Victory in Truth

My friend just won the Siberian National Agility Dog show. Won! First place in the nation! She is one of the nicest young ladies I know, so I am very pleased for her. She posted many scenes of her Siberian husky playing in the snow, the first snow that particular ambassador of the ancient breed of snow dogs had seen. Snow even before Reformation Day! That is early! (We don't celebrate Halloween so I prefer to try to marginalize it as much as possible and note instead that it is indeed the anniversary of Martin Luther's brave posting of the 95 thesis on the Church door to protest church abuse. He was a lone voice, finally excommunicated for his persistence, but he refused to not voice what he believed was right.)

However, this post is not about Reformation Day, but about being early. All over the northeast, people were saying it was too early for snow, especially snow in this amount. My friend's pictures showed her Siberian frolicking in drifts a foot deep!

While reading about the snow, I found an allusion to Daylight Saving Time ending on Saturday night. I was surprised the paper hadn't mentioned it, but nonetheless, told my family we could all sleep in an extra hour on Sunday morning. Then I went about setting all the clocks back an hour. On Sunday morning, I got up a little later than usual and noticed the atomic clock in the kitchen, a gift of my gadget crazy Dad, still thought it was an hour later.
"That's odd," I thought. I found the set time button, and set it an hour back. It registered the new time, and I made coffee. Then I glanced back at the atomic clock. It had reset itself to an hour ahead. Doesn't it recognize Daylight Saving Time, I wondered?

Then I looked at my phone. It also, like the clock, was still an hour ahead.
"You were supposed to fall back an hour!" I laughed at my phone scornfully, "And you think you are so smart!"
Next, I settled at the computer to write my blog, and noticed the computer also claimed it was still an hour ahead.
"This is strange," I said, in the cold dark morning, "Why don't the machines automatically register the new time?"
I went outside and got the paper. No headline about the time change. Had the reporters forgotten to warn their readers about the time change? This was a first!
Now, a little worried for my sanity, I did an internet search of time change in 2011. I saw again the chart that had told me it was Oct. 30, 2011.
"Is this 2011?" I asked myself, "I think it is...in fact I am almost certain it is."
I turned on the television. The little clock in the corner of the screen, like all the deluded machines in our home, had forgotten to fall back an hour. The news people, uncharacteristically on this day, were not chiding their audience for getting up early and forgetting to fall back and get that happy extra hour of sleep.
I was frantic by now, certain I had lost my mind.
I woke Arvo up.
"I think we missed church," I said.
"Why?" he mumbled.
"I don't think we were supposed to set the clocks back."
He did a quick internet check and told me, "They fall back next weekend."

We didn't make church worship service, but we did get there in time for the adult class afterwards and Asherel's youth group. Our teacher is doing a fascinating and well considered study on the logical basis for faith. He is an extremely intelligent and well read man, and I am loving the class. One of his points he made yesterday is that a common mistake of proving anything is that we often start with the premise we want to prove, and only see "facts" that support that premise, or even worse, manipulate facts to support that premise. Sometimes we become so caught up in believing the truth of a false premise, that we refuse to relinquish our position, even in the face of overwhelming evidence otherwise. I thought of my morning fighting the clocks in our home, trying to reset them when they knew they were not supposed to fall back for a week. I was completely convinced the clocks all over the world were wrong, and I was the only poor soul who was going to know what time it was that day.

My teacher was demonstrating how the theory of evolution, despite insolvable flaws and evidence to the contrary, continues to be the dominant theory of how life evolved. It is always hard to believe that intelligent, dedicated masses of people could be so wrong, but from my research and study of the evidence, it sure looks wrong to me. Where are the transitional fossils, how does one explain "irreducibly complex" structures like the Krebs cycle or the mammalian eye which had to appear all at once intact or have no possible way of working? How did matter arise out of nothing if the universe had a beginning (Big Bang) and if it didn't have a beginning, why haven't the stars all burned out?  I sat in the class, and remembered my morning spent convinced that Daylight Saving Time had arrived, despite all the evidence that it had not.

When I was finally ready to concede that Daylight Saving Time would not arrive for a week, I had a new dilemma. Should I set every one of our multitudinous clocks in our home back to the correct time...or just let them be wrong for a week? I decided to set them to the correct time. I thought it was important that there be victory in truth.

Psalm 25:5

⁵ Guide me in your truth and teach me,
   for you are God my Savior,
   and my hope is in you all day long.

Emoticons for Dummies

"How far should we expect a 65 cm trebuchet to shoot?" I asked the Science Olympiad internet forum. We had had a good trebuchet last year, but this year the size changed so we decided to cut ours down rather than totally rebuild. It was not shooting projectiles as far as last year, but it was smaller. I had no idea if our distances were competitive or not.
I received an answer: for the smallest counterweight, .5 kg., we could expect optimally a 20- 30 meter shot.
I blinked morosely at the computer. How could I ever tell my team? We were lucky to get 2 meters. How would we get ten times that amount? Should I tell them, I wondered.

At our trebuchet meeting, I decided it was early enough in the season that if we had to rebuild, we could. So I told them.
"And then," I said, "I told the forum I sure hoped they were joking."
"Did the message he sent you have a colon and a p at the end?" asked Asherel.
For those of you who need visuals, this looks like this:  (:p)

This is called an "emoticon" for those of you who don't have teenagers or are still living in the 19th century when people used words and vocal cords and facial expressions to convey human emotion.
"Well, yes!" I exclaimed, wondering how Asherel could have surmised what emoticon the message contained.
"That's the sign that he was joking. Oh good grief, Mom!"

Later as we were driving to her volunteer work at a nearby horsefarm, she started quizzing me.
"Do you know what a colon, slash symbol means?( :/)"
"Surprise?"
"Well yes, sort of...more like sadness. How about a semicolon parenthesis? ;)"
"That's easy, a wink."
"Mom, you really need to do a google search and study these."
"Most of them are commonsense."
"Yes, but good grief, you didn't know the forum messenger was joking."
"Don't you want to zone out with your headphone and iPod music like you usually do?"
"No, this is too important. You have to know this stuff."

Later my dad and I were discussing the origin of the universe. This is always good for raising my blood pressure a few points. My Dad ascribes to the theory that given an infinite amount of time, a monkey could write the entire work of Shakespeare randomly. I have heard this argument before- it is quite famous. However, mathematicians say that unless there is a sequence constraint at which a certain sequence of letters must first make sense, after which the monkeys can move on to the next sequence, such a task would require infinite monkeys with infinite time, and even then the probability is so low that it is certainly not possible if the universe had a beginning, or really, even if it didn't. It cannot be proven either- the so called research on this involved constrained sequences of information. That is cheating. The constraint requires intervention by Someone. Supposedly, the monkey believers are trying to write Someone out of the equation.

Then we moved on to stars. I had just heard a very interesting lecture that if the galaxy were infinitely old then due to the second law of thermodynamics, everything would tend to lose energy, to go to a steady state...and thus all those hots spots in the universe would have to have burned out. There would be no stars. This is partially why scientists believe the universe must have had a beginning.

And then of course, one has to ask, if the universe had a beginning, who began it? And who began the Beginner? Something or someone has to be infinite...but science seems to indicate it cannot be the universe.

I do expect a counter argument from my Dad, and I will let him have the last word. I can't take time to research monkeys or stars anymore. I have a whole list of emoticons my daughter wants me to memorize and the test is on Monday.

Genesis 1: 16-17
¹⁶ God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. ¹⁷ God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth,

Romans 1:20

²⁰ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

The Blossoming Weed

Poinsettias get a bad rap.... alot like pitbulls. Poinsettias are not toxic...or at least not as deadly toxic as rumor has it. They have some sort of substance that is irritating to skin, but you won't likely die from munching on their leaves. (Not that I would recommend it.)

I had been curious how Poinsettias had come to symbolize Christmas. I love origins, tracing words, customs, creation back as far as we can and trying to understand the source from which we sprang....or sprung. (?)  The poinsettia, which grows wild in Mexico, became associated with Christmas in the 16th century. The legend says a poor child, too impoverished to buy a gift for the baby Jesus celebration in her church was told to gather weeds from the roadside to place as altar decoration. The weeds blossomed into vibrant red and the beautiful Poinsettia has graced church altars and homes at Xmas time ever since. There are a few problems with this story though. The red leaves are not "blossoms", they are leaves. The blossoms are actually the more subtle little yellow centers.

The more obvious problem is that who in their right mind would tell a child, "Go gather some dusty old weeds from the roadside to celebrate the most profound event of all time."?  It smacks of urban legend from the get go, doesn't it? But we all love those kinds of stories, where out of nothing, wondrous things are produced. The rags to riches stories of the world. And the Poinsettia abounds in those images- it must have darkness for extended periods or the beautiful red leaves will not develop. The most dramatic of plants, it begins life as a green weed.

I think we all yearn for those kinds of stories because at their heart, they reflect the one story that trumps all the others. The one story that matters most.  A little baby that was lucky not to have frozen to death was born to poor, humble parents amid great scandal in a no-nothing town. Completely surprising everyone, He grew to change the course of History. He, like the Poinsettia, grew to manhood in the dark and obscure corner of the world to suddenly spring forth as the light of the world. Rather than red blossoms or even leaves adorning His magnificence, He wore a crown of thorns and drops of red blood that were shed for me...for you.... for all of us.

I like the transforming nature of the Poinsettia. It gives me hope. I am usually more like a weed, and I don't love those periods of darkness in my life. But the lesson of the Poinsettia is the lesson of Jesus. Out of the darkness, God made a Light to guide us - and when we walk in the Light, we enter the presence of blossoming Glory.

Deuteronomy 5:23
²³ When you heard the voice out of the darkness, while the mountain was ablaze with fire, all the leaders of your tribes and your elders came to me. ²⁴ And you said, “The LORD our God has shown us his glory and his majesty, and we have heard his voice from the fire. Today we have seen that a person can live even if God speaks with them.

Isaiah 42:16
I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.