Ok a post it is....

So, be sure to click on and enlarge and read and laugh at the comic below. That aside, I turn to graver issues. Recently I have been reading "A Chance to Die" which is a book about the life of Amy Carmichael. She was a facinating lady who spent most of her life as a "missionary" in India. She basically ended up in India hoping to preach to the millions of people who she had heard were dying every year without having heard about Jesus. Along the way she began finding children who needed, for one reason or another, to be rescued. Some were abandoned; many were sold or were going to be sold to the local hindu temples to be "married to the gods" or rather, to become temple prostitutes. These are small young children mind you.
Well a few children became dozens, and became a nursury, and became a few nursuries, and became a dozen nursuries and still grew. Its a pretty amazing story. The book cannot seem to help but praise this woman, although, it is, in fact, critical of some of her methods. She was raised in a strict Irish presbyterian family (i think) and some of her strict and victorian roots came across in her dealings with people.
The most amazing thing to me was her take on money. I imagine that she made some money from selling books, although, i cannot say how much if any. She wrote many books which were published in her lifetime. However, no matter how poor or streched her fellowship was for money, it was apparently unthinkable to ask people for money to her. She believed that she should ask God to provide the monies neccesary and He aparently always did. There are amazing stories of Amy needing a certain amount to buy a piece of land for her overflowing nursuries, or needing a certain amount to buy a child out from the temple and in the cases mentioned (which are numerous and probably incomplete) the money always arrived. Usually in the sort of way which rules out the causality of prayer (i.e. I pray today for money that arrives tomorrow, but must have been sent weeks ago to make it to India from England) and yet demonstrates the soverignty of God. Those who are skeptical will thumb their nose and say that as improbable as it might be (for someone, on multiple occasions to recieve something that was prayed for which would not normally be recieved) it doesn't mean that there is a God who listens to our prayers. They may even try to say that it should be perfectly normal. Which unfortunaly might be something that is a matter of faith that is only understood from within.
Everyone has some kind of faith as we have established before. No one could belive much of anything if they only belived what they empirically tested themselves. Some argue that its not fair that Jesus doesn't make himself as manifest to us as the computer screen you are looking at when, after all, it is totally within his power to do so. I say he did make himself manifest about 2000 years ago. Then it is argued "why not now? why not to me?" To that I don't have much of an answer except that 1) that's not how God seems to interact with us, and 2) why should he?
(here i note that "because he could" is not a good answer)
I also hear people say "how can you believe the "miraculous" claims of the bible that you cannot verify? I say I believe the ones I cannot verify because of the many that I can verify. Its very similar to the way a person can believe a scientific claim that someone makes but cannot verify. Like evolution or black holes or dark matter etc. (by the way, did you know that the generally accepted model for our universe is that its composed of 74% dark energy, 22% dark matter, and only 4% ordinary matter-- and the reason that the majority of unknowns are called "dark" is because they are mysterious, unknown, and so far undetectable--{they may not even exist})
I'm asked "how can you accpet the claims of the bible on faith alone?" I answer, how can you reject the claims of the bible on faith alone? I should not be surprised to find out that many who reject the bible know very little about it from their own experience. They have heard anecdotes and not much more. And yet if i tell them its a life or death decision with eternal consequences, they don't seem to care enough to investigate.
These are some of the things that I have been thinking about for the last few weeks. I'd be happy to hear your thoughts or rebuttals, or not.
I promise nothing in the way of more regular posting.
Peace