No Ordinary Thaw

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This past weekend we had a Tea Party for Bethany and several of her friends at a local Bed and Breakfast in Stillwater, MN, a quaint little town down on the St. Croix river.

As the pictures convey everyone looked very sweet and had a lovely time. But we did pause at one point and talk about inner beauty. We started with a few thoughts from the recent motion picture, One Night with the King (the telling of the life of Esther). First, we talked about the cleansing and beauty treatments that Esther and all the candidates under went BEFORE they could go before the king, how this is a shadow of the cleansing of our sins through baptism. Then later in the movie, the Eunuch who is caring for Esther, asks her if she was pleased with the beauty treatments and the classes given by the best instructors in the land. She responds by saying that the ‘instructing’ was lacking in teaching them to be Queen in the respects of, “A word well spoken and a deed well done.”

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I came across this amazing lesson in the Concepts of Astronomy course that I just finished up at Northwestern College (St. Paul). The lesson was titled SETI vs. Scripture, SETI standing for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, which might give you a hint as to what it was about. Most of the scientific community are atheists, believers in evolution, and attribute our physical world to chance. So common questions are: isn’t it possible that there could be other life out there… even intelligent life? The universe is HUGE; enormous beyond our wildest dreams! Why shouldn’t there be other life out there? What’s so special about us?

There is something very special about the human race. (Genesis 1:27) The search for extraterrestrial life is simply an exemplifying act by men to discount themselves as a special creation and therefore accountable to an all powerful and perfect Creator. However, what is to say there isn’t other life out there? Some following points below will show just how special, beautiful, and unique life is here on our Earth. (Note: I will not include everything in the lesson since it would create a very long post, not to mention some foreign concepts and vocabulary to some. ;) )

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I’ve been thinking lately of the verse in Mark 6:3 (and the parallel passage in Matthew 13:57) where Jesus came back into His hometown and, though the people were amazed at His teaching, they “took offense at Him.”

I’ve noticed as I’ve looked back in my life at times when I was offended, so often it was a selfish offense. I just didn’t like what I heard. What I heard, especially about my own life, or about what I thought was a “good idea,” but really just wasn’t, offended me. I had something else at stake. Either just the personal “skin I had in the game” due to pride (“it was my idea”), or some kind of recognition I was looking forward to receiving (though the deceitfulness of our hearts rarely sees it that way — our pride and ego are careful to hide behind “rationalality” and “sincerity”), and the Truth “got in the way” of what I wanted.

Jesus offended people. Especially religious people with “good ideas” or people wanting acclaim or even to “do good things.” I’ve heard it said so often it’s not the bad things which oppose God’s Will so much as the “good” we want to do that we think we are doing. And God has to oppose it.

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