I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old, familiar carols play,
and wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, public domain. Source: Wikipedia.

Sunspots 557

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

The Arts: Stephen Burnett has some advice for those who are working on a film version of The Silver Chair, the great book by C. S. Lewis.
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Christianity: An article on the main reason that young people leave the church.

A Sojourners article urges us to "wage peace," and indicates how that should be done.

Ken Schenck considers, carefully, what the Bible says about suicide and end-of-life decisions. (It doesn't say much!)

Computing: (This is different from the item in last weeks Sunspots.) Gizmo's Freeware tells us how to get an instant, unique e-mail address.

Gizmo's also has an annotated list of the best free software for the Mac OS.

Wired reports on how to create an e-book, from something you've already written, or from a public domain work that isn't available in digital format.

Education: National Public Radio reports on research that indicates that "pretty girls make higher grades."

Health: The BBC reports that beards may help fight infection. Really.

Humor: (or something) The BBC, and other news outlets, report that a church shaped like a glass slipper has been built in Taiwan. Really.

Listverse is a site that puts up bizarre lists frequently -- example: "10 Ridiculous Political Parties You Won't Believe Got Elected."

Politics: FiveThirtyEight points out that politicians, and the rest of us, are not mentioning the US national deficit, or our debt, as much as we used to, and considers why that is so. (The deficit has dropped in recent years, but a deficit of even $1 adds to the national debt, which has increased, of course.)

Science: Wired reports on the bearded vulture, or lammergeier, a bird that eats almost nothing but bones.

Wired also reports on a study that finds that you have a lot more insects in your home than you thought you did.

And Wired, and many other sources, report on the possible discovery of another planet.

FiveThirtyEight reports that, again, the past year is the hottest ever recorded.

Sports: ESPN and other sources report that, for the first time, an NFL team has hired a female full-time assistant coach.


Image source (public domain)

What Christians should pray for in our private prayers, according to Philip Yancey

The graphic above is also a link to my Flickr photostream, where it is available in larger sizes.

In his excellent book, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006. See here for the book's web site.) Philip Yancey has a chapter on "What to Pray For." In it, he discusses these appropriate subjects for prayer:
Heart Desire
Yancey writes: "What is the point of prayer if not to express our heart's desire, especially when it matches what we know to be God's will on earth?" Of course, many of my prayers, and probably many of yours, are for things about which we do not know God's will for certain.
Peace, or Trust
Here Yancey is not speaking of world peace, but of praying for peace, because we believe that the matter we are praying about, whatever it may be, is in God's good hands.
Faith, or Trust
Yancey describes a special kind of faith, which he calls fidelity - "a hang-on-by-the-fingernails faith against all odds, no matter the cost."
Complaint, or Lament
Many prayers in the Bible are complaints to God, such as the book of Lamentations, a good many of the Psalms, and the complaints of Mary and Martha about the death of Lazarus. We think that God should have acted, and He doesn't seem to have done so.
God's presence Yancey believes that we should pray that the Holy Spirit would live through us. We must act that way, too!
Compassion
The author describes his own prayers for AIDS victims in Africa as an example. He says that he prays for health-care workers, and for philanthropic and governmental activity aimed at helping AIDS victims, and prevention.
Grace
No one deserves God's grace, but we should pray for it for ourselves, because God gives it to us, and no one deserves it. Paul prayed for grace for the new churches, in his letters.
Preparations
By this, Yancey means praying that we may be prepared for death, of ourselves, or of those we care for. He isn't talking about praying that we will go to heaven. He is telling me that I should pray that I will have a Christ-like attitude toward those around me as I begin to suffer from whatever it is that will end my life, and that I will manifest a Christ-like attitude toward anyone in that state, for example with dementia, if it becomes my responsibility to care for them.
Gratitude
Probably no one is as grateful to God as much as she should be, or grateful for all the things she should be. We take so much for granted -- air, beauty, water, the ability to listen and look, for example.

A great deal more could be said about each of these topics, and Yancey has said quite a bit about each of them.

Yancey writes: "At its best, my prayer does not seek to manipulate God into doing my will -- quite the opposite. Prayer enters the pool of God's own love and widens outward."

I have previously posted on what the New Testament church prayed for. There's almost no overlap with Yancey's discussion, in part because he is writing about personal prayer. I have also posted on the ACTS scheme of praying.

I originally posted this a few days ago, saying that I expected to modify the post in the near future, adding a graphic, and more explanation. I have added the graphic, and re-worked the post, on February 26, 2014. Thanks for reading, and looking!

Prayers in the Bible: Romans 1

In his letters to churches, Paul often has words like this, near the beginning of the message:

Romans 1:7b Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, that your faith is proclaimed throughout the whole world. (World English Bible)

The request that God send grace and peace is supplication, and verse 8 is thanksgiving. There is no confession or adoration, two other types of prayer, in this part of Romans 1. I don't use those types of prayer enough. (I'm not saying that Paul didn't use them enough!)

Grace and peace to you, whoever may read this, and I thank God for you, whoever you might be.

Thanks for reading. This is one in a series of posts on prayers in the Bible. The previous post is here.

Norman Borlaug, Nobel prize winning botanist, dies

Norman Borlaug, architect of the Green Revolution, has passed away, at age 95.

The categories for the Nobel Prizes were mostly determined by the will of Alfred Nobel. A number of geneticists, such as Watson and Crick, have won or shared in the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, but there is no prize in genetics. There is no prize in zoology, or botany. A few zoologists have won the Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Borlaug, a botanist, made scientific and agricultural contributions of such importance that he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.

What did Borlaug do? What is the Green Revolution? Put simply, Borlaug worked, for many years, on improving crop yields in third world countries. Much of his work was in the field in those countries. There is a chart included in the Wikipedia article on the man that dramatically shows the effect of the work of Borlaug and his colleagues. Wheat yields in Mexico, according to the chart, increased by more than four-fold since 1950. Borlaug's techniques involved increased fertilizer and other agricultural techniques which had not been used very much in third world countries, and breeding crops that could take advantage of these techniques. It seems clear that Borlaug's work kept many people, probably many millions, from starvation.

Borlaug's work has not been without controversy. Critics have claimed that Borlaug's techniques have worked to the advantage of agribusiness companies, made third world farmers too dependent on seed that they may not always be able to afford, and harmed the environment. There is some truth in all these claims, but Borlaug believed that producing more food was more important. He has also put forward the Borlaug Hypothesis, which states that improving crop yields makes deforestation less likely. He has stated that population growth is one of the important reasons why people don't have enough food.

Science is sometimes accused of being too divorced from people's real needs. Maybe so. What, if any, is the practical value of string theory? But discoveries that, at first, seem only interesting to specialists, or irrelevant to human physical or economic needs, often turn out to be of immense practical use. One example is Mendel's work in studying how some characteristics of peas were inherited. I doubt if Mendel, or Mendel's contemporaries, had any idea that his discoveries would make tremendous advances in agriculture and medicine possible. Without Mendel, no Borlaug. Science is also a way of learning about God. Psalm 19:1-4 and Romans 1:20 tell us that how nature works is one of the ways God is revealed to us.

I'm not sure Borlaug's work has helped us to know God better, but it has helped lots of people stay alive, so that they have a chance of learning about Him. We should be grateful for his work.

Thanks for reading.

Cazaril, from Bujold's The Curse of Chalion, on war

"Chalion lost more than dy Jironal gained on that ill-conceived venture."
Iselle's eyebrows bent. "Was it not a victory?"
"By what definition? We and the Roknari princedoms have been pushing shoving over that border area for decades -- it's now a waste. Orchards and olive groves and vineyards burned, farms abandoned, animals turned loose to go wild or starve -- it's peace, not war,that makes wealth for a country. War just transfers posession of the residue from the weaker to the stronger. Worse, what is bought with blood is sold for coin, and then stolen back again." He brooded, and added bitterly, "Your grandfather Roya Fonsa bought Gotorget with the lives of his sons. It was sold by March dy Jironal for three hundred thousand royals. It's a wondrous transmutation, where the blood of one man is turned into the money of another. Lead into gold is nothing to it." (Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion, New York: HarperCollins, 2001, pp. 131-2) Cazaril is in Roya (king) Orico's menagerie with Iselle, now 16, the Roya's half-sister, and Betriz, her companion, a little older. He is tutoring them. Umegat, who runs the menagerie, is also present. The conversation starts with a discussion of a rare bird brought to the menagerie by dy Jironal.

Two Quotes from On Blue's Waters, by Gene Wolfe

On Blue's Waters: Volume One of the Book of the Short Sun, by Gene Wolfe (New York: Tor, 1999) is the first of a trilogy of fantastic novels. Wolfe is a good writer. He considers lots of ideas. Here are two quotations from the book:
Immediate action is the soul of war, as I learned many years ago by observing General Mint. It is not the soul of peace. (p. 185)

Listen all you phantom readers. Buildings are temporary, ideas permanent. (p. 348)

Thanks for reading!