Lord’s Day 33

Posted on August 16, 2009 by arator

(Third Part: Of Thankfulness—Questions 86-129)

88. In how many things does true repentance or conversion consist?

  • In two things: the dying of the old man, and the quickening of the new.

89. What is the dying of the old man?

  • Heartfelt sorrow for sin; causing us to hate and turn from it always more and more.

90. What is the quickening of the new man?

  • Heartfelt joy in God; causing us to take delight in living according to the will of God in all good works.

91. But what are good works?

  • Those only which are done from true faith, according to the Law of God, for His glory; and not such as rest on our own opinion, or the commandments of men.
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Real Lilies

Posted on August 14, 2009 by arator

Quite a few of the blooms I have featured on Fridays recently have been called “lily” but have not been true lilies. Well, today you get the real deal. There are about 90 species in the genus Lilium, probably the most famous among them being the Easter lily, Lilium longiflorum. They typically show up as attractive potted plants around the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. The pure-white blossoms symbolize the spotless Lamb of God as no other can. A native of Japan, it naturally blooms around November. It has to be artifically “forced” to bloom at Easter.

lilium-formosanum01 This week’s pic is of a near relative of the Easter lily, the Formosa lily, Lilium formosanum, a native of, you guessed it, Taiwan. It was introduced to the west in the late nineteenth century. If all you saw was the bloom, you might think it to be that of an Easter lily, except that the trumpet is a bit longer. This is no mere potted plant, however; no escapee from the parlor, growing outside for the summer. This is the giraffe, the giant redwood, of the genus Lilium, in some cases reaching six or seven feet in height. Click on the picture and notice the foliage in the back ground. That is a six-foot holly hedge. Talk about back of the flower border; this one is made for it. In fact because the plant in bloom is so tall it really needs a fence  to grow up against for support in windy areas. Have you ever known Oklahoma not to be windy? It’s kind of like asking “Is the Pope Catholic?” I’m saying stake it to something if you don’t want to be sad.

Only requiring the afore mentioned support, the Formosa lily is very easy to grow, readily started from seed. If you start the seed early enough in the spring, it usually blooms the first season, an uncommon feat for most perennials. In fact, Formosa lily can become quite a nuisance if you don’t cut and remove the quite attractive seed pods before they split open in the fall, scattering the many seeds everywhere you don’t want them to sprout. In just one year the front of your flower border will look just like the back. Blooming a few weeks in July and August, the Formosa lily is a joy to see. Its Easter lily semblance always reminds me of our Savior.

don-juan01 I had to include this shot my wife took of our Don Juan climbing rose. She has fond memories of her grandparents back yard where the same variety of rambling climber engulfed their tool shed. Her grandfather was a avid fisherman, and from time to time he would bury a few fish skeletons at the base of his roses for fertilizer. They were magnificent. When it comes to care, roses are just the opposite of the Formosa lily. They need a fair amount of spraying to keep the bugs and fungi at bay, but it is well worth the trouble.

We had a much-welcomed shower Monday night, into Tuesday, so we will be spending our Saturday out mowing and weed-eating. Hopefully there will be time to enjoy the landscape some too, and rejoice in God’s creation. You get out and enjoy it too, and give thanks. See you Sunday at church.

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Lord’s Day 32

Posted on August 9, 2009 by arator

(Third Part: Of Thankfulness—Questions 86-129)

86. Since then we are redeemed from our misery by grace through Christ, without any merit of ours, why must we do good works?

  • Because Christ, having redeemed us by His blood, renews us also by His Holy Spirit after His own image, that with our whole life we may show ourselves thankful to God for His blessing, and that He may be glorified through us; then also, that we ourselves may be assured of our faith by the fruits thereof, and by our godly walk may win others also to Christ.

87. Can they then be saved who do not turn to God from their unthankful, impenitent life?

  • By no means: for, as the Scripture saith, no unchaste person, idolater, adulterer, thief, covetous man, drunkard, slanderer, robber, or any such like, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
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Crinum Lily

Posted on August 7, 2009 by arator

This crinum-ellen-bos02.jpg may turn out to be an all-lily month for  my Friday Floral pics. I nearly waited too long for this weeks gem, but I knew I had a very narrow window on the Lycoris last week, and decided to push it back till this week. The Crinum lily, Crinum sp. is made up of a number of species that readily interbreed. This promiscuous behavior makes identifying parentage very difficult, often impossible. The one Crinum we have, C. ‘Ellen Bosanquet’, is no exception. It was hybridized in Florida in the 1920′s by a plant breeder, Louis Bosanquet, which he named in honor of his wife, Ellen. To this day nobody is sure of the parentage, and to date no one has been able to recreate this hybrid with any known combination of species and/or varieties. Wow! Mystery in the front yard!

And don’t you just love the way the buds in this first shot are lined up in the queue? Unfortunately, the down side is that the spent blooms don’t fall off by themselves, and increasingly take away from what was a beautiful beginning. A good gardener will go around and snip out the spent blooms every day. Yeah, right. Notice in the second shot the stubs below the main bloom. This cluster is nearly spent.

crinum-ellen-bos01.jpg More closely related to amaryllis than lily, all in the genus Crinum are tough, pest-resistant plants. They are usually listed as hardy to zone 7, which makes them technically half a zone shy of the Tulsa area. We have never had a hint of trouble here, and these bulbs are planted well away from the house, so they are not benefiting from winter house heat. Back in the seventies the USDA realigned the hardiness zones and I think there is a bit of confusion in the nursery trade; some growers using the old charts, some the new. That’s how I explain it. The foliage is a rosette tropical-like floppiness, reaching about two foot high. The flower stalks stand almost a foot taller.

Rain is forecast for this weekend, so if you can get out in it, do so. See you in church on Sunday.

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Faith and Repentance

Posted on August 4, 2009 by arator

In his Systematic Theology, Wayne Grudem occasionally offers a personal comment relating to the current evangelical state in America. In his chapter on conversion, after showing from Scripture and logic that faith and repentance are inseparable, Grudem gives this analysis:

“When we realize that genuine saving faith must be accompanied by genuine repentance of sin, it helps us to understand why some preaching of the gospel has such inadequate results today. If there is no mention of the need of repentance, sometimes the gospel message becomes only, “Believe in Jesus Christ and be saved” without any mention of repentance at all. But this watered-down version of the gospel does not ask for a wholehearted commitment to Christ—commitment to Christ, if genuine, must include a commitment to turn from sin. Preaching the need for faith without repentance is preaching only half of the gospel. It will result in many people being deceived, thinking that they have heard the Christian gospel and tried it, but nothing has happened. They might even say something like, “I accepted Christ as Savior over and over again and it never worked.” Yet they never really did receive Christ as Their Savior, for he comes to us in his majesty and invites us to receive him as he is—the one who deserves to be, and demands to be, absolute Lord of our lives as well.”
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994), pp. 716-717.

This also may help explain why only 8 million of our 16 million Southern Baptists can be found in church on any given Sunday, or why so many of our young people abandon church forever between their freshman and sophomore years in college.

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Lord’s Day 31

Posted on August 2, 2009 by arator

(Second Part: Of Man’s Redemption—Questions 12-85)

83. What is the Office of the Keys?

  • The Preaching of the Holy Gospel and Church Discipline; by which two things the kingdom of heaven is opened to believers and shut against unbelievers.

84. How is the kingdom of heaven opened and shut by the Preaching of the Holy Gospel?

  • In this way: that according to the command of Christ, it is proclaimed and openly witnessed to believers, one and all, that as often as they accept with true faith the promise of the Gospel, all their sins are really forgiven them of God for the sake of Christ’s merits; and on the contrary, to all unbelievers and hypocrites, that the wrath of God and eternal condemnation abide on them, so long as they are not converted; according to which witness of the Gospel, will be the judgment of God both in this life and in that which is to come.

85. How is the kingdom of heaven shut and opened by Church Discipline?

  • In this way: that according to the command of Christ, if any under the Christian name show themselves unsound either in doctrine or life, and after repeated brotherly admonition refuse to turn from their errors of evil ways, they are complained of to the church or to its proper officers, and, if they neglect to hear them also, are by them excluded from the Holy Sacraments and the Christian communion, and by God Himself from the kingdom of Christ; and if they promise and show real amendment, they are again received as members of Christ and His Church.
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Surprise, Surprise

Posted on July 31, 2009 by arator

The weeds01 surprise lily is just that; a surprise. The other day I was scratching around the front gate, trying to get a handle on some low-growing weeds near the Don Juan climbing roses. It was mostly spurge, Oxalis, and that low-growing—we hates it, Precious; nasty little…—well, whatever it’s called. Forgive me. I lost it for a bit there. I wouldn’t dignify the spurge with its Latin name except for the fact that it shares a genus with the Christmas poinsettia: Euphorbia. Where was I?

While scratching in the bit of bare ground—except for the afore-mentioned weeds—around the front gate, near the Don Juan climbing roses, it dawned on me just where I was scratching, and what time of year it was, and why that little spot was “bare.” Well, surprise, surprise, but what should I see the next day but a number of pale green bud-tipped shafts emerging from the very spot I was weeding the day before. You see, surprise lilies get their common name from the fact that the one-inch wide strap-like foliage appears in the spring, providing energy to the underground bulb, in order to enable it to produce some flowers. But no flower stalks emerge. After three or four weeks the foliage browns out and dies, and you say “Well, what a cheat.” A couple of months after you forget about it, Gomer Pyle comes around and says “Surprise, surprise.” The shafts emerge quickly and the buds open in just a couple of days to to gorgeous pale-pink trumpets that smell delightful. The scene is a bit surreal because the absence of foliage make the blooms look fake, like someone stabbed plastic flowers in the flower bed.

lycoris-squ01 Surprise lily is officially known as Lycoris squamigera. How dull can that be? The Latin is necessary in order to accurately identify and categorize, but the common names add color and reflect on culture and human nature. Surprise lily is also known as magic lily, resurrection lily, and—I’ve saved the best/worst for last—nekkid ladies or naked lily, to tone it down a bit. In our front yard we have another representation of the genus Lycoris in the spider lily; L. radiata, which follows a totally different calendar for bloom and foliage periods, not to mention size shape and color. I’ll leave you hanging there in suspense, saving the details until spider lilies come into bloom and make their debut on Friday Floral later this year. I’ll bet you’re biting your nails all ready.

lycoris-squ02 Surprise lily is easy to grow, with no cold hardiness issues here in Oklahoma. The bulbs are rather large, about the size of a baseball, and rarely need to be dug up and divided. Because they leave the ground bare a good bit of the year you might consider planting them near some other bulbs that bloom at a different time so they can have overlapping spaces. Most commonly, you will find these “pink flamingos” stabbed out in the suburban lawn, a practice I perfectly detest, but it is one solution. The bloom period is when you won’t be mowing much anyway, and when the show is over you can just mow it all down. No mess, no fuss. The only problem is in the spring when the mass of foliage emerges. You have to mow around it for weeks while it becomes a nest for all kinds of vermin. You choose; it’s your yard.

That’s it for this week. Go out and plant something, or scratch up some weeds—the nasties, we hates ‘em. If you have a surplus in your garden, then share with neighbors. It makes a great ice breaker for sharing the gospel of Christ. That is, if you’re not trying to pawn off those overgrown baseball-bat zucchinis. See you in church on Sunday.

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Lord’s Day 30

Posted on July 26, 2009 by arator

(Second Part: Of Man’s Redemption—Questions 12-85)

80. What difference is there between the Lord’s Supper and the Popish Mass?

  • The Lord’s Supper testifies to us, that we have full forgiveness of all our sins by the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which He Himself has once accomplished on the cross; and that by the Holy Ghost we are ingrafted into Christ, who with His true body is now in heaven at the right hand of the Father, and is to be there worshiped. But the Mass teaches, that the living and the dead have not forgiveness of sins through the sufferings of Christ, unless Christ is still daily offered for them by the priests; and that Christ is bodily under the form of bread and wine, and is therefore to be worshiped in them. And thus the Mass at bottom is nothing else than a denial of the one sacrifice and passion of Jesus Christ, and an accursed idolatry.

81. Who are to come unto the table of the Lord?

  • Those who are displeased with themselves for their sins, yet trust that these are forgiven them, and that their remaining infirmity is covered by the passion and death of Christ; who also desire more and more to strengthen their faith and amend their life. But the impenitent and hypocrites eat and drink judgment to themselves.

82. Are they then also to be admitted to this Supper, who show themselves to be, by their confession and life, unbelieving and ungodly?

  • No: for by this the covenant of God is profaned, and His wrath provoked against the whole congregation; wherefore the Christian Church is bound, according to the order of Christ and His Apostles, by the office of the keys to exclude such persons, until they amend their life.
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Fun in the Desert

Posted on July 24, 2009 by arator

This summer has been anything but dry. Usually after the spring rains, summer showers in Oklahoma—even here in northeastern Oklahoma— are few and far between. This year has been different, with soaking rains about every ten days or so. Now I know that summer isn’t even half over, but the extended forecast looks good. Even if it turns off dry from this point, we’ve been blessed this summer. So, let’s talk about drought-tolerant plants.

desertwillow01 The desertwillow,  Chilopsis linearis, is a much overlooked small flowering tree. The reason may be that it is only hardy through zone 6b, roughly the Kansas-Oklahoma border; while the various species of dogwood are hardy to zone 4 or 5. Unlike dogwoods, the desert willow can take poor soil and moisture conditions and never blink an eye.  Desertwillow blooms at a time when hardly any other small tree is blooming, unless you consider crapemyrtle a tree, which you certainly may. Beginning in June, desertwillow blooms in successive flushes till fall. This pic was taken the 11th of June, and the tree is still covered with blossoms. The texture and form is unique, and fits well in a small backyard patio setting, providing a light shade with a wispy effect on a breezy day. Desertwillow rarely reaches more than fifteen feet at maturity, and requires some selective pruning to achieve the desired effect of a strong yet interesting specimen. The only problem is that they are difficult to find in the retail nursery trade, so you will probably have to resort to mail-order.

It looks like it is going to be a beautiful weekend. Enjoy it, and I hope to see you in church this Sunday.

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An Eighteen-point Calvinist?

Posted on July 20, 2009 by arator

Most folks here in Oklahoma probably don’t have a clue who Doug Baker is. You better get to know him, because come August 1 he will take over the reins of our state association’s paper, the Baptist Messenger. The Messenger announced the selection of their new executive editor this last week in two separate articles. I know of Doug Baker from a series of podcast episodes he produced for the North Carolina Baptists. In each of the episodes Baker interviewed a notable pastor or leader on the current SBC scene; men like Ed Stetzer, Johnny Hunt, Tullian Tchividjian, Nathan Finn, Danny Akin, and J. D. Greear. Baker has a clear, distinctive voice, and he knows how to ask the right questions. Go to the link above and check out the interviews. They are all informative and well worth the listen.

As long as I have been reading it, the Baptist Messenger has been a bit on the—how do you say it nicely—mushy side. You know, squishy theology with a generous helping of moralism/legalism, served on an SBC party-line platter. Hopefully that will change with Baker at the helm. Except for a few years as Huckabee’s speech writer, his credentials sure look impressive. Among the men he identifies as having the greatest influence on his life, four of the top five include David Dockery, Timothy George, Danny Akin, and Mark Dever. Does that make him an eighteen-point Calvinist? Needless to say, Baker admires some mighty respectable men.

It sure sounds like change is in the air here in Oklahoma with the arrival of Doug Baker, and I don’t mean just a technological modernization of the Messenger. I smell the real deal here. Maybe the “young and restless” in Oklahoma will have something worth reading before too long. Maybe we old and restless will have something to read too. Keep your fingers crossed. I mean, God willing.

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