The great poet David once looked to the night skies and poured out his heart in praise to God: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge” (Psalm 19:1-2).
Notice all the ways that creation is communicating: The heavens are declaring, the sky is proclaiming, the day is speaking, the night is revealing. And then notice the content of this communication: The heavens are declaring God’s glory, the skies are proclaiming the fact that they were created by him, the day and night are revealing the knowledge of his existence.
It’s for this reason that Sam Storms once said that each human being is under a mandate to become an amateur astronomer. Every Christian is to look to the heavens to see what God has created and to learn the lessons he means for us to learn from them. And just as we must look up to the skies, we must also look down to the microscopic world, out to all the plants and animals, and even inward to the human body and soul. In all of it, we see God’s handiwork. If we have ears to hear and eyes to see, we will learn beyond any dispute that God is communicating. He is communicating that he exists and that he is supremely powerful—that he is worthy of our honor and worship.

With today being the 80th anniversary of D-Day, you may be interested in this brand new oral history of that momentous day: When the Sea Came Alive. It is a brilliant telling of the day’s events.
Today’s Kindle deals include Stephen McAlpine’s excellent Being the Bad Guys which helps Christians know how to live in a world that sees Christianity as a force for evil rather than good.
(Yesterday on the blog: The Least of My Children’s Accomplishments)

Brad Littlejohn has written a very interesting and very helpful article about pronatalism (which is to say, about the goodness of bearing children). “As of 2024, the only developed country on earth with births above replacement rate (2.1) is Israel (2.9). The US has fallen to 1.7 per woman, which is near the upper end of the spectrum for European countries, which range as low as 1.3 (Italy and Spain). This number, which if maintained would result in a population halving every fifty years.”

Another very thoughtful article is this one by Samuel C. Heard. He writes about the rise of “hyperpleasures.” “If we take a broad look at our history, the pleasures associated with the ordinary activities of life have often been capped. Humans have always had access to pleasure, of course, but our capacity to remove discomfort from pleasure has basically always been nil.” But today some new forms of pleasure are available.

I tend to agree with this: That only pastors should be able to baptize. Also, under normal circumstances, baptisms should only happen within the context of a local church!

“We are living with these sins, and we don’t have a problem with them. Not really. We have become desensitized to them. Perhaps, we have come to justify them.”

You’re probably aware of the discussion (or is it a debate?) about whether a person who has been sinned against can forgive someone who isn’t repentant. Mike Wittmer brings helpful balance to the discussion by drawing some important distinctions.

Just like the title says, here are some good questions for a young man to consider as he prepares to make a marriage proposal.

Our task is to trust him—to trust him in what he will give and what he will refuse, in what he will grant in a moment and what he will grant only in time. 

Show me a church’s songs and I’ll show you their theology.
—Gordon Fee

A father and his child walked together by the banks of the Yangtze River. They paused often to gaze at it in wonder. In the distance, they could hear the roar of a waterfall and they could see great clouds of mist rising far into the air. Soon they came to the edge of the chasm where the water plummets to a gorge far below. Approaching the bank of the river where the water is shallow and safe, they stopped and stooped so the father could dip a cup into the river. He held it toward his child and said, “Drink.” But just as the cup met the child’s thirsty lips, a voice boomed from the river and said, “Don’t drink! There’s not enough water for you. I am in danger of running dry.”

The missionaries had traveled far down the Amazon in a long, open river canoe. A local pilot guided the husband and wife safely through sections narrow and wide, deep and shallow. He led them safely to the point where they would disembark and begin their lives among a tribe that had never heard of Jesus and never had the opportunity to worship his name. When the boat finally nudged up against the bank of the river, they leaped ashore. Having unloaded their meager belongings, they watched the pilot turn and head back, their last link to the lives they had left behind. Taking a bucket, the wife dipped it and filled it and just as she began to pull it ashore, the river cried out, “You can take that, but no more. You can drink seldom, but not often. For my water is running out. This river is running dry.”
Stuff and nonsense, as they say. The world’s great rivers do not run dry. The world’s great rivers flow throughout the seasons. The world’s great rivers are never so low that they cannot sate the thirst of a parched traveler, never so dry that they cannot refresh the body of a weary wanderer. We can drink from them as often as we need to, refresh ourselves in their waters, irrigate our lands as much as necessary. They flow swiftly, they flow mightily, they flow endlessly. They flow like the grace of God. They flowed yesterday and they flow today and they will flow still tomorrow and through endless ages to come. They flow without end and always invite us to take and drink.
And so too the grace of God. We can always and forever approach God’s throne of grace and plead for mercy and grace to help in our time of need. We can plead for mercy that forgives when we have strayed and God will never turn us away, he will never fail to respond, he will never refuse to pardon us. We can plead for grace, grace to equip us to endure trials, to remain unbroken when tested, and to remain unsullied when tempted.
And that grace will never run out. We will never exhaust God with our coming to him, never tire God with our pleas for his help. We will never reach the end of his ability to assist or his capacity to intervene. We will never encounter an enemy that is beyond his power to defeat and never come into a situation that is beyond his power to overcome. He will never be bothered by our coming and he will never turn us away. If God utters any complaint at all, it is merely that we should have approached more often and more earnestly, that we should have drunk more freely of the waters and drunk more deeply.
“Drink!” say the great rivers of the world. “Drink until you are satisfied and then drink again. Drink without hesitation. Drink without concern. Drink without fear that you will exhaust these waters.” And “Approach!” says God. “Approach my throne and simply ask—ask for mercy, ask for grace, ask in your time of need, ask and ask again, and I will supply what you require. The Amazon will run dry long before you reach the end of my grace. The Yangtze will cry out for you to stop drinking of its waters before I will scold you for coming to me too frequently, too earnestly, too helplessly. So come and speak, come and plead, come and drink.”

Inspired by F.B. Meyer