Cornerstone is running a special on little girls this month!  (See two posts below.) Caitlin was born yesterday and is looking forward to meeting her church family.

“Let the little children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.”

—The Lord Jesus, referring to children raised in the covenant of God

Someone once said, “Babies are such a nice way to start people.” And they are!  As Sophia Hawthorne — wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne (the author) — once observed, “How pleasant it is to see a human countenance which cannot be insincere.” She said this while commenting on her infant daughter Rose’s smile.

The next time you see a new human being, marvel again at the eternal, inexhaustible glory of God.  God made humanity in his own image, and we’ve not yet seen all the ways that image can be reflected upon, known, and enjoyed.  He is, after all, an infinite God.

Mike Mason said it best:  “A child is a revelation from God.  Prophets receive visions, mystics ponder the ineffable, great preachers deliver God’s word.  But the greatest revelation comes through flesh and blood.  Every child is a fresh, unheard–of image of God, and children keep coming and coming because the world has not yet conceived of all the fullness of God’s glory.”

In our “Faith” studies we’ve been hammering away on the goodness of all the “stuff” of creation.  Christianity is not a gnostic religion.  Are you familiar with gnosticism?

Gnosticism was an early heresy that denied the fundamental goodness of creation.  The gnostics taught that this world was not created by the Supreme Good God, but by an evil, rebellious, “lesser” deity.  And so the world that this “lesser” god made was an evil place… a prison from which we need to be rescued.

For the gnostics, salvation consisted of withdrawing and detaching one’s self from this evil world.  And if you withdraw and detach yourself sufficiently from the “stuff” of this world, then you can achieve a sort of mystical/spiritual union with the Supreme Good God.  And that’s how you achieve salvation.

As I said — heresy.  This teaching declares outright war on everything that the Bible has to say about this life and this world.

Consider what Paul says in 1 Timothy 4.1–5.  He says that it is a departure from the Christian faith (in fact, he says it’s the teaching of deceitful demons!) to withdraw and detach one’s self from a world “that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.”

And then he says this:  (Someone once called it a “manifesto.”) “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.”

And then in verse 6 Paul tells Timothy that IF he drives this particular point home to the believers whom he serves (as their pastor), THEN he “will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed.”

It’s very plain.  False teachers accuse / malign / incriminate / denounce / blame / besmirch God’s creation (or some parts of God’s creation).  Faithful believers declare the GOODNESS of God’s creation.

In fact, right here we find one of the great reminders of the world of difference between Christianity and every other religion, worldview, opinion, or philosophy that you could line up against it.

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Baby Hannah was born yesterday!  We look forward to seeing her at Cornerstone soon.

“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.”
–Psalm 127.3

Gardiner Spring — a Presbyterian pastor who died in 1873 — once said this about these little images of God:

“The poorest, the weakest, the simplest child, is born for immortality.  This value outweighs the entire material universe, no matter how small a mark this child makes on it.  The tiniest infant owns a deathless intellect, and is as immortal as the Father of spirits.  No one can tell what this child will become.”

We’re glad to meet you, Hannah!

Why is this world here?  How did it get here?  What are we supposed to be doing here?  Why is this world so messed up?  Why are we so messed up?  Can anything be done to fix this mess?  Is there a purpose to all of this?

These are some of humanity’s most fundamental questions, and we’ll be dealing with them in our new sermon series, as we work our way through the first eleven chapters of Genesis.

And, yes, that is a smear of blood.  Because in the beginning something went wrong.  And someone’s going to have to pay for it.

My first introduction to the world of the Vikings came from Hagar the Horrible (at the same time that Beetle Bailey was introducing me to the army and Redeye was introducing me to Indians).  Then came the Minnesota football team.  And then somewhere along the way I dipped into Viking story books.  Only the ones with cool pictures, mind you.

But eventually — if one keeps pursuing these kinds of interests long enough — one finds that reality is so much more interesting than Hagar, Beetle, or Redeye ever let on.  Consider the background of how the Vikings took up the Christian faith.

In 793 AD, after the Vikings raided a monastery, the scholar Alcuin of York wrote: “Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race.  Behold, the church of Saint Cuthbert, splattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of all its ornaments; a place more venerable than all in Britain is given as a prey to pagan peoples.”

The Viking attacks on Christian churches and monasteries became so frequent that one monk wrote: “Everywhere the Christians are victims of massacres, burnings and plunderings. The Vikings conquer all in their path, and no one resists them. Oh God deliver us, deliver us from the fury of the Northmen!!” And soon all of Europe was praying this prayer with him.

Yet, it was through these very raids that God began a centuries–long process of introducing the Vikings to Christ.

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