Biblical Illuminations

Just a Pawn - A Short Sermon llustration about God's Love

In http://www.biblical-illuminations.com/2008_Apr/cosmic_chess.asp a previous entry, I wrote about chess, and compared the universe to an enormous chess game. An excellent chess player makes moves that are incomprehensible to me because I don't understand all the complexities of the game. The universe is infinitely more complex than a chess game, but fortunately, God is infinitely wiser than the best chess player, and we should not be at all surprised when we don't understand the "moves" He's making. As I think about chess, and how a novice plays it (and when I speak of novices, I'm thinking primarily of myself!), a novice player will often treat his pawns as though they are unimportant. He will throw them in the path of other pieces in orde

A Greater Strategist Than The Best Chess Player

If you've ever played chess, you know it's a very complicated game. If you want to be good at the game, you have to be able to look at the entire board, recognize a variety of possibilities, and see several moves aheain. An excellent chess player has to see all sixty-four squares and all the pieces on the board. An excellent chess player won't move his bishop and think: "I moved my bishop there because it puts his king in check." Instead, an excellent chess player will be thinking: "I moved my bishop there because it puts his king in check, blocks him from moving his knight where he wants to, protects my queen, opens up space to move my rook, and sets me up to take his bishop two moves down the road." When I'm watching an excellent chess player in a

Mister Rogers Neighborhood - A Lesson On Character

Last week I did something I never do: I turned on my television in the middle of the day to see what was on. Now I remember why I never do that. Although, as I was flipping through the channels I saw a face that was very familiar from my childhood: Fred Rogers. Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was one of those shows I watched faithfully when I was a little child, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it's still being aired after all these years. So I decided to sit down and watch it, and see how my perceptions of the show would change since my childhood days. Mister Rogers was talking about music that day, and he told his "neighbors" that he wanted to take us to meet a friend of his, who was a professional musician. Off we went,

Pre-Written Obituaries and Celebrity Death

Celebrity death has been in the news quite a bit lately, with both Brad Renfro and Heath Ledger dying in the past week. Two very young actors. I think it's interesting that Associated Press and other news services have pre-written obituaries for a handful of very famous people. They are mostly well known people who are either quite old or quite ill, and whose lifetime accomplishments are mostly behind them. If the obituary is pre-written, when they die, AP can just write one last paragraph with death details, and then post the whole thing online. Of course, it's not worth the hassle if they have to keep updating it, which is why they only have obituaries on file for a small handful of people. I think it's interesting that Britney Spears has made

Moral Values Begin With The Small Things

If moral values don't begin with the small things, they never go anywhere. I begin my story today with three parties who shall remain anonymous, to protect the guilty. I shall refer to them as Mr. X, Pastor Y, and Organization Z. Mr. X is running for a political office from the State of Maine. Pastor Y is a pastor here in Maine, who apparently runs an organization (Organization Z) devoted to conservative Christian values and social/political action. Pastor Y is also a spammer. His organization sends me spam on two of my email accounts - both of which are publicly posted on the internet, and which I never use to sign up for email lists. I never asked to receive email from him, yet I receive it anyway. Twice. This, by definition, make

Why The Law Then? An illustration of Galatians 3:19

A few years ago I had an interesting incident occur at our youth group. One night while the teens were playing a game out in the field, two of the girls decided to go visit a relative who lived within walking distance of the church. And they left without either asking permission, or telling anyone they were going. Now, we have a policy that we don't permit teens to leave youth group unless they have permission given by parent/guardian or the parent/guardian comes to pick them up. So I wasn't happy when I realized these girls had taken off. When they returned, I approached them and asked "Where have you been?" One of the girls replied, "Oh, we were just over on the other side of the building." The thing that was ironic about this was, if they

Love God with your Whole Heart: an Illustration for Deut 6:5

Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ~ Deut 6:5 Deuteronomy 6:5 If you've ever been to Camp Fairhaven, you've probably met Dunkin. Dunkin is not a person, he's a dog. He belongs to Dave, who is currently one of the directors at the camp. I've never seen a dog quite like Dunkin. I've never seen a dog so devoted to his master. If Dave is in the camp office, Dunkin will stand just outside the office door and stare at him. Doesn't matter if Dave is in there for three hours; Dunkin is content to stare for three hours. Dunkin follows Dave everywhere. Once, when Dave ended up on the opposite side of the lake from Dunkin, Dunkin didn't wait for Dave to come get him - he s

Philippians 4:8 Illustration - Squirrels and Campers

At Camp Fairhaven, there is a lake right in the middle of the camp. There are two sets of cabins and lodges on either side of the lake. One is the boy's side, the other is the girl's side. This year, things were different than they have been in the past; this year they couldn't get enough staff to run both sides of the camp, so they moved the boys to the girls side, and left the boys side deserted. With one exception. Since they were using all the cabins on the girls side, they put me, the Bible teacher, on the other side of the camp. I felt like I was living in a ghost town! But the camp was NOT deserted. It was overrun with squirrels. These squirrels were the boldest animals I've ever seen. They would scurry up the walls of my cabin, they w

Love God with your whole heart, mind, and soul - Matt 22:37

Last week I spent a night in the emergency room at Franklin Memorial Hospital (Farmington, ME). Turns out I have gallstones. The doctor discussed with me my options, considering that I wanted to finish out my summer of camp ministry before having surgery. My main issue is, I need to spend the summer on a very low fat diet. In other words, no camp food. I find, though, that people tend to misunderstand what I mean when I tell them I'm on a low fat diet. When people think "low fat diet", they think of someone trying to lose weight or lower cholesterol. And when that's the purpose of your diet, it's okay if you splurge once in awhile. If you eat healthy all week, you could have pizza for one meal, and then go back to eating healthy. That is not

Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere

My neighbors have an orange tiger cat, that lives on the porch, and thinks that it belongs to me, instead of them. No kidding. Part of the reason for that is probably the fact that they have a pre-school age daughter, and (I would imagine) she's a bit rough on the cat. I, on the other hand, always stop to pet the cat when I walk by, so it's natural that the cat would enjoy my company. During the winter months, particularly when it's very cold outside, the cat more or less lives in front of my door. Either that or he has very good ears, and can hear me coming, so he's always there when I start to open the door. I've never let the cat inside my house, and yet, the cat seems to think it really wants to be inside with me. A couple da