little spacecraft called Psyche did a loop around Mars to gain momentum as it aims at its eponymous asteroid. As it circled around Mars, at a similar height to the Artemis astronauts circled the moon, it took closeup pictures of the Red Planet. Some of the pictures I saw looked blue – don’t know what that means.

But one of the pictures included a mostly brown spherical picture with a white blob on it. The white blob is ice. Now, as it turns out, we already have close-ups of that picture. It doesn’t look like our polar caps necessarily, but it’s interesting all the same, and well, conjures up some questions in my mind.

Questions like…How did that get there? Why is it still there? Why didn’t they film the movie “The Martian” there? Couldn’t Martians live off of that water? Inquiring minds want to know.

Deeper questions emerge, wonderings about the potential this reality presents. “Potentially” there was life there. Potentially there could be life there. I think potential is all about hope. We see potential in children. We see potential in relationships. We see potential in some business proposition. Any “potential” is a good thing. All good things come from God. So, potential is a gift. Here, on Mars, wherever.

Our polar caps are dynamic. They seem like monolithic desolate wastelands, but they’re not. Certainly, with global warming we see a lot of change in them. But and this is part of the “potential” thought, there is a lot of power under that stillness. In days of old, life was not as immediately evident, and it moved at a slower pace. (What do they call it- “at a glacier pace”?) But what power lies there? Have you seen ice fall from glaciers?

I think of God in that way sometimes. God is huge. And sometimes He doesn’t seem to move. God doesn’t seem to interact with me… (namely answer my prayers!)  But that doesn’t mean that God is not there. It does not mean that God does not move or have power. It just means that His power moves at a different speed than what I want or even perceive. Just as I wonder about the power that is held in reserve there on the caps of Mars, so I wonder about the power of God that I perceive to be inoperative, but maybe isn’t moving, simply because I don’t ask (James 4:2) or because I perceive God to be farther away than those little caps on Mars (Acts 17:27).

Finally, I think I like this new idea of Marcian polar caps because it offers something similar to what I know here, way out there. For example, I’ve been to Meteor Lake in New Mexico. It felt like the Moon, and in fact astronauts trained there many years ago. There are similarities between the Earth and the Moon there which are endearing. And likewise, the Earth and Mars have polar caps (and meteor craters). I see the signature of God in the universe when I see those similarities. I think that’s why I hope they find life elsewhere in the universe – that life will reveal more about God than anything else. Learning about God is the ultimate human endeavor.

Still grounded here on Earth,

Craig

God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him though he is not far from any one of us.

Acts 17:27 (NIV)

       My grandmother had a bell collection on her hallway wall. Over 100 bells, from all over the world, hung on strings hanging from what looked like a curtain rod adorning the hall in a most unusual way. My great aunt collected spoons displayed in a nice wooden case. My Mom ended up with that and now I have the case and a bag full of discolored spoons. I have a collection of Matchbox cars from my childhood. We all have collections of something, I guess.

     The other day I read about a group of people who “collect” sightings of replicas of the Liberty Bell. They set out to find a replica of the Liberty Bell in every state. There’s a long story about how the Department of Treasury gave one to each state years ago, but that’s a story for another time, or for you to google.

     People still collect stamps and coins and Hess trucks (even though the Hess gas company has long gone out of business). Some people collect stickers with the names of the states they have visited and paste them on their RV’s. I too have “collected” experiences, like driving all of Route 66 and US1 (on the East Coast so far). We all collect things.

      To collect anything requires intention. It was widely known that my grandmother collected bells, and so she was always looking for them and receiving them from other people (my parents gave her one with my name on it, for Instance). Driving US1 took me four years (I have a REALLY slow car). Hess trucks used to appear only briefly at Hess stations around Christmas time.

       Collections reflect what we value. I still have the first Matchbox car given to me (a truck actually), and those toys filled much of my childhood – my collection reflects the idyllic childhood that was offered to me.

        Collections grow. In adulthood I collected the few Matchbox cars that were missing from the full production of Lesley Matchbox cars in 1969. The number of roads that I have driven from end to end is getting longer (Route 41 may be my next one). Now granted, collections can get out of hand – go to the Flagler Museum in St. Augustine to find this condition amply illustrated. But that too is a story for another time.

        What do you collect? As I think about our church gathering on a Sunday morning, I hope that we are collecting, with passion, spiritual experiences that make us grow. If collections require intention, how intentional are we on finding the Lord in our worship, our service, and our giving? Collections reflect what we value – where is our time spent, our treasure used, delight displayed? And collections grow, in some cases one little car or spoon at a time, in others, one mile or Liberty Bell at a time. Likewise, our Christian character grows one experience, one Bible reading, one prayer at a time. The Apostle Paul said that we “are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18). That transformation happens one little bit at a time.

       I come to church, I lead Bible Study, I pray sort of as a collector of the grace that God offers us in those experiences. I find my treasures in those times, and I not only value those experiences, but those experiences mold what I treasure. All of our treasures grow as we gather together in His name. I’m glad you’re here.

Back in church,

Craig

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:21 (NIV)

       It was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, not the Bible, that said “Change is the only constant in life.” He said that in the time of Isaiah! That was 500 years before Jesus, when, in my mind, things didn’t change that much. We quote Heraclitus nowadays because so much changes. And in a post-Einstein world, we kind of think that everything changes, even our understanding of the truth, that everything is relative. And that everything changes. There are no constants that we can count on.

But even Einstein believed in constants. Remember that famous equation E=mC2? The C of that equation stands for Constant. Light, as far as Einstein was concerned, is constant. The Bible nods its head at that idea too.

Physics suggests that there are several constants. Look up Planck’s Constant – it’s fascinating. And incredibly precise. The constant speed of light is likewise precisely measured: 186,000 miles per second to be exact.

    The pull of gravity is also understood to be constant, but that figure has been elusive. A physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland by the name of Stephan Schlamminger has spent the last 10 years trying to ascertain that number, and the number he has come up with is different from everybody else’s ideas. Even the experiment that he was trying to replicate. Bless his heart. He called his endeavor “life-sucking.” You’ve got to feel sorry for a guy that spends 10 years of his life on an experiment that essentially failed.

      If something is constant, how in the world can you not measure it? I’m sure Dr. Schlamminger has asked himself the same question for the last 10 years. I don’t have the answer to that; he suggests that gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces, and… yeah, it got a little foggy for me after that.

      I don’t think, as he does, that just because you can’t measure it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Just because you can’t figure it out doesn’t mean it’s not true. Wait. Say that again…. Just because you can’t figure something out doesn’t mean that it’s not true. That is true for the tests and measures around gravity, but it’s true in the spiritual life as well. I will never understand how my mom lived as long as she did without food and water. Nor how her illness did not cause her pain. But her life during those months was real, and redemptive for me, and for many. Incredible, real things happened in those days.

      The inability to figure things out does not equate to failure. Schlamminger described his testing as a long walk through a dark valley (which has echoes of Psalm 23). Life leads all of us through some “valley of the shadow of death.” Those valleys feel like failures, and very well may be, but they do not mean the end, or that God is not with us. Psalm 37:23-24 says: “The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though he falls, he shall not be cast headlong, for the Lord upholds his hand.”

     I can give witness to that truth. Not all has gone well for me. My body has failed in rather catastrophic ways, for instance. And yet I can say that the Lord has made firm my steps, and though I have fallen, the Lord has been graceful to let me get up again, and again. A failed 10-year endeavor to come up with a number has to be tough, but not the end.

      And one last word. My experience of, and my trust in, gravity is unaffected by Schlamminger’s testing. When I put my cup down on the table, it still stays there, even if we don’t know precisely the force that keeps it from floating away. The constant is not invalidated by the lack of measurement. God told Micah: I the Lord do not change (Micah 3:6). Even though Heraclitus’ dictum seems true, it ultimately is not. God is constant. God does not change. God will always be faithful. You can count on that (pun intended).

Craig

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 1 John 1:5 (NIV)