This Sunday’s sermon at The Donelson Fellowship is from Psalm 118:24:  This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.  If you live in Nashville or you’re going to be in town please join us at 8:45 or 10:15.  Here’s an excerpt from the message:

Psalm 118:24 tells us that God is in the day-making business.  The Ancient of Days is the Manufacturer of Days.  He has a vast, continually-running conveyor belt stretched from the sun to the earth and from heaven to this world.  One new day rolls off God’s assembly line every twenty-four hours, right on schedule, each one unique. 

This verse reminds us that God’s compassions never fail; they are new every morning, for great is His faithfulness.  Goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives; and as our days may demand shall our strength ever be. 

Day by day the promise reads,
Daily strength for daily needs.

It’s the happy privilege of the Christian to rise from bed each day with the knowledge that from the workbench of God’s wisdom comes an endless succession of sunrises and sunsets, all of them individually crafted and each one packaged with grace and wrapped in love.

This is the day the Lord hath made;
He calls the hours His own;
Let Heav’n rejoice, let earth be glad,
And praise surround the throne.

Anyone preaching on the Signs of the Times or concerned about the End of the Age cannot ignore the dramatic and frightening Islamic Takeover of Europe.  In today’s New York Times, there’s a review of a book by Christopher Caldwell titled Reflections on the Revolution in Europe:  Immigration, Islam, and the West.

I haven’t read the book, but the NYT article was fascinating.  Let me skip to the final sentence, which is a quote from Caldwell:

When an insecure, malleable, relativistic culture (Europe’s) meets a culture that is anchored, confident, and strengthened by common doctrines (Islam’s), it is generally the former that changes to suit the latter.

Read that again!  With the loss of its Christian mooring, Western society has become insecure, malleable (pliable, subject to being manipulated), and relativistic.  When another, stronger, conviction-based culture immigrates and reproduces in large numbers, who is going to win?

Here are some other comments from the New York Times review.  These are quotable and dramatic observations.

Through decades of mass immigration to Europe’s hospitable cities and because of a strong disinclination to assimilate, Muslims are changing the face of Europe, perhaps decisively.  These Muslim immigrants are not so much enhancing European culture as they are supplanting it.  The products of an adversarial culture, these immigrants and their religion, Islam, are “patiently conquering Europe’s cities, street by street.”

These immigrants are…swamping Europe demographically…because of their high fertility rates…. In Brussels in 2006, the seven most common given boys’ names were Mohamed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine, and Hamza.

Muslims are not melting in.  They are instead forming…a parallel society.  Newcomers to England now listen to Al Jazeera, not the BBC.

Spain translates more foreign books a year than all the Arab-speaking countries have translated since the reign of Caliph Mamoun in the ninth century.

These immigrants are bringing anti-Semitism back to Europe.

The debate over Muslim immigration in Europe is one that the continent can’t openly have, because anyone remotely critical of Islam is branded as Islamophobic.

As I said, I’ve not read the book, just the review; but you can find more about Caldwell’s book here.  For a sermon I preached on this subject a couple of years ago, click here.

I vividly remember sitting as a teenager around the fuzzy black-and-white television picture, watching with my family as the first men walked on the moon.  But I didn’t know until today that the astronauts observed the Lord’s Supper there.  How did I miss this crucial moment in church history?

Here’s what happened:  

Buzz Aldrin was an elder at Webster Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas.  He asked his pastor how to appropriately celebrate God’s goodness on the moon with a spiritually meaningful event.  The pastor consecrated a communion wafer and a small vile of communion wine.

After the Eagle Lunar Lander touched down, Buzz Aldrin sat beside Neil Armstrong, waiting for the moment when they’d exit onto the moon.  Aldrin pulled out a small silver chaice and some small communion bread and a notecard with Scripture taken from John 15.  (Later the notecard was auctioned off for $180,000.  The church still owns the chalice, but keeps it in a safe-deposit box.  A replica can be seen in a glass case near the sanctuary).

 Shortly after 3:17 p.m. (EST) on Sunday, July 20, 1969, Buzz Aldrin radioed to earth, saying:  “Houston, this is the Eagle.  This is the LM pilot speaking.  I would like to request a few moments of silence.  I would like to invite each person listening in, whoever or whatever he may be, to contemplate for a moment the events of the last few hours, and to give thanks in his own individual way.”

  Aldrin later wrote:

 “In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the Scripture, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing.’

 I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute [they] had requested that I not do this. NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O’Hare, the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at Christmas. I agreed reluctantly. …

 I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.”

 For a report from the church on its annual Lunar Communin Worship Service, click here and here.

Last week the New York Times had a great article on 101 Super Summer Salads, and Katrina and I tried #2.  It was easy, healthy, tasty, and refreshing; and it’s going in my recipe file.  Since tomatoes and peaches are in season, you might want to try it.  It’s as simple as this:

Mix wedges of tomatoes and peaches, add slivers of red onion, a few red-pepper flakes and cilantro. Dress with olive oil and lime or lemon juice. Astonishing.

Here’s a synopsis of today’s sermon at The Donelson Fellowship.

The Key Text – Galatians 5:22:  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Against such things there is no law.

Introduction:  When God created the world, He built the same patterns and principles into both the physical and spiritual realms, and that’s why we can illustrate spiritual truths with physical realities (like trees and grapevines).  For example, if a farmer taped artificial apples to the trees in his orchard, it might look good from a distance for little while; but no one would be fooled for long.  Genuine fruit is produced from within.  We don’t need artificial attitudes or synthetic personality traits.  We need the genuine love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control of Jesus Christ.  The key thought in Galatians 5:16-26 is walking with Jesus Christ by means of the Holy Spirit.  Verses 16, 18, and 25 tell us to live by the Spirit, to be led by the Spirit, and to keep in step with the Spirit.  We can walk with Jesus just as surely as the two disciples did in Luke 24; but now it’s via His ever-present Spirit.  As we do this, there are two results:

1.  We Minimize Our Faults (verses 16-21).  When we live by the Spirit, we won’t gratify the desires of the sinful nature, and we’ll be increasingly able to overcome the lusts of the flesh, which are listed in this passage.

2.  We Maximize our Fruits (verses 22-16).  When we live by the Spirit, we’ll begin to automatically develop nine different attitudes that make up the Christian personality, and these are listed in verses 22-23 as the “fruit of the Spirit.”

Conclusion:  These nine traits describe perfectly the personality of Jesus of Nazareth.  This is a description of His character.  If you had to make a list of nine words to describe Jesus Christ, this would be the list.  And Jesus said in John 15 that as we are connected to Him like a branch to a vine, we will bear much fruit.  His character is reproduced within us.  The only way to develop more love, joy, peace, and all the rest is to abide in Christ.  He alone can minimize our faults and maximize our fruits.

  During the Free Will Baptist Convention in Cincinnati, I occupied some of my time tracking down chili parlors.  There are about 180 of them in the city, and many of them were started by Greek immigrants in the early-to-mid 1900s.  Cincinnati chili has a secret ingredient.  Depending on the recipe, it has a bit of chocolate, cinnamon, and/or nutmeg to enhance the flavor.  It’s typically served on a small plate over a heaping pile of spaghetti, and, if you get it “five-way”, it’s covered with beans, onions, and a mountain of shredded cheddar cheese.

Two of these restaurants have morphed into big chains—Skyline and Gold Star.  They’re hard to beat.  But here are four great mom-and-pop chili parlors that I enjoyed, and if you’re going to be in Cincinnati you might want to check them out.

My favorite was Pleasant Ridge Chili at 6032 Montgomery Road.  Part of the charm was the ambiance.  This is a storefront parlor, not in the finest part of town — an old-time, 1960s café with canopy-covered booths, small tables squeezed down the middle, a counter at the front, and a juke box in the corner.  It was started by an old Greek fellow who still works there.  He told me he emigrated from Greece in the early 1940s and about six years later opened this restaurant with his own chili recipe.  His grandson now runs it.  I thought it was just great.

Camp Washington Chili is also a single-shop outfit, and it, too, was started by a Greek immigrant in the 1940s.  But the building is new, clean, and spacious; and the walls are lined with reviews from local and national magazines.  The chili didn’t seem to have as much of that unique, quaint Cincinnati taste, the noodles are a little thicker, the sauce was a little oilier, and the beans were pintos, not kidneys.  Jeff Nichols and I enjoyed it very much, but it probably wasn’t my favorite.

Blue Ash Chili has two locations, and I stopped at one near the interstate just north of the city.  This chili was great; not much different from Skyline, but their open air patio gave me the option of dining outside, which is always my favorite (weather permitting).  On the downside, I thought the chili had too little sauce and too much cheese.

Empress Chili is often rated the best by CinnChili aficionados.  I stopped there as I was leaving Cincinnati, but by that time I was just about chili-ed out.  But it was piping hot with that wonderful distinctive flavor, arranged in perfect proportions on a larger plate, and it probably deserves its applause.  If I’d had it earlier in the trip, I would have rated it the finest.

This little excursion into taste-testing and restaurant-reviewing took a toll, but someone has to do the research.  And although it’s going to be a long time before I want to look at another plate of Cincinnati chili, I’d recommend it to anyone wanting to taste a bit of meaty Midwestern, five-way, Greek-inspired Americana. 

PS – Tomorrow’s sermon at The Donelson Fellowship is also about food, in a way.  The subject is the Fruit of the Spirit, in Galatians 5:22-23.  You’re invited to join us at 8:45 or 10:15.

 Today’s a special day for several reasons.  Our family has two birthday’s today:  My brother-in-law, Steve Campbell, is… well, I’m not sure; he’s younger than I am.  And here in Nashville, we’re having a little party tonight to celebrate Big Number Four for our grandson, Elijah.

Today at Fort Jackson, our son-in-law, Ethan Pierce, is graduating from a horrendous and hot ten weeks of Basic Training.  We’re enormously proud of him, especially considering he’s twice as old as most of the young recruits with whom he trained.  Victoria is there, and she’s going to be able to drive him to his next assignment at Fort Lee, outside of Richmond, Virginia.

And finally, today I finished reading devotionally through the Bible.  It has taken me exactly 3 1/2 years.  I started with Genesis 1:1 on January 24, 2006.  My practice regarding my morning devotional Bible reading is:

• Start reading where I left off the day before
• Start with Genesis and work my way toward Revelation
• Read until I find the verse God has for me for the day
• Be unconcerned about speed with which I read through the Bible
• Try to note in my journal the verse or truth I want to take into the day.

So I’ve walked through the Bible from January 24, 2006 to July 24, 2009.  Tomorrow I’ll start back at Genesis 1:1!

This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

 I’m in Ohio at my denominational convention, but I’m a little distracted by a writing deadline and by sermon preperation.  Here’s a story I was working on tonight.  It’s about the very last of the 9000 hymns that came from the pen of Charles Wesley, the Sweet Singer of Methodism.

Charles started writing verses immediately upon his conversion and during his lifetime he composed nearly 9,000 hymns—probably more than anyone else in history.  His associate, Henry Moore, described him this way:  “When he was nearly eighty he rode a little horse, grey with age….  Even in the height of summer he was dressed in winter clothes.  As he jogged leisurely along, he jotted down any thoughts that struck him.  He kept a card in his pocket for this purpose, on which he wrote his hymn in shorthand.  Not infrequently he has come to our house in City Road, and, having left the pony in the garden in front, he would enter, crying out, ‘Pen and ink!  Pen and ink!’  These being supplied he wrote the hymn he had been composing.” 

Despite the incredible quantity of his hymns, there remained a depth of quality that astounds us today, with hymns like:  “And Can it Be,” “O, For a Thousand Tongues,” “Rejoice the Lord is King,” the Easter anthem “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” and the Christmas carol “Hark!  The Herald Angels Sing.”  In addition, Charles joined his brother John in traveling from one end of Britain to the other as open-air evangelists and as founders of the Methodist movement. 

Charles’ last hymn was composed on Saturday, March 29, 1788, the day he died. 

In January of that year, he’d found himself too weak for even short rides.  In February, he’d been confined to bed.  He was in no pain and showed no signs of specific illness; he was just worn out physically.  On March 29, he composed this one-verse hymn, “In Age and Feebleness Extreme,” and, too weak to write it down, dictated it to his wife Sally.  He slipped into unconsciousness.  As his daughter Sarah held his hand, the great Charles Wesley caught a smile from God and dropped into eternity.

In age and feebleness extreme,
Who shall a helpless worm redeem?
Jesus, my only hope Thou art,
Strength of my failing flesh and heart:
O could I catch one smile from Thee,
And drop into eternity!

This week I’m at our denomination convention in Cincinnati.  I think the best part of these annual gatherings is being with some of the friends one has acquired over the years.  Friends are people with whom we share a common history and a compatible chemistry.  Of the billions of people on this planet, our lives have intersected in some way; and it’s made a lasting impression.  Even when seeing some of our friends only once a year, we can pick up where we left off — somehow it’s a permanent bond, and an eternal one.  I’ve wondered tonight if this might be the last time I see some of my friends this side of heaven; with others, I’ve wondered if they may re-enter my life with greater frequency. 

Someone once said, “It takes a long time to grow an old friend.” 

Funny thing is, I’m even getting to be friends with some people whom I once rather disliked.  It’s a little scary.  I wonder who has changed—them or me?

Tomorrow—Sunday, July 19—I’ll be in Columbus, Ohio, at Hillview FWB Church in the morning services and at Heritage FWB Church in the evening.  If you live in the Columbus area, come on out!  Jeff Nichols will be ably filling the pulpit at The Donelson Fellowship where we’re continuing our 100-vese project by looking at Ephesians 5:18-20.

Today I want to post a last word from Andrew Murray on the subject of humility.  Murray suggests that the blessings of perfect peace and overflowing joy are sometimes like charming objects behind a department store window.  We’d like to reach out and grasp them, but there’s a thick sheet of plate glass in the way.  And that plate glass represents pride.  

“Humility,” wrote Murray, “is simply the disposition which prepares the soul for living on trust.”  Pride refuses to let God be what He is and must be—our All in All.  Humility, on the other hand, “is the secret of the truest happiness, of a joy that nothing can destroy.”
 
“We shall find that the deepest humility is the secret of the truest happiness, of a joy that nothing can destroy.”