Status Report: January

Sitting…on the couch in the living room, sharing the space with the old dog.

Taking…a cue from Lisa and doing a status report, too.

Loving…having company here with me, but also loving the idea that the company will leave and things will return to normal tomorrow.

Wondering…which January organizing project to tackle first. First up, I suppose, is putting away all the Christmas decoration. And then?

Reading…Sola Scriptura, edited by by Don Kistler. It includes a collection of essays by a bunch of good men on the Protestand postition on the Bible.

Also reading…a bunch of old home decorating magazines. Okay, I’m not really reading them, but I am looking at the pictures.

Wanting…my Amazon order to arrive so that I have new reading material.

Thinking…that I haven’t told you this story: Before Christmas, my church choir sang several  familiar carols at an extended care facility (aka the nursing home) after their annual Christmas dinner. When we were done singing, an elderly lady in the front row motioned me over to her. “That was beautiful,” she said.

I thanked her and mentioned that I’d seen her singing along with us.

“Yes,” she replied, “I picked up all those songs”—and here she snapped her fingers—“just like that!”

Enjoying…a bowl of vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce.

Planning…to paint my coffee table and maybe a few pieces of furniture. I’m also thinking of trying to slipcover something. I’ve always wanted to do slipcovering, but I’ve been too scared to actually do it. I can sew almost anything, clothes-wise, including doing tailoring, so there’s no reason I wouldn’t be able to slipcover, is there?

Hoping…that the cold weather is all behind us now and the the warm days stay for the rest of the winter. Hoping that I wake up with lots of organizing energy tomorrow.

Called According to Paul: Romans 4:17

I want to put this old series of posts in the favorite posts section on the right sidebar, so I’ve been reposting them from my previous Blogger blog one by one. An explanation of this series of posts can be found here. You’ll find other posts in this series here.

Not Herman Ridderbos.

In Roman 4:1 Paul writes,

…as it is written, ‘I have made you the father of many nations’—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. (ESV)

Paul is writing in Romans 4 of Abraham’s faith. Abraham, he says, believed that God would fulfill his promise. You’ll remember the promise: God told Abraham that he would make him the father of many nations so that the number of his offspring would be like the number of stars in the sky.

Abraham’s faith held firm when a son seemed like an impossibility because he knew the God who spoke the promise to him was the God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. In other words, Abraham’s faith was strong regardless of the impossibility, humanly-speaking, of what God had promised him (Abraham, after all was “as good as dead” and Sarah was barren), for he understood that his God was the God of divine fiat.

The language of the phrase we’re looking at—”calls into existence the things that do not exist”—harks back to God’s creation by command. And while in this usage call is not refering to the call that works salvation (or faith, or conversion) like the usages already examined in 1 Corinthians 1 and 7, Paul is nonetheless using it in the sense of divine command. Abraham understood that just as God had called all of creation into existence out of nothing, he could produce offspring from an old man and his barren wife by calling into existence things that do not exist. Paul is using call here to refer to a command with creative power.

As with other posts in this series, I welcome additions/corrections/comments regarding the way Paul uses of the word call in this passage.

A Catechism for Girls and Boys

Part I: Questions about God, Man, and Sin

15. Q. Who wrote the Bible?
      A. Holy men who were taught by the Holy Spirit.

(Click through to read scriptural proofs.)

Click to read more ...