The indications of Providence

“I think you are not quite clear upon the indications of Providence, my dear brother. I don’t think we ought to wait for them. Our duty is to go forward and look for indications. In general I have observed that people who have sat long waiting have sat long enough before they saw any indication to go.” David Livingstone

Uncle Shigeo

Last Sunday, the 26th, in our Takase Church, Naho's Uncle, Shigeo Oyama, gave a good testimony to Christ's grace. His youngest sister, my wife's mother, Fumiko Kimura, became a Christian while she was in Junior High. Then little by little the Lord has been saving her family and relatives. Please pray that the Lord's shalom, salvation and grace would abound to Uncle Shigeo's family and his brothers. He is a member and leader of a church in Takamatsu, about 1 hour from us here in Takase.

The best weapon

"Prayer is the best weapon we possess, the key that opens the heart of God." Padre Pio

"Pray with out ceasing." 1 Thessalonians 5:13

Ill-taught piano students

“The church has spent so much time inculcating in us the fear of making mistakes that she has made us like ill-taught piano students: we play our songs, but we never really hear them because our main concern is not to make music but to avoid some flub that will get us in dutch.” Robert Farrar Capon

Sept. 25th, Setouchi International Art Festival- Ogijima

We road the ferry to Ogijima Island.

Naho's mother, Naho, Joshua, Shane, Hosahna and I enjoyed the art and the view of the Inland Sea.

The “You and I [Nawa] Ogijima Pillar 2010” designed by Mariyo Yagi.

Joshua noted that the feathers moved by a simple motor. Interesting.

*Please scroll down a little and read about the art festival.

It’s literally killing them

“They want love so bad, it’s literally killing them.” Henri Nouwen, having visited various ministries to AIDS patients

Sept. 19th, Sports Day!

At our children's school, we have a sports day annually.

Naho's mother, sister and niece joined us for the full four hours. And it was very hot.

Shane's (3rd grade) team won the relay!

Joshua (5th) did some ’construction calisthenics.' He also helped set up and clean up.

Daddy (52 yrs.) and Hoshana (2nd) did a tricycle race.

The sports day (Jpn: undokai) is a part of the national Japanese culture. It is a good way to spend time with the community and for me hopefully spread 'the fragrance of Christ.' Christians often have a difficulty joining this event because it is held on Sundays. We have chosen to have our worship in the evening so that we can join these events.

The message of ‘justification by faith only’ can be dangerous

“There is thus clearly a sense in which the message of ‘justification by faith only’ can be dangerous, and likewise with the message that salvation is entirely of grace…. I would say to all preachers: If your preaching of salvation has not been misunderstood in that way, then you had better examine your sermons again, and you had better make sure that you really are preaching salvation that is offered in the New Testament to the ungodly, to the sinner, to those who are enemies of God. There is this kind of dangerous element about the true presentation of the doctrine of salvation.” Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Doctor Lloyd-Jones was referring to Romans 5:20-6:2. "The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?"

The Final Hour- a sermon on the Passion

You have got to listen to Tim Keller's sermon on the cross: The Final Hour. It truly moved me.

Comment on their website: "The cross solves many of our deepest human dilemmas. We wonder how there can be a God when there is so much injustice in the world, yet of all the world’s religions, only Christianity has a God who comes down and suffers injustice alongside us. We wonder how we can ever truly please a perfectly holy God, but on the cross, Jesus satisfies the holiness of God for us. The temple curtain is torn, and we are welcomed inside as God’s children."

Sour-faced saints

“From silly devotions and sour-faced saints, spare us, O Lord.” Teresa of Avila

Fear

I see the action of Pastor Terry Jones to burn the Koran as an expression of fear. After 911 America has changed. So much more than before there is now a sense of fear, insecurity and anxiety. The terrorists have indeed spread terror. It is taking it’s affect on America- yes, even Christians in America. Yet we, Christians, should not let fear rule us. The entirety of Scripture is full of the command ‘Don’t be afraid.’ The Scripture says that, since the Lord gave His life for us on the cross, He will take care of us and be with us, even in the face of death (Psalm 23). We need to say NO to fear and all the actions that flow from fear, even Koran burning. We need to say YES to faith in the living God who walks with us and show mercy to all.

David Junker

lay-missionary in Japan

* a letter to editors

Mercy

"Mercy has converted more souls than zeal, or eloquence, or learning or all of them together." Soren Kierkegaard

" Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. " Jesus Christ, Matthew 5:7

Hearts burning

"A sermon that has more head infused into it than heart will not borne home with efficacy to the hearers." Richard Cecil

"Were not our hearts burning within us while he (Jesus Christ)talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" Luke 24:32

The true home

“In the world the Christians are a colony of the true home.” Dietrich Boenhoeffer

Grace is the only exception.

Simone Weil’s life flamed like a bright candle before she died at the age of thirty-three. A French intellectual, she chose to work on farms and in factories in order to identify with the working class. When Hitler’s armies rolled into France, she escaped to join the Free French in London, and there she died, her tuberculosis complicated by malnourishment when she refused to eat more than the rations of her countrymen suffering Nazi occupation. As her only legacy, this Jew who followed Christ left in scattered notes and journals a dense record of her pilgrimage toward God.

Weil concluded that two great forces rule the universe: gravity and grace. Gravity causes one body to attract other bodies so that it continually enlarges by absorbing more and more of he universe into itself. Something like this same force operates in human beings. We too want to expand, to acquire, to swell in significance. The desire to ‘be as gods,’ after all, led Adam and even to rebel.

Emotionally, Weil concluded, we humans operate by laws as fixed as Newton’s. ‘All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception.’ Most of us remain trapped in the gravitational field of self-love, and thus we ‘fill up the fissures through which grace might pass.’” Philip Yancey