Sunday, August 30, 2009

molecule


It may look like a piece of honeycomb, but this lattice-shaped image is the first ever close-up view of a single molecule. Scientists from IBM used an atomic force microscope (AFM) to reveal the chemical bonds within a molecule. This is the first time that all the atoms in a molecule have been imaged.

The researchers focused on a single molecule of pentacene, which is commonly used in solar cells. The rectangular-shaped organic molecule is made up of 22 carbon atoms and 14 hydrogen atoms.

In the image above the hexagonal shapes of the five carbon rings are clear and even the positions of the hydrogen atoms around the carbon rings can be seen.To give some perspective, the space between the carbon rings is only 0.14 nanometers across, which is roughly one million times smaller than the diameter of a grain of sand.
(The odds of a single protein molecule forming by chance is 1 in 10243 - that's a 10 followed by 243 zeros. A single cell is comprised of millions of protein molecules....
more evidence of a divine designer.)

Thursday, August 27, 2009

National Back To Church Sunday


Sunday, September 13th is National Back To Church Sunday.
Everyone invite someone new to church or welcome someone back.
Let's fill up the church on September 13th!

Monday, August 24, 2009

elca steeple


Lord, Where Shall We Lutherans Go?
Uwe Siemon-Netto

As one whose profession it has been for many years to observe the plight of Christianity, I am always grateful for signs that our God is truly a Jewish God – one with a hilarious sense of irony. This happened again during the ELCA’s national assembly, which will go down in history as a singularly boneheaded display of unfaithfulness.

Just as delegates worked themselves up to their decision to allow homosexuals in committed relationships to serve as pastors, a highly selective tornado knocked the cross off the roof of Central Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, where some of their shameful meetings took place.
I could not help grinning: This was truly Old Testament-style: God sometimes uses nature to make a point. Of course you will have to believe in these things in order to grasp their ramifications. If on the other hand you accept Biblical truths only selectively, as did the majority of the Minneapolis delegates, then this incident could only have been a random occurrence – you know: as random as the beginning of the universe.

I was then reminded of another display of God’s irony 40 years ago in East Berlin when a television tower, the tallest building in the whole city, went into operation. Walter Ulbricht, the East German Communist party leader, had ordered it built to symbolize the superiority of the Marxist-Leninist worldview that was the state religion in his land.

When the tower was inaugurated on a sunny day, the Communists were shocked. Its rotating ball-shaped dome consisting of hundreds of thousands of metal prisms reflected the sun in the shape of a huge cross regardless of the time of the day. Ulbricht’s regime invested millions of marks to rid their edifice of this embarrassing phenomenon. It did not succeed. To this day, an enormous shining cross keeps dominating Berlin, which has alas become the most godless capital city in Western Europe.

To Christians in Germany this amusing episode serves as a reminder of who is still boss -- even after 56 years of Nazi and Communist dictatorship, and the demented two decades of secularization that followed Germany’s reunification in 1990.

Until then, East Germany called itself German Democratic Republic, or GDR, for 40 years. Germans used to quip that this acronym stood for a threefold lie. The GDR was neither German, nor Democratic, nor a Republic. One wonders whether a similar analogy could not be made for the ELCA now that its national assembly of this denomination supposedly committed to the “Sola Scriptura” principle stressing the authority of Scripture.

Is it still “evangelical”? Surely not! Is it still “Lutheran”? No way! Is it in fact still “Church” in the original sense of this word deriving from the Greek vocable “Kyriake” (belonging to the Lord)? That depends on which Lord are we talking about – God or a wimp who does not care whether His word is mocked? The Greek word for church is “ekklesia,” meaning “called out.” In the light of the ELCA’s new sexuality decision we must ponder the identity of the Spirit the largest Lutheran church body in the United States seems to follow these days.

To state it bluntly, there is nothing Lutheran about what has happened in Minneapolis. We have witnessed 19th century cultural Protestantism gone wild -- the theologoumenon that Christ and the highest expressions of aspirations of culture are in agreement. But what are at any given time the highest expressions and aspirations of culture? Do they not come across as Zeitgeist, or spirit of time? Were not Nazism and Communism two murderous manifestations of a Zeitgeist? The genocidal “choice” ideology that has slaughtered more than 50 million unborn children in America since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 certainly falls into the same category.

Aghast, faithful Lutherans wonder: “Lord where shall we Lutherans go?” Why is it that we Lutherans so often lose our way just at a time when no message is more needed then ours? Let it be known that there exists a paradoxical tension between Christ and culture: The certainty of being forgiven sinners through Christ’s redeeming work on the cross frees us to engage the world with all its foibles but not to embrace them as the ELCA has just done.

I observed the ELCA’s Minneapolis proceedings on my computer and murmured, “Lord, have mercy!” Then I remembered one of my favorite lines in the Psalter: “He who sits in the heavens laughs” (Psalm 2:4). It’s really good to have a Jewish God occasionally sending selective tornados and marking a godless edifice with a shining sign of the cross.

Uwe Siemon-Netto Ph.D.
Director, Center for Lutheran Theology & Public Life

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

things are looking up


If our health care system is so bad, as some would have you believe, then why has our life expectancy gone up so much in the past 30 years?

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

twitter babble


Research has now shown what we all know to be true -
40 percent of the messages on Twitter are "pointless babble" according to a study conducted by a US market research firm.

Pear Analytics, based in San Antonio, Texas, said that it randomly sampled 2,000 messages from the public stream of Twitter and separated them into six categories. The categories were: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversational and pass-along value. Pear said "pointless babble" accounted for 40 percent of the total number of messages sampled.

Monday, August 17, 2009

wisdom


I’m sure most of you can recall a word of wisdom or two from your parents or grandparents. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Keep your eye on the ball. Count your blessings. Early to bed, early to rise, makes one healthy, wealthy, and wise.
These little nuggets were intended to help prepare us for life. That’s what parents do for their children. Our Heavenly Father does the same for us. He shares with us his Wisdom to prepare us for life - eternal life.
The book of Proverbs states, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."
Remember the story of God coming to Solomon? Before He became a great king, a wise and wealthy ruler, the writer of the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, God came to him and said -
Ask for whatever you wish and I will give it to you. Solomon chose wisdom, and God was pleased with his wish. God granted his request, plus a whole lot more! Solomon chose wisely.

Unfortunately, there are many who choose foolishly. There are those who don’t care about wisdom. They disdain wisdom and knowledge. The fool doesn’t know that they don’t know and they don’t really care. This affects their responsibilities, their relationships, and most important, their relationship with God and his Word. Fools take pride in their so-called freedom, their ability to live life as they please, to be masters of their own destiny; captains of their own fate, oblivious to God’s will for their lives. Folly and foolishness is living without knowledge and wisdom. “Seek wisdom,” says the writer of Proverbs. Look for it and treasure it.
But what exactly is Wisdom? Its not just an intellectual quality, it’s not just about being smart. It is the ability to put into action and practice the knowledge of God’s revealed standard.
So how will we know Wisdom when we encounter it?
In the wisdom literature of Holy Scripture, we see that “Wisdom" is personified - spoken of as if “Wisdom” were a person. But how can that be? Isn’t wisdom simply a concept?
There are subtle and not so subtle hints in Proverbs and in the rest of the Scriptures that Wisdom is a Someone and not just a something.
What we find in the Gospels is that Jesus Christ is Wisdom Personified, the New Testament fulfillment of the Old Testament proverbs, and actually, the fulfillment of the whole OT itself. Ultimate wisdom is not found in a concept but in the person and work of the Son of God, Jesus Himself. It is Jesus who invites us from the “high places” to come join Him.
It is Jesus who invites us to “live and walk in the way of insight.”
It is in Jesus we find forgiveness and salvation and the meaning for life itself. He is the incarnate Word and Wisdom of God, the one thing that we need most of all. For in Christ we receive God's forgiveness for all of our foolish sins of unwise living.
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. "
Nothing in this life is more important than the wisdom God gives us in His Son Jesus Christ which makes us wise for salvation.
So wise up - Believe in Jesus. Trust in Him and you will be saved.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009


Teens Encounter Christ (TEC) is a three day retreat for Christian teens and young adults who wish to experience the life, death, and resurrection of Christ in a deep and meaningful way.
Leaving the world behind for three days to focus on your relationship with God and others can be a very renewing and refreshing thing. Jesus made it a regular part of His earthly life to take time away from the crowds to be alone and pray, and this helps put our life and faith in perspective as well.
The weekend retreat is based on the three-day theme of “Die Day”, “Rise Day”, and “Go Day”, the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
If you ever have the opportunity to go on a Teens Encounter Christ Weekend, by all means do it. It might just be the most important thing you do all year!
(Next Heart of Missouri TEC Weekend is Summer 2010)

Friday, August 7, 2009

vespasian



ROME – Archaeologists say they have unearthed a country villa believed to be the birthplace of Vespasian, the emperor who built the Colosseum.

The 2,000-year-old ruins of the luxurious residence were found about 80 miles northeast of Rome. There are no clear inscriptions on the complex, but its location and decorations suggest it is from the right period and the emperor was born in the area.

Monday, August 3, 2009

bread of life


Bread is a basic staple in every home in every part of the world. There's just nothing quite as simple and satisfying as bread. And there are so many different kinds to choose from!

White bread, Wheat bread, Rye Bread, Sourdough, Potato Bread, Banana Bread, Zuchini Bread
French Bread, Italian Bread, Irish Soda Bread, German Bread, Pumpernickel...
the list goes goes on and on.

Bread is eaten all over the world, in every culture and region, and at every time and every place all throughout human history. Bread is such a big part of our daily lives. We all need it to live.

Jesus says in John chaper 6 - "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall not thirst."
Jesus is the true Bread from heaven who will never perish, spoil, mold or decay. He'll never get rotten or stale. His bread is delicious and nutritious, and always fresh and new every morning.
He is the true source of life, and just as there is no physical life without bread, there is no spiritual life without Jesus - the Bread of Life.
"He who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall not thirst."
You're invited to come and eat at His table today.
Come ... taste and see that the Lord is good!

Saturday, August 1, 2009

energy drink for pastors


I'm starting to drag a little - time for another REV Energy, the energy drink for pastors!
(from old lutheran.com)