Journal Notes

This Thursday is the National Day of Prayer. In 1952 President Truman signed the bill into law which created a National Day of Prayer. In 1988 President Reagan set the date as the first Thursday in May. On April 15 of this year, federal judge Barbara Crabb declared the 1952 law unconstitutional. The government has appealed this decision. In the meantime, President Obama will issue a proclaimation calling for a National Day of Prayer.

I don't think prayer is something that comes easy for any of us. Even Luther struggled with prayer at times. He wrote to his friend Melancthon in 1521, 'I sit here like a fool and hardened in leisure, pray little, do not sigh for the church of God, yet burn in a big fire of my untamed body. In short I should be ardent in spirit, but I am ardent in the flesh, in lust, in laziness, leisure, and sleepiness.' Luther was a great pray-er but even he found it hard at times it sounds like.

I'm reading John Ortberg's 'Know Doubt'. He's one of my favorite authors because he writes from a common man point of view. I'm still early in the book but I want to share a few quick excerpts for your consideration:
'Those who believe they believe in God but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without dispair, believe only in the idea of God and not in God Himself.'
and
'Doubt is a good servant but a poor master.'
and one more...
'I would like some assurance that when they play taps over my body down here, Someone will be blowing reveille on the other side.'
lastly...
Ortberg quotes martin Luther, ' Faith is a free surrender and a joyous wager on the unseen, unknown, untested goodness of God.'

I read this week that researchers from Noah's Ark Ministries International believe they have found Noah's Ark. "The search team has made the greatest discovery in history. This finding is very important and the greatest up to now," said a team archaeologist, Prof. Oktay Belli, in an April 25 press conference. Although many "people have searched the mountain for the holy Ark," he added, this recent discovery "is the first serious search (and) that the team found a wood structure under ice." Makes me wonder, is science proving our beliefs again??? And how cool would it be if the picture below really is the ark and I'm looking at the same wall Noah did???


A Chinese explorer inside one of the wooden structures on Mt. Ararat. Credit: Noah's Ark Ministries International.

Going to go hear Ollie Olson lead a Bible study at Calvary Lutheran (a Keystone neighbor church) tonight. He does a great job and when he comes to town they get about 50 people or more in his class. Tonight's topic, The Revelation Churches of Philadelphia and Laodicia.