Don't settle for less than Jesus.
I took a drama class in high school where we learned about writing, set design and eventually production. We got to pick a short play to do, just for us, no audience. There were only about 10 or 12 of us in the class so everyone had a part except Mel Coffee, who was the director.
I remember almost nothing about that little play. I can’t tell you what it was about, my character’s name or anything else except there was one scene – one line, really – where Mel really pushed me. Ironically, the line was, “What do you want from me?” I tried it. Mel said no, say it like this, “What do you WANT from me?” So I said it just like he said it. He said no, say it like, “What do you WANT from me?” I apologize because I’m probably still not saying it right, except we went back and forth like that for a long time until I eventually got exasperated with Mel and I screamed at him, “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?” And he said, “That’s it!”
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Seeing Christ
Have you ever looked into a clear night sky and noticed how the stars twinkle? Well, that isn’t exactly accurate. It is somewhat of an optical illusion, albeit a very nice one. Stars don’t twinkle. The twinkling we see is due to things like humidity and the shifting pockets of air in the various layers of our atmosphere. And the twinkling wasn’t much of an issue for most of the ways we’ve viewed and even used stars for navigation and whatnot for most of human history. You can make out Orion and tell a story, you can mark time by their apparent progress across the sky or you can navigate. Polaris, the North Star, is there whether or not it’s twinkling.
But when scientists – specifically astrophysicists – are peering deep into interstellar space to look at stars, galaxies and the planets in their courses to learn about the nature and history of our universe, twinkling is a problem. They need precision. So, the best observatories are built high where the air is thin and in low humidity. But that’s really not good enough.
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Conditions of the Heart
In the early morning hours of April 26, 1986, the #4 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, causing the worst disaster in the history of nuclear power generation. It initially released several times more radioactive material than what was released at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Radiation at such levels not only causes immediate death and long-term cancers, but it can actually alter DNA; it can damage and warp the created design of individual cells, transforming the normal, healthy and productive systems of the body into diseased and disfiguring illness and death. The Soviet government tried to mitigate the damage done in the meltdown, but they - the whole world - knew that nothing could be done; there is no undoing that level of radiation damage! Ultimately, the only thing even the brightest scientists came up with was to put a fence around the irradiated area in what became known euphemistically as the “exclusion zone.” Even now - 37 years later - Chernobyl is encircled by an eerie ghost-state which will remain barren of life for the unknown foreseeable future. The horrific effects of the meltdown of reactor #4, once started, could not be stopped, or corrected, or restored; the Soviets’ only choice was to cordon it off behind a 1,600 square mile physical barrier - encircling the site, creating an uninhabitable dead zone.
Even having taken the dramatic step of isolating Chernobyl from the surrounding apparently healthy environment, it soon became clear that one of the most worrisome forms of fallout released into the atmosphere as a result of the disaster was strontium-90, a deadly radioactive isotope which the melt-down had set free … to float out in whatever direction, for however long until it finally fell wherever it might. Stontium-90’s particular danger (aside from the corruption of living DNA common to any radiation poisoning) is that, chemically, strontium-90 is very similar to calcium, so similar that - like a radioactive Trojan horse - strontium-90 molecules can actually infiltrate and replace calcium in certain foods - essentially “deceiving” the food’s internal composition - and once eaten, will concentrate in the consumer’s bones and blood, progressively weakening, and finally killing its host.
So, why, does the destruction of Chernobyl come to my mind today - especially on a day when MaryBeth and Patrick Corwith have chosen to have little Emily Beatrice (“Busy”) baptized? At such a joyful blessed moment, do these challenging lessons fit with the joys of a child’s baptism? More than we might think initially…
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