According to Timothy Keller in his book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, the Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, argued that everyone gets their identity, their sense of being distinct and valuable, from somewhere or something, and that human beings were made not only to believe in God, but to love Him solely and supremely, to centre their lives on Him, and to build their very identities on Him. To do otherwise is to sin. And what is the result?

According to The Reason for God, if we centre our lives:

• on our spouse or significant other, we'll become emotionally dependent or controlling, overwhelmed by the other person's problems.
• on our family and children, our children will become miniature versions of ourselves, having no lives of their own, and resenting us for it; and we may end up abusing them for this.
• on our work or career, we will become driven workaholics, shallow and boring; and if our careers go badly, we may be left deeply depressed.
• on money or possessions, we will worry excessively about these, and may do unethical things to maintain our lifestyle, ruining our lives.
• on pleasure, gratification, and comfort, we will become addicted to any and all escape strategies to avoid the harshness of life.
• on relationships or approval, we will be constantly hurt by criticism and thus lose friends; and we will fear confronting others and thereby become a useless friend ourselves.
• on noble causes, our world will become black and white to us; we will demonize our opponents, who will end up controlling our lives; and without them, we will have no purpose in life.
• on morality and religious practices, if we live up to our moral standards, we will become proud and self-righteous; and if we do not, we will be devastated by guilt.

It was for good and sufficient reason that God said:

Exodus 20:3 – You shall have no other gods before Me. (NKJV)

Because our culture is so secular and antagonistic to the Christian faith, too many of our young people have centred their lives on something other than God. When they discover the emptiness of their lives, they have no true faith to fall back on. Consequently, they have succumbed to utter despair, and lose their lives in abject surrender to that saddest of fates — self-inflicted death.

Romans 8:5-6 – For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. (NKJV)

Even when we bring up our children in faithful churches, they still have the freedom to choose, and we need not bear a heavy burden of guilt if the worst happens to them. Only the Spirit of God can open their minds and souls, but it is up to us to expose them to the faith which saves.

Deuteronomy 6:6-7a – And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children. (NKJV)

Prayer: Dear Father, remind us constantly as parents and grandparents never to shirk our duty of bringing up our children to know and love You. May we always consider this to be the joyful duty of good servants, and a way to demonstrate our love to our children and to You. In Your Son's precious name, we pray. Amen.

"I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.

"And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary. When grown to manhood, He touched lives, loving, caring, blessing, and ministering to men and women while He was amongst us. He healed minds and bodies and raised the dead. He taught and interpreted the Scriptures and preached the gospel of salvation to all who would listen to Him. He was betrayed by one of His own to selfish men in high places, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell. The third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of God The Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

"I believe in the Holy Ghost; the Holy Catholic Church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen."

John 21:25 – And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen. (NKJV)

Why have I done this? I suppose, as a retired engineer, I have a somewhat orderly mind. This means, amongst other things, that if I summarize my beliefs on a subject, I like to have all of them there without gaps, for the sake of continuity and completeness. Now, I don't believe that any of you need worry — I'm sure an overwhelming majority of Christians are satisfied to leave the Apostles' Creed just as it is. In the end, so am I. But it is a bit of a challenge for all of us — do you not think — to try and summarize what we believe as concisely and completely as possible.

Question to ponder: If someone asked you what you believed, how exactly would you answer them?

Prayer: Heavenly Father, when we are asked to declare what we believe, may we do it not by rote, but thoughtfully, completely, boldly, and clearly, so that all who hear us will know unmistakably who and what we are. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.

I am in the middle of a very interesting general-interest course on the life cycle of stars. To simplify and condense the subject, the current theory is that stars are formed within clouds of stellar gases, the detritus of dead stars. These clouds are mainly hydrogen, the simplest and most abundant element in the universe. Taking form from these stellar clouds and under the influence of gravity, these infant stars reach critical mass, and nuclear fusion begins. Through this process of ingesting surrounding gases, if a star grows to several sizes larger than our sun, nuclear fusion will coalesce atoms, converting hydrogen to helium to carbon to progressively heavier elements. The final element reached in the core is iron. At this point, the star is near the end of its life — perhaps a few billion years old, so the theory goes. The end is a cataclysmic supernova explosion, expanding at the rate of tens of thousands of kilometres a second, leaving only neutrons at the centre of an expanding shell of gas. This gas then fuels the formation of new stars, and the life cycle repeats itself.

Oversimplified though the preceding description may be, it inevitably engenders no end of questions. How and when did it all start? To their surprise, astronomers have discovered that the universe is still accelerating outward, and they now believe that the "Big Bang" occurred 14 billion years ago. To what purpose? Did time start then? What existed before? How vast is the universe now? Astronomers believe that there are about 150 billion stars in our own galaxy, but how many other galaxies are there? Is the universe infinitely large? Will it end? How and when? Will time end then? What will follow afterwards? And so on …

Things of infinite size and with no ending are incomprehensible to us. The times, speeds, distances in light-years, temperatures, brilliances, etc., are so vast they blow our minds.

Job 42:3 – You asked, "Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?" Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. (NKJV)

If all the foregoing is true, I am absolutely convinced that the start of it was no fluke, no coincidence, as a famous physicist would have us believe. That defies logic; it makes no sense. It can only be an ongoing act of God. The "Big Bang" theory is consistent with the belief that the universe had a beginning and with what one would expect when God said, "Let there be light." There is a mind, a will out there, one of incredible power, an infinite Spirit filling the cosmos, truly eternal, omnipotent, omniscient — in other words, God — our God. We soon run out of nouns and adjectives to ascribe to the unknowable. God showed great wisdom in telling Moses simply that He was the "I AM". Anything else would have totally confounded the prophet.

And as we think on all this, we cannot but be impressed with our total insignificance, our helplessness in the scale of creation. Yet this great God did create us to worship and enjoy Him forever. Further, when we proved a disappointment to Him, He loved us enough to be born into the world that He Himself had created, a perfect human being who, because of the Father's love for us, lived and died for us so that we, too, would know eternity in love, worship, and praise. Now that really blows the mind!

Prayer: Heavenly Father, we know that there are some things that we are not destined to know or understand in our mortal lifetimes. We see now through a glass darkly. But all will be made plain to us in Your good time. Meanwhile, give us the patience to enjoy and appreciate the mystery, beauty, and awesomeness of Your ongoing creation, and the wonderment to give You all the glory and praise for it. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.

Many of us know what a scourge Alzheimer's disease is. While cancer in its various forms seems to dominate the attention of our aging congregation right now, we have also had our share of Alzheimer's and dementia victims. The despair, heartache, and frustration these bring to loved ones has to be experienced first-hand to be believed. I have read many inspiring prayers for the loved ones of Alzheimer's victims, but this one, written for our Drummond Hill Presbyterian Church congregation in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, by our pastor, Rev. Wally Hong, is especially poignant and says it all, in my opinion. Let it speak for itself.

Dear God, my loved one remembers me less.
There, sitting alone in a world so far away;
       when our eyes meet, there is no recognition … no hello.
The more I bring past joys to awaken the life that could be,
       the more emptiness I find in those beautiful eyes.
My heart aches! My soul is full of anguish!
Where do I get strength and peace?
Be with me, O God! Give me strength to remember
       the love of yesterday
       when our hearts and souls danced together,
       when we glimpsed eternity and laughed.
Give me the sight to see life that is from You,
       filled with possibilities of love …
For I refuse to stop loving even in my deepest sadness. Amen.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8a – Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. (NKJV)

One of our church ladies died several years ago after a lengthy spell of Alzheimer's. At her funeral, two of her long-suffering daughters stood beside her open casket, beaming at me, and asserting, "Now she knows who she is again!" That is the language of rejoicing and of love.

Prayer: Merciful Father, we thank You that Jesus assumed our burdens and suffered for our sins. But some are assuming the burdens and suffering of their loved ones who are slowly slipping into the oblivion of Alzheimer's. Uphold those who suffer, Father, both the afflicted and their loved ones; enable them to endure. May those of us who are spared such agony of spirit extend our love, sympathy, understanding, and active help to those who undergo the experience. In Jesus' most precious name, we pray. Amen.

Nevertheless, Susan was like a breath of fresh air to our group. She brought laughter and a keen sense of humour to our deliberations. She was a searcher after biblical truth, very articulate, insightful, and always ready to contribute intelligently to our studies. She had an uncommon knack of coaxing unusual insights from the readings, provoking further thought and discussion. She was truly a "nice person", and we simply loved her.

In late June, the lady who had introduced Susan to our group grew concerned because she hadn't heard from her, and couldn't get hold of her. Her vehicle was still in her apartment's parking lot. Doors were forced, and Susan was found dead across her bed, a victim of diabetic shock. Most of us never knew she suffered from severe Type 1 diabetes.

The effect on our group has been to demoralize and diminish us. Now we know first-hand how true are the words John Donne wrote a long time ago:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main. …
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

Many questions have assailed us. How could a woman who, as we found out later, kept juices in every room against just such an eventuality — plus an emergency pager — be felled like that at the relatively young age of 63? How, God? And why, God? Shock and hurt — hurt felt all the more when she was cremated without service, as she wished. All these emotions and more have been and are being felt by all members of our group. Gradually — very gradually — has come acceptance, a necessary prerequisite to recovery.

Isaiah 55:8-9 – "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," says the Lord, "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts." (NKJV)

Acceptance means acknowledging that God's will must be done. Our group adjourned for the summer to nurse our grief, to gather our thoughts and fond memories of Susan, which will never fade completely, and to move on towards our recommencement come September. We believe that God has a place for Susan in heaven, and this comforts us.

Romans 8:38-39 – For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (NKJV)

Prayer: Dear Father, comfort those of us who grieve. Raise us up from our despair, remind us of the wonderful love that You will never withhold from us and those we love, and set our feet firmly again on life's pilgrimage towards the beautiful eternity with You which awaits us. In Jesus' precious name, we pray. Amen.

I host a weekly ecumenical lectionary Bible study. The people who attend are Christians of all stripes, and so are the versions of the holy Bible that they bring with them. We may have four or five versions in use at one time, and we sometimes marvel at the differences in nuance.

The gospels and epistles of the New Testament that we have today have their origins in Greek manuscripts. These manuscripts have been laboriously copied from each other down the ages from the first century A.D. to the invention of the printing press, by fallible men. The original manuscript for each book of the New Testament, termed an autograph, has in every case been lost. Therefore, manuscript has been copied from manuscript, until today, there are some 5,800 extant for the New Testament alone.

The process of analyzing these manuscripts for authenticity is termed textual criticism. Textual criticism is part art, part science. The methodology involved behind textual criticism is explained in detail in a slim little volume entitled Behind the Bible, by Jeffrey D. Johnson. Johnson uses beautiful, precise English, as you would expect of a biblical scholar and a professional textual critic, to explain how he goes about his analyses.

The upshot is that in the 5,800 or so extant manuscripts, there are over 400,000 variants. These variants may arise accidentally, for example, from carelessness or amateurishness in some of the scribes or tiredness from copying in poor light. Or it may be deliberate, introducing an adjustment to make one manuscript harmonize with another; or, somewhat more perniciously, to introduce an iota of doctrine which a scribe might, in his own or his superior's mind, find to be lacking. Nevertheless, it's amazing that about 75 percent of the 400,000 variations are not much more than spelling or grammatical errors, or errors in word transposition. Only about 400, or a tenth of one percent, are variants of any importance, and of these, only about 50 are of major importance, yet without doctrinal compromise.

Now, isn't it marvellous that all the doctrines that we profess in The Apostles' Creed (including the virgin birth, the crucifixion, and the resurrection) still stand firm in light of the foregoing? The agreement, the harmony between the manuscripts and textual families — despite 2,000 years of human foibles — is nothing short of miraculous. Johnson calls it supernatural providence in the closing paragraphs of his book. "God-inspired" might be a better description.

There is good reason that so many thousands of patient scribes have laboured to copy and transmit the Bible. As Dwight Moody said a century ago, "The Bible was not given to increase our knowledge but to change our lives." It is God's gift to us for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. Therefore, we must pay attention to it, read it, study it, memorize it, and let it change us.

Prayer: Father, we thank You that Your Word has been faithfully preserved for us down the centuries through the efforts of Your fallible servants. Grant that we will read, absorb, inwardly digest, and faithfully and joyfully live out Your Word in our lives. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.

I sometimes think that we Christians can get a little too smug about what we would and would not do. It's not surprising. After all, we have the benefit of hindsight. We have our Bibles and two thousand years of Christian tradition behind us. All of this underpins and influences our beliefs and behaviour. But what if we had none of this? I often wonder what I and others would have done were we living as Jews in Jesus' time here on earth. How would we have received Him on hearing Him for the first and perhaps the only time? Those of us on the lowest rungs of the social order would be illiterate. Such education as we had would have been delivered in the home or workshop to give us working skills. Religious instruction, if we had it, would have been based on the Law given in the Pentateuch, the first five books in our Old Testament. Engraved and foremost in our minds would be the words:

Deuteronomy 6:4 – Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! (NKJV)

Then, out of the blue, comes a man claiming to be the Son of God and to have fulfilled the Law and the Prophets! The only religious authorities we would have known were the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the scribes, and they were always fighting amongst themselves. Nevertheless, they rejected Him almost to a man. You see now that once we place ourselves in the ancient Jewish world — given the circumstances of time and place, the decadence and mindset of our religious teachers, and our own ignorance — we begin to see how difficult it would be for us to acknowledge Jesus as Messiah, Lord, and Saviour. It is all too easy to condemn. We should remember that it was the grace of God which caused a few to embrace Him, and that there, but for the grace of God, might we be amongst the many who rejected Him. This should be a humbling thought to us.

And if we are so foolish as to say to ourselves, "Oh, we're civilized and Christian now. We would never crucify our Saviour", then we need to remind ourselves that the nation which gave us Martin Luther, Goethe, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, and Bonhoeffer, also gave us Adolf Hitler and the holocaust. The lesson is that no nation or people, however gifted, is exempt from the possibility of inflicting great evil, given the "right" circumstances. It is incumbent on us, then, to constantly remind ourselves who we are, who and what Jesus is, and what, then, is expected of us.

Luke 23:34 – Then Jesus said, "Father forgive them, for they do not know what they do." (NKJV)

This is just as true today as it was two thousand years ago. It is sobering that we still do not know the evil that we are capable of in the absence of a love for God and our fellow man.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, deliver us from evil, both of our own doing, and that of others. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.