Preaching From a Wire

      It is facinating to see 50 birds sitting together on a telephone line or a bunch of geese together on a golf fairway or football field.  The way they eat together, fly together and live together gives them a sense of community.  They are able to communicate and warn each other of danger.  They are not giving us a narcissistic message of "survival of the fittest".  They are not trying to see who is the most evolved or talented in flight.  They are not focused on the weakest of them dying off.  They functioned as a group.  They act like they are fine just the way they are with no evolving needed.
      In the creation story in Genesis, God made an interesting observation about creation.  He didn't look at the birds and say they had a lot evolving to do.  He said they were good just like they were.  "And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.  And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good." (Genesis 1:20-21)  In verse 10, God observed the land and sea and said it was good.  He did not observe any necessary evolving at that point.  In verse 12, God observed that the grass, the herbs and trees were good.  In verse 18, God saw that the stars, the moon and the sun were good.  In verse 25, God saw that the animals were good.  In verse 31, God saw that every thing he made, including man and woman, was good.
      So what about this sense of community?  1 John 4:8 says "...God is love."  How could God love before man was created?  Who could he love?  In 1 John 4:3, the Spirit confesseth that Jesus Christ is come int the flesh.  In Hebrews 3-12 we see that Jesus is our Melchisedec High Priest and mediator before God in Heaven.  In John 3:16&17 we see that God sent us his Son to save us.  God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Spirit are all working in different ways and yet are working together in community.  Love was present before God loved man.  Genesis 1:26 says, "And God said, Let us make man in our image...."  We were created through a group effort.
      The birds are not sending us an evolutionary message of survival of the fittest.  They are giving us  a message of community - of the nature and character of their creator.  They are preaching a message about our Great God.

Separation of Church and State

      Public schools are supposed to recognize the separation of church and state.  It can be quite difficult however.  The Bible says that God is the maker of all things.  At school students breath air that God created.  The school buildings sit in space that was created by God.  Teachers use time that God has created to teach students.  To have a true separation of Church and State, the state would need to create its own air.  The state would need to create it's own space for school buildings and create it's own time for teachers to teach in.

      I doubt the state could create air out of nothing.  It would be very hard for the state to create time and space out of nothing.  If the state was able to do so, more taxes would need to be created to pay for them.  There would probably be a tax on the amount of government-made air that we breathe.  We would probably be taxed on the amount of government-made space we use and the amount of govenment-made time that we use.

      Since our state presently has limited creative abilities, it will just have to depend on God creation for it's existence.  We are not going to have a true separation of church and state.