suziebeezieland

london 2011: the british museum

Bob and I went to the British Museum (or, as our brother-in-law Greg calls it, The Museum of Plunder) on Valentine's Day. Our hotel was across the street from it, so it was just a hop to get there.

I tell you in all embarrassed honesty that I did not anticipate liking the British Museum, simply because I don't think of myself as an "antiquities" girl. 

But it was really wonderful, and I would gladly have come back for several days in a row, if we'd had the time, just to look around. They take a very interesting "storytelling" approach to many of the exhibits, so that instead of feeling as if you're standing around looking at a bunch of old stuff, you find yourself becoming so intimately involved in the lives of people who used or made these things, that you end up really caring. 

And the building itself is quite stunning. It is open to the light as much as possible, and is expansive. 

We spent quite some time in the Enlightenment Room (Room 1), where I had the epiphany that Martha Stewart has probably been there and liked it. That room felt like her magazine. Everything was collected, explained, and cataloged for posterity.

It was very interesting. 

We spent the majority of our time at the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead exhibit. Again, I was not particularly excited about seeing an Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, but I don't think I will ever forget that exhibit. It was absolutely fascinating. (It ran through March 6 and has since been replaced with Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World.) Again, they used a storyline to draw you through the exhibit and make you care very much about Hunifer and his wife, Nasha, and some other ancient Egyptians. I found myself thinking quite a lot about their respective fates.

The "Book" wasn't a single text.  It was a compilation of spells that were designed to guide the deceased through the dangers of the underworld, ultimately ensuring eternal life. The spells were on papyrus and linen. There were also funerary figurines called "shabtis", amulets, jewelry, statues, and coffins in the exhibit. Here is a little video about it if you get curious.

We also spent quite a bit of time looking at Ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman sculpture on the first floor.

Here is the Rosetta Stone, and me reflected in it. :)

I liked this sarcophagus.

Here is a marble bust of Alexander the Great from Alexandria around 2 or 1 B.C. Alexander ran his own P.R. campaign pretty tightly. He controlled how he looked in all the representations of him displayed throughout his empire. He only used a few, select painters and sculptors, and they always had to make him look young and clean-shaven, with long hair and this dynamic turn of the head. Alexander was deified in his own lifetime, which is really never a good idea, but goes to show you what a good job he did in making himself seem greater than he really was. 

I always think such men start believing their own progaganda about themselves, and half believe they won't actually die. And yet they do.

He reminds me quite a bit of Lord Byron here. Don't cha think?

I think she looks like she is ready to backhand anybody who gets too fresh.

The Parthenon Sculptures (a.k.a. the Elgin Marbles) were quite impressive. They were (as you probably know) sculptures that decorated the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens.

There are Parthenon sculptures in several museums in countries around the world, including the Louvre, the Vatican museum, and some others in Austria, Germany, and Denmark. And of course there are also some Parthenon sculptures in Athens, at the New Acropolis Museum.

Greece is kind of angry that all the Parthenon sculptures are not in Greece. They would like to restore the Acropolis, but can't really do it without all the sculptures. On the other hand, the British Museum has this to say:

The British Museum exists to tell the story of cultural achievement throughout the world, from the dawn of human history over two million years ago until the present day. The Museum is a unique resource for the world: the breadth and depth of its collection allows the world public to re-examine cultural identities and explore the complex network of interconnected world cultures. Within the context of this unparalleled collection, the Parthenon sculptures are an important representation of ancient Athenian civilisation.

Each year millions of visitors, free of charge, admire the artistry of the sculptures and gain insights on how ancient Greece influenced, and was influenced by, the other civilisations that it encountered.

The Trustees of the British Museum warmly welcome the opening of the New Acropolis Museum which will allow the Parthenon sculptures that are in Athens to be appreciated against the backdrop of ancient Greek and Athenian history. The new museum, however, does not alter the Trustees’ view that the sculptures are part of everyone’s shared heritage and transcend cultural boundaries. The Trustees remain convinced that the current division allows different and complementary stories to be told about the surviving sculptures, highlighting their significance for world culture and affirming the universal legacy of Ancient Greece.

Do you have opinions on this? 

The frieze (a bit is pictured below) ran high up around all four sides of the Parthenon inside the colonnades.

It's really hard to draw horses on paper. I can't imagine carving them out of stone and making them look so fluid and horsey-like.

We wandered around the Museum for five or six hours, and then I pooped out and went back to the hotel to take a nap. Bob stayed another hour or so and went upstairs and saw more neat stuff. I really hope to go and spend more time there. Who knew that I was, after all, an antiquities girl? I just needed to find someone who would explain it well to me. Thanks, British Museum. :)

london 2011: hampstead heath

If you are ever in London on a Sunday morning at ten a.m., Bob and I both recommend that you take the Old Hampstead Village walk with London Walks. (We would like to plan an entire London vacation some time centered around the London Walks walks. They are fantastic.)

If you take this walk on Sunday, your guide will be David, who owns the company. Don't let the fact that he is American (from Wisconsin) deter you. He is brilliant, and has lived in London for a very long time. He went over from the U.S. as a lad to do a doctoral dissertation on Charles Dickens, and just stayed.

Here is the London Walks description of the Old Hampstead Village walk:

This is a great walk. They just don't come any better than this. Our setting is London's most picturesque neighbourhood – a perfectly preserved Georgian village crowning the top of a handsome hill and garnished with the capital's most elegant old world promenade, a medley of cobble-stone lanes, pretty cottages, surprising turnings, and unsurpassed views. As for our cast of characters...well it's every bit as beguiling as our setting, ranging from the highwayman Dick Turpin to the painter Constable to the poet Keats; from Freud and D.H. Lawrence to Sting and Boy George; from Elizabeth Taylor and Judy Dench and Emma Thompson to Rex Harrison, Peter O'Toole, Alan Bates, Liam Gallagher and Jeremy Irons. And for good measure, there's London's most villagey atmosphere, white swans on a lake, and magnificent Hampstead Heath. 

Bob and I also recommend that you hit The Holly Bush for lunch after the tour if you can squeeze in. We spent a really enjoyable couple of hours there.

A whole slew of very interesting creative types have lived in or do live in Hampstead. Seriously, take a look at the list of literary folks. Dude.

This is Jamie Oliver's old house, kitty-corner to The Holly Bush.

George Romney was a great English portrait painter, and a poster boy for selfishness. He moved out on his family, lived the life of the womanizing artist for years and years, and then showed up back home (after being gone for forty years) once he was old and sick and broke, expecting his wife to take care of him. And she did, for two years, until he died.

George DuMaurier is all over Hampstead. Everywhere you turn, there he lived. If you are not familiar with George, he was a cartoonist and author. He was also Sylvia Llewelyn Davie's dad and Daphne DuMaurier's grandfather. (Sylvia's five sons inspired J.M. Barrie to write Peter Pan, which you know if you saw Finding Neverland, and Daphne wrote Rebecca, which you know if you read Rebecca. Ha.) He was also a close friend of Henry James.

He lived in the house below, and so did Ridley Scott. But not in the same century.

If you look at the roof of this house below, you''ll probably recognize it. 

Here is a hint:

And then there is the Heath itself, which is large and lovely.

Here's the English flag. (Not the British.)

The Vale of Health is a bit of a misnomer. It would have been a swampy, mosquito-infested and decidedly unhealthy area when it was named. 

People get pretty animated talking about parking in Hampstead. It's a bit of an issue. 

The house below used to be a carriage house. You can see on the bottom where the old, huge doors have been replaced by new brick, two windows, and a front door.

Here's an art studio where Mark Gertler lived.

Here's the Everyman Cinema. It used to be a very influential little theater theatre.

If you take the walking tour, it winds up on a beautiful little Georgian street in front of St. John-at-Hampstead church. The churchyard is lovely.

John Constable is buried here.

And here's George DuMaurier again. Three of the Llewelyn Davies children and their parents are also buried here.

I don't think my photos catch the most interesting thing about walking around Hampstead, which is that it's on a hill, in London but high above London. It's really lovely. Walking around Hampstead on an overcast Sunday morning is a really pleasant way to spend a couple hours. If this is something you would enjoy, I hope you get to do it sometime. :)

one little photo of windsor

I saved the rest of our London photos (from February) to share now, this week, because I knew I would be wanting to bask in the glow of the Royal Wedding. :) 

I took 119 photos the day we were at Windsor. I may have gotten a bit carried away. I promise not to show you 119 photos of Windsor. But Windsor has been home to the Sovereign for 900 years, and it is fantastic.

Here is one of them. I'll post some more photos later this week.

Yay, William and Kate. Yay!

if claire were marrying prince william tomorrow

catalina island

On Tuesday morning, we took the Catalina Express over to Catalina Island. The trip takes about an hour from Long Beach. Catalina Island is 26 miles from the mainland. But you may have known that already, from the song:

Twenty-six miles across the sea
Santa Catalina is a-waitin' for me
Santa Catalina, the island of romance, romance, romance

I'd never been to Catalina before. Neither had Claire. Bob represents the Santa Catalina Island Company (known as "The Company" to locals) and the Santa Catalina Island Conservancy (known as "The Conservancy" to locals) and goes over fairly often for business, so he was excited to show us around.

Pulling out of Long Beach harbor, we got a better view of the Queen Mary.

Bun Bun had a good seat in Claire's cupholder on the Catalina Express.

As you approach the island, you see the Casino (built in 1928-29 by William Wrigley Jr. of the Chicago Wrigleys) and the rest of Avalon (the only city on the island).

It feels so Mediterranean! And a little bit how I've always imagined Sardinia or Cyprus to be, maybe. Or even Smuggers' Island in Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun, when they made it into a t.v. movie with Peter Ustinov in the eighties. That one. Smugglers' Island is just off the coast of Devon in the book, but they filmed that movie in Majorca, so now if I read the book, the ambiance is a bit messed up. 

Anyway, it feels like you're sailing into a fishing village that should have an exciting mystery happening in it.

It's strange to imagine what California in general would look like today without the mediterranean influence.

I heard that part of Catalina Island still accidentally belongs to Spain. The story is that the ownership description on the title documents left off a small portion of the island when it was transferred to the U.S., so that bit is still Spain's.

You might not want to quote me on that, because I'm not sure it's true. But it's sure a mighty interesting story.

We stayed at the Pavilion Hotel, which is a short walk from the pier. It was renovated in 2010. It's lovely, and has a very pleasant courtyard garden.

Oh, the joys of investigating a new hotel room. The little bottles of shampoo and conditioner! The closets with the extra pillows and the hairdryer and the luggage rack! The two beds to jump between!

After we got settled, we went out to investigate things and get some lunch.

Tile was manufactured on Catalina between 1927 and 1937. William Wrigley Jr. found clay deposits there when he was developing the island, and so the Company invested in the development of a brick and tile factory. It only lasted a decade, but the tiles are still famous. There are several tile artists now in business who try replicating the old tiles, but one woman does such fine work that everybody hires her for new tiles or replacement of old tiles. 

We had a pretty view while we ate lunch. See that cruise ship out there? That's the same one that was in the harbor in Long Beach. Avalon was filled up with cruise ship people during the day, but it emptied out after three in the afternoon because they all had to go back to the ship, or be left behind.

Catalina runs on island time, so everything is kind of slow. I love that. It took awhile for our lunch to arrive, so we talked and then a woman with leopard spots tattooed on her arm walked by, so then Claire drew a leopard. 

If I were forced to say what my favorite thing to do is, I think my favorite thing to do is to eat outside when the weather is nice and I am with people I like. So I was pretty happy at lunch, even though it took a long time.

We walked back to the hotel (everything is close together in Avalon) to get our sweaters because it was windy, and to buy tickets to the undersea tour.

The undersea tour takes about 45 minutes. They take you out to Lover's Cove Marine Preserve in a semi-sub, and feed the fish, who go nuts and come swimming all around you. It's super fun. Here is a short video I took. It looks like we're looking into an aquarium, but nope, we're underwater in a boat.

Claire is good on boats for about half an hour before she starts feeling seasick. However, she always wants to go on boats, anyway. She was happy to go upstairs and feel the fresh air on her face as the tour came to an end.

After the undersea tour, Bob and Claire went miniature golfing, and I went and sat in the lovely courtyard garden of our hotel and worked on my book for about 90 minutes. I am not going to make my self-imposed deadline of April 29, and I'm kind of sad about that, but that's okay. I will get it done.

Then they came back and told me all about golfing, and then it was time for the hotel's free wine and cheese time, which is between 4 and 4:30 exactly. So Bob brought me a glass of wine and some cheese, and brought Claire some lemonade, and brought himself some wine and cheese, and we sat in the courtyard some more and enjoyed each other.  It was very relaxing.

At about six, we decided it was time for dinner. This is the lovely thing about vacation. It's a bunch of meals strung together with things like reading and writing and looking at fish and tiles and having cheese and drawing pictures of leopards at one's leisure.

We went here for dinner, to the Ristorante Villa Portofino. The service was really excellent. The pasta was your basic pasta. :) I think the facade is so cute. Look at the plants on the balcony.

After we ate, Bob really wanted to show us the Casino. Up until this point, I thought there was a casino in the Casino, and I wasn't all that interested in seeing it. But it hasn't been a casino in years. Now it houses the Avalon Theatre and the Catalina Island Museum, and is really beautiful. I'm glad I didn't miss that walk or the Casino, because it was one of my favorite parts of our time there.

At dusk everything starts feeling magical.

This mermaid is iconic. She is one of several painted frescos (circa 1929) outside the entrance to the Avalon Theatre in the Casino. The architect ran out of time to create the vignettes in tile as originally planned and so had workmen paint them, instead, but the mermaid was finally converted to tile in 1987.

Here Bob is teaching Claire some of the differences between art deco and art nouveau, which are both featured here. :) I got a kick out of that.

I would not have been too terribly surprised if a mermaid peeked up out of this water. 

living the cross centered life book winners

Hi, ladies. :) Since only four of you entered the drawing to win the book Living the Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel the Main Thing, I just decided to send a copy to each of you. If you can each (JoAnn, Julie, Michelle D. and Rizza) email me your mailing address, I'll get a copy right out to you.

Congratulations! It's a really good book. 

xxoo

long beach

Claire has spring break this week, so Bob took a few days off work and we took a little mini-vacation. We spent Monday night in Long Beach, and last night on Catalina Island. Then today we came home. 

Long Beach is a working port (second busiest container port in the U.S.), so there is all kinds of shipping activity going on in the harbor (there were a total of 4,691,258 loaded inbound and outbound containers through Long Beach last year) as well as tourist-oriented attractions such as the harbored Queen Mary steamship.

Bob used Priceline to get us a reservation for one night at the Hotel Maya in Long Beach. It was so relaxing, and we just hung out there the whole time. :) The weather was perfect.

First we checked out the funky lobby and restaurant areas.

Below is the view from the restaurant. The hotel is located right on the harbor. The ship that is horizontal to us below is a Carnival cruise ship that docks there every few days. The ship perpendicular to it is the Queen Mary. That dome to the right is where Howard Hughes's Spruce Goose used to be on exhibit.

Here's downtown Long Beach.

There are some cool public lounging areas, so we lounged. :)

After we checked out the public areas close to the hotel entrance, we jumped in our car and drove over to our room. We had a nice view of the swimming pool and harbor. The Queen Mary and the Carnival cruise ship are behind the trees. :)

After we settled in, Bob and Claire went down to swim and I sat on the balcony and watched them and dozed off for a few minutes. It was awesome. :)

The lounge chairs make the pool deck look like a piano. (That's Bob and Claire down there.)

When they came back from swimming I decided it was time to bust out my real camera and quit using only my phone. :)

Many of you are familiar with "tag team parenting," which is often necessary when the parents are tired but the children are not. So after Bob took Claire swimming while I relaxed, he took a nap and I took Claire for a walk around the beautiful hotel grounds. 

We made a few stops when she felt the need to dance.

This is looking back towards the hotel, which are those modern-looking buildings on the left. 

Then we went back and Bob was awake and we decided it was close enough to dinner time. :)

I needed to crop Bob reading a map out of this photo (you can still see the map), but I wanted to show you the headboard. Our room had two queen beds. I don't really think stones are a practical headboard, and I piled about three pillows behind Claire's head when she went to bed at night, but I wanted you to see it. :)

The room was nice, and I'm sorry that I didn't take more photos of it. I think I was just mesmerized by the balcony. I just wanted to be outside.

We decided to eat at Fuego, which is the restaurant at the hotel itself. I told you, we did not set foot away from the hotel our whole time there. :) We all highly recommend the sopes at Fuego. It's an appetizer, but if you ate the whole thing it would make a great meal. YUM. I would drive back to Long Beach just to eat those sopes.

Here is a Shirley Temple.

The restaurant looks out on the water.

On the way back to our room, we checked out one of the fire pits, lined with orange glass. So cool.

It was a really good day. :)

claire the stormtrooper

Last Saturday we went to a Star-Wars-themed birthday party for our friend Amy, who works in the film industry and was turning 27. Bob took Claire to the costume store in the morning and she came back as a stormtrooper!

I think she was a little scared of herself whenever she looked in the mirror. :)

a very nice easter

We had a very nice Easter here with our family. I hope you did, too. 

There were 19 of us altogether (14 grownups and 5 kids) and the weather was pleasant and there was more food than anyone could eat in three or four Easters. It was lovely. :)

through faith in jesus christ for all who believe

On Friday we noted that we are all unrighteous and, therefore, subject to God's wrath. We left off with the apostle Paul crying out, "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" 

There is such good news for us, for Christ the Lord is risen today. :)

For God has not destined us for wrath,
but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,
who died for us
so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him.
(1 Thessalonians 5:9-10)

First Peter 1:24 elaborates:

He himself bore our sins 
in his body on the tree, 
that we might die to sin 
and live to righteousness. 
By his wounds 
you have been healed. 

What God required, He provided. Jesus Christ, perfect son of God, stood in your place and took your punishment on Himself so that you could be reconciled to God. God's wrath for your sin was poured out on Jesus.

Do you believe this?

Do you see those words "but now" below? These are two of the most exciting words in the whole Bible. 

For by works of the law no human being will be justified
in his [God's] sight,
since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
But now
the righteousness of God has been manifested
apart from the law,
although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—
the righteousness of God
through faith in Jesus Christ
for all who believe.
For there is no distinction:
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
and are justified by his grace as a gift,
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood,
to be received by faith.
(Romans 3:20-25)

We're not righteous. But this faith in Jesus will be counted to us as righteousness.

It will be counted to us who believe in him
who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord,
who was delivered up for our trespasses
and raised for our justification.
(Romans 4:24, 25) 

Look! Here is the Good News again in 1 Corinthians 15. Not only did Jesus die for our sins, but He rose again, eternally triumphant over all His enemies.

For I delivered to you as of first importance 
what I also received: 
that Christ died for our sins 
in accordance with the Scriptures, 
that he was buried,
that he was raised 
on the third day 
in accordance with the Scriptures...

Look at it again in Romans 5:

...but God shows his love for us
in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us
Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood,
much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.
For if while we were enemies
we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son,
much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
More than that, we also rejoice in God
through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Lee Strobel, former legal editor of the Chicago Tribune and former atheist, has this to say about his investigation into the resurrection of Jesus:

One by one, my objections evaporated. I read books by skeptics, but their counter-arguments crumbled under the weight of the historical data ...

In the end, after I had thoroughly investigated the matter, I reached an unexpected conclusion: it would actually take more faith to maintain my atheism than to become a follower of Jesus.

And that’s why I’m now celebrating my 30th Easter as a Christian. Not because of wishful thinking, the fear of death, or the need for a psychological crutch, but because of the facts.

C.S. Lewis, former atheist, Oxford don, and writer, had this to say about the nature of Jesus:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

Francis Collins, former atheist and head of the Human Genome Project, and current director of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, has this to say about his belief in Jesus:

As I read [C.S. Lewis's] arguments about the Moral Law -- the knowledge of right and wrong, which makes no sense from the perspective of basic evolution and biology but makes great sense as a signpost to God -- I began to realize the truth of what he was saying. Ultimately, I realized I couldn't go back to where I was. I could never again say atheism is the only logical choice for a scientifically trained person ... Nobody gets argued all the way into becoming a believer on the sheer basis of logic and reason. That requires a leap of faith. And that leap of faith seemed very scary to me. After I had struggled with this for a couple of years, I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains on a beautiful fall afternoon. I turned the corner and saw in front of me this frozen waterfall, a couple of hundred feet high. Actually, a waterfall that had three parts to it -- also the symbolic three in one. At that moment, I felt my resistance leave me. And it was a great sense of relief. The next morning, in the dewy grass in the shadow of the Cascades, I fell on my knees and accepted this truth -- that God is God, that Christ is his son and that I am giving my life to that belief.

And in John 11:25, Jesus says this about Himself, and follows it with the most important question you can ever ask yourself:

I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?

an easter song for you ♥

isaiah 53

Isaiah wrote this about 750 years before Jesus was born.
(You can read the whole chapter here.)

Surely he has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities,
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned -- every one -- to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on him
The iniquity of us all.
(Isaiah 53:4-6)

our need for a savior

Today is Good Friday. Today many of us contemplate the work Christ did for us on the cross. Many more people question why, exactly, they would even need a savior.

It's not really the thing nowadays to tell people that they're "wretched sinners". And you don't hear the phrase "abominable iniquity" thrown around too much, either. You don't see that too much on the front of women's magazines when you're in the grocery line: "Hey, girlfriend! You are a wretched sinner guilty of abominable iniquity!"

You're a lot more likely to have someone tell you, "Wow, you are just a poor, misunderstood victim of circumstance." Or "You know, that's okay, because nobody's perfect." Or someone may say, "You need to love yourself, warts and all."

But if you don't understand that you are a wretched sinner who is powerless on your own to quit being a wretched sinner, and if you don't understand that God is holy, loving, and perfectly just, you are not really going to understand what Easter is all about.

The Bible is the story of faithless people and a faithful God. We are, without the atoning work of Christ in our lives, enemies of God. Full-blown enemies. We are rebels who are guilty of what R.C. Sproul calls "cosmic treason." We are not the cool type of Princess Leia rebels who are seeking to overthrow evil. We are the bad type of rebels, who are seeking to overthrow good.

Romans 1 has a clear description of this unrighteousness state:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools . . .

(Romans 1:18-23 ESV)

Because we have rebelled from God, we are subject to His wrath. God's wrath is also not a popular subject, but it's an important thing to be aware of. You can't understand Easter without understanding that we deserve God's wrath, but that Jesus is offering us full, complete, eternal, and utter reconciliation with God.

It's not a good idea to make a close analogy between God's wrath and human anger. Our anger is too often fueled by self-interest, and we are not holy like God is holy, so neither is our anger. But do you know the feeling you get when you read in the paper about something really horrible a person has done to another person? You know the kinds of stuff I'm talking about. In these cases, you feel a strong repulsion towards evil. You do not tolerate it. You have a strong sense that it would be a horrible miscarriage of justice for some crimes to be treated as misdemeanors when they are clearly felonies. You may even feel grief mixed in with your anger, and a very clear sense that this evil is a terrible abomination.

God always has an intolerance for evil. All evil. He is perfectly holy and perfectly good. He is also perfectly just. His abhorrence of our sin is always perfectly right. The problem is that we think most of the stuff we do is just not that bad, because we compare ourselves to other people. We compare ourselves to other sinners, and we seem pretty okay. But our standard isn't other people's behavior. Our standard is God. 

The Bible describes a God so good that we cannot fathom His goodness. We literally cannot imagine the kind of good that God is. His great goodness makes even our smallest act of rebellion an act of high treason and real evil. 

First John 1:5 says "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." Psalm 107:1 says "Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!" Psalm 31:19 says "Oh, how abundant is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you and worked for those who take refuge in you, in the sight of the children of mankind!" James 1:17 says: "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change." Psalm 34:8 says: "Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!" 

God is a good King. He does not allow evil. He punishes it. Sometimes we see evil punished here and now, on earth. We see God's judgment of it. Some evil does not appear to be punished here and now on earth. This suggests there is further judgment to come.

When we sin, we are subject to God's holy and righteous wrath. Here are some (but by no means all) sins God does not tolerate:

They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Romans 1:29-32)

If you thought you were doing okay because you haven't murdered anyone and don't do drugs, you need to think again. It turns out we are all felons. Look at that list. Murder is in there, but so is gossip and foolishness. And this is not a comprehensive list. 

These actions proceed from our hearts. That's where the real problem is. And our hearts are what God sees. In Genesis 8:21, God says "for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth." And 1 Samuel 16:7 says "For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” 

We are a big mess. Every single one of us. I know how my heart is because it is my own heart, and I know how yours is because of what the Bible tells me. I have never even MET most of you before, and I can say with absolute certainty that you often have impure motives behind your actions, that you often think unkind thoughts, and that you often seek to manipulate life to your advantage. Romans 3:23 says, "For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Psalm 53:1 says, "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.'  They are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity; there is none who does good."

In Romans 7, the apostle Paul notes, "For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing." 

And then he cries out, "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?"

Stay tuned! Because Sunday's a comin', and there is a really, really wonderful answer to that question.

easter eggs

despicable christians, unspeakable grace:a response to ricky gervais

In his abundant mercy, God looks upon the broken, the downtrodden, those crushed by the burdens of Satan, sin, and death, and provides scandalous mercy in Jesus Christ. That’s the starting place of the gospel, and the starting place of any conversation about what it means to be a Christian. Ricky Gervais looks at the Scriptures and sees only law, not grace, and responds with appeals to legal obedience.

Mike Cosper over at The Gospel Coalition has written a thoughtful response (definitely worth a read) to Ricky Gervais's WSJ Atheist Easter Message. (You may know Gervais as the prototype of Michael Scott in the original British version of The Office.)

... Gervais, actually, is quite religious, and the lack of religiosity in the gospel is what he finds so offensive. Religion is a way of looking at the world that tells us, “If you behave, you’ll be rewarded, and if you misbehave, you’ll be punished.” The gospel turns that message on its head. “You’re an absolute mess,” it says, “and an innocent Savior (the only one who ‘behaved’) was punished in your place so that you can belong regardless of how unpleasant you may be.” ... Gervais is appealing to his own superior moralism, supposing that it should be sufficient, whether there’s a God or not. He’s right to point out that Christians are often unkind and unforgiving, but the gospel anticipates that we’re a mess.

my favorite worship music

This morning I just wanted to share my three favorite worship CDs with you. I use "CD" loosely, because I own them mostly as MP3s on my iPod. :)

It just so happens that my top three favorites all involve male vocalists. But of course I also own and enjoy worship music with women singing. :)

Together for the Gospel Live
Sovereign Grace Music

This is my absolute favorite. It is just a live recording of worship during the Together for the Gospel Live 2008 pastors' conference. It's not polished, and it's not a choir. It is just unadorned worship, with a piano to keep the tune. But I'm telling you, to hear all those deep male voices sing these wonderful hymns gives me goosebumps every single time. I never get tired of it. And the hymns are some of my favorite, too.  I just about want to fall over on the chorus of "Amazing Love." Good stuff, ladies. Good stuff. :) Sovereign Grace Music is my favorite source for hymns that contain good, solid doctrine. 

Amazing Love
How can it be
That thou, my God, shouldst die for me 

Hymns of Worship
Fernando Ortega 

This is an oldie-but-goody (circa 2003) that has gotten a whole lot of airplay here over the years. His voice is so pleasing, and none of the songs is over-produced, so it all feels worshipful rather than "tah dah, listen to me sing." 

All creatures of our God and King
Lift up your voice and with us sing,
Alleluia!

Peace Like a River: The Hymns Project
Chris Rice

Again, really solid old good hymns, and a clear, nice voice that doesn't detract from the purpose of the singing. Chris is also a great original songwriter, so you might check out his other albums, too, if you've never listened to him before. I find myself with A Mighty Fortress is Our God in my head all day any time I listen to this one. I love this CD. I wish it were longer.

A mighty fortress is our God
A bulwark never failing
Our helper He amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing 

summer cottage

A few weeks ago I ordered a magazine online called Summer Cottage because it had a cute cover. :) Also, the title contains two of my very favorite words. (If anybody published magazines called "Cheesecake Spring" or "Jane Austen Birdies" or "Spring Green England" or "Mr. Darcy's Diet Coke" or "John Thornton's Patchwork Quilts" I'd be all over those, too.)

(I also ordered Fresh Style and Victoria Classics Gardens of Bliss, and will show you those later.)

I think the front cover is still my favorite image in this magazine, but there were several more that I liked. Here are a few:

confetti eggs

Bob's sweet secretary sent home a big Easter basket for Claire. One of the things in it was so neat. I have never seen these before. Have you?

They are real egg shells that have been emptied and filled with paper confetti. The top is gone and covered with tissue paper that is dyed the same color as the egg shell.

Then you throw them in the air and let them smash on the sidewalk. It's very satisifying. :)

space + sight

Here is a gratuitous photo of Hannah sitting on a tray. I wonder what she is thinking about. She is probably contemplating new ways to sit on our laps, purr, rub against us, look irresistible, and then bite (hard) if anyone pets her for more than about three little pets. She has a somewhat prickly personality. That is how I think of it. 

So when she sits around prettily like this, like a piece of furry performance art, she is really earning her keep. If that is all she has to offer us, I'm okay with that. :D

The vine that comes over our wall from the neighbors has bloomed. This makes me happy every spring. The new neighbors have talked about pulling it out. (It is rooted on their side of the wall.) I hope they don't. They are young and new to both home-ownership and gardening, so I am hoping they pause before running wild with the tearing-stuff-out impulse.

I stuck a new little scrolled iron edging in our backyard a few weeks ago. Can you see it? It tidies things up a bit.

The hydrangeas are starting to bloom. Yay! That also makes me excited. :) These will deepen to the most glorious shades of blue and purple I have ever seen. That whole blue-indigo-violet chunk of the color spectrum is regal, mysterious, and goose-bump-inducing to me.

If you ever need something neat to think about, think about the type of God who would invent color.

Have you ever read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard? I might have talked about this before (did I?) but in it, there is this neat passage where she discusses a book by Marius von Senden called Space and Sight. She writes,

When Western surgeons discovered how to perform safe cataract operations, they ranged across Europe and America operating on dozens of men and women of all ages who had been blinded by cataracts since birth. Von Senden collected accounts of such cases; the histories are fascinating. Many doctors had tested their patients' sense perceptions of ideas and space both before and after the operations. The vast majority of patients, of both sexes and all ages, had, in von Senden's opinion, no idea of space whatsoever. 

She quotes von Senden's descriptions of several of these post-surgery experiences, which I don't have room to go over here, but I was particularly fascinated by this:

... even at this stage, after three weeks' experience of seeing ... "space," as he conceives it, ends with visual space, i.e. with colour-patches that happen to bound his view. He does not yet have the notion that a larger object (a chair) can mask a smaller one (a dog), or that the latter can still be present even though it is not directly seen.

Dillard goes on to explain that "in general the newly sighted see color as a dazzle of color-patches. They are pleased by the sensation of color, and learn quickly to name the colors, but the rest of seeing is tormentingly difficult." She again quotes von Senden, who noted that soon after his operation, a patient:

generally bumps into one of these colour-patches and observes them to be substantial, since they resist him as tactual objects do. In walking about it also strikes him -- or can if he pays attention -- that he is continually passing in between the colours he sees, that he can go past a visual object, that a part of it then steadily disappears from view; and that in spite of this, however he twists and turns -- whether entering the room from a door, for example, or returning back to it -- he always has a visual space in front of him. Thus he gradually comes to realize that there is also a space behind him, which he does not see.

Dillard notes that while some experiences of the newly sighted are extremely difficult, some are exceedingly pleasing:

... a twenty-two-year-old girl was dazzled by the world's brightness and kept her eyes shut for two weeks. When at the end of that time she opened her eyes again, she did not recognize any objects, but, "the more she now directed her gaze upon everything about her, the more it could be seen how an expression of gratification and astonishment overspread her features; she repeatedly exclaimed: "Oh God! How beautiful!"

I read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek when I was in college, and it had a profound effect on me. It catalyzed my Biblical conviction that we are foolish to believe that the totality of what we see and understand here on earth is the fullness of reality. Some of my favorite verses in 2 Corinthians say this:

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

Tomorrow Bob is helping me get the backyard tidied up for Easter. We are all going to sit outside if the weather is nice, but first Bob and I must drag the tables out there this weekend and figure out the best configuration for twenty people. 

I wonder what it was like for the God of the universe, who created space and sight, to experience space and sight as a human. I also wonder what it will be like for us to experience space and sight in heaven, in the direct presence of its creator.

I bet we will repeatedly exclaim, "Oh, God! How beautiful!"

in hindsight

On Tuesday, I was by myself driving down a nearby street when I had to slow for a few minutes while this truck angled and straightened and backed its way into a grocery store parking lot.

And when I saw all those Orange Crush bottles in front of me,

suddenly,

for those few minutes,

I thought about how for half of eighth grade,

and all of ninth grade,

and all of tenth grade,

when I lived in Spokane,

I was wildly, insanely, and futiley in love

with a tall and handsome basketball player named Tim,

and how my little heart went pitter-patter for all that time,

{so loyally}

with nothing at all to encourage it but a gentle friendship

and my own wild imagination,

and how he occasionally wore a bright orange zip-up hoody,

which is why,

when I drooped and fainted and swooned about him with my best friend Pam,

I always used the super-secret-talk-about-him-in-code nickname of

My Sunkist.

And now that I think about it,

it is so terribly obvious

that I should have nicknamed him

My Orange Crush

instead.