Photo Every Now and Then #1

I know it's been months since I tried to keep up with the Photo of the Week plan. Oh well, maybe the progam should be called Photo Every Now and Then. This one was taken while I was visiting Christine and Adam in the Florida Keys. I don't remember exactly which key we were on at the time. I love sunsets, as anyone who has browsed this blog will know. I particularly like the vibrant colors in this picture, though the sun was setting about 120 degrees counter-clockwise from this angle.

Florida Keys, August 2006

Jesus and Snakes

I learned something new several weeks ago, and I am just now getting around to sharing. Unlike the horrifically ridiculous recent movie about Snakes on a Plane, this truth about snakes left me in awe and reminded me of the great mystery of Christ. In my community group at church, we have been studying the book of John. There is a passage in John 3:14-15 where Jesus says, "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."

I don't know about you, but when I read that at first, it doesn't really amount to much. I'm not all that familiar with why Moses lifted the snake up in the desert, and I don't like snakes, and so I just kind of breeze past that to other verses, like the very next one which is the oh-so-famous John 3:16. But Jesus was not just talking out of his ear on this one. It really has a solid relationship to what the Jews would have known and understood. Thankfully someone showed me, and it is in Numbers 21:4-9. I will paraphrase a little of it and then quote some of it:

Basically, the Israelites were traveling in the desert, and they were getting disappointed with their "freedom" and said to Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!" Wow, talk about ungrateful whining people. So God's answer (despite his love for them) was to send venoumous snakes among them to bite them. Eventually they realized their sin in turning against God, so they went to Moses again to plead for his help. So Moses prayed to God for them, to which God replied, "Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live". Verse 9: "So Moses mode a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived."

Thousands of years later, Jesus says, "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."

Isn't that amazing? Back in the desert with the Israelites, God was foreshadowing the coming of Christ! He knew, and he sent a symbolic representation of what was to come. And isn't it appropriate that a snake was used for the Israelites to represent our sin, since Satan is represented as a serpent in Genesis? So now, we today can take hold of this truth. We have been bitten by the serpent, and we are helpless in our sin as we wander in our own deserts. And if we look to Christ, who has absorbed our sin, we will live for all eternity. Now John 3:16 even makes more sense, while I previously thought that was rather a strange segway from verse 15 to 16.

Worship at it's Best

From a favorite of mine:

"O love that will not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be."

If you took the time to read that, take a little more time and meditate on it. Believe what it says: that God will not let you go, that you can rest your weary soul in him, and that surrounded by the depths of who he is, your life will become more rich. It is easy to read and even sing these words without really thinking about how they should impact our every breath. And that's just the first verse, which I think is enough to dwell on for now.

What I Did in School Today

If I still lived at home, my mom would proudly hang this on the refrigerator. Did I mention yet that I am having fun in school?

Trial by Fire

Tonight was my first job as a banquet server (see blog August 2), and boy was it an interesting introduction to this line of work! I showed up about 20 minutes early, so the "captain" for the evening told me to wait until the start of the party. All I knew was what time it started and to be at the hotel a little early, nothing about the event. Well, I sat and waited a few minutes in the back area where the kitchen and all the storage rooms are. Then all of the sudden a frenzy began, someone handed my white gloves and told me to put them on, then they handed me a tray of hors d'oeuvres and sent me through some double-doors. Before I knew what was happening, I was being attacked by a hungry mob of well-dressed people, who I soon realized were the guests at a Jewish wedding reception. I ran in and out, refilling my tray, for the better part of an hour, and the mob finally seemed to be satiated with food after about 45 minutes. Meanwhile, I was swapping the tray from one arm to the other in the hopes that neither arm would fall off. Luckily, my arms did stay on. The night went on and continued into the next room, set up in typical wedding reception style with round tables and a dance floor. The party droned on forever, and my interest in observing the people and being an outsider at a wedding wore off as my back began to stiffen. I am happy to report that I did not drop or break anything, which was my goal for the evening. I also walked away with a souvenir that someone left on a table. Apparently they give these out at Jewish weddings to the men: