Figuring Out Dropbox

Lately I’ve been experimenting with Drobox. I’ve used this Internet-based tool before, but sparingly. The graphics designer who did the covers for Doctor Luke’s Assistant and the print cover for Documenting America saved them to Dropbox, because of their size. I recovered them from there, did whatever I had to do with them, but didn’t explore Dropbox much. When I needed those covers either completed or tweaked, the next designers I gave them to got the files via Dropbox.

So as I understand it, Dropbox is a service wherein you can store files on someone’s server, somewhere in the world, and access the files at any time from any computer. It also becomes a place to store files you want backed up. A poor man’s backup, if you will. The service is free, up to some number of mb or gb. For a fee I’m sure you can get a whole lot more storage space.

I’m concerned about this thing, this cloud thing, if that’s the right word for it. If I store my files at Dropbox, where are they? They are on a hard drive, only God knows where, with my name on a small piece of it. So long at the Internet is available, I can access them. If the Internet is not available, they are as good as lost, whereas if they are on a hard drive at your location, you can access them so long as you have electricity and a working computer. But, lack of Internet is temporary. They say that in the future the Internet will be so much more ubiquitous than it is even now that lack of Internet will be almost unheard of. Maybe 10 to 15 years down the road.

But I like things to be where I’m at. Paper books and files are nice. A hand-held e-reader is nice. I’m concerned when things are out of my sight. However, I have a current need regarding my writing, and decided to see how Dropbox might help me.

My current work-in-progress is a non-fiction, public domain book titled Thomas Carlyle’s Edinburgh Encyclopedia Articles. For the first time all twenty-one articles will be gathered into one volume. Plus I have a short introduction and some footnotes added. I’m at the point where I’m doing some incredibly picky stuff to the text, to get it closer to perfect, and will soon shift to formatting for print book and e-book. I’m working on it at the office and at home. My normal procedure is to save it to whatever computer I’m working at, with the day’s date attached to the file name, and e-mail it to myself. Then I can access it via e-mail at the other computer. Except sometimes I forget to do the e-mail. I get to the other computer and realize I don’t have the latest tweaks to build on, and I lose whatever time I was going to spend on it.

That would be eliminated if I would just save it to Dropbox, in addition to the computer I’m working on. Then, so long as I have the Internet, I should be able to access it from anywhere. Right? That’s the theory. And so far it worked. Yesterday I worked on it a little at work, saved it to my office computer, saved it to Dropbox (for the first time), and then worked on it at home in the evening. I repeated the saving process. Today I did some additions to the Introduction and proofreading that resulted in a few changes. I saved it to my computer here, changing yesterday’s date to today’s, then saved it to Dropbox with that new file name. I don’t know if circumstances will allow me to work on it at home tonight. But if they do, I will have the latest file there to pull-up and work on. If I remember to save it to Dropbox, tomorrow I’ll have the latest file here at work.

I don’t know. Maybe I’ll come to like this. It should maximize my writing time, but most importantly eliminate downtime. And that’s a good thing. And it will assure that the most recent copy is always backed-up to the Internet. And that’s another good thing. I’ll keep using it for a while, see how I like it. So far, so good.

Finally, the Lesson

What a week this has been. Not wow, what a great week, or drat, what an awful week. Let's say a weird week. Busy in some sense, leisurely in others, stressful in all.

Last Saturday, the 1st, we moved my mother-in-law, Esther Barnes, from her own retirement apartment to an "independent" living apartment at the Concordia retirement center here in Bella Vista. The physical move went well; the emotional move not so much. Her son is in from Santa Fe, staying with her and doing much of the work. My wife hasn't been particularly well the last several weeks, so there was limited things she could do. I was away the week before the move, and had my week back in the office afterward, so there was limited stuff I could do. Plus we had the rogue March sleet/snow storm in the midst of this. Consequently, everything went slower than expected and it was just yesterday, Saturday March 8, that we finished all at the apartment and could officially declare the move "over". Of course, our garage is filled with boxes and unneeded furniture, waiting to be sorted and sold or discarded. What a mess.

Part of the problem was the mix of strong and weak personalities. Lynda's brother is a strong personality. He keeps telling his mother what to do rather than asking what she wants to do. That's fine for some things. Esther is beyond the point in her life where she wants to make a lot of decisions. But some things, such as "Do you want this table or the other? You only have room for one at the new place" should be decided by her, not dictated by someone. If she doesn't want to make the decision, so be it.

Consequently, emotions have been running high this week. The three strong-willed parties have been at each other's throats at times. Each of us has taken time out, the others have said nothing, and we all went back to the work until it was done. Of course, it's not done until Esther feels fully comfortable in her new place and until our garage is usable again for its intended purpose. That, I imagine, will take weeks.

But tomorrow, all will at least in part return to normal. We will be back in church tomorrow morning. We missed last week due to the frozen-stuff storm. Lynda missed the two weeks before that, sick the second and away the first. So it's been four weeks since we've been there together, and two since I've been there. Actually, that week was a special week for our Upwards Basketball program, so we didn't have Life Groups. It's been three weeks since we were met as a Life Group.

I miss it. It is a highlight of my week. Most of the time on Sunday I post something about church and Life Group, as I did last Sunday during the storm. I gain inspiration from the worship service, the fellowship with friends, and the study of scripture or related items. The study we're in, in Ephesians, has been quite worthwhile and uplifting. I've missed it the last two weeks, and missed the people in the class.

This week I haven't re-read the scripture or made any notes for teaching. It's not my week to teach, so I've kind of slacked off. Last night I should have taken some time to do so, but there was writing to do, books to read and DVDs to watch. On Sunday morning I review the scripture, skimmed the Matthew Henry commentary, and did some preparations. I'm actually writing this before class, for scheduled posting, so, while I'm not scheduled to teach, I don't know whether my veterinarian co-teacher will be called away on an animal emergency and I'll have to teach. That will be okay if I do. If a group of mature Christians can't pull out a passage of scripture and discuss it for an hour, with a competent group leader, then something is wrong with them. So, even if I have to teach this, with limited, immediate study, I think I'll be okay.

Any way, a return to Life Group and worship tomorrow will be a good ending for a stressful eight days. God is good.

Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise

I figure one out of three of those, healthy-wealthy-wise, will be pretty good. Wise I hope for, and keep working toward by accumulating knowledge and trying to rightly apply it. Wealthy seems to be escaping me, though through frugality I'm working on that as well.

That leaves health. That's not totally within our control. Genes and environment have something to say about it. But more and more I'm learning that much of it is within my control, through eating, exercise, and daily regimen. I feel that this year I'm healthier than I've been for many, many years, at least a decade.

Last Tuesday, the day I left for Nashville and the annual conference of the IECA, I weighed in at 231 pounds, in jeans. This is the lowest I've been in years. In 2001, while trying to lose weight before out daughter's wedding, I got down briefly, for one day, to 230 before going back up to around 242 at the time of the wedding. Before that I have to go back to 1992 when, in contest with another man in the office, I got down to 222 before ballooning up again. I peaked at 304 in 2004, tried to get down and did, to about 259, but then went back up again to 304 in March 2006. At that point I said Enough, and began a program of trying to live healthier.

I started being more faithful at exercise, and more careful about what I ate. Slowly, over several years, the weight started coming off and I felt better. I purposely wanted the weight loss to be slow, to hopefully be more permanent. Also over these several years some rules for weight loss and better health came into focus for me. I'm sure I reported them to this blog before, but to make this an all inclusive post I'll repeat them. These did not come to me all at once, but over several years.

1. Eat a little better
2. Exercise a little more
3. Drink a little more water
4. Eat a little less
5. Get a little more sleep
6. Exercise a little better
7. Solve my "free food" problem.

Simple rules, but effective for me. I started my better health quest with eating a little better and getting a little more exercise, mainly walking. And it seemed to work. In 2006 I lost 20 pounds, kept it off in 2007, lost 10 more in 2008, etc. I had some challenges along the way. My pre-diabetes came into full Type 2 diabetes. I started taking medicines for it, some of which work against weight loss. I contracted ehrlichiosis, not once but twice, the second time causing a severe flare-up in my rheumatoid arthritis. This included an especially painful right knee, which my rheumatologist said will someday need to be replaced. I had a mild case of pneumonia once, the flu once, and more than my normal number of colds. I had a few ups and downs on weight, but mostly down, like stocks in a bear market.

January 2013 found me up a little in weight from twelve months before, my blood sugar again rising, and having a general lack of energy. I decided that was it, I was going to go back to my rules and re-apply them. It seemed to me that each one could be applied in any situation. If my weight loss stalled, I could eat a little better and a little less. I could exercise a little more and a little better (meaning, exercises that stressed the body more). It worked, and slowly through the year I went down from about 265 to 242 (I think; my weight log is at work, I'm typing this at home).

In November 2013, at a corporate leadership retreat, we had a couple of exercise ladies come in and put us through a set of exercises and talk with us about healthy lifestyles. They had us doing lunges, thrusts, and planks. I liked the lunges and planks, not so much the thrusts, and have incorporated those two into my regimen. Not a whole lot, but some. It seems to be working. I'm feellng better.

Also, my blood sugars have been excellent of late, which I think is a combination of eating better, exercising more and better, and a change in medications in January 2013. I'm now taking Byetta, which, as I understand it, delays the emptying of the stomach, which is supposed to equalize blood sugars. It is also conducive to weight loss, unlike other diabetes medicines. My sugars in 2014 have been mostly between 130 and 90, and for the last month have averaged around 104. In March so far they are 111-91-107. Even while I was out last week during the convention, with somewhat overeating, my sugars weren't bad.

So, I won't say I'm healthy at this stage, but I'm healthier than I was. I feel younger than I did eight years ago. I'm motivated to keep going. Next week or the week after I hope to weigh-in below 230 for the first time in 22 years. When I see the doctor in April I hope to be given six months before needing to come back to see him. That will be a moment of triumph if that happens. I need to get to 219 before I will be considered overweight rather than obese. That will be the next goal. The doctor set 200 as the upper end of my ideal weight goal, but I think 180 is a better goal for me, and what I'm working towards.

So, I'm now waiting for the weather to break a little more so that I can do more outside work. I saw up deadfall and fell dead trees and saw them up, all with a manual bowsaw. It's mainly for exercise, though we take some to Oklahoma City on some trips for the kids to burn. I'll get back on my 3.7 mile walks soon, and see how they affect me. And I'll walk a little more consistently on noon hours. All while eating a little better and a little less. Next time I report, hopefully I'll be reporting to you from south of 230.

Rooted and Grounded

Here I am, back after an absence of two weeks, ready to resume a more consistent regimen of writing and posting. The biggest thing that worked against me the last two weeks was my employment. Last week I was in Nashville, TN, attending the conference of the IECA and presenting a paper there. The week before that had preparation for the conference. Other writing tasks had entered into that, as I had a book out on inter-library loan—research for a future book, which I'll write about on my other blog—and that took up a lot of evenings.

So here I am, on a Sunday morning, ready to post. It's a time when I would normally be in church, soon to finish the first service and go into life groups in the second hour, for fellowship and study. It's my week to teach. But I'm not there because of the storm we're having. I can't say a storm is raging outside The Dungeon windows, because the white stuff is barely coming down. But earlier we had sleet and/or ice. Yesterday the church decided to cancel life groups and just go with one service at 10:45 a.m. Anymore I really minimize driving in bad weather or bad roads, so I decided we wouldn't go in today if in fact the forecast storm occurred. Lynda didn't object, so here we are.

I arose at 8 this morning, took my blood sugar (it was good, a subject for a future post) and shot. I heated coffee from last night and settled in my reading chair. I decided to read Ephesians 3:14-21, which was the lesson for today. Then I read Ephesians from the beginning up through and including this passage. Since, knowing the storm was coming and we most certainly wouldn't be venturing out, I hadn't actually prepared a lesson, I decided to at least read in one of the commentary's on it. I chose Adam Clarke's commentary, two pages of 8 point font on this passage. Actually, I don't read in Clarke's actual commentary; I read Ralph Earle's abridgement of the commentary. One day perhaps I'll write about this.

From Clarke I picked up several things about the passage that I hadn't noticed on my own. This is Paul's prayer for the Ephesians: "For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family  in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may...." Clarke pointed out that this prayer isn't so much an intercession as it is a prayer of dedication. Paul prays lofty things, the types of things you might pray when dedicating a church building. Clarke drew parallels between this prayer and that of King Solomon when he dedicated the temple.

Another thing Clarke mentioned, which I can't believe I missed on my own, is the double metaphor Paul uses: "And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love...." The King James version, which Clarke used, has "rooted and grounded in love." He says this double metaphor comes from agriculture and architecture. Rooted clearly refers to plants. The roots push down into the soil and hold the plant in place. This is a subject oft heard at the conference I attended last week, Environmental Connection 14, the annual conference of the International Erosion Control Association. Much has been said in recent years about the importance of vegetation in preventing erosion. Since my mind was on this subject already, I'm especially surprised the fact that this was an apt metaphor escaped me. Perhaps it was because I've read and thought about this passage so much over the years that I wasn't drilling down to the nuts and bolts of it. I was skimming, in a way.

Clarke says the grounded metaphor has to do with a building. A building is fixed to the ground, oriented, provided first with a foundation, then rises into a superstructure. Clearly the translators of the NIV thought established was a better word here than grounded. This destroys the building metaphor, but strengths the plant metaphor. A plant that is rooted is established. It is firm in its location, immovable, holding together the soil around it, interrupting the raindrops falling all around it, preventing them from impacting on the soil and dislodging individual soil particles. The roots prevent those raindrops from washing away soil particles from the root zone. Paul prays that the Ephesian believers might be like the plants: affecting their environment, holding things together, preventing that place from eroding. It is a great metaphor.

Clarke also pointed out a curious phrasing of Paul's: "And I pray that you...may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge...." How can you know what surpasses knowledge? How can you know the unknowable? So what is Paul saying here? Perhaps that it is beyond human knowledge, but perhaps it is only known with special insight granted by God. Or maybe, as Clarke suggests, the know in this case has to do with acknowledgement. We know we can't really understand the love of God, and we acknowledge that and grasp what we can of it. This is something I will have to ponder more fully. It will be a good discussion point in life group.

Paul ends his prayer, before moving on to a section about living the Christian life in an unChristian world, with a doxology. "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us, to him be flory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." A great ending to a great prayer. I shall have to read this again and again. And, I still have to read Matthew Henry's commentary on it. Though next week won't be mine to teach, I'll still be prepared at the substitute, and who knows what more I'll learn from the preparation.

Since I began writing this the storm has changed. Then it was light sleet, barely visible. Now it has changed over to snow, the light and fluffy kind, but heavier, clearly visible, drifting slightly from north to south in what appears to be a gentle wind. The temperature is around 15 degrees F. I don't know that I'll go out for my usual snow walk. But I know that this is fun to look at.

Ephesians 3:1-13 – A Mystery

Our Life Group lesson this week was on Ephesians 3:1-13, our sixth lesson on this marvelous epistle of Paul. The apostle is about to pray for the Ephesians, in his letter, but first he goes on a digression. He begins, "For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles—". Then, if we skip to verse 14 we read, "For this reason I kneel before the Father...[vs. 16] I pray that...." Everything between verse 1 and verse 14 is digression.

Why this digression? Why everything in these verses? I said in class today that I have to know the why of things—knowing what isn't good enough. I built my lesson around the mystery (vs. 3, 4, 6, and 9) that the Gentiles would be saved through Christ, and Jew and Gentile be brought into one fellowship. Why did God choose to do things that way and leave his ultimate plan a mystery for so long? As opposed to, millennia earlier introducing the system that ended up with salvation through Christ?

But something I didn't take note of or mention in class is that this passage is directed to the Gentiles. Paul begins the letter by addressing it "To God's holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus." In chapter 2, verse 11-23, Paul seems to be speaking to both Jews [circumcised; near by] and Gentiles [uncircumcised; far away]. But now he says, "I, Paul...for the sake of you Gentiles...." Is he now saying there are only Gentile Christians in the Ephesus church? Or is just changing focus to address those of the church who are Gentiles?

Paul has just described himself as "the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles".  Except, that's not really what he's saying. He's actually saying that for the sake of the Gentiles he's "a prisoner of Christ Jesus." A subtle difference, perhaps, but a difference. Is what Paul's about to say for the Gentiles' sake, or is he a prisoner for the sake of the Gentiles? The notes in the NIV Study Bible don't cover this, so I reached back to two older commentaries I have: Adam Clarke and Matthew Henry.

Clarke states it is the latter: Paul is a prisoner because he preached Christ to the Gentiles and insisted they could be Christians without first becoming Jews, thus raising the ire of Jewish leaders. Those leaders grabbed him in Jerusalem and he was prisoner there, in Caesarea, and in Rome. Clarke glosses over that Paul says he was "the prisoner of Christ Jesus," not prisoner of the Jews or Romans, nor did he say he was in prison or in chains. Matthew Henry attributes the phrase "for this reason" as pointing back to Chapter 2, wherein Paul said God had made Jew and Gentile one, refers to why Paul is a prisoner (rather than why Paul is about to say what he says beginning in verse 14). At least Henry spends time on the fact that he is Christ Jesus' prisoner. But I didn't find much help in Henry on the question of what "for the sake of" means.

Could this verse actually mean something slightly different? I'm working only in English here, since I don't know Greek. When we say something like "I'm doing this for your sake," I see two possible meanings, one causal, one a result. It could mean I'm doing this because of something you did [e.g. I'm drive to the hospital for your sake, because while jumping around in the basement you fell and broke your arm]. Or it could mean I'm doing this for your benefit [e.g. I'm making you do your homework, child, for your sake, not mine—because you will learn and grow as a result]. It is in this latter sense, I believe, that Paul means "for the sake of you Gentiles." So my conclusions concerning verse 1 are:

• "For this reason" refers of course to what went before in the letter, that Jew and Gentile are brought together in Christ; and it's prefacing what Paul is about to say.
• "the prisoner of Christ Jesus" is Paul's recognitions that no matter who restricts him he is really a will prisoner of God in Jesus.
• "for the sake of you Gentiles" most likely refers to his imprisonment being for the Gentiles' benefit, not something caused by them or his preaching to them.

What now shall we say about the lesson? Having spent so much time and space on the first verse, I have no more of either to tell you of administration (vs. 2, 9) being koinonia, or going in depth into the mystery (vs. 3, 4, 6, 9), or the marching orders for the church (vs. 10), or deal again with the heavenly realms (vs. 10) and who the rulers mentioned are, or how this ties together with 1:3, 1:20, 2:6, and 6:12.

How rich is this book! I could almost devote my entire blog to it.

Additional Review of "In the Blink of an Eye"

Andrew Parker’s book In the Blink of an Eye was the subject of an earlier review post on this blog. I had intended to come back and do two more posts. Alas, way led on to way and I never got back. I’m finally circling round, however, and will do at least this one more post about it.

The premise of Parker’s book is that the evolution of the eye, long thought to be a very weak link in the evolutionary chain, because of the length of time that it would take, could in fact have happened in about 500,000 years. Which is, in evolutionary terms, just the blink of an eye. He says this happened at the beginning of the Cambrian Epoch, which would have been approximately 543 million years ago.

Well, actually, according to Parker there’s no approximate about it. Dating of fossils is so exact that he says it took place exactly then, give or take a million years. This corresponded with what scientists call the Cambrian Explosion, which was a rapid increase in the number of species in a short amount of time (evolutionary speaking). Other things taking place at that time, in addition to species suddenly having eyes, is the sudden appearance of hard body parts and eyes. All the phyla we know now are found in fossils know to be after the explosion, but not in fossils known to be before the explosion. Parker says this happened precisely 543 million years ago. It was the sudden evolution of eyes, he says, that caused the need for animals to evolve hard body parts, which in turn gave rise to the explosion in the number of species, all because eyes changed the whole relation of prey and predator.

The book goes on, in great detail, to state what happened at that time, as determined from the fossil record. Finally, toward the end, Parker gives us his view on the why: “Why it happened is the puzzle this book sets out to solve.”

Those who doubt evolution say this explosion would correspond to certain parts of the Creation account in the book of Genesis. Parker and his peers would reject this (though see his book The Genesis Enigma for a lengthy discussion of the Genesis account of creation), saying that God, if He really exists, had no part in any creation of all things animal, vegetable, or mineral. Everything had to happen by natural causes.

On page 224, Parker begins his discussion on the rapid evolution of the eye. First a patch of light-sensitive skin occurs, for whatever reason. Mathematical modeling done has shown that, from that small patch of light-sensitive skin, 364,000 generations would be needed for a fully developed eye to evolve if the rate of evolution were just “0.005 percent from one generation to the next.” He then says this is pessimistically slow, and that a much faster rate of evolution is likely. Based on the life span of the species living 544 million years ago, those generations would pass in about a half million years. The 0.005 percent change per generation was based on a light-sensitive patch of skin changing in length, width, or protein density by 1 percent for each generation.

But, what I don’t get is why evolution should happen at 0.005 percent from generation to generation. Does evolution happen from “adaption”—that is, the slow process of survival of the fittest then breeding offspring who are even more fit—or does it happen by “mutation”—the sudden, unexplained occurrence of a change in the animal that just happens to be fitter than a non-mutated offspring?

Say that a larger animal is fitter than a smaller animal, because it will win a fight between the two. Or it will have more success in predation, and thus will live longer and breed more often, and it’s offspring will be more likely to be like it than like those smaller/weaker members of the species at the opposite side of the bell curve. In any species I suppose no two critters are exactly alike. There will be a range of sizes, for example, with some kind of distribution around a mean or average. Those few of the species who are a standard deviation or more above the mean will have greater success at predation and living and breeding. After some generations of this, the mean will change; it will be larger/stronger/fitter. But the species preyed upon will be adapting too, and will have a new mean after those generations and be fitter to fight off the predation of the other animals.

Now, the animals in question don’t will this to happen, as I understand evolutionary theory. The stimulus to adapt must come from external pressures, not internal causes. They don’t say, “Our species has to grow larger and stronger or we won’t survive. Let me produce larger and stronger offspring.” It takes place through natural selection based on success and failure of the various members of the species. Over a long period of time the specie changes or, as evolutionists believe, a whole new species develops.

This idea that evolutionary change by adaption should take place in nice 0.005 percent steps seems to me to be ridiculous. It assumes that at each change the species is fitter than it was before the change. Parker says that is obviously true, but it’s not obvious for me.

So, while I enjoyed this book and took in a lot of information, I am not persuaded by the conclusions, which are:

• The eye evolved precisely 544 million years ago
• The eye evolved in a period of 500 thousand years in a series of tiny steps, with each step producing a species mean that was fitter than the one before
• That the impetus for this natural process was probably a rapid increase in the intensity of sunlight

Parker’s book is good. It is, however, neither a practical, popular book nor a scientific text. It is somewhere in between these two species, too non-academic to be used as a text, and too full of scientific terms to speak to the common man. It is an interesting experiment, but I predict this species will find itself extinct somewhere down the road.

The Two Made One - Ephesians 2:11-22

Yesterday, Sunday, was not my day to teach Life Group. But on Friday the few-days-old adopted grandchild of my co-teacher underwent surgery at Children's Hospital in Little Rock, so I knew I would be called on to substitute. I went ahead and read the scripture for the lesson: Ephesians 2:11-22.

This is our fifth lesson in Ephesians, a book that is, or should be, well known to Christians who are long established in their walk with Christ. I this passage on Friday, and was immediately struck with how rich it is, and how full of wonder statements. Here are the ones that stood out to me.

2:13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.

2:14 For he himself is our peace....

 2:15b His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace....

2:18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

2:19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household....

2:20b ...with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.

2:21 In him the whole building...rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.

How rich! how full! how memorable! are these fragments, all worthy in their own right to be memorized by the devout Christian, as well as in place as part of a full passage.

The context of these in Ephesians is easy to understand from reading the full passage. Paul speaks of the Jew and Gentile as those who were near to and far away from God, respectively. The work of Jesus, specifically through his blood (i.e. his death) is the method God used to bring these two groups together to the point where they could put aside their natural animosity toward each other and become one church, one holy people devoted to God. Paul had alluded to this in a statement earlier in Ephesians:

1:9-10 And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

In our modern world it's difficult to understand the division there was at the time of Paul, and of Jesus, between Gentile and Jew. Or is it? In the class I gave an illustration of a sermon I once heard preached by a leader in our church. He was in South Africa, helping people at an altar of prayer, people praying for salvation. One man expressed joy at having prayed through and found assurance of salvation. This preacher started questioning the man. "Do you love your neighbor?" "Oh yes!" "Do you love your family?" "Oh yes?" "Do you love the Dutch?" The man praying was of English descent, and he hesitated at this question. The preacher told him to keep praying, and went off to help others.

Later he came back to that man and said, "Do you love the Dutch?" "Oh yes!" "Do you love the black man?" Again the seeker hesitated, so the preacher told him to keep praying, that he had not really prayed through.

Alas, our world is full of such divisions. How often have you heard it said, "There are two kinds of people in the world: Texans, and those who wish they were Texans." Or maybe its corollary: "There are two kinds of people in the world: Texans, and those who are glad they aren't Texans." We are still divided racially, ethnically, nationally, by language, by customs and culture, by doctrine and worship practices, by social status, by economic status.

The answer for breaking down all these barriers isn't better understanding of the other group. It's not intermingling, though that can help. No, the answer to this is the blood of Christ, working in the human heart and changing that heart, casting aside sin and its guilt, and creating a new heart, a new man.

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross...

How I wish it were so! That sin did not now separate man into hostile camps.

Come, Lord Jesus.