Perfect Conditions

"Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap."
(Ecclesiastes 11:4)

This verse is basically saying that if we wait for the perfect conditions to do something we will most likely never get anything done because those perfect conditions never arrive. So what do we do? Take a leap of faith, just a little one, trusting that God will guide and provide.

"And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." (Hebrews 11:6)

I just got back from a week in Manchester, Vermont. Two granddaughters were being baptized and many family members were there for the occasion. Many of the family work on Wall Street and were lamenting the current financial situation and recession. It wasn’t that they had no reason to complain as we are indeed in a bad fiscal situation, not just in America but all over the world. Some spoke of current conditions and what needed to take place to allow for growth while others stated it was time to buy gold, guns, and prefab bomb shelters. Unfortunately, there seemed to be no perfect condition available in anyone’s opinion to remedy the current financial issues of the day.

Everyone is looking for the perfect condition to make decisions or to make a forecast for the future. It’s Human Nature; the problem is that we are expressing faith in those conditions rather than in God. Now understand, I am not saying that we blindly barge forward and completely disregard all logical thinking. God has graciously given us a mind that he expects us to use in a sensible way. However, I think you will agree that very often we can allow our sensibility to create all kinds of excuses for not taking the step of faith that honors God.

Writers of the Old and New Testament remind us often that we need to honor God first, and then move forward. “Well you are a Bishop; you’re supposed to have that kind of faith.” Yes the clergy are supposed to set the example but we alone are not the torch bearers of faith for everyone else. To find faith we must trust, to trust we must know God, to know God we must give up self and serve Him who gave us life.

"For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." (Ephesians 2:10 )

Will your faith be tested? Of course it will, but take the step anyway. Will you meet with opposition that will challenge your commitment? Of course you will, but take the step anyway. Will you meet with negativity that will question your sanity? Of course you will, but take the step anyway. We honor God when you show trust in God. The families of our two granddaughters’ had faith enough to know they needed to be baptized. That was a small leap of faith.

We had a great time Vermont; we had good weather, good food, and good fellowship. It is always a joy for Robin and me to wander such places as these. Realize that God gave us these beautiful places to play in. If we are faithful in this life, think of the beauty and love He will give us in the next. Fulfill the purpose you have been created for and bring glory to God....you will not be disappointed!

Be of good faith…

Bishop Ian

Space - the Forgotten Frontier

I don’t often go off on tangents in my Blog. But there are exceptions. Here’s one of them.

NASA's new mission: Building ties to Muslim world.

This was the headline I read on AOL as I ate my breakfast. It was one of those double take moments. I thought, ‘maybe it’s an acute case of dyslexia or my computer juxtaposed a story’.

Nope, as I read on I was horrified (and I don’t use that term lightly) to discover that the new NASA administrator, Charles Bolden, had been given three tasks by President Obama. He was quoted from an AL Jazeera interview no less. “He (Obama) wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering." You can’t make this stuff up. NASA’s foremost mission is to make Muslims feel good? I mean the President does realize that the “S” in NASA stands for “Space,” right???

I grew up with astronauts as my heroes. I love astronomy, and I’ve read every book I could find about the space program, and by the astronauts who flew the missions. I’ve seen “From the Earth to the Moon” six times. And now, I wake up to read that the new mission of NASA is to make the Muslim world feel good about their contributions to science, math and engineering? What are we talking about here, two or three guys, who like the Germans of WWlI, escaped fascism and were given an opportunity to build a space program in the confines of freedom and liberty here in the US?

They can’t seriously be trying to give the warm fuzzies to the guys in Iran - those same guys who are trying to come up with a guided missile delivery vehicle to blow up Israel are they? Maybe NASA can have a class on how to build a better IED. "Hi kids. Wanna see science? Today we are going to make an explosive device from common household items." It’s…well, lunacy.

The writer from the Washington Examiner goes on to say, “Obama's proposal stunned U.S. space heroes Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan -- the first and last men to walk on the moon -- who, along with Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, made a rare public statement denouncing the plan as a "devastating" scheme that "destines our nation to become one of second - or even third-rate stature."

Look, even John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, who later became a Democratic senator and an Obama supporter, chimed in on the president's plan to rely on the Russians to ferry American astronauts to the international space station. "We're putting ourselves in line for a single-point failure ending the whole manned space program."

I was 6 years old when Glenn orbited the earth. I remember following every mission, from Mercury to Apollo. I was 13 when Armstrong walked on the moon, and I was 16 when Gene Cernan closed the hatch on the Lunar Module and flew home. I stood on the bridge of the USCGC Hammer anchored near Titusville, FL and watched as the last Apollo mission left Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It was the Apollo-Soyuz mission with Deke Slayton, one of the Original 7 Mercury Astronauts, and he was flying his first mission into space. Every launch and every mission I ever watched always left me with one word, WOW! It was a huge source of national pride, not just for me but for most of the nation.

In 1997, I retired from active ministry in the Episcopal Church and went to work at a national TV network in Washington DC as one of the Post Production Supervisors. I bought a small townhouse in Baltimore and commuted to Washington’s Union Station everyday. It was a late night and I was waiting to take the last MARC train - the 10:15 back to Baltimore. There were three of us in the terminal area, when two spry elderly people came and sat next to me. He looked at me smiled and said; “How are you tonight young man.” It was John Glenn, and his wife Annie. It was another one word moment - I was sitting next to Mercury Astronaut John Glenn!!!. WOW…

He was taking the train to NYC to do one of the national morning TV shows before heading back to Florida. He was training for his trip back to space and he had just spent the evening with President Clinton.

I worried about being intrusive especially with a living legend so I congratulated him on his upcoming flight and I thanked him for his service and I told him how I remembered his first flight even as a young child of 6 years old. I rambled on about how he and the others had inspired me to get a telescope and study astronomy and learn about rockets and space. He smiled, stood up and shook my hand and said, “Young man, I am glad to hear you say that. I get asked all the time why I am doing this, and that is the reason - that’s it right there, what you just said, the reason I’m going back up, to inspire young people to start looking up again.”

Now c’mon folks, NASA for the last 50 years has been about Space. When NASA put John Glenn into orbit and landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, the whole world went, WOW. They have done things in their fifty year history that made people; ordinary people like me from all over the world look up again and say WOW.

We have a president whose vision of America’s greatness lies in our humility, rather than the greatness we have achieved as a nation. Nothing embodied that greatness like the accomplishments of NASA. Making Muslims feel better??? Yes, I thought, WOW, when I read the article. It wasn’t the good kind of WOW factor. This is politics, the worst kind; NASA deserves better. America deserves better. All of mankind, who NASA has inspired for fifty years, deserve better.

Be Inspired,

Bishop Ian (boldly going where I haven't gone before)

The Fourth of July: Remembering America as a Nation Under God

"The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: that it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity."

- John Quincy Adams

The signers intended the Declaration of Independence to officiate the separation between America and Great Britain. However, they based the Declaration, which has served as a foundation for the beginning of the American nation, upon a greater foundational belief that God, or as written in the Declaration, a “Creator,” was the source for men’s irrevocable rights.
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration, also believed, "God, who gave us life gave us liberty.”

Two of the Continental Congress’ first actions were to hire military chaplains and to purchase 20,000 Bibles to remedy a national shortage.

Although America was already a free nation during the presidency of George Washington, as the first president of the United States, he suggested that only religion could uphold its morality. During his farewell address he said, "And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

The first settlers in America, the Pilgrims, clearly stated the purpose for their voyage even before stepping off the Mayflower; “...undertaken for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith...”

The U.S. Supreme Court also identified America as a Christian nation in 1892 after 10 years of examining hundreds of documents on the foundation of the country. The justices came to the unanimous conclusion that the documents undeniably "add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a religious people, a Christian nation."

After the constitution had been ratified, John Adams, the second president of the United States, summed the document up this way. “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

The late Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States, held the conviction that God cannot and should not be moved from the social and governmental construct of America. He said, "Without God there is no virtue because there is no prompting of the conscience....without God there is a coarsening of the society; without God democracy will not and cannot long endure....If we ever forget that we are one Nation under God, then we will be a Nation gone under."

People who want to remove all mention of a God from schools, public buildings, government, and society in general, use the First Amendment to the Constitution as their rallying point. But if you read that amendment carefully, you will note that the words "separation of church and state" do not appear. The amendment simply prohibits "an establishment of religion." That means there should be no nationally mandated or tax supported church. The amendment promises the federal government will not start a national church, like England has the Church of England.

We have to answer to God for our national life, because it was God who gave us our national life. It was God who was often called upon by our leaders and credited with our victory in America’s War for Independence, and not just "good fortune" or "luck" that allowed thirteen colonies to defeat the greatest military power in the world at that time.

Be Patriotic,

Bishop Ian