Sunspots 903

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

Computing: Gizmodo on how malware can be hidden in graphics files.

Environment: The Conversation on the costs of desalinating water. There are less expensive ways to obtain fresh water.

ABC News, and other outlets, report that Spain has granted personhood status (!) to a pollution-endangered lagoon.

NPR reports that newly hatched puffins get confused by our lights, as opposed to the moon. So Icelanders catch confused puffins and throw them off of a cliff, into the ocean, which saves lots of puffin lives.

Finances: (or something) Gizmodo reports on a study indicating that a 4-day work week is beneficial.

Science: A Conversation writer discusses the Mandela Effect -- where many people "remember" something that isn't, or wasn't, so.

*I try not to include items that require a password or fee to view.

Thanks for reading. 

With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 145

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. 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. 

It was after Jesus had spoken of our [union] thus through the Holy Spirit knowing that He is in the Father, and even so we in Him and He in us, that He said, 'Abide in me, and I in you.'

Accept, consent to receive that Divine life of union with myself, in virtue of which, as you abide in me, I also abide in you, even as I abide in the Father. So that your life is mine and mine is yours.’ This is the true abiding, the occupying of the position in which Christ can come and abide; so abiding in Him that the soul has come away from self to find that He has taken the place and become our life. It is the becoming as little children who have no care, and find their happiness in trusting and obeying the love that has done all for them.

To those who thus abide, the promise comes as their rightful heritage: Ask whatsoever ye will. It cannot be otherwise. Christ has got full possession of them. Christ dwells in their love, their will, their life. Not only has their will been given up; Christ has entered it, and dwells and breathes in it by His Spirit. He whom the Father always hears, prays in them; they pray in Him: what they ask shall be done unto them. Beloved fellow-believer! let us confess that it is because we do not abide in Christ as He would have us, that the Church is so impotent in presence of the infidelity and worldliness and heathendom, in the midst of which the Lord is able to make her more than conqueror. Let us believe that He means what He promises, and accept the condemnation the confession implies.

Sunspots 902

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

Christianity: Christianity Today tells us about Samaritan's Purse, Operation Christmas Child, and Franklin Graham.

Computing: (and ethics) The Conversation reports on experiments that indicate that people are more likely to cheat others on-line when they use a laptop computer, compared to smartphone users.

Environment: NPR has posted a map showing when peak fall color is most likely to occur in all of the contiguous US.

Gizmodo reports on how many kinds of toilet paper are harmful to the environment.

Finances: An Indian man is now the second richest person on the planet, according to NPR.

Science: A Conversation writer describes several tons of waste that humans have left on Mars.

*I try not to include items that require a password or fee to view.

Thanks for reading.

With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 144

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. 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. 

There must surely be something in our abiding in Christ and Christ in us, which ... [has not yet been] experienced.

It is so. Faith and obedience are but the pathway of blessing. Before giving us the parable of the vine and the branches, Jesus had very distinctly told what the full blessing is to which faith and obedience are to lead. Three times over He had said, ‘If ye love me, keep my commandments,’ and spoken of the threefold blessing with which He would crown such obedient love. The Holy Spirit would come from the Father; the Son would manifest Himself; the Father and the Son would come and make their abode. It is as our faith grows into obedience, and in obedience and love our whole being goes out and clings itself to Christ, that our inner life becomes opened up, and the capacity is formed within of receiving the life, the spirit, of the glorified Jesus, as a distinct and conscious union with Christ and with the Father. The word is fulfilled in us: ‘In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father and ye in me, and I in you.’ We understand how, just as Christ is in God, and God in Christ, one together not only in will and in love, but in identity of nature and life, because they exist in each other, so we are in Christ and Christ in us, in union not only of will and love, but of life and nature too.

Sunspots 901

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

Christianity: Christianity Today tells us about the faith of the late Queen Elizabeth.

Computing: NPR explains why social media is likely to polarize our opinions more and more.

Finances: A Conversation writer gives some tips on evaluating charities before contributing to them.

Science: A Conversation writer discusses the ability of ants to walk straight up a wall.

*I try not to include items that require a password or fee to view.

Thanks for reading.

With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 143

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. 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 yet it is as if there is something wanting. The will and the heart are on Christ’s side; he obeys and he loves his Lord. But still, why is it that the fleshly nature has yet so much power, that the spontaneous motions and emotions of the inmost being are not what they should be? The will does not approve or allow, but here is a region beyond control of the will. And why also, even when there is not so much of positive commission to condemn, why so much of omission, the deficiency of that beauty of holiness, that zeal of love, that conformity to Jesus and His death, in which the life of self is lost, and which is surely implied in the abiding, as the Master meant it? There must surely be something in our abiding in Christ and Christ in us, which he has not yet experienced.

Sunspots 900

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

The Arts: A Christianity Today writer on Tolkien's world, and ours.

Christianity: A Christianity Today writer on how corporate worship may bond us together in ways we don't realize.

Christianity Today has posted links to several articles on the late Mickail Gorbachev.

Politics:  A Conversation writer says that Iran is winning the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Gizmodo notes that former President Trump has incriminated himself on his own social media platform.

Science: Gizmodo on 7 animals that use tools.

A web page that tells us that fruit flies have been important in Nobel-prize-winning research.

A writer for The Conversation points out that over half of human fertilized eggs die before the woman knows that she is pregnant, but that laws protecting human embryos don't take this into account.

Another writer for The Conversation discusses what we know about fish sleep.

Sports: FiveThirtyEight tells us which of the big universities are football schools, and which are basketball schools.

*I try not to include items that require a password or fee to view.

Thanks for reading.

With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 142

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. 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. 

In the growing life of abiding in Christ, the first stage is that of faith. As the believer sees that, with all his feebleness, the command is really meant for him, his great aim is simply to believe that, as he knows he is in Christ, so now, notwithstanding unfaithfulness and failure, abiding in Christ is his immediate duty, and a blessing within his reach. He is specially occupied with the love, and power, and faithfulness of the Saviour: he feels his one need to be believing.

It is not long before he sees something more is needed. Obedience and faith must go together. Not as if to the faith he has the obedience must be added, but faith must be made manifest in obedience. Faith is obedience at home and looking to the Master: obedience is faith going out to do His will. He sees how he has been more occupied with the privilege and the blessings of this abiding than with its duties and its fruit. There has been much of self and of self-will that has been unnoticed or tolerated: the peace which, as a young and feeble disciple, he could enjoy in believing goes from him; it is in practical obedience that the abiding must be maintained: ‘If ye keep my commands, ye shall abide in my love.’ As before his great aim was through the mind, and the truth it took hold of, to let the heart rest on Christ and His promises; so now, in this stage, he chief effort is to get his will united with the will of his Lord, and the heart and the life brought entirely under His rule.

Sunspots 899

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

The Arts: Gizmodo  describes 13 streaming services, ranging from free to ad-supported to paying, that you have probably never heard of.

Tor.com has published an article on Galadriel, as Tolkien portrayed her. (Note that the article isn't based on the upcoming Rings of Power video series.)

Christianity: (or something) A Conversation writer discusses the role of dragons in religions.

A Christianity Today writer writes about the possibility of having artificial intelligences as worship leaders and preachers.

Health: NPR on how sweat that smells stinky protects us.

Politics: FiveThirtyEight reports on Republican election deniers who won their elections.

Science: (or something) CNet tells us about things that make us more attractive to mosquitoes.

*I try not to include items that require a password or fee to view.

Thanks for reading. 

With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 141

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. 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. 

‘If ye abide in me.’ As a Christian grows in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, he is often surprised to find how the words of God grow too, in the new and deeper meaning with which they come to him. He can look back to the day when some word of God was opened up to him and he rejoiced in the blessing he had found in it. After a time some deeper experience gave it a new meaning, and it was as if he never had seen what it contained. And yet once again, as he advanced in the Christian life, the same word stood before him again as a great mystery, until anew the Holy Spirit led him still deeper into its Divine fulness. One of these ever-growing, never-exhausted words, opening up to us step by step the fulness of the Divine life, is the Master’s precious ‘Abide in me.’ As the union of the branch with the vine is one of growth, never-ceasing growth and increase, so our abiding in Christ is a life process in which the Divine life takes ever fuller and more complete possession of us. The young and feeble believer may be really abiding in Christ up to the measure of his light; it is he who reaches onward to the full abiding in the sense in which the Master understood the words, who inherits all the promises connected with it.

Sunspots 898

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

Christianity: Christianity Today reports on the openness to women in various leadership roles, in Protestant churches.

Education: A Conversation article on violence against teachers by students. About 10% of teachers have been so attacked.

A Conversation writer discusses some ways that the Metaverse (the author doesn't know how to define or describe it) is helping college education.

Finances: NPR reports on how prisoners earn income behind bars, and what the income is.

Science: The Scientist on the energetics of chewing, (It takes a lot of energy.) and the possible relationship to humanoid evolution.

NPR reports that a company is planning to bring back the Tasmanian "tiger," which has been extinct for over 80 years. There are questions about trying to do this.

NPR also reports on some interesting (and possibly dangerous to humans) behavior by orcas/aka killer whales.

A Conversation writer discusses his own research, which indicates that dolphins use "signature whistles -- brief sequences of noise that the animals emit," which are not copies of those emitted by other dolphins, to identify other dolphins.

*I try not to include items that require a password or fee to view.

Thanks for reading.

With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray, excerpt 140

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. 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.

‘If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’—John xv. 7.
In all God’s intercourse with us, the promise and its conditions are inseparable. If we fulfil the conditions, He fulfils the promise. What He is to be to us depends upon what we are willing to be to Him. ‘Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.’ And so in prayer the unlimited promise, Ask whatsoever ye will, has its one simple and natural condition, if ye abide in me. It is Christ whom the Father always hears; God is in Christ, and can only be reached by being in Him; to be IN HIM is the way to have our prayer heard; fully and wholly ABIDING IN HIM, we have the right to ask whatsoever we will, and the promise  that it shall be done unto us.
When we compare this promise with the experiences of most believers, we are startled by a terrible discrepancy. Who can number up the countless prayers that rise and bring no answer? The cause must be either that we do not fulfil the condition, or God does not fulfil the promise. Believers are not willing to admit either, and therefore have devised a way of escape from the dilemma. They put into the promise the qualifying clause our Saviour did not put there—if it be God’s will; and so maintain both God’s integrity and their own. O if they did but accept it and hold it fast as it stands, trusting to Christ to vindicate His truth, how God’s Spirit would lead them to see the Divine propriety of such a promise to those who really abide in Christ in the sense in which He means it, and to confess that the failure
in the fulfilling the condition is the one sufficient explanation of unanswered prayer. And  how the Holy Spirit would then make our feebleness in prayer one of the mightiest motives to urge us on to discover the secret, and obtain the blessing, of full abiding in Christ.

Musing about The Rings of Power, based on J. R. R. Tolkien's works

The Rings of Power, based on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, is to be available for streaming on Amazon Prime in a couple of weeks. I have not seen it. I have heard that Amazon has spent a billion dollars or so on the series.

I have read much of Tolkien's work. I have appreciated it. My report on the last book in the Lord of the Rings is here. There are links, in that post, to my musings on more of Tolkien's work.

Tolkien had a large influence on later writers, for example, Elizabeth Moon. The films based on his books were among the most popular of all time.

Tolkien was a Christian. He worshiped regularly as a Catholic. His friendship with C. S. Lewis was one aspect of the conversion of Lewis, one of the most influential Christians of the 20th Century. But some aspects of his work are troubling. There are many gods, for one thing. Evil is often associated with blackness, and good with white. Women are mostly of secondary importance. (There are exceptions, such as Galadriel.)

Was Tolkien a Christian novelist? See here. I don't expect that The Rings of Power, any more than Tolkien's other work, will be preachy, at all. I expect that there will be important moral choices in The Rings of Power. Will there be a Christ-figure, submission to a good Creator, hope in a supernatural being, and other aspects of a Christian world view? I hope so. Will pride, like that of Fëanor, be punished? Punishment for pride is perhaps the main theme of Tolkien's work.

Thanks for reading.

Sunspots 897

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

The Arts: NPR has posted photos of lots of fireflies in action.

Politics: A Conversation writer discusses access to White House documents.

Another Conversation writer tells about partisan news consumption. (In other words, getting news from one side of the political divide.)

Yet another Conversation post discusses political activity by members of the military.

Science: Gizmodo reports that a newly discovered species of isopods (aka pill bugs, wood lice, roly polys, and more) can grow up to a half meter or so in length.

The Scientist reports on why doing work that requires thinking makes you feel tired.

The Scientist also has an article about dreaming in animals, and its possible ethical implications.

A Conversation article tells us why animals have tails.

*I try not to include items that require a password or fee to view.

Thanks for reading.

With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 139

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. 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.

Blessed Lord Jesus! I come again to Thee. Every lesson Thou givest me convinces me more deeply how little I know to pray aright. But every lesson also inspires me with hope that Thou art going to teach me, that Thou art teaching me not only to know what prayer should be, but actually to pray as I ought. O my Lord! I look with courage to Thee, the Great Intercessor, who didst pray and dost hear prayer, only that the Father may be glorified, to teach me too to live and to pray to the glory of God.

Saviour! To this end I yield myself to Thee again. I would be nothing. I have given self, as already crucified with Thee, to the death. Through the Spirit its workings are mortified and made dead; Thy life and Thy love of the Father are taking possession of me. A new longing begins to fill my soul, that every day, every hour, that in every prayer the glory of the Father may be everything to me. O my Lord! I am in Thy school to learn this: teach Thou it me.

And do Thou, the God of glory, the Father of glory, my God and my Father, accept the desire of a child who has seen that Thy glory is indeed alone worth living for. O Lord! Show me Thy glory. Let it overshadow me. Let it fill the temple of my heart. Let me dwell in it as revealed in Christ. And do Thou Thyself fulfil in me Thine own good pleasure, that Thy child should find his glory in seeking the glory of his Father. Amen.

Sunspots 896

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

Christianity: Ken Schenck writes about what the Bible says about gender and sex.

Education: A Conversation post on why there is a teacher shortage.

Food: (and Science) Gizmodo reports on developments in lab-grown fish sticks.

Health: (or something) Gizmodo reports that a surgery-performing robot is about to be tested in the International Space Station.

Gizmodo reports that UPS drivers are enduring dangerous heat. There's no A/C  in the trucks, and the rear part of the trucks (where most of the packages are) can get really hot.

Science: A Conversation writer tells us about coyotes in urban environments.

SciTechDaily reports that human genes have been transferred to yeast cells, and apparently work just fine.

Sports: C. Vivian Stringer, first African-American college coach to win 1000 games, has retired.

*I try not to include items that require a password or fee to view.

Thanks for reading.

Could there have been animal death before the Fall?, 2nd edition

It is often said that the earth must not be very old, because death could not have occurred before the Fall of Adam and Eve, as told in Genesis 3. When this is said, it means death of non-humans, such as the many generations of animals that would have been needed for, say, the origin of birds from reptiles, by natural selection.

A search has led me to some web pages, all arguing, using the Bible, that there could have been, or even must have been, death of non-human creatures before the Fall. (There are also posts that deny this.)

Here they are:
"No Physical Death Before the Fall?" by Glen Kuban.

"Death Before the Fall: God Created Cellular Death Codes," by Glenn Morton.

"Creation Science Issues: Death Before the Fall of Man," by Greg Neyman. 

 "Animal Death Before the Fall: What Does the Bible Say?" by Lee Irons.

"Was there animal death before the fall?" by Jay Wile.

"Did death occur before the Fall?" by BioLogos.

I have previously posted on a related matter.

None of these take the view that there couldn't have been death before the Fall, but some of them also present reasons why some people believe that there was no such death.

See my posts on David Snoke's book, A Biblical Case for an Old Earth. Snoke argues that the Bible allows the death of animals before the Fall. Here's one such post. Click on the "David Snoke" label at the end of the post to see all of them.

This post is a revision of one from January 2008.

Thank you for reading!

 

With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 138

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. 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 Father accepts the will, the sacrifice is well-pleasing; the Holy Spirit will seal us within with the consciousness, we are living for God and His glory.

And then what quiet peace and power there will be in our prayers, as we know ourselves through His grace, in perfect harmony with Him who says to us, when He promises to do what we ask: ‘That the Father may be glorified in the Son.’ With our whole being consciously yielded to the inspiration of the Word and Spirit, our desires will be no longer ours but His;  their chief end the glory of God. With increasing liberty we shall be able in prayer to say: Father! Thou knowest, we ask it only for Thy glory. And the condition of prayer-answers, instead of being as a mountain we cannot climb, will only give us the greater confidence that we shall be heard, because we have seen that prayer has no higher beauty or blessedness than this, that it glorifies the Father. And the precious privilege of prayer will become doubly precious because it brings us into perfect unison with the Beloved Son in the wonderful partnership He proposes: ‘You ask, and I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.’ precious because it brings us into perfect unison with the Beloved Son in the wonderful partnership He proposes: ‘You ask, and I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.’

‘LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.

Sunspots 895

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

The Arts: (and Christianity) a Tor author discusses the fate of Susan Pevensie in the Narnia books, by C. S. Lewis.

Christianity: (and Politics) Christianity Today examines the question of how behavior changes in Southern whites who have stopped going to church.

Finances: Gizmodo reports that the oil industry has received lots of profit over the past few years, but has cut its workforce drastically.

CNN reports on how Russia is financing the war in Ukraine with African gold, and propping up African dictators.

Science: The Scientist on why a humpback whale recently collided with a small boat.

NPR reports that, although the moon has been thought of as divided into two regions, one too hot, and one too cold for living things, certain geological features on the moon are habitable throughout the lunar cycle, neither too hot or too cold.

*I try not to include items that require a password or fee to view.

Thanks for reading.

 

With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 137

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. 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.

He that seeks God’s glory will see it in the answer to his prayer, and he alone.

And how, we ask again, shall we attain to it? Let us begin with confession. How little has the glory of God been an all-absorbing passion; how little our lives and our prayers have been full of it. How little have we lived in the likeness of the Son, and in sympathy with Him—for God and His glory alone. Let us take time, until the Holy Spirit discover it to us, and we see how wanting we have been in this. True knowledge and confession of sin are the sure path to deliverance.
And then let us look to Jesus. In Him we can see by what death we can glorify God. In death He glorified Him; through death He was glorified with Him. It is by dying, being dead to self and living to God, that we can glorify Him. And this—this death to self, this life to the glory of God—is what Jesus gives and lives in each one who can trust Him for it.
Let nothing less than these—the desire, the decision to live only for the glory of the Father, even as Christ did; the acceptance of Him with His life and strength working it in us; the joyful assurance that we can live to the glory of God, because Christ lives in us;—let this be the spirit of our daily life. Jesus stands surety for our living thus; the Holy Spirit is given, and waiting to make it our experience, if we will only trust and let Him; O let us not hold back through unbelief, but confidently take as our watchword—All to the glory of God! The Father accepts the will, the sacrifice is well-pleasing; the Holy Spirit will seal us within with the consciousness, we are living for God and His glory.