My Season

Yes, for everyone that ever wanted to know, this is my season! That is, the one that follows summer and precedes winter...AUTUMN! And with that comes all the changing colors of the leaves. Here at Fountainview, we have orchards all over the property and the leaves have slowly been changing colors from greens to yellows to oranges to pinks to reds. It is beautiful! Several students and I were in the orchards yesterday getting some last snapshots before they turn brown. Here is just a small selection of the photos... (I thought I would include some of Autumn and Autumn ;)...)











It is amazing to me that many of us think fall is one of the prettiest seasons of the year. But after the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, that first fall was a devastating experience for Adam and Eve. Mrs White comments, "As Adam witnessed the first signs of decaying nature in the falling leaf and in the drooping flowers, he mourned more deeply than men now mourn over their dead. The drooping flowers were not so deep a cause of grief, because more tender and delicate; but the tall, noble, sturdy trees to cast off their leaves, to decay, presented before him the general dissolution of beautiful nature, which God had created for the special benefit of man." {SR 55.2} How is it that today we have come to think of it as such a beautiful time of year rather than a time of mourning. I can think of two things: 1) God brings beauty out of tragedy. Though it is a reminder of sin, God tries to still cover it with his grace and bring a beauty out of it instead. 2) Though it is the beginning of a bleak, barren, harsh, and long cold winter to come, the fall colors almost give us a foretaste and glimpse of the beauty that will come to the earth during the new birth of spring when God makes all things new again.

So in our own lives: when we are on the brink of a winter experience in our lives, he shows us two things: first, that He can bring beauty where their is pain and ugliness and second, He will takes us through that experience to enjoy the rebirth on the other side where he makes all things new. May you remember that this fall.

Show me a mission, then evidence

Today we had a very interesting discussion in Bible class. We have been studying through the defense of the Christian faith and have finally progressed from the defense of God and the Bible to the defense of Jesus Christ. In class, we watched several news casts about Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda and his claim to be Jesus. This spurred an excellent discussion in class about the students' reactions to his claim. After analyzing different things he said that completely contradict what we know in the Bible, several students mentioned something very interesting. When the interviewer asked Miranda why he thinks he was chosen to be Jesus on earth, he says he doesn't know. The students commented that he seems to have no purpose, no mission, no goals. In fact, he doesn't even know why he is Jesus. We compared this with Jesus of Nazareth. He made it very clear from the very start of his ministry that he had a purpose, a mission, and a goal. He knew clearly why He was on this earth--to seek and save the lost. Everything in his ministry to others was with that mission in mind. He had focus and direction.

We then discussed that this man showed no evidence of his being Jesus. The interviewer asked him if he could perform miracles, walk on water, etc. He responded, "Not exactly." This launched us into a discussion of the role of evidence in proving a claim. One student said that if he didn't perform miracles then that proved that he wasn't from God. So I countered that with, "Then if he could do miracles, does that prove that He is divine? What about all the faith healers that perform all those so called 'miracles'? Just because they can do these things, does that prove that they are from God?" Of course they said no. So then I asked them where does "evidence" come into play and how can we know when that evidence confirms the divinity of the individual.

This led us to look to Jesus' example in how he used evidence in his ministry to prove his divine nature. We looked at Jesus standing before Herod. Mrs. White states that Herod was anxious to see Christ "prove His claims by working a miracle." While Jesus had done this on many other occasions, he refused to do it now. Herod insisted, "If Thou canst work miracles for others, work them now for Thine own good, and it will serve Thee a good purpose. Again he commanded, Show us a sign that Thou hast the power with which rumor hath accredited Thee. But Christ was as one who heard and saw not.... Herod promised that if Christ would perform some miracle in his presence, He should be released...." DA 729-730.

So here we see that Jesus refused to heal because it would only satisfy idle curiosity. In addition, it would prevent Him from fulfilling his mission to seek and save the lost because Herod would have released Him. Thus, any type of evidence shown would have gone against Christ's purpose--so he refused to do it.

Then we looked at the story of the man sick with the palsy in Matt. 9. I asked the class if Jesus' main goal was to heal the man physically or spiritually. Of course it was spiritually. So instead of healing the man, Jesus forgave his sins. But when the Pharisees cried blasphemy, Jesus knew he needed to give some evidence that he could indeed forgive. So he told them, "But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house." Notice why Jesus gave evidence in this circumstance and not in the one with Herod. Jesus had to emphasize his mission as one who could forgive sin. But since nobody can see whether sins are actually forgiven, Jesus then gave them proof that they could see--a healing miracle. We see this occurring over and over in Jesus' ministry: the evidence was always for one reason alone--to prove his mission, his goal, his purpose.

So that leads us back to the role of evidence. Evidence is never just for the sake of evidence--it is to prove mission. When you look at these faith healers, one must ask themselves "what is the mission? and how does this 'evidence' concur with the mission." The fact is that these healings seem to be for the sake of healings alone--not for the sake of the gospel message in healing the soul of sin.

So our class discussion concluded with one main idea that distinguishes Christ from all other so called 'Christs' and faith healers. He had a very clear-cut mission and purpose. And any evidence that he ever gave was only for the sake of proving that he could fulfill that mission.

Mrs. White sums it up beautifully in one final statement about Christ before Herod: "The mission of Christ in this world was not to gratify idle curiosity. He came to heal the brokenhearted. Could He have spoken any word to heal the bruises of sin-sick souls, He would not have kept silent. But He had no words for those who would but trample the truth under their unholy feet." DA 730

For myself, I am thankful that in the life of Jesus physical evidence was provided that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus could and did fulfill the mission that all this evidence pointed to--that He indeed can save and forgive my sin!

This Morning's Rat Race

Some people have the boring, methodical way to wake up in the morning--their alarm clock. Well for those of you boring souls out there, you just need to come live with me for awhile and you can get all kinds of interesting wake up calls. At six this morning, I was still in bed when I had a light tap on my bedroom door. One of my suite mates tiptoed in and profusely apologized for waking me up and then pleaded and begged me to come to their aid... They had a visitor that morning--a pack rat. He had climbed up the bottom bunk and crawled across one of the girls. She flung him and the covers onto the floor and then started yelling at her roommate that there was a rat in their bedroom. Her roommate thought it was a big joke until they looked in the closet and saw this big rat hiding in the corner behind the shoes. Being the expert rat hunters that we are (ya right! like we've had lots of practice!), we first called one of the assistant boy's deans to come over to help us (poor guy, he had just woken up and then he is called to help some girls catch a rat!). So Johnny came over with an ax of all things (we thought he was going to kill it in the bedroom, but he said it was only so he could corner it...). Then we barricaded all the doors and stuffed sleeping backs under the doors to prevent him from escaping to another part of the house. We set about three rat traps and one live trap and then armed with a trusty trash can, we were ready to shew him out of the closet. We finally coaxed him out and then he ran helter skelter all over the floor nearly crawling up the legs of my friends. They screamed and hollered and danced around. We finally threw the trash can over him but then weren't sure what to do. I unloaded a three ring binder and then carefully slid it under the trash can. The rat jumped when we slid it under causing one of the girls to jump too. We carefully lifted the trash can and then slid the binder just enough for the rat to fall into the live trap. As soon as we dropped him in, he raced up the sides and nearly out the top, but thankfully Johnny closed the trap door just in time. Good thing or we would have had another rat race around the room. To say the least, it was a crazy way to start the morning! (This is the second one we caught in the house in the past week. The first one was three times this big!)







Krystal and I trying to decide how we are going to lift the trash can without the rat escaping. (She's sitting on the trash can to make sure he can't get out!)








Our weapons of mass destruction






Just to show how big he is in comparison with the trap









Cute...maybe, annoying...definitely!



Oh, yes, some of my other wake up calls at night have been for the bears... Many a night since I have been here in Canada, I have been awoken by my dog barking at some unknown thing outside. Nearly every time I look outside to see what it is, it is either a bear or coyote looming in the plum trees right outside my window. A couple nights ago, my suite mates and I heard Shanuk barking so we looked outside to see a huge bear in the orchard. Grabbing the flashlight, we tromped outside to see if we could get a better look. I laughed when I thought of the childhood game I used to play where one person hides and you all go marching around yelling "no bears out tonight, Daddy shot them all last night" and then they jump out of the dark and tag you. Well, I definitely cannot sing that song here! There is a bear out nearly every night. But the bear was shy and took off before we could get close...oh, well, maybe next time. (Just kidding! I have no intention on getting close to those guys! And don't worry, we were being careful when we went out to see it!)