Sunspots 966

Previous Sunspots posts have included a photo of spots on the sun, from NASA. I haven't been able to do that for this edition.

The previous Sunspots post pointed to a news article about Caitlin Clark, who recently scored more points than any other female college basketball player. Or not. NPR reports on two other great women scorers who have been mostly overlooked, Lynette Woodard and Pearl Moore.

ScienceAlert reports that scientists have produced cells that are part rice and part beef.

A Conversation writer compares Trump's claim of being persecuted with the actual persecution of Alexia Navalny.

Gizmodo reports on the discovery of small moons around Uranus and Neptune.

(Thanks to a relative for this item.) The Texas Christian University women's basketball team was so beset by injuries that they welcomed women who wanted to try out.

USA Today and many other outlets report on the discovery (by scientists -- aboriginal people knew about it) of a new, and large species of anaconda.

Neuroscience News reports that the belief of Pythagoras, that sounds related by simple ratios produced pleasing music, was not exactly correct. 

With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 212

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I do this, not because I'm a powerful prayer warrior, but because I'm not. Murray was. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color. Murray's book is based on Mark 11:22-24.  

To many a believer it was a new epoch in his spiritual life when it was revealed to him how truly and entirely Christ was his life, standing good as surety for his remaining faithful and obedient. It was then first that he really began to life a faith-life. No less blessed will be the discovery that Christ is surety for our prayer-life too, the centre and embodiment of all prayer, to be communicated by Him through the Holy Spirit to His people. ‘He ever liveth to make intercession’ as the Head of the body, as the Leader in that new and living way which He hath opened up, as the Author and the Perfecter of our faith. He provides in everything for the life of His redeemed ones by giving His own life in them: He cares for their life of prayer, by taking them up into His heavenly prayer-life, by giving and maintaining His prayer-life within them. ‘I have prayed for thee,’ not to render thy faith needless, but ‘that thy faith fail not:’ our faith and prayer of faith is rooted in His. It is, ‘if ye abide in me,’ the ever-living Intercessor, and pray with me and in me: ‘ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’

The thought of our fellowship in the intercession of Jesus reminds us of what He has taught us more than once before, how all these wonderful prayer-promises have as their aim and their justification, the glory of God in the manifestation of His kingdom and the salvation of sinners. As long as we only or chiefly pray for ourselves, the promises of the last night must remain a sealed book to us. It is to the fruit-bearing branches of the Vine; it is to disciples sent into the world as the Father sent Him, to live for perishing men; it is to His faithful servants and intimate friends who take up the work He leaves behind, who have like their Lord become as the seed-corn, losing its life to multiply it manifold;—it is to such that the promises are given. Let us each find out what the work is, and who the souls are entrusted to our special prayers; let us make our intercession for them our life of fellowship with God, and we shall not only find the promises of power in prayer made true to us, but we shall then first begin to realize how our abiding in Christ and His abiding in us makes us share in His own joy of blessing and saving men.

O most wonderful intercession of our Blessed Lord Jesus, to which we not only owe everything, but in which we are taken up as active partners and fellow-workers! Now we understand what it is to pray in the Name of Jesus, and why it has such power. In His Name, in His Spirit, in Himself, in perfect union with Him. O wondrous, ever active, and most efficacious intercession of the man Christ Jesus! When shall we be wholly taken up into it and always pray in it?

Do bacteria mutate randomly, and acquire antibiotic resistance, or do they mutate when exposed to antibiotics?

A post from The Conversation reminds us of the classic experiments conducted by Salvador Luria and Max Delbrück, who showed, in 1943, that bacteria mutate randomly, producing antibiotic-resistant organisms without exposure to the antibiotics. See the Wikipedia article on this Nobel prize winning research.

Thanks for reading!

Sunspots 965

A Conversation article discusses dietary supplements, with some warnings. 

Another Conversation article tells us about synthetic human embryos.

A Grist report suggests that we are now occasionally experiencing category 6 hurricanes.

A Conversation writer examines the ethnic and national diversity among the Israeli defense forces.

Joel Duff pleads with Christian leaders who routinely post material, opinions, copied from others without checking -- the equivalent of posting material from the tabloids on sale at supermarket checkout areas, he says.

Gizmodo warns us that Mac computers are vulnerable to viruses.

A Conversation writer discusses having relationships with artificial intelligences.

Caitlin Clark has set a record for points scored over a career in women's basketball, according to NPR and multiple other sources. She's not a ball hog -- she recently made her 1000th assist. The all-time record for either sex, set by Pete Maravich over 50 years ago, is likely the next record Clark will break.

Immigration and migration, what the Bible says (repost)

This was a fairly long post on what the Bible says about how to treat immigrants.

Thanks for reading, or re-reading.

With Christ in the school of prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 211

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I do this, not because I'm a powerful prayer warrior, but because I'm not. Murray was. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color. Murray's book is based on Mark 11:22-24. 

The Only-begotten is the only one who has the right to pray: to Him alone it was said, ‘Ask, and it shall be given Thee.’ As in all other things the fulness dwells in Him, so the true prayer-fulness too; He alone has the power of prayer. And just as the growth of the spiritual life consists in the clearer insight that all the treasures are in Him, and that we too are in Him, to receive each moment what we possess in Him, grace for grace, so with the prayer-life too. Our faith in the intercession of Jesus must not only be that He prays in our stead, when we do not or cannot pray, but that, as the Author of our life and our faith, He draws us on to pray in unison with Himself. Our prayer must be a work of faith in this sense too, that as we know that Jesus communicates His whole life in us, He also out of that prayerfulness which is His alone breathes into us our praying.

Sunspots 964

Things I have spotted that may be of interest to others:

A splendid essay on eight principles of sound Christian thinking.

A Conversation writer discusses treason and the 14th amendment to the US Constitution.

Another Conversation writer tells us that there are limits to the length of legal briefs, and some lawyers do their best to get around such limits.

Gizmodo has an article which tells you how to find out what model your phone is.

Heart, Mind, Soul and Strength considers demons, whether real beings or diseases.

Gizmodo reports that a woman has received a brain implant device that controls her OCD and bipolar disease.

Gizmodo also reports on a Russian man who found his wife using artificial intelligence.

LiveScience reports that blue whales, the largest animals on earth, have been mating, occasionally, with another species of whale.

NPR reports that gardeners can now grow purple tomatoes. The purple color comes from snapdragon flowers.

Thanks for reading!

With Christ in the School of prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 210

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I do this, not because I'm a powerful prayer warrior, but because I'm not. Murray was. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color. Murray's book is based on Mark 11:22-24. 

And we participate not only in the benefits of this His work, but in the work itself. This because we are His body. Body and members are one: ‘The head cannot say to the feet, I have no need of thee.’ We share with Jesus in all He is and has: ‘The glory which Thou gavest me, I have given them.’ We are partakers of His life, His righteousness, His work: we share with Him in His intercession too; it is not a work He does without us.

We do this because we are partakers of His life: ‘Christ is our life;’ ‘No longer I, but Christ liveth in me.’ The life in Him and in us is identical, one and the same. His life in us is an ever-praying life. When it descends and takes possession of us, it does not lose its character; in us too it is the every-praying life—a life that without ceasing asks and receives from God. And this not as if there were two separate currents of prayer rising upwards, one from Him, and one from His people. No, but the substantial life-union is also prayerunion: what He prays passes through us, what we pray passes through Him. He is the angel with the golden censer: ‘UNTO HIM there was given much incense,’ the secret of acceptable prayer, ‘that He should add it unto the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar.’ We live, we abide in Him, the Interceding One.