Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!

Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!

Behold, your king is coming to you;

righteous and having salvation is he,

humble and mounted on a donkey,

on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim

and the war horse from Jerusalem;

and the battle bow shall be cut off,

and he shall speak peace to the nations;

his rule shall be from sea to sea,

and from the River to the ends of the earth.

-Zechariah 9:9-10

Last Night in L.A.

I took the advice of a reader who recently commented on a post and had dinner at the historic Pantry Cafe in downtown L.A. to celebrate the end of my month here. I ordered the french toast and was not disappointed. I also snapped a photo of a picture hanging on the wall. Thanks TLF+ for the recommendation!

All we have to decide

Over on Titusonenine, a blog I read almost daily, there is a discussion going on about dealing with difficult circumstances where Kendall Harmon, the writer of that blog, makes reference to a J.R.R. Tolkien quote. With interest I read the comments and saw that one of the commenters quoted my favorite lines from the trilogy. Speaking of a seemingly impossible task before him, the main character laments his situation:

'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' said Frodo.

'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.'

I have often thought of those lines when I've been tempted to despair about a difficult situation. I know that nothing that happens in my life happens apart from God's sovereign will and, looking at Christ and His cross, I also know that He loves me. That knowledge should bring me to the place of not fretting about my situation but seeking God's will and deciding to do it. This quote reminds me of that.

Weep

You need not weep because Christ died one-tenth so much as because your sins rendered it necessary that He should die. You need not weep over the crucifixion, but weep over your transgression, for your sins nailed the Redeemer to the accursed tree. To weep over a dying Saviour is to lament the remedy; it were wiser to bewail the disease. To weep over the dying Saviour is to wet the surgeon's knife with tears; it were better to bewail the spreading polyps which that knife must cut away. To weep over the Lord Jesus as He goes to the cross is to weep over that which is the subject of the highest joy that ever heaven and earth have known; your tears are scarcely needed there; they are unnatural, but a deeper wisdom will make you brush them all away and chant with joy His victory over death and the grave. If we must continue our sad emotions, let us lament that we should have broken the law which He thus painfully vindicated; let us mourn that we should have incurred the penalty which He even to the death was made to endure ... O brethren and sisters, this is the reason why we souls weep: because we have broken the divine law and rendered it impossible that we should be saved except Jesus Christ should die.

- C.H. Spurgeon, H/T: Tim Challies

Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.

Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.

Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, grant us peace.

Angelus

I began my own nerdy version of Los Angeles tourism this week when I went to check out a site that all of my fellow classmates are most likely completely unaware of. After moving to downtown L.A. for the month I've been checking out my map on my iPhone for any interesting nearby sites. I noticed one which was not too far away that I immediately wanted to check out.

When I've gone home to Battle Ground for various breaks in the last four or five years I've almost always worshipped with some close friends at the Foursquare church in town. So I have a certain sense of connection with this denomination which is more officially known as the "International Church of the Foursquare Gospel," which is sort of your run-of-the-mill charismatic denomination. It turns out that this denomination was started by a woman in the 1920's named Aimee Semple McPherson. The denomination had its start at the Angelus Temple, a church building constructed under the direction of McPherson in downtown Los Angeles in 1923.

So I noticed that the Angelus Temple was not too far from where I'm currently living and working so it was high on my list of places to check out. I did just that this week. There wasn't actually much to see and the building was locked up so I couldn't go inside. It was hard to get a good picture of the whole building so here are some photos of some plaques I found kind of interesting:

City of Angels

They call Los Angeles the "City of Angels." I haven't found it to be that, exactly. On Monday morning I moved to Los Angeles, about 60 miles west of Loma Linda. For the next month I'll be living and working at the White Memorial Medical Center in East L.A., not far from downtown for my inpatient pediatric rotation. Posts may be sparse in the coming month unless some unforeseen inspiration seizes me.

The view of downtown Los Angeles from the Ellen G. White Memorial Medical Center at dusk.