Hymn for Thought

This is an ongoing feature here at the Texas Cru Blog. Our faith has a rich history, a deeply meaningful past, which is well reflected in the hymns of the church. The poetic and complex nature of these songs of praise pull us outside of our tiny indivdualized worlds into the very heavens in which God resides. It's the stuff of romance. Read the words; once, twice, three times over. Take some time to meditate. Take a second to write a comment: what do these words mean to you?

THY MERCY MY GOD
the words of John Stocker

Thy mercy my God is the theme of my song
The joy of my heart and the boast of my tongue
Thy free grace alone, from the first to the last
Hath won my affection and bound my soul fast


Without Thy sweet mercy I could not live here
Sin soon would reduce me to utter despair
But through Thy free goodness my spirits revive
And He that first made me still keeps me alive


Thy mercy is more than a match for my heart
Which wonders to feel its own hardness depart
Dissolved by Thy goodness, I fall to the ground
And weep to the praise of the mercy I've found


Great Father of mercies! Thy goodness I own
And the covenant love of Thy crucified Son
All praise to the Spirit whose whisper divine
Seals mercy and pardon and righteousness mine!

Jesus and QED

The Light (Part 5)
by Cabe Matthews

What Joseph is talking about in his post is Quantum Electrodynamics (QED). It is the quantum study of electromagnetic interactions, and if you look it up on the internet and try to figure it out it should completely blow your mind. It’s the process of these virtual photons in QED being exchanged that makes chemistry work and even stranger processes (Quantum Chromodynamics) that actually hold nuclei of atoms, and even protons and neutrons themselves together. These sciences consist of many results that are difficult to visualize, and a number of equations that are literally impossible to solve exactly.

A lot of people have devoted their lives to the study of QED and related subjects, but no one really understands it all completely. There are a plethora of good ideas and methods in physics that work well with experiment, but as a whole modern quantum theory doesn’t really jive well with gravity quite like it should the way we currently understand it, and there are a number of other questions that are also left unanswered. QED itself is actually the simplest of all quantum field theories, but everyone pretty much agrees that the knowledge that we have of it is incomplete and imperfect, and although one day we as humans may be able to understand QED, we won’t ever completely understand the ways of our God.

The great physicist Richard Feynman (certainly one of the smartest men to have lived in the last 100 years) once said, “Nobody understands quantum theory”, and I think this is also very true of God. I think the biggest problems occur when people decide that they have God and His will figured out. If someone thinks they have God figured out then they can’t be taught, not by God or anyone. This is because if they think that way then in their heads they are basically in a position in their lives where God doesn’t really have anything to offer them. They kind of know everything and have it figured out, and whether they appear to be the best church going Christian ever or not they are effectively living as an atheist. They don’t need God because they are smart enough to be their own God.

They can also do another dangerous thing. Since they have God figured out and they know everything then of course they can take God and tack Him onto their own agenda. The name of God can be used to improve their position in society, support what might otherwise be an unpopular decision or just make them feel right all the time and better than everyone else around them.

I think when you really boil it down this is the biggest problem that people like Job’s Friends and the Pharisees and David Koresh and Hitler and Medieval Crusaders and even I ever have had. We tend to put God in a box and pull Him out to show everyone only when it’s beneficial to us. This is really stupid because I don’t think a god small enough to fit in the box I often try to keep him in would be enough to come up with the ideas that form the basis of physics or light or grasshoppers or mountains.

So a creation that at the most fundamental level is not understood by the most intelligent of humans must by logical necessity have been created by a being of considerably more complexity and beauty than that which He created. It is when we step back and admire this beauty of God and embrace the fact that we’ll never really understand Him at all that we are being the people who he made us to be – people who simply stand (and live) in awe of Him.

Light is often used in the Bible as a metaphor for a number of things, and one of them is truth and honesty. If you are “in the light” – in Christ, that is – then you will be honest about how much, or rather how little you really know.

That’s worship.

Pass Christian

by Jason Stenhouse

I was in Pass Christian, Mississippi this weekend, helping some people clean up the destruction brought by Hurricane Katrina. My thoughts have been a jumble these past few days as I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what it is that I just took in. I have seen, though, a common thread running through my haphazard experiences and impressions. I have been reminded that God is faithful.

This year I have been trying to read the entire Bible, but I haven’t been keeping up with it. My Bible tells me that it is September 6th, but today is really October 30th. I’m a little behind. It’s good though, because God often orders things in a specific way, so that He may speak to us. He brought me to the book of Joel today. I don’t know of any other book that is more fitting theme-wise for our experience over the weekend.

Joel tells of a great day of judgment in Israel. A great army of locusts have come to destroy all that is green in Israel. “The great locusts have eaten…The vine is dried up and the fig tree is withered; the pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree—all the trees of the field—are dried up. Surely the joy of mankind is withered away” (1:4, 12). The people are mourning, for there is nothing left. I find that these locusts are a great picture for Katrina and the destruction that she has caused down on the coast. There is almost nothing left in Pass Christian except maybe a sense of sorrow. It is as if a nuclear bomb went off, bringing everything down.

But in the midst of all this, Joel proclaims a message of hope: “‘Even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning…’ and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (2:12, 32). And with this salvation, “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten…You will have plenty to eat, until you are full, and you will praise the name of the Lord your God, who has worked wonders for you; never again will my people be shamed” (2:25, 26). What truth, that in all this sorrow and destruction God is still calling out to all who would come to Him. He is just screaming, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). There is hope in every situation, even in the dimmest of places; even in Pass Christian.