END OF SARDINES DAY 2

Nothing too profound to relate about the sardine fast. 

Today I had two cans for lunch and two for dinner. With hot sauce. 

Sunday morning, I weighed in at 201 pounds - after overeating at several graduation open houses. Recently I have been bouncing between 196 and 199 most mornings. 

After my first full day of nothing but sardines yesterday, this morning the scale said 197. 

Obviously, most of that has to be water weight. But that does indicate to me that the amount of sweets I put into my body is likely trapping a lot of water in inflammation. 

I will say this about the sardines - I didn't wake up hungry today. And that's saying something. For most of my adult years I have skipped breakfast. I'm just not interested. 

But on my last trip to Ghana, we were served a BIG breakfast every single morning. And in Ghanaian culture, it is rude to refuse food. By the time I returned home, I had established a breakfast habit. Now I was hungry every morning. 

This morning, though, no hunger at all. Maybe that's because sardines are high in protein. I think when your body gets enough protein, the cravings for junk food greatly diminish. 

And that's a good thing, because a sardine for breakfast doesn't sound all that appealing. 

FISHY

Yesterday afternoon, after worship and a couple of graduation parties, Melissa and Sarah started the long trip to Myrtle Beach. Melissa is helping drive Sarah's car there and then she will be flying back on Friday night.

Samuel, all of a sudden, has decided to move to go ahead and move to Bloomington. He leaves tomorrow.

It will just be me and the dog for the next few days.

And anytime I am alone, I take the opportunity to do some fasting. It cuts down on me fussing about what to cook for myself, and fasting tends to be easier when nobody else is around stocking the fridge with tempting food.

This time I thought I would try something a little different: a "sardine fast".

If the internet can be trusted - and when has it ever steered me wrong? - sardines are a type of "superfood".

Several folks on YouTube have experimented with 3 or more days of eating nothing but sardines and have found it beneficial in several ways. 

Because sardines have such low calories and high protein content, they provide a type of fast which doesn't result in excessive hunger.

That is, assuming you can stomach sardines - which I happen to thoroughly enjoy. 

Today I ate three cans for lunch and two for dinner. I also consumed a couple of mints, to battle my fish breath.

I will let you know the effects over this week, both positive and negative. Melissa doesn't come home until late Friday night, so I have five solid days to experiment. 

Should be interesting. 

NOT A BIG DEAL?

Pentecost doesn't get even the tiniest fraction of the attention which the incarnation gets.

Every year Christians spend an entire month (at least) in recognition of the moment in time when God took on human flesh and entered into human history. 

There are movies, songs, parties, food, decorations, and special traditions - all over the world!

But when it comes to recognizing the moment 33 years after that Babe was born, when the Holy Spirit entered into human history and ignited the ongoing Body of Christ, there's hardly a passing mention in most churches. 

Why is that?

How does the coming of the Holy Spirit rank against the coming of the Son? 

Was the Spirit's arrival in human history just not as important?

SOMETHING WAS MISSING

When Paul comes across 12 disciples in Ephesus during his third missionary journey, he asks them an unusual question: "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" (Acts 19:2)

And considering this was 20 to 25 years after Pentecost, their answer was shocking: "We have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit!"

They go on to explain to Paul that they were baptized into John's baptism - which would have been 25 to 30 years back! 

And then Paul explains that John was baptizing "with the baptism of repentance" and that he had pointed people toward believing in the One who was to come after him, i.e. Jesus.

So then these 12 guys are "baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus". Next, Paul lays his hands on them and they suddenly start speaking in tongues and prophesying!

And I am left with so many questions!

• How did these guys come across the baptism of John the Baptist - who was waist deep in the Jordan River - all the way from Ephesus, over 600 miles away? Were they personally baptized by John or did John's disciples take it upon themselves to spread his message of repentance, eventually reaching to Ephesus? Maybe these 12 WERE disciples of John on a lifelong evangelistic mission?
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• Are there two different types of baptism? If so, how EXACTLY are they distinguished from each other?
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• Were these 12 guys sort of their own little church? Without the Holy Spirit?

I can't even begin to speculate on the answers to any of these questions. There are too few details.

But one other question that comes to mind might warrant some conjecture:

• What prompted Paul to ask these guys whether they had received the Holy Spirit in the first place?

Did he see a lack of joy? Or power? 

An absence of victory over sin? 

Did they lack fruit? Or confidence? Or love?

Were there clues in the way they talked? In their priorities? Their values?

Was there a distance in their relationship with God?

Whatever the clues, something was missing, and Paul immediately recognized what it was: the Holy Spirit.

What has been your experience? Can YOU tell upon meeting a person whether or not he or she is filled with the Holy Spirit, entirely lacking the Holy Spirit, or somewhere in between?

A WONDERFULLY STRANGE WEDDING

I didn't fall out of my writing habit again... 

I simply took a few days off and worked to live in the moment as much as possible as Melissa, Sarah and I traveled to a wedding in Branson, Missouri for a few days.

This involved an 8-hour drive on Monday, a bit of sightseeing and the wedding on Tuesday, and then another 8-hour drive back on Wednesday. 

It was an excellent use of time, especially considering that Sarah is heading to Myrtle Beach for the next two months in just a couple of days, so we won't be getting to spend time with her this summer. 

And the sightseeing was fun, especially the Butterfly Palace.

But what really stood out was the wedding itself and the reception which followed.

It was a bit surreal, because the bride was a daughter of the missionary family living next door to us most of our time in Haiti and several of the guests were Haitians - my former students. 

And I wasn't prepared for that.

It was just so strange to be in this beautiful, glass event facility in the green countryside of Missouri with the "kids" from our life 6+ years ago when we lived and worked in the poorest, most chaotic country in this hemisphere. 

And they are all in their twenties and dressed to the nines!

And they are doing well. Praise God. 

The Lord works in mysterious ways, for certain!

WHAT MATTERS MOST

I once heard someone say that we talk most about the things that matter the least and we talk the least about the things that matter the most. 

And that is all too true. And so very sad.

As a high school English teacher, I often had to cover topics that, if I were totally honest, simply didn't matter - the sort of stuff that prompts some student to ask, "When are we ever going to use this in real life?"

The majority of the time, there wasn't a good answer to that question. 

I have been a teacher for about two decades at this point. Currently I teach English as a Second Language classes two nights a week to local immigrants AND I teach the Bible on Sunday mornings from the pulpit of Sardinia Baptist Church.

And recently I have started to think of myself also as a possible mentor to others ... on matters of life and faith. 

And it occurs to me that a mentor is just a teacher who generally works one-on-one and whose lessons deal only with what matters most about life - as particular needs arise. 

And, again, I say the Church needs more mentors.

SPEAKING IN TONGUES?

A long time ago - and we're talking about 35 years back - I visited a church that was very much into the Holy Spirit. 

At least, that was the impression I had. 

But what they were really into was speaking in tongues. AND they understood speaking in tongues to be THE litmus test proving a believer was filled with the Holy Spirit.

I didn't know my Bible all that well at the time. But now I know that such an idea finds no support in Scripture. 

I wanted desperately to have the experience of speaking in tongues. I didn't know anyone in the church and so I had nothing to lose by going forward at the end of the service to "receive the gift of tongues". 

Some folks prayed over me and, as they did, I was hoping that a jumble of unrecognized words would soon come pouring out of my mouth of their own volition. But after a few minutes of prayer, it became clear to me that if I was going to speak in tongues in that moment, it would require me faking it. 

I couldn't bring myself to do it. After all, I didn't want something fake - I wanted what was real.

Now I look back and wonder what I really hoped to experience. Upon reflection now as a 58-year-old lifelong believer, I think it was this: 

I wanted to lose myself completely. I didn't want to struggle against sin and uncertainty. I wanted to escape my own poor self-image. I wanted God to show up inside my brain, push me away from the steering wheel and take over. 

When read about how the Holy Spirit came over the crowd of disciples at Pentecost, as recorded in the opening of Acts 2, we tend to hyper fixate on the tongues of flame and the commotion of the disciples speaking in other languages. 

And if we do that, we miss what is really important about the story:

When the Spirit comes, He inspires the disciples to WITNESS about God's power and goodness and He miraculously enables them to communicate these things to the waiting world in a way that they can understand. 

Being filled with the Spirit doesn't necessarily result in speaking in unknown languages. It's about speaking and living as witnesses to the love of Jesus.