Did you know that soil is an "essential natural resource"?  Or that July 28 will forever be designated the Day of the American Cowboy?  Today's Wall Street Journal complains that the 110th Congress has passed fewer public laws at this point in the session than any in two decades, but more resolutions than any in history.  It's not even close—294 of the former to 1,900 of the latter.

 

Thanks to the work of this Congress, we now know that May 5-9 is National Substitute Teacher Recognition Week.  July will forever be National Watermelon Month, until a resolution in the future makes it National Somethingelse Month.  (How does one honor a watermelon?)  We have no legislation responding to gasoline prices or predatory lending, but we have established the fact that Pittsfield, Massachusetts is home to the earliest known reference to the word "baseball."  This is news you can use.

 

This morning's New York Times continues our theme of practical information with the announcement that the Hubble constant has now been calculated to 74 kilometers per second per megaparsec.  In case you need clarification, that means that for every additional million parsecs (about 3.26 million light-years) a galaxy is from us, it is traveling 74 kilometers per second faster.  Now are we clear?  Cosmologists care greatly about this debate, as it helps them understand the age, size, and composition of the universe.  The rest of us are wondering how to pay our gas bill.

 

It used to bother me that the Bible doesn't tell us what happened to the dinosaurs or how old the universe is.  Nothing in Scripture explains the origin of the pyramids or identifies the source of the Amazon.  But when I came to understand that the Bible is practical, rather than speculative, the light came on.  The Hebrews were intensely interested in the here and now.  The Greeks, by contrast, were given to rational, logical speculation.  You and I have inherited the world of Plato and Aristotle.  We like our truth to be non-contradictory and linear.  But God's word is interested in what you need to know more than what you would like to know.

 

If I could prove that the universe was 14.2 billion years old rather than 13.7 billion years old, or that dinosaurs died because a meteor crashed into the Yucatan and created a global dust cloud, how would that information improve your life this morning?  Congress might pass a resolution complimenting me, but not much would change.  By contrast, J. I. Packer called the Bible, "God preaching."  So, what do you need to know this morning?  Have you listened to your Father yet today?

 

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