A loooooooooong time ago

I was explaining to the children how God has always existed. 

He was there 100 years ago... A thousand years ago... A million... A billion... A trillion...

5 year old: an octillion

7 year old: a googolplex,*

Wasn't expecting that 😆

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*Fortunately I did know this was a real number! Didn't know how big, so I've just looked it up. It's 10¹⁰¹⁰⁰, which means that the mass of the books needed to write the number down would be many times the mass of the visible universe. Fairly large, then.

Analogies are not (necessarily) heresy

Wrote this aaaages ago - finally got round to finishing and posting.

From time to time, people claim that this analogy or that analogy of the Trinity gives the wrong idea of God, or is even heretical. I'm sure that's sometimes true. But sometimes I think it's just that the people criticising it are trying to make an analogy do more than it's meant to.

For example, take the triangle. People say it's a bad way to explain the Trinity because each member of the Trinity is fully God, whereas each side of a triangle is not a triangle. But, I don't think it's bad, just - like all analogies - incomplete. It would only be a bad analogy if you were saying that a triangle says everything that's to be said about how the Trinity relates - and that's not how analogies work.

Craft we made, based on these instructions.

 

I have used the triangle analogy in Sunday school. I'm teaching people who may not yet even know that Jesus is God. So all the analogy is meant to say is that:

• The trinity is a thing.
• There is one God, made of three people, (who are all God).
• They are the Father, the Son (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit.

It's true in what it intends to teach - it's not the last word on the subject.

Actually, it's the same with the analogies of Jesus which are used in the Bible. He is variously described as our father, future husband, brother, master, shepherd, a lamb, a vine, a gate, bread, water, light... If you took any of those to extremes you could easily make a heresy. And some of them are mutually contradictory.

 

But the point is that Jesus - who is far more than we could ever understand - is a little bit like all those things (and the context usually makes it clear in what way).

Here's a quote:

We have to think about Christ using ideas and images, but if we put our trust in these symbols, rather than in the One they symbolize, we will be making a big mistake. [...] By using more than one image for God, we remind ourselves that any image we use is only temporary; it must be corrected and relieved by other images. These images serve our minds; they do not save our souls. A fork is not food.

~Michael Ward, The Narnia Code

Unusual menu item

A good reminder

"Nothing is wasted

Nothing is wasted

In the hands of our redeemer

Nothing is wasted"

~Jason Gray

Clever business card

Came across this old business card for a restaurant.

Tasty leftovers

Leftover cabbage, fried up with bacon. A few splashes of soy sauce. On granary bread. 

Wasn't sure what it would be like, but definitely worth repeating.

[Edit: also works with broccoli]

Pillars

I liked this quote about pillars in the Bible - both literal stone monuments, and the pillar of fire & cloud that the Israelites followed in the desert.

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” 1 Samuel 7:12

"In your own life, there are, no doubt, “pillars” that point you backward, reminding you of what God has done before and what he can do again. You need that. Those are reassuring and give us the confidence to keep walking. 

By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light  Exodus 13:21

"The pillar of fire, though, is scary. It points you onward, and, like your ancestors in their journey, it gives you only enough light to see just ahead. You will see that the light goes out into the wilderness with you, but often these times will feel to you confusing and disorienting. You will feel lost. Only in retrospect, if at all, will you see what God was doing. The temptation at the moment, though, will be to pitch the tent in place and look to the pillar of memory rather than to follow the pillar of glory. The light is there, though; the cloud is overhead. Moreover, this pillar of glory is not really a “thing,” but a person. Where it is pointing you to is the final New Jerusalem, which has “no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Rev. 21:23). The Lamb is the Light. The pillar of fire and cloud still leads on."

~Russell Moore