Up the Sunbeam

-- "Without fail." Quietly, fiercely, almost to himself, he answered her question. It was only two words, just one soft-spoken answer delivered by Denzell Washington's character in the movie  The Book of Eli , but it has echoed in my heart ever since. A young woman, who knew nothing of such things, had asked him whether he read the book every day . . .  the book he treasured above all else, including his life. [Spoiler Alert] I don't want to give too much away if you haven't seen the movie, but this very special book was none other than the last remaining copy of the Bible in a post-apocalyptic world. This scene, and maybe the whole movie, put a fine point on thoughts my Father had been laying before me all week. First, last Sunday when our pastor spoke of using his phone and a Bible app to listen to the Bible being read out loud, and how important it is to personally eat this daily bread even for pastors who study it as their vocation. That made me th...

-- Three days after God called LIGHT out of nothing into the blank space of His new universe, He gathered a handful of it up and rolled it into a fiery, glowing orb and set earth whirling around it. From that day to this one, there has never failed to come a sunrise. We set our lives in whirling motion of our own every day, based consciously or unconsciously, on our confidence that another sunrise will come tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that . . . Our faith in the next sunrise is not something we have to muster up, or exert effort and break a sweat to produce, or even think about most of the time. We have a good long track record to base our faith upon, we've never known the sun to sleep in or call in sick or go on vacation, so we trust that it will continue to be its faithful sunny self for as many bright tomorrows as God allows. When it is so easy to have faith in something as finite and beyond our control as the sunrise, I wonder why we have such cha...

-- They were practically superheroes! At the very least, they were the equivalent of today's Secret Service, Special Forces and 5-Star Generals rolled into one. David's Mighty Men , 37 warriors named and honored for all time as Hall-of-Famers in the history of Israel. Many of them joined David after God had named him Israel's next king, but while he was still on the run, trying to stay alive in the face of then-King Saul's attempts to kill him. They risked everything to support and protect the man whom God had chosen to be their next king. David had been in caves and foxholes with these guys, had lived on the razor's edge of life and death with them, had been protected and defended by them, knew their names and their stories and where they were from. His relationship with them was forged in the fires of combat and they must have been closer to David than his own brothers. Fast-forward a quarter of a century . . . David has been on the throne for some 20 years...

-- Storm watch! For days ahead of time they warned of a stack of storms from the Pacific. Anticipation . . . then . . . I awoke to the sound of rain bullets pelting windows in the wee hours, drivin g wind forcing water sideways. Drummer Boy stumbled out of bed early--I think he couldn't resist nature's finest percussion--he probably wondered if he could play his double-bass that fast! What a wild, raucous celebration!! Like an orchestra playing big bold brassy music, with cymbals crashing and timpanis thundering, the weather was a wild thing all day! Rain started. . . and stopped . . . and started again. My 4th floor office affords almost a 360° view and there was a lot to see! By late afternoon, a cloud made of midnight crested over the hills to th e west, while the east side of the building was bathed in light as warm as morning sun! It seemed night and day were colliding directly above us! All at once, the rain in that rolling black thunderhead crashed h...