Dear Astronomy,

So get this: Astronomy is a 3 credit gen ed... and I've put ALMOST more time into homework and preparation for tests than I did for my Arabic classes. It's a bit out of control.

What I do appreciate about the class is the learning curve. I have not learned this much "new information" so systematically for some time. Planets, moons, their cycles and phases, our sun, our solar system, the galaxies... orbits, revolution, and rotation... this class is info overload!

An interesting thing Dr. Trapp said in class the other day is that Astronomers can see approximately 5% of the universe. When we asked him how they knew it was "5%" if they can't see the entirety of it in order to know what fraction they see... he had a pretty decent answer which I can't really remember.

So when I read this today, I was humbled--to say the least:

"Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with
the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the
dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the
scales and the hills in a balance?" -- Isaiah 40:12

God is more majestic than I know Him to be. My sin is so often a result of not viewing Him rightly. Jesus is what my soul craves, and the only one capable of fully satisfying these cravings for pleasure and joy!

May I see myself in light of God's vastness and be humbled. May I then see the greater glory of the slaughtered Lamb--Jesus Christ--and be spurred to live to make this glory known and magnified.

Imperfection: Part واحد

واحد means "one". Part I.

Tim Keller once said, "Christianity is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints."

This is a fair comment on the "sickness" and "disease" I so clearly perceive in myself every day. A peculiar hospital it is... for indeed, Christ has made me well! "For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified" Hebrews 10:14

Yet my sickness is ever with me. If holiness is to be pursued and grown in, why is it that my sin is ever-more apparent to me?

What is more, He has declared me to be a Saint. So what does Keller mean? Why not display the saints for one to admire? Because the saint-hood of anyone is not their doing. The glory is not in sainthood, but in the One who exchanged His holiness, perfection, and spotlessness for our depravity which enables us to do nothing but sin.

This is the glory that reigns and will be at center-stage for eternity: the glory of the grace of the Lamb who was slain.

Two reasons we don't need this museum:

1. Saints still sin
2. The glory of sainthood is merely a reflection of Christ's glorious grace

The reason Jesus doesn't need a museum:

• Museums are for dead people; Jesus is alive.

You can see the way I change

A new swag, new walk, new focus...
It's all Christ--not me--no boastin.



Romans 12:2 "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind."

Don't waste your life

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Jesus said, whoever drinks the water that I give him will never thirst again.

seeking satisfaction?

"Men are in a restless pursuit after satisfaction in earthly things. They will exhaust themselves in the deceitful delights of sin, and, finding them all to be vanity and emptiness, they will become very perplexed and disappointed. But they will continue their fruitless search. Though wearied, they still stagger forward under the influence of spiritual madness, and though there is no result to be reached except that of everlasting disappointment, yet they press forward. They have no forethought for their eternal state; the present hour absorbs them. They turn to another and another of earth's broken cisterns, hoping to find water where not a drop was ever discovered yet."
--C.H. Spurgeon