A young boy was visiting the Washington Monument and walked up to one of the park staff to disclose that he was interested in purchasing the monument to bring back to his home. The park ranger, wanting to humour the child, asked the boy how much money he had in his wallet. The boy took his wallet out, counted up his change, and announced he had $1.88 to offer in exchange for the monument. The park ranger replied: “Well, first, the monument isn’t for sale. Second, even if it were for sale, it’s worth much more money than you could afford to pay. Third, since you are a citizen of the United States, it already belongs to you.” The analogy to forgiveness: we can’t buy it (God offers it to us freely), we can’t earn it (i.e. there’s nothing we can give up that would be enough to buy our forgiveness unless God had made the perfect sacrifice for us), and, upon accepting Christ, we have become citizens of God’s kingdom and have received forgiveness through Christ’s sacrifice. I thought the analogy was both cute and beautifully accurate.
How sweet the Name of Jesus sounds
In a believer’s ear!
It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds,
And drives away his fear.
It makes the wounded spirit whole,
And calms the troubled breast;
’Tis manna to the hungry soul,
And to the weary, rest.
Dear Name, the Rock on which I build,
My Shield and Hiding Place,
My never failing treasury, filled
With boundless stores of grace!
By Thee my prayers acceptance gain,
Although with sin defiled;
Satan accuses me in vain,
And I am owned a child.
Jesus! my Shepherd, Husband, Friend,
O Prophet, Priest and King,
My Lord, my Life, my Way, my End,
Accept the praise I bring.
Weak is the effort of my heart,
And cold my warmest thought;
But when I see Thee as Thou art,
I’ll praise Thee as I ought.
Till then I would Thy love proclaim
With every fleeting breath,
And may the music of Thy Name
Refresh my soul in death!
So, it’s been a while and you’ve only had cute animals for inspiration to keep you going. Well, from my end, the lack of posting is for good reason - as most of you know, I have moved to Boston to start a post-doctoral fellowship at MIT. I’m two weeks into my work now and things are going OK so far - it’s kind of overwhelming to be in a lab which is bigger than the entire DEPARTMENT I worked in at McMaster, but things are starting to come together. Boston is also a pretty nice place to live, although I’ve been shocked at how many pointless bureaucratic hoops one must jump through in order to be a “legal alien” here. I’m still in church-shopping mode at the moment, but there are a couple of decent possibilities so far even in what my new insurance agent generously dubbed “the people’s republic of Cambridge” (the suburb of Boston where I live - it’s a REALLY liberal city!). I’m actually off to a service right now at one of the bigger churches around located right downtown in the Boston Common, which is probably where I’ll end up. They have a “people in their 20’s” fellowship group which is kind of like oXyGEN on steroids - 400 people in small groups within that demographic alone! Pretty wild!
So, seeing as I am not even in the same country, I thought it might be slightly odd to keep posting on this blog. As a result, I started my own blog at:
So, (cue shameless self-promotion), feel free to stop by and check it out if you are so inclined. I’ve made quite a few posts already, so if you read bottom-to-top it will probably make a (little bit) more sense. I miss you all!
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