The Chapel Project

Greetings, O creatures great and small!

Today we're actually talking about what we've been listening to in chapel all week long: Andy Braner's apologetic message. In other words: why do you believe what you believe? A very good message, I will agree--young Christians ought to be able to defend their faith with absolute certainty against the world. And as Andy proved to us, the world is working like clockwork to defeat us and bring us away from God.

At first, I thought: yaaaaaayyyy, Spiritual Emphasis Week. When combined with homecoming, we're never going to get ANYTHING done in ANY class...whoopde-pancake-flippin-doo...
But as the week went on, despite the fact that everyone came to school dressed in their best not-school clothes, I kind of enjoyed this year's week. Not really as enlightening as last year's, but still pretty cool.

Here's the part that I found to be the most important (to me) of the whole week: Christians are supposed to be careful of our relationships. How, you might ask? Well, first off, we have to watch our relationship with God. As my dear Choir teacher says, "God isn't someone that you just pray to when a family member's sick or you need help on a test." In other words, we're not supposed to treat God as a magical genie who does whatever we want, whenever we want. God is completely in control, and you are not.

To reinforce my viewpoint of how insignificant we all are, here's a picture. This was taken by the Voyager spacecraft before it began to leave the Solar System. At the request of Carl Sagan, NASA told Voyager to take a picture of Earth from 3.8 BILLION MILES away.

This is what turned up:



If you don't get it, look closer at the first beam of light from the right. In the middle, you will see a tiny blue dot.

Here's a closer look:



That's how small we are in the infinite cosmos. THAT is an example of objective truth, or truth that has no influence from man's opinions.

When you realize something that huge, it begins to affect the way you think about life and how you treat people. Knowing that your actions, while they may seem significant here, have NO effect on the vast majority of the universe is a big shocker for some people. But when you think about it, Earth is kind of blessed. As illustrated here, even though Earth is, as a famous astronomer remarked upon viewing this photograph, "A mote of dust in a ray of sunlight", God thinks of us as more than just a speck of dust.

Think about it.

The universe is literally infinite (to our limited standards of knowledge), with limitless possibilities for life and fruition on planets too numerous to be counted, as paradoxical as that sounds, and of all the places for God to send His one and only Son to die the most horrible death for the salvation of a species, He sent Him HERE???

That must have caused some havoc in the angel labor union!

.....sorry, I forgot. Sacrilege, and all that...

If we are so insignificant, yet also significant in God's eyes, then that should shape the way we act to people, and to God. No, not to be like the Pharisee who prayed to God saying, "Thanks, God. Thanks blessing me, unlike that tax collector over there." That's the kind of attitude that the devil wants you to have.

What the devil doesn't want you to say is, "Thanks, God. Now I'll show Your love to everyone else, as well." If you really understand how lucky we are to know God, and I mean REALLY UNDERSTAND, how much pride do you have to despise everyone around you by not telling them AND showing them about God's love?

Something to think about...

And now, I will leave you with this LINK to a video about THE GAME, in case anyone's still interested.

Peace, love, and Japanese Sprite!

--JesusFreak