Good afternoon, Zane.
Any time now, our good friends, Elvin and Eunice will roll into our driveway. We will spend some time together preparing to participate in a memorial service on Saturday for another old college friend—Mick Owings.
I’m sure you’ve noticed that the New Testament reading for today includes one of the most well-known verses of the Bible—John 3:16. Would to God that it was as well-embraced and practiced as it is well-known. To be sure, it’s just as true and relevant today as it was when Jesus uttered it nearly two centuries ago!
Have a great day. Love and prayers—Tua (Ray)
I can identify with Nicodemas’ question and exclamation. My mind seems to ask that question very often about lots of things. How do birds and fish know when and where to migrate? How does a spider spin a web and know how and where to place it? How does the digestive track in my own body know how to process food and distribute nutrition to where it needs to go? How does this computer work? How can multiple 2-way conversations and transmissions of data pass through one little wire?—or without a wire? I could go on and on. Just because of my inability to comprehend so many things, I will not reject their reality. I’m quite happy to eat my breakfast fruit salad and exercise the power of this computer even though I don’t perfectly understand how it all works.
I don’t know if this is true or not, but I have heard of the existence of a group calling themselves THE FLAT EARTH SOCIETY. Well, why not check it out? I just did by “googling” that title. Sure enough—it’s true! There they are! In rejection of all the scientific knowledge available today, they still insist that the earth is flat. I want to exclaim again, “How can this be?!?”
That is no more foolish than the person who rejects the reality and need of the NEW BIRTH on the basis of it sounding too strange or it not being compatible with their background experience and mindset. I recommend that we respond to this concept the same way we do our computers or our digestion—that we accept it and use it and be benefitted by it to the full.
There’s a very encouraging piece of good news resident in John 19:39. It implies that Nicodemas went on to become genuinely BORN AGAIN. He wisely did not reject what he could not perfectly comprehend.