Bishop Guernsey visits Christ's Church

This Sunday we were honored at Christ's Church to have Bishop John Guernsey preach and celebrate the liturgy with us. Bishop Guernsey spoke of how in many African churches it is customary to hear testimonies before the sermon and he then proceeded to give his own testimony as his sermon. In many ways I could identify with what he had to say. He talked about growing up in a church where conversion and the power of the Holy Spirit were not emphasized. He talked of the belief he had that there must be something more in this relationship with God and how he eventually found this through a woman at a church he was pastoring who had been filled with the Holy Spirit. After preaching, Bishop Guernsey led the congregation in a prayer of recommitment to Christ and of inviting a greater infilling of the Holy Spirit. I was very impressed with what the Bishop had to say and his obvious gift for preaching. The music also seemed especially good today and I got to sing one of my favorite hymns, "Holy, Holy, Holy."

Feats of man-power...

Okay, I know the title is dorky. But it's the best way I can describe the last two weeks and the first half of next week. It's a bit misleading though considering that here at Loma Linda 50% of the people in the midst of this "feat" are women. At the end of our first year of med school here at Loma Linda we undergo two and a half weeks of exams. Some of these exams are "in-house," many  of them cumulative for the entire year. The other exams we're taking are called "mock-boards." These are national standardized tests where we are compared to med students across the country. I was warned by second-year students that these two and a half weeks would be the worst of our entire lives. I doubted their assessment but I'm coming to think that they're probably correct. It's pretty terrible. If anything can bring on depression, two weeks like this should be able to.... poor quality sleep, near constant anxiety and guilt when you're not studying, poor eating habits, and the social isolation which comes from constantly having your nose in review books. Last night my thumb kept me awake by continually spazzing-out (technically called fasciculations), probably from so much "bubbling-in" answers on multiple choice tests.  No one ever wants to admit it but I've had conversations with friends about whether or not they ever regret having come to medical school. Some do. As for me, I don't think I could do anything else. I think this is where I'm supposed to be. If I wasn't here I think I would always want to be here. The thing about most medical schools is that once you're in, unless you're rich, you are immediately in a degree of student-loan debt so much greater than undergrad that there is basically nothing else you can do.

Pentecost

But Oh, this power could not be bought. All the money in the world could not have purchased it, but to those who humble themselves in lowliness and in sincerity before the Lord shall the Spirit be given freely without money and without price. Oh, tell me, Peter and Paul, tell me John and James, and all you who received this mighty incoming of the Holy Ghost with its attendant power and glory, may we, in this 20th century, receive this like precious gift, or did the Holy Spirit empty Himself of all His power in the apostolic days? Did you consume all of these supernatural wondrous blessings, or did you leave enough to spare for us today?

"Yes, indeed," they answer in unison. "Heaven is not bankrupt. Heaven's storehouse still is full. The Holy Spirit has never lost his power, the promise is unto them that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. Did not our Lord say: 'When He is come, He shall abide with you forever'? Doubt no longer, but with open heart ask ye of the Lord rain in the time of the latter rain. Remember these words of Joel the prophet: 'It shall come to pass in the last days,' saith God, 'I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh.' Remember, too, that when the high priest went in the Holy of Holies the bells rang, and the high priest came out the bells rang again. When Jesus ascended up on high the bells rang and the people spoke with tongues and magnified God. Now this same Jesus, our high priest, is coming forth again for his waiting church, and on earth the bells are ringing, the latter rain is falling, and again those who have received the old-time power speak with other tongues."

- Aimee Semple McPherson 

A Brother's Life Preserved!

Yesterday, when I got back from a jog I had just taken in the Loma Linda Hills, I noticed that I had missed a phone call from my youngest brother. I didn't think much of it and I certainly didn't have that feeling of fear that can go with an unexpected call from family. Later my mom left a message saying that another of my brothers, Joey, had totaled his car after swerving to avoid a dog that ran out in the road. After seeing the pictures, I was as amazed and thankful as the rest of my family that he walked away from the accident with not more than a scratch. It goes without saying that my whole family is thankful to God for the preservation of my brother's life.

O Trinity of love and power,

Our brethren shield in danger's hour;

From rock and tempest, fire and foe;

Protect them wheresoe'er they go:

Thus evermore shall rise to Thee

Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.

-William Whiting

Ascension

Hail the day that sees Him rise,

Ravished from our wistful eyes!

Christ, awhile to mortals given,

Re-ascends His native heaven.

There the glorious triumph waits,

Lift your heads, eternal gates!

Wide unfold the radiant scene,

Take the King of glory in!

- Charles Wesley

Coptic Easter

Last night I was honored to be able to celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord with a classmate of mine from the medical school. My classmate, Mina, is of Egyptian decent and is a Coptic Christian. I met him near the beginning of the year and after talking a bit about the Coptic Church he invited me to celebrate Pascha at his church. So last night I headed to Covina, to St. John Coptic Orthodox Church. I was blessed by the nearly five hours of beautiful liturgy celebrating the Resurrection. I had a harder time following along than I did last year when I celebrated Pascha at an Orthodox Church in America parish as only about a quarter to a third of the liturgy was in English. As far as I could tell, elements were used from both the liturgies of St. Basil and St. Gregory. The songs and chants of the night had the intonations which one would hear in the calls to prayer coming from minarets in the Muslim world. I think the foreign musical scale made it harder for me to learn some of the hymns that were chanted many times throughout the night. By the end of the night I had begun to pick up one of the hymns and it was very cool to try singing with the Arabic intonations instead of the Western that I have always heard and sung. The homily was first preached by a Coptic bishop either in Arabic or a Coptic dialect and then was read by a deacon in English. The gospel message was presented as clearly in that homily as I have ever heard it presented in any "gospel" Evangelical church. I will leave you with the words from the chorus of the Coptic Resurrection hymn, "Very Early Sunday Morning," which we sang many times toward the end of the night:

Resurrection is my song,

Resurrection gave me life,

Resurrection made me strong,

Jesus, my Lord, is alive,

Resurrection made me strong,

Jesus, my Lord, is alive.

Amen.

Gettin' Ready for the Summer

Trying on the ACU and making my parents happy by posting a picture.

Random Update...

So I get online at my local Starbucks, which is really my home away from home, and I look at my forlorn blog with its increasingly infrequent posts and I feel like I'm somehow abnegating some responsibility. I just haven't had anything I've felt strongly enough about to write about lately. School is starting to get crazy with two and a half weeks of exams coming up at the beginning of May. I went to the Army base at Los Alamitos yesterday and got ACU's, boots, rank and various other things I'll need for my Army training in Texas this summer. I also got my hair buzzed off so I could get my military identification. On the home-front I'm hoping to move into a house with four other guys from the med school next year so we checked out a great house in Loma Linda a few days ago. Church is going great as usual. There's a men's retreat coming up in a few weeks where Archbishop Orombi will be preaching. I had hoped to attend but my exams will unfortunately not allow for that. I finally checked out an Adventist church here in Loma Linda. It's a charismatic church so it's not really a taste of traditional Adventism but I liked it and had a wonderful time there worshiping my Lord. I read a book recently that my mom gave to me. It was interesting and good although I was slightly uncomfortable with certain parts of it. Maybe I'll write a blog about it later. On the lighter side, I was happy to catch my first episode of The Office in a long time a few days ago. Well, there you go. If you actually read through this blather I apologize. Until my next procrastination episode I bid you all Lebe wohl.

Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

I was reading Romans the other day, through a passage I have read many times, and a short instruction from the Apostle Paul jumped out at me. This instruction was, “mourn with those who mourn. (Romans 12:15b)” I guess part of the reason it jumped out at me was because of a recent conversation I had with a friend. This friend has been dealing with some hard times lately and he’s been grappling with depression. He is also a friend who helped get me through a battle with depression a few years ago. We both realized that part of what we appreciated about each other’s friendship was the fact that neither of us just tried to solve the other’s problem. Instead we actually “mourned with those who mourn.”

It’s not that it’s never right to try to solve someone’s problems. But the reality is that often there is no easy solution to the problems and struggles a person faces. Maybe a person doesn't even have a good reason to "mourn" yet they seem unable to find joy in life. I think that there is a common assumption in our Western, modern culture which is that there is a solution to every problem if only we are intelligent enough, or perhaps from the Christian point of view, only if we know our Bible well enough or if we’re close enough to God. If this is your point of view, then a person who mourns and who cannot be easily consoled will only seem like a problem to you. Perhaps you will get frustrated with the person and avoid being around them because their mourning depresses you. But this is not obedience to the words of the Holy Spirit written down by the Apostle Paul. In Ecclesiastes, we see it affirmed that there can be a season for mourning. If we are to allow for “seasons” of mourning instead of thinking we can quickly solve every problem, and if we are seeking to love those who mourn, I think we must be obedient to the words of Paul and mourn with those who mourn.

98604

Having spent a wonderful four days in Kentucky, I finished out my spring break among friends and family in Battle Ground, Washington. I love going home. I love the town I grew up in. While I was home I lounged around my parent's house, I went out to eat with friends and family, I watched a friend's ice hockey game and I went to a wedding.
As I did these things I thought of a conversation I had with a friend at Asbury Seminary a couple of years ago. We were talking about Tolkien and the philosophy behind his The Lord of the Rings. I liked what my friend, Daniel, had to say about it. He said that the point of The Lord of the Rings was not the adventure. It was not about being out in the world, achieving notoriety or personal greatness. The point was that The Shire was worth fighting and dying for. Those simple Hobbits, going about their simple tasks, living their ordinary lives was the real point of Middle Earth, not the slaying of dragons or taking the Ring to Mt. Doom. The older I get, the more I come to embrace this kind of thinking. It's not that the adventure doesn't appeal to me. But if I didn't have a place to call home. If I didn't have a hometown filled with people I love and people I have a hard time loving, filled with the best and worst memories of my life, filled with all kinds of broken people who God died for, the adventure would be meaningless. So maybe I don't completely agree with Daniel that adventure is not at all the point of The Lord of the Rings. But without the Shire, I think the adventure would have been empty and selfish.

The Language of God

Francis Collins’ The Language of God has been high on my list of books to read since I heard of its publication in 2006. Collins is the head of the Human Genome Project, a distinguished scientist and an Evangelical Christian. While I was in Kentucky, visiting my friend David Goran and his wife in Versailles, Dave gave me his copy of the book. Like me, David got his undergraduate degree in a biology-related field so it is not surprising that he also appreciated the book. I read the book in a couple of sittings between Kentucky and Washington. The Language of God is Collins’ testimony of his coming to faith in Christ but it is also a treatise on faith and science and how they should relate. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and whole-heartedly agree with Collins’ view that faith and science both have the same goal of truth and the two therefore should not be in conflict. Not only did I appreciate the story of Collins’ spiritual journey but I was fascinated by the more scientific side of the book. I really enjoyed the story of the Human Genome Project and Collins’ writing on the origin of the universe and on the theory of evolution. Collins’ view of theistic evolution will be controversial to many Bible-believing Christians, but he does an impressive job of presenting his view and arguing for its compatibility with respect for the authority of Scripture. As a Bible-believing Christian and a scientist I also have struggled with how I should understand the evidence and the overwhelming consensus of biologists with respect to the origin of species. I can’t say that I have arrived at a totally satisfying synthesis yet but I appreciate the conclusion that Collins came to and I am certainly leaning in that direction with respect to my own views. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has struggled with reconciling the truth revealed in Scripture with the truth that God has allowed us to discover using our scientific abilities.

The Glories of Asbury

Well, I spent a wonderful first half of spring break in Wilmore, Kentucky with possibly the coolest group of people I have ever had the privilege of knowing. It was great being back on my old stomping grounds of Asbury Seminary's campus, seeing many familiar and many not-so-familiar faces. I got to meet with my old professor, Dr. Jerry Walls who was kind enough to give me a CD he produced of Charles Wesley hymns done in various genres in honor of Wesley's 300th birthday. I got to attend chapel in Estes on Tuesday and hear Asbury's president, Dr. J. Ellsworth Kalas, preach an Easter sermon. One of my favorite things at Asbury was hymn-singing in Estes Chapel as Albin Whitworth played the pipe organ. I was not disappointed on Tuesday as we sang "Christ the Lord is Risen Today," and "Up From the Grave He Arose."

I was in a Bible study with these guys during my two years at Asbury.

In Estes Chapel all decked-out for Easter.

A White Easter

He is Risen! For the first half of my spring break from Loma Linda I've returned to my home-away-from-home in Wilmore, Kentucky where I spent two years at Asbury Theological Seminary. I spent a blessed Easter with old friends at my old church, St. Patrick's Anglican. It was a wonderful service with a baptism the way a baptism should be. I especially enjoyed the preaching from Father Peter Matthews. It was a short message but it was one that confronted the reality of death with the stronger reality of the Resurrection. The day became even more interesting when last night it began snowing hard here in the Bluegrass of Kentucky. It only snowed for a while and there wasn't much more than a trace of accumulation but it was the first "white Easter" I had ever seen.

In his message Fr. Matthews talked about the unnaturalness of death. He talked about how the very center of our beings cry out against this reality we all must face. Fr. Matthews didn't preach that we should somehow embrace death as a natural part of life. He said that there is a reason why death seems so wrong to us. That is, we were not made for death but for life. In his message he quoted this poem from Dylan Thomas:

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Which Cross do you believe in?

The old cross slew men; the new cross entertains them. The old cross condemned; the new cross amuses. The old cross destroyed confidence in the flesh; the new cross encourages it.
–A. W. Tozer
HT - T19

All Glory, Laud and Honor

Happy Palm Sunday! As I got ready for church today and enjoyed the processional and liturgy I was reminded of Palm Sundays I celebrated as a child at our little Methodist church in Battle Ground, Washington. For some reason Palm Sunday was always one of my favorite days as a child. I remember Palm Sunday commonly being one of the first sunny or slightly warm days in the cold, rainy western-Washington spring. Perhaps God was showing his grace to all of the many church members who would be parading around their sanctuaries, waving palm branches that day. Another cherished memory of Palm Sunday involves the spear-like palm fronds that our church would always use. I remember regularly getting into trouble with my brothers as we turned our palm fronds into weapons to whip one another with as the good kids folded their palms into nice little crosses. I think another thing a I really liked about the day was its uniqueness. There is something unique about a bunch of reserved business-like people walking around a church waving palm branches.

Undoubtedly as a child, I liked the festive nature of the Palm Sunday service. When I got older I began to appreciate the irony of the day, that this celebration of Jesus with cries of "Hosanna" would shortly turn into the Passion of Christ, with cries of "Crucify Him!" Today in our service, as part of the liturgy, we joined in with the crowd, saying, "Crucify Him!" When we say this we express an important truth. That we are just as guilty as those who crucified our Lord. That it was not the nails that held Christ to the cross but our own sin.

I still love Palm Sunday. I love that it is a festival of Christ's coming to the city. I still long to see Christ welcomed with cries of Hosanna and the laying down of palm branches. But it is not only a day of festivity but also a day of the cross. Ultimately there can be no festivity, no real joy, without the cross.

Amen