Matthew 6:9-13 (King James Version)
Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

This prayer, taught to Jesus’ followers, says, “Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” God has called us to make the world a bit more like heaven where His will is done and He is considered holy. How should we do this?

*We should start with the room in which we are at this moment and there seek to make it as much a part of heaven as we can possibly make it. Next we should expand our thoughts to those with whom we live and make our household as much like heaven as we are able to do. We should treat those with whom we live as the sons and daughters of God that they are. But we should not stop there. Next we must consider those who live next door to us and seek to give them a taste of heaven and of this God whom we serve. Do they know that God loves them and wants the very best for them? Do they have any needs that God has placed in their hearts with which we might help them? Are there any barriers that we have caused to prevent them from seeing the heaven which God is seeking to create on this earth? Again, we would not stop there, but would next ask ourselves about the community in which we live. How can I make my community a bit more like heaven on earth? What is God’s will for this place? What is He already doing here? What about our country? How might we serve our country and make it a little more heavenly? What of those who live in other countries? What would it look like if more of God’s will was done in their country? How might we use what God has given us to help those in other places? We might start with a country next door and expand to other parts of the world.

Of course all of this is not necessarily sequential and we can and should pursue God’s will on more than one front at a time. But as we begin to feel overwhelmed by the sense of the gravity of the situation and the immensity of the task, perhaps we should read that first line again: “We should start with the room in which we are at this moment and there seek to make it as much a part of heaven as we can possibly make it.” What mustard seed efforts might I make today as I start at home?

*I know that I have read something like this in a book somewhere but when I looked for it I could not find it. Perhaps one of my friends who reads the same books I do could inform me as to where I have read something like this so that I might give the original author full credit.

I was looking for a specific C.S. Lewis quote when I came upon these brilliant, but lesser known quotes.

“She’s the sort of woman who lives for others—you can always tell the others by their hunted expression.” – C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters (p. 145).

He expands upon this concept in his book, The Four Loves.

Mrs. Fidget died a few months ago. It is really astonishing how her family have brightened up. The drawn look has gone from her husband’s face; he begins to be able to laugh. The younger boy, whom I had always thought an embittered, peevish little creature, turns out to be quite human. The elder, who was hardly ever at home except when he was in bed, is nearly always there now and has begun to reorganise the garden. The girl, who was always supposed to be “delicate” (though I never found out what exactly the trouble was), now has the riding lessons which were once out of the question, dances all night, and plays any amount of tennis. Even the dog who was never allowed out except on a lead is now a well-known member of the Lamp-post Club in their road.
Mrs. Fidget very often said that she lived for her family. And it was not untrue. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew it. “She lives for her family,” they said; “what a wife and mother!” She did all the washing; true, she did it badly, and they could have afforded to send it out to a laundry, and they frequently begged her not to do it. But she did. There was always a hot lunch for anyone who was at home and always a hot meal at night (even in mid-summer). They implored her not to provide this. They protested almost with tears in their eyes (and with truth) that they liked cold meals. It made no difference. She was living for her family. – C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves (as quoted in C.S. Lewis: An Examined Life, By Bruce L. Edwards, p. 197).

Perhaps the antidote to this problem is found in this quote.

For what comes is Judgment: happy are those whom it finds labouring in their vocations, whether they were merely going out to feed the pigs or laying good plans to deliver humanity a hundred years hence from some great evil. The curtain has indeed now fallen. Those pigs will never in fact be fed, the great campaign against White Slavery or Governmental Tyranny will never in fact proceed to victory. No matter; you were at your post when the Inspection came. – C.S. Lewis in The World’s Last Night, and Other Essays (1960).

It
all started in the garden. The world was tainted by sin in that first garden when
a snake crept in and marred what God had made. God had made the world in such a
way that it had the potential for beauty and perfection; he had also made it
with the potential for sin and disease and death. For John, it all started in the
garden as well. Ever since Adam, humans have been trying to correct the damage
done in that first garden: toiling over weeds and sin. Maybe John twisted a
little hard as he pulled a weed, maybe it was as he lifted a tool in the
garage. Even he wasn’t sure, but something popped and he began to feel his
mortality. His ribs were sore the next day and continued to be sore for the
next several days. Sometimes it was difficult to breathe without pain.
Laughter, always an essential part of John’s life, hurt and it became difficult
to sleep.

The
pain in his ribs was not truly the beginning for John, but merely one of the
first noticeable signs. No one knows when, or for that matter why, but deep in
the marrow of his bones a process had started some time ago. As cells divided and
multiplied to replace other cells that were dying in the natural processes of
life, something went wrong. One of those cells lost one of its chromosomes.
Chromosome 13 is a mid-sized chromosome in a very tiny world of chromosomes
within a very tiny cell and yet the loss of this microscopic piece of
information in one cell was enough to start the process. As this cell divided
and other cells were created from it, they too were lacking a copy of chromosome
13. This change in itself was not enough to cause disease because each cell has
a second copy of chromosome 13. The creator had designed the system with
redundancy and just as a computer user backs up his information on a second
disk, God backed up the information on chromosome 13 with another chromosome
13. But as more and more of these cells with missing information proliferated
in the marrow, there was a chance that something even smaller would happen. When
millions of cells with only one chromosome 13 had developed in John’s bone
marrow something further did happen. When all of the genetic information was
being copied so that another cell could divide and carry out its important
work, a little gene, too small to even see with a microscope, was copied with
an error. Perhaps one of the tiny building blocks that make up the gene was not
put into its proper place, leaving a tiny hole in the gene. Or perhaps one of the
building blocks that we label with C was used instead of the one we label G. The
end result was that a second copy of a vital piece of information was lost. Now
this cell, with both copies of this genetic information missing had an
important switch missing. It was the “off” switch. This cell no longer knew how
to quit dividing and making more of itself. It could no longer tell that there
were already enough of its type of cell in the bone marrow. And so it made more
of itself and its daughter cells made more of themselves. Each daughter cell
was missing the switching mechanisms that told it when to shut off. More and
more of these cells were made at the expense of other types of cells in the
bone marrow. This overproduction of cells began to make John tired, even before
he knew anything was going on. He began to have far too many of some cells in his
blood and a lack of other cells in his blood. So many of the “B”
cells were being made that there was a lack of resources to put into the
production of red blood cells and other cell types. John began to be anaemic.

These “out-of-control” B cells
travelled out into John’s blood stream and into his lymphatic system in such
huge numbers that they swamped some of the other types of cells. Some of these
daughter cells differentiated into cells with specific jobs to carry out. One
of the many jobs of these cells, is the work of breaking down bone. Some of the
B cells, with no “off switch,” became osteoclasts – the bone breakers.
Osteoclasts lie on the bone surface or in pits where they resorb bone.
Normally, this natural degrading of bone allows for periodic repair and
remodelling needed for everyday skeletal health. Normally, the production of these
osteoclasts is balanced with bone formation by another group of cells called
osteoblasts. Now, there were far too many of the osteoclasts and not enough of
the osteoblasts. There were far too few builders and far too many breakers.

John’s
bones began to get weak. Deep pits began to form where bone had been broken
down but no bone cells had been put back in to replace the ones that had been
destroyed. The bones in John’s body began to look like Swiss cheese. And so, in
the summer of 2001, as John was working to rid his garden of the corruption
brought on by the fall, as he pulled on a weed that marred the simple beauty of
God’s creation, another part of the corruption brought on by the fall became
evident. One of John’s ribs broke.

I am continually amazed as I think about the nature of our world. We live in constant interaction with the molecules of the universe. We perceive things around us as solid objects: the keyboard on which I pound out these words, the desk on which my computer sits, and the dense mass of the mountains I can see out my window. We also perceive things in between the solid objects as empty space.

Yet, the space between the mountains and me, and my desk and me for that matter, is far from empty. That “space” is filled with molecules of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and carbon-dioxide. The “emptiness” also contains water vapour, trace amounts of household chemicals, vapours given off by plastics and electronics, particles of my own body as dead skin cells flake off and float on the air or bio-chemicals from my lungs are expelled into the atmosphere. (It is all of this stuff that our bodies are continually giving off that allows a good tracking dog to detect us and follow our trail through the woods.) The space between me and the mountains is also filled with dust and industrial particles from a major city, electrons sent out from the sun in a continuous solar wind, and photons of light. Physicists are still unclear on the best way to describe the elementary particle/wave that is a photon but we can see that they are there.

The things that seem solid are less solid than our perception would lead us to believe. The molecules which make up these solid items have a significant amount of space between them and the individual protons, in the nucleus of these atoms, associate with electrons that are far away from the proton itself. To get an idea of these subatomic distances, let us consider a thought experiment in which we scale up these protons and electrons to the size of things which we are used to handling.

Here, I must give a few disclaimers about how this thought experiment will work. It will not be strictly accurate. Whenever we try to describe such molecular and atomic interactions, words will fail us. Mathematics is a language better suited to describing such things and yet most of us do not have sufficient mathematical fluency to converse about these subjects. A mathematical physicist would look at my crude description of protons and electrons and find many flaws within it. So think of it as a metaphor that might poetically, not scientifically, explain some of the sizes and spaces between things.

Allow me to take your imagination on a journey down into atomic spaces. The size of a proton is approximately 0.8418 femtometres (fm) or 0.8418 X 10^-15 metres. A very simple atom is the hydrogen atom. It consists of one proton and one electron. The electron orbits around the proton and the average distance from proton to electron is called the Bohr Radius. This distance is approximately 5.29 X 10^-11 metres.

Thus, if we scale up the size of the proton to the size of a basketball, the electron would orbit around the proton at an average distance of 1.60 X 10^4 metres = 16000 metres = 16 km.* If I held a basketball sized hydrogen proton in my living room, its associated electron would be somewhere around Richmond in the south, Burnaby to the east, the North Shore mountains to the north, or out over the Pacific Ocean to the west at any given moment.

This is the simplest of atomic models. The typical distance between two helium protons is
2.5 X 10^-15 metres. In our scaled up model, this distance becomes about 0.755 metres. Thus our basketball model helium atom would have two basketballs separated by 75 cm in my living room in downtown Vancouver and two electrons whizzing around in an orbit which again would include portions of Richmond and Burnaby.

The nuclear radius of Uranium is around 15 X 10^-15 metres. This involves 92 protons interacting together in this nucleus. In the model we have been discussing, that is 92 basketballs in my living room taking up about 4.5 metres of space. The cloud of 92 electrons would be similarly scattered in orbits far beyond the protons themselves. By the way, electrons are small, but present science has not given us a very good idea of their actual diameter.

Even the massive granite of a mountain (like the Stawamus Chief monolith near Squamish BC) is a complex interaction of molecules in which individual atoms are linked together by molecular bonds and share electrons between atoms. There are spaces between the protons and electrons and the whole thing is a spinning, buzzing, hive of activity despite the fact that we see it as a lump of rock simply sitting there since the mountain range was formed.

What do we do with this sense of space and solid objects? It is beyond our comprehension. There is something beautiful, mystical, and spiritual about it. It fills me with awe. It causes me to praise a creator who could create all of this and understand all of its complexities.

He counts the stars
and calls them all by name.
How great is our Lord! His power is absolute!
His understanding is beyond comprehension!
Psalm 147:4, 5 New Living Translation

*Basketball model:
254 mm Basket ball = 2.54 X 10-1 metres;
0.8418 X 10-15 metres proton;
5.29 X 10-11 metres average proton/electron distance
(2.54 X 10-1 / 0.8418 X 10-15) X 5.29 X 10-11 metres;
3.02 X 1014 X 5.29 X 10-11 metres
1.60 X 104 metres = 16000 metres = 16 km.

Yesterday’s blog quoted Bruce Cockburn’s amazing song, “Pacing The Cage.” In that song sunset is a metaphor for aging and death. It is a dark and brooding song about the sundown stage of life. In this follow-up I quote Wayne Watson’s “There Goes Sundown.” It has some of the same melancholy and sorrow of a man looking back over his life. Yet, in this song, sundown is much more hopeful. It is a sign of God’s faithfulness. Sundown represents another day that God has given us on this earth.
Certainly the song also contains the singer’s mental struggle about whether it is better to be on this earth (growing old with that girl of his) or for the Lord to return and renew this life he lives. In this we hear echoes of the apostle Paul saying,

For to me, living means living for Christ, and dying is even better. But if I live, I can do more fruitful work for Christ. So I really don’t know which is better. I’m torn between two desires: I long to go and be with Christ, which would be far better for me. But for your sakes, it is better that I continue to live. (Philippians 1:21-24)

There is hope. God is faithful, he is good, and he knows the number of the days of a man . . . and a woman.

There Goes Sundown
(Words and Music by Wayne Watson)

Doomsday… Some day
But not today so far
Said this world wouldn’t
Be here much longer
But look around, here we are.
Only God in his wisdom
Surely not me in mine
Knows the number of the days of a man
Every day he shows me a sign.

There Goes Sundown
There Goes Sundown
There Goes Sundown again.

Some days I pray this prayer more than others
For My Lord to come
When I’m weary of fightin’
When I’m tired of runnin’.
Other days I wanna stay around
Grow old with that girl of mine
Most of the future is out of my hands
He reminds me every day about this time.

There Goes Sundown
There Goes Sundown
There Goes Sundown again.

I Don’t Believe
We’ve been forgotten
God’s too faithful
He’s too good at keeping
All his promises
He’s gonna come for me
Just like he said he would.

There Goes Sundown
There Goes Sundown
There Goes Sundown again.

(Bruce Cockburn – 24 June 1995. Philadelphia.) (Watch him perform this song here.)

Sunset is an angel weeping
Holding out a bloody sword
No matter how I squint I cannot
Make out what it’s pointing toward
Sometimes you feel like you live too long
Days drip slowly on the page
You catch yourself
Pacing the cage

I’ve proven who I am so many times
The magnetic strip’s worn thin
And each time I was someone else
And every one was taken in
Powers chatter in high places
Stir up eddies in the dust of rage
Set me to pacing the cage

I never knew what you all wanted
So I gave you everything
All that I could pillage
All the spells that I could sing
It’s as if the thing were written
In the constitution of the age
Sooner or later you’ll wind up
Pacing the cage

Sometimes the best map will not guide you
You can’t see what’s round the bend
Sometimes the road leads through dark places
Sometimes the darkness is your friend
Today these eyes scan bleached-out land
For the coming of the outbound stage
Pacing the cage
Pacing the cage

The longer I live the more I can relate to this song by Bruce Cockburn. In this world of ever changing careers, values, and practises, I sometimes feel like “I’ve proven who I am so many times, the magnetic strip’s worn thin.” We can never rest on yesterday’s successes. That holds true for folk-singers, scientists, authors, bloggers, pastors, and church planters. “Sometimes the best map will not guide you; you can’t see what’s round the bend. Sometimes the road leads through dark places; sometimes the darkness is your friend.” All too often I catch myself pacing the cage.

Jeremiah knew these emotions as he wrote Lamentations 3:1-8,

I am the man who has seen affliction
Because of the rod of His wrath.
He has driven me and made me walk
In darkness and not in light.
Surely against me He has turned His hand
Repeatedly all the day.
He has caused my flesh and my skin to waste away,
He has broken my bones.
He has besieged and encompassed me with bitterness and hardship.
In dark places He has made me dwell,
Like those who have long been dead.
He has walled me in so that I cannot go out;
He has made my chain heavy.
Even when I cry out and call for help,
He shuts out my prayer.

It is unclear whether Jeremiah had truly been shut out by God. More likely, Jeremiah is expressing how he feels God has treated him and is prophetically speaking of how God will one day abandon his Son, Jesus, on the cross. Later, Jeremiah seems to realize that God is more gracious and loving and attentive than Jeremiah had made him out to be. In 3:21-26 he says,

Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.”
The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD.

So, just as we cannot rest on yesterday’s successes, we must use the best map we have even if it is insufficient to the task of guiding us, and we must strike out to where the road leads even if it is through dark places. As we go, we can take a fresh measure of God’s great love and his compassions; for they are new every morning and made fresh each day for every one of us. “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him. The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”

I arrived home from a week of Christmas and New Year holidays in Alberta and was pleased to find a package with two CDs in my mail box. The albums are Flying and The Hometown Band by “The Hometown Band.” They have recently been digitized from the original masters kept in the vaults of Universal Music. I first owned these recordings on 8-track tape in the late 70s and enjoyed them for hours in my 1970 Ford Gran Torino.

I pulled them out and gave them each a good listen. If, like me, you are a fan of Canadian music from the 70s you would readily remember their signature song, “Flying.” But, like me, you may have forgotten some of the other great songs on these two albums. I found myself singing along with “I’m Ready” and reminiscing about how much I enjoyed this song. Shari Ulrich’s vocals are incredibly strong and I remembered how much I enjoyed seeing her and the whole band perform in 1977 as they toured with the legendary folk icon, Valdy. Both “Flying” and “I’m Ready” were written by J. Mock. [I do not know this name but I must do some research to learn who this phenomenal writer is. Perhaps in a future blog I can give you the results of my investigations.]

Many of the songs on both albums show off the instrumental abilities of the band members. Producer Claire Lawrence’s saxophones soar and tug at the heart, Ulrich’s violin parts are mesmerizing. The concert I saw in 1977 at the Memorial Centre in Red Deer, Alberta started with a five to seven minute fiddle solo by Ulrich before the curtains pulled back revealing the rest of the band on the stage behind her; they then joined in. I remember thinking how amazing it was to see one person with a fiddle hold an entire audience spellbound for this long. The song, “Spread’m All Around,” on Flying really shows the prowess of all of the band members. A strong bass line undergirds this twelve minute masterpiece while violin and saxophone duel and swoop. The song also features some great organ solos by Robbie King (I am thinking it is a Hammond B-3). The organ sound is solid without becoming overpowering like much of the music in this period known for over reliance on the organ and synthesizer as filler. Great guitars by Doug Edwards fills out the sound.

Of the two CDs, Flying is the stronger album yet the self-titled album has a few pleasant surprises. “What Would I Do” has that sound that made it a hit on AM radio in the 70s and still gets me singing along. The short but sweet “Feel Good” written by Ulrich is a great example of her ability as a writer and is just plain fun. “Sweet Emma” written by Ulrich and Lawrence has a fantastic rhythm and a New Orleans sound (is that a straight tenor sax I hear?).

The Hometown Band started in 1975 as a group of session musicians who supported Valdy but they developed their own identity on the strength of these phenomenal musicians. The music still sounds very good today. I am glad Shari put in the effort to convince Universal that it was time to digitize this important art from the Canadian music scene. I long ago lost the ability to play this music on my 8-track player. I encourage you to go to Shari Ulrich’s web site (www.shariulrich.com) and order the two CDs while you still can.

(Written by Marc Martel and Jason Germain; 2006 Centricity Music Publishing/Germain and Martel Music Publishing/ASCAP)
From the album “Ending is Beginning.”

Follow the star to a place unexpected
Would you believe after all we’ve projected
A child in a manger
Lowly and small, the weakest of all
Unlikeliness hero, wrapped in his mothers shawl
Just a child
Is this who we’ve waited for? Cuz

How many kings, stepped down from their thrones?
How many lords have abandoned their homes?
How many greats have become the least for me?
How many Gods have poured out their hearts
To romance a world that has torn all apart?
How many fathers gave up their sons for me?

Bringing our gifts for the newborn savior
All that we have whether costly or meek
Because we believe
Gold for his honor and frankincense for his pleasure
And myrrh for the cross he’ll suffer
Do you believe, is this who we’ve waited for?
It’s who we’ve waited for

How many kings, stepped down from their thrones?
How many lords have abandoned their homes?
How many greats have become the least for me?
How many Gods have poured out their hearts
To romance a world that has torn all apart?
How many fathers gave up their sons for me?

Only one did that for me
All for me, All for you
All for me, All for you

This is a great song for this time of year or any time of year. You can listen to it here.

On December 9th John Stackhouse had a blog post which contained these quotes from Walter Hilton. Hilton offered a way for us to determine if we truly love our enemies. Here is the quote.

What it really comes to is this: if you are not stirred up against such a person in anger while faking an outward cheer, and have no secret hatred in your heart, despising him or judging him or considering him worthless; if the more shame and villainy he does to you in word or deed, the more pity and compassion you show toward him, almost as you would for someone who was emotionally or mentally distressed; and if you are so compelled by love that you actually cannot find it in your heart to hate him, but instead you pray for him, help him out, and desire his amending (not only with your mouth, as hypocrites do, but with a true feeling of love in your heart): then you will be in perfect charity toward [him]. . . .

. . . Stop and think how Christ loved Judas, who was both his mortal enemy and a sinful dog. How good Christ was to him, how benign, how courteous, how humble toward him whom he knew to be damnable. He chose him for his apostle and sent him to preach with the other apostles. He gave him power to work miracles. He showed to him the same good cheer in word and deed. He shared with him his precious Body, and preached to him in the same manner as he did to the other apostles. He did not condemn him openly; nor did he abuse him or despise him, nor ever speak evil of him (and yet even if he had done all of that, it would simply have been to tell the truth!). And above all, when Judas seized him, he kissed him and called him his friend.

Once there was a wealthy business man who passed away. People knew him as an upright entrepreneur, a leader who served in a mid-level political role, and a man of character. He was well loved and it was expected that many would attend his funeral and speak of his kindness to others, his generous gifts to the poor, and the grace with which he served and cared for his family.

The entrepreneur had left a will that contained instructions for his own funeral. In those instructions he asked that six specific people be given the honour and responsibility of carrying his casket and speaking of him at his funeral. People were surprised to see who the business man had chosen to fulfill this role as pall-bearers.

The first pall-bearer was a man who had sued him in a business deal. This same pall-bearer had many arguments with other business people and had sued or threatened to sue others. He was known as an unscrupulous dealer. Another pall-bearer was a woman who had accused the deceased man as the father of her child hoping for financial gain. Her case had been proven to be unfounded. A third pall-bearer had been a political rival who had mounted an extreme campaign against the business man in a bid to discredit and unseat the business man in a particular election. And so it went, each pall-bearer was found to be someone who had a disagreement with or had spoken publicly against the deceased man.

A large crowd gathered at the funeral to see what these enemies of the man would say at his funeral. Each pall-bearer came forward and struggled with something to say. All could tell that they were uncomfortable with the situation and had little they could say either for or against the man. The lawyer for the deceased business man was then instructed to read a statement the man had prepared before his death. In it the business man said, that it was his desire that half of his wealth be given to the poor and if anyone felt that he had cheated anyone in any of his business or personal dealings then that person should be paid back four times the amount they had been cheated. No one came forward with an accusation but it was noted that several of the pall-bearers went and settled arguments and debts they had with other people in the community. The people of the community organized their own tribute to the deceased entrepreneur and people came forward and spoke for many hours regarding the character and love of this man. And so it is that we shall be known by our deeds toward our enemies.