Saturday, April 11, 2009

HOLY SATURDAY

God is not in time. As C.S. Lewis wrote in his book Mere Christianity, “God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call ‘tomorrow’ is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call ‘today.’ All the days are ‘Now’ for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday; He simply sees you doing them, because, though you have lost yesterday, He has not. He does not ‘foresee’ you doing things tomorrow; He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him.” (pg. 170)

So because God had no beginning and has no end - when he declares with His infallible voice, “IT IS FINISHED” – then mortal man better listen!

Two particular times He said it - two realities ushered in into the existence of mankind - and both times were on Fridays.

Throughout Biblical history – the days of the week were consistently referred to using ordinal numbers – first, second, third, fourth, etc. And so in Genesis 1:31 and Genesis 2:1, we read, "Then God saw everything that He had made and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished."

Also we read in John 19:30, "So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, "It is finished!" And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit." On Good Friday, the sixth day, the body of Christ was taken down from the cross and buried, on the seventh-day Sabbath His body remained in the tomb. (see verse 31)

Two days. Two eternal declarations.

On the sixth day of creation week, God declared with a loud voice, “IT IS FINISHED” – and ushered mankind and creation into the seventh-day Sabbath rest – a sanctuary of time for Adam and Eve to rest from their labors and worship their Creator God.

On the sixth day of Semana Santa, or Holy Week, Christ, Immanuel, God with Us, the Word made flesh, declared with a loud cry, ‘IT IS FINISHED” – and ushered mankind and creation into the seventh-day Sabbath rest – a symbol of redemptive rest for by grace you have been saved through faith, not of works – a sanctuary of time for the redeemed to rest from their labors and worship their Creator God.

TWO DAYS – a call to worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.

Today is Holy Saturday. A high biblical day of worship - And very timely appropriate to remember both God’s creative and redemptive work.

Friday, April 10, 2009

THE MARTIAN MARATHON

On April 5th, 2009.... the earth stood still.



The face-off was inevitable.



It won a first-one-to-blink-losses game, but I challenged it to a 26.2 miler of pounding pavement... and that was a different story.



Night and day compared to the Chicago Marathon, which had over 33,000 runners. I found myself running solo several times, but came in at 101 out of 450.



Ideal running day. 40s. Blue sky.



I crossed the finish line in 3:37:07! A personal record! In fact, I knocked off 21 minutes off my first marathon run in Chicago last year which was 3:58:21.