Leap Day: How Clocks and Calendars Shape Us
Both the calendar and the development of mechanical clocks are rooted in the Church’s recognition of the need to see the world as sacred. Like the Sabbath and the feast of ancient Israel, time and seasons remind us that our lives are not ultimately our own and are instead part of the larger story of creation to redemption. In other words, as demanding as the clock can be, the Christian notion of time should help us from viewing the days of our lives in purely secular terms.
Throughout the Bible, for example in Galatians 4:4 or Paul’s speech to the “Men of Athens” recorded in Acts 17, God is described as a God of historical precision. He is outside of but fully in control of time and place. This distinctive of the Judeo-Christian understanding of God stands in sharp contrast to pagan and polytheistic notions of deities and time, and dramatically shaped human history. Today, Leap Day, is an appropriate day to think about our relationship to time.
One of the earliest examples of time anxiety in history is found in the French song “Frère Jacques.” In it, Brother James is rebuked for sleeping and not ringing the Matins bells at midnight. The song reflects the seriousness with which the Church took the times designated for prayer. Following Psalm 119:164, which says, “Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous rules,” monastic liturgies included seven set times for prayer.
Initially, given the changing length of day and night throughout the year, liturgical hours were not fixed. Instead, the Church regularized the hours by measuring the passage of time. By the 1200s, the mechanical clock was invented to keep pace with a chime that signaled when to ring the bells for the monastic hours.
Not long after, mechanical clocks appeared in city towers. In 1288, the predecessor to the tower clock known as “Big Ben” went up across from Westminster Abbey. In 1292, a clock was built in Canterbury Cathedral. The oldest surviving tower clock in England, dating to 1386, is at Salisbury Cathedral. In addition to time, these clocks often marked heavenly phenomena. The most elaborate surviving example is in Prague. Installed in 1410, this clock told time using a standard 24-hour day, as well as in “Italian time,” which put the 24th hour at sunset.
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Let Suffering Lead to Gentleness, Not Bitterness
A gentle spirit isn’t cultivated through gritted teeth, clenched fists, and a strained smile. Gentleness grows in a heart set on this truth: the Lord is near (Phil. 4:5b). A gentle woman holds a deep, residing peace in her heart that comforts her anxieties. She knows her life is in God’s hands, therefore anything that passes by her, it first passed through him. She trusts in the full truth of Romans 8:28–30.
As suffering rattled through our lives, I felt like an acorn clinging to a branch as an axe sliced into the trunk of my tree. We spun in every direction as we tumbled to the ground, until we finally hit the leafy, forest bottom.
We tried to make the best of it, to see the good. Here’s a nice, shady spot to dig our roots deep. Maybe now we’ll begin to grow. Instead, we were further kicked, tossed, and thrown, receiving a few cracks to our shell throughout. When it all finally ended, I didn’t dare believe it.
As we suffer, and our bodies and hearts finally begin to recover from the richeting and shaking we’ve received, bitterness settles in easily as if it had always lived there inside us. Without any effort, our words are slightly sharpened to an edge from the cracks we’ve endured. “Of course, bad things always happen to me.” “I mean, is it any surprise something like this would happen again?” The people we love distort to look like our enemies in our vision—rather than come together to recover and carry one another, we snap and snarl instead. Not a single offense gets covered, and each one endures our full wrath.
What doesn’t come naturally is gentleness. Yet this is the calling of the Christian: to not be formed into a crusted, bitter-hard shell from our suffering, but to gently flourish into a beautiful, strong tree, bearing fruit for others to receive.
The Molding Power of Suffering
When the axe comes for our trunks, when tree-cutting season inevitably comes, people often remind us of Romans 8:28—for God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God.
This is intended to fall on our ears as a comforting promise, but when it stands alone with us in the midst of a trial as we soak our pillow with tears and bark splinters below, we may wonder what that good could possibly be.
If we continue to read past verse 28, God defines the good. “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (vv. 29–30 ESV). Sanctification is the goodness beyond our eyesight. God predestined each believer before the foundations of the earth to become Christ-like, and he promises to see each of them to glorification (Eph. 1:4; Phil. 1:6; 1 Thess. 5:23–24).
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Dr. Carl W. Bogue, 82, Retired PCA Minister, Called Home to Glory
Returning to the US in 1969, he took a pastorate at Allenside United Presbyterian Church in Akron, Ohio. He would spend the rest of his career in Akron, first at Allenside and then at Faith Presbyterian Church (PCA), which he led out of the mainline denomination in 1975. Faith PCA was the first church in that denomination outside of the Southern United States.
Carl William Bogue (1939-2022) fell asleep in the Lord and passed into glory on Sunday morning, September 18, 2022.
Carl was born on December 8,1939 in Vincennes, Indiana, the son of Carl W. Bogue Sr. and Jessie Mae (Parker) Bogue.
He grew up in Princeton, IN, graduated from Princeton High School in 1957, and attended Muskingum College in Ohio, where he met his future wife, Rosalie Maffett. He graduated in 1961 with a B.A. in History and Philosophy.
After college he spent a year at the Presbyterian mission in Dembi Dollo, Ethiopia, teaching 7th and 8th grade.
He married Rosalie in 1962. They would eventually have four children together. He then attended Pittsburgh Theological Seminary for three years, receiving an M.Div. After graduation from seminary he moved to the Netherlands, where he studied systematic theology at the Free University of Amsterdam, receiving a Doctorandus and ultimately, ThD.
Returning to the US in 1969, he took a pastorate at Allenside United Presbyterian Church in Akron, Ohio. He would spend the rest of his career in Akron, first at Allenside and then at Faith Presbyterian Church (PCA), which he led out of the mainline denomination in 1975. Faith PCA was the first church in that denomination outside of the Southern United States.
Also in 1975, he defended his doctoral thesis, Jonathan Edwards and the Covenant of Grace, by oral exam, in Dutch, at the Free University. His doctorate was republished in 2009, in coordination with the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University.
In addition to pastoring a church and keeping a full preaching schedule, he was active in church leadership at the regional level (Ascension Presbytery) and the national level, serving on various committees for the PCA General Assembly. He was a signatory to the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. He taught theology to students at Westminster Academy, a Christian school started by Faith Church. Over the course of his career, he mentored many young men who later became pastors and missionaries in the PCA and Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Besides his thesis, he wrote numerous articles, some pamphlets, and contributed chapters to several books. He taught courses focused on theology and missions at several seminaries and institutions of higher learning, both in the USA and in South Korea and Cyprus. Over the course of his long career, he maintained an extensive correspondence with his colleagues in the pastorate and on the mission field, and with fellow Christians around the world. He welcomed opportunities to travel and teach or preach wherever he went.
Rosalie passed away from cancer in 2004. He remarried, to Deborah Jones Feil. He retired in 2007 and moved to Scottsdale, Arizona. Even after retirement, he maintained an active preaching and teaching schedule, preaching in many vacant pulpits throughout Arizona and at Calvin OPC in Phoenix. He was received into the OPC in 2020 (Presbytery of Southern California). He and Deborah recently joined a new OPC church plant in Scottsdale; Providence OPC.
He enjoyed playing tennis, and was a lifelong fan of Indiana college basketball, Ohio State football, and the St. Louis Cardinals. He appreciated classical music and had a large record collection. His photo collection was even larger, a testimony to a life filled with family, church work, and travel. He was a skilled gardener and loved fishing in the Portage Lakes of Ohio and the trout streams of New Mexico and Arizona. He had his private pilot’s license for many years. After he retired, he took up skiing with Deb and looked forward to every opportunity to practice his new hobby.
He is survived by wife Deborah, children Katherine Chapman (Stephen), Andrew Bogue, Elizabeth Bogue, and Sarah Coombes (Christopher), and eight grandchildren: Daniel (Caroline), Peter, Emma, and Chloe Chapman; Liam, Ulrik, Rosalie and Brynn Coombes. He was a mentor and father in the faith to many more. After fighting the good fight, keeping the faith, and finishing his course, he is at home with his Lord. He would not want us to mourn him too much, but rather to work diligently for Christ’s kingdom.
The funeral of Dr Carl Bogue will be held at 11am on Saturday the 15th October 2022 at Redeemer PCA in Hudson, Ohio (190 W Streetsboro St, Hudson, OH 44236). There will be a light lunch following the service with a burial at 2.30pm at Manchester Cemetery ( 1030 West Nimisila Road, Manchester, OH 45144).
A Service of Thanksgiving to God for the life of Dr. Bogue will be held at 1pm on Saturday the 1st October 2022 at Providence OPC in Scottsdale, Arizona (Desert Valley Church, 7575 E Redfield Rd Suite #101, Scottsdale, AZ 8526).
As church planting was something very dear to Dr. Bogue’s heart, the family asks that in lieu of flowers you make a donation to your presbytery for church planting in your presbytery.
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7 Reasons for Triumphant Praise
Praise is a special means of glorifying God (Psalm 50:23) and so it is frequently commanded. In the space of just two verses, we are commanded five times to sing praise to God (Psalm 47:6-7). But one of these is to sing praise with the understanding (v7 see 1 Corinthians 14:15). The whole psalm helps us to do this by giving reasons for joyful praise. In the psalms God gives us not just many commands to sing praise but also reasons for it and not only that but the very words to use. Using the same kind of ascension language as Psalm 68:18 it also points to a time of a gospel kingdom rather than simply the Jewish people praising God. It reveals a future king, clearly the Messiah who would subdue the nations and have everything under His rule (Ephesians 1:22).
David Dickson describes this psalm as a “prophecy of the enlargement of Christ’s kingdom, and of the conjunction of Jews and Gentiles in one body under Christ their Head and Lord”. It is an exhortation to “Jews and Gentiles, joyfully to praise the God and Saviour of His people Jesus Christ” whom the Psalmist sees “ascended into heaven triumphantly after the full payment made of the price of redemption”. Christ is gathering His redeemed people, Jews and Gentiles, out of all nations. The benefits of His kingdom belong to more nations than one “for in Him the redeemed in al the nations of the earth are blessed” (Psalm 47:1).
It is a matter of chief joy when the kingdom of Christ comes to anyone because it means deliverance from “sin, Satan, and misery”. He has conquered these enemies and also brings “sure mercies of righteousness, peace, and joy” with eternal life. The Gentiles are commanded “to clap their hands and shout, and to shout with the voice of triumph”. They are to “shout to God, the triumpher, who in all this Psalm is the Redeemer Christ” “distinctly to be praised for His work of victorious redemption of sinners”. Thus it says “shout unto God with the voice of triumph” (Psalm 47:1). In the following updated extract Dickson goes on to show the reasons that this psalm gives us for praise. “None can praise God, or praise Christ sincerely, who do not understand the reasons for which they should praise” so it follow that praising with the understanding stirs up the affections also.
1. Christ is Sovereign Over all the Earth
The first reason for joyful praising of Christ is taken from His sovereign majesty over all the world (Psalm 47:2). The Redeemer, the victorious triumpher is the Lord: very God, essentially Jehovah, the Lord most high. Christ has the right and just title to erect a church in what country and kingdom He pleases without asking the permission of any. He is able to set up the profession of His name and the practice of all His ordinances in doctrine, worship, and church government. “He is a great king over all the earth.”
2. Christ’s Kingdom is Increasing
The second reason for joyful praising of Christ is taken from the increase of His own kingdom, and the exalting of all His subjects above the rest of the world (Psalm 47:3).
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