Christ is Risen!
by Newnameelizabeth
Indeed He is Risen!
“On Bright Thursday the Gospel reading is John 3:1-15, which mentions the Pharisee Νikόdēmos who came by night to speak to Christ. The Lord told him that a man could not see the Kingdom of God unless he were born again. Νikόdēmos, taking Him much too literally, could not understand how such a thing was possible.
The Savior then clarified His words, saying that one must be born “of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5), referring to Baptism. Νikόdēmos, however, still found it difficult to understand Him.
The Lord said, “If I have told you of earthly things, and you believe not, how shall you believe if I tell you of heavenly things?” (John 3:12).
The reading from Acts 2:38-41 also speaks of Baptism. Saint Peter told the crowd, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you… and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).
The main focus of today’s readings is on Baptism, but they also point to other things. We are to raise our mind and understanding from earthly to heavenly things, and to seek the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
– https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2007/04/12/31-bright-thursday
My favorite things right now are rocks, plants and birds. I love that they were created by God and that they provide stability, beauty, and joyful, loud life. According to the above, we should circle these attributes back to our worship of God and, since I’m still reading Mother Alexandra’s book on Angels, the heavenly hosts.
It seems out of order that the land and plants were created the third day, before the sun, moon and planets on the fourth. Also that birds were created with fish on the fifth day before land animals on the sixth.
Archiopterix used to be considered the first appearing feathered bird 150 million years ago, but Wikipedia says that 2009 Anchiornis was discovered in China and beats it by 10 million years. Current finds show land animals before that by a few tens on millions of years, but maybe there are earlier bird fossils to discover.
Btw Hugh Ross and Stephen Meyer have converted me to old earth creationism but Meyer doesn’t use that term. Still, birds and mammals appearing close together makes their separation into different “days” curious.
So like Nicodemus we can be scientifically skeptical but there’s probably something spiritual we’re missing.
Words 
If we believe that the world was essentially refashioned when Adam and Eve sinned, then there is essentially nothing that can be known empirically about the beginning of the world. If the earthly creation is as a mirror of the soul of Man, then corruption did not enter the world until man became corrupt, but instead mirrored the harmony which existed between Adam and Eve and their Creator. This is certainly not the world that we live in now!
In St. Basil’s “Hexameron” it says that God created things instantly, in their mature form, as if many years of growth had already taken place; in other words, they were created “in process”. Would not this principle also apply to the Earth as a whole? Why would God create the Earth as a sterile lump of rock and wait for the processes of weathering to produce soil accumulations? It seems the Earth would have been created in process as well, with soils already in place in preparation for their husbandman. Also, these soils are not infinitely renewable; the processes of weathering take place far too slowly, especially considering modern rates of soil depletion. The soils we have are a gift of life from our Creator, but it is a gift which extends only some thousands of years. We like to believe that we can become master of the Earth through rewriting all natural processes, thereby extending our progeny into the far future, and perhaps through all of Space as well, but it is not so; we have only that life which has been given to us, and in the end it must be surrendered to the Giver, who will “roll up the skies as a scroll”.
An old earth view certainly makes the fall more complicated since it necessitates that death and hunting predate man.
They now have “discovered” that there have been single cell organisms living since almost the very beginning of the earth’s formation “billions” of years ago. I now do not mind that the earth was actively being formed for that long. I also believe there were countless interventions and new things introduced possibly by molding if not ex nihilo.
Topsoil may be fragile, but clay is way less so. It does not require organic material as it is mostly made from weathered silica, aluminum, oxygen and hydrogen.
Christian astrophysicist Hugh Ross lays out the complicated, very dynamic creation of the universe in The Improbable Universe.
I was talking about the weathering that has to take place to produce clay.
All dating methods are doubtful; they choose the methods which give space for their theories. That being so, should we adopt the beliefs which allow us to fit into the modern world, albeit awkwardly, or do we choose to believe in a way which allows us to flow seamlessly into the Patristic worldview?
Modern people are worshipers of Science, which is to say, worshippers of human intellect, which is to say worshipers of themselves.
Being a former nurse, I appreciate modern scientific advances. I do not consider new discoveries as opposed to the Church Fathers. I assume they accepted the scientific developments of their day as well as its inadequacies.
I take the constant revision of scientific dating with a grain of salt. I tend to believe things happened faster and at times more suddenly than they say. I do not believe there is enough evidence to confidently support inter-species evolution either. But I do believe in physical evidence and linguistic metaphor.
I have also quit vilifying slow craftsmanship, and do not find instant ex nihilo the only virtuous way.
I’m not against knowledge, which is what the word science means, but I am opposed to modern Science, because modern Science is the history of the unnatural elevation of intellectual inquiry, its progressive divorce from Christian spirituality and every other restraining influence, and its subsequent unfettered application to every aspect of life. In order for modern Science to regain its utility, it must become properly humble before the mystery of Being. We have to stop thinking of scientific investigation as the thing which opens the door to the understanding of the Universe; for one thing, this inducts us into a Materialist universe which is at its core reductionist, because the only thing scientists are competent to study is the material universe, and if Science is seen as the gateway to all knowledge, then these investigations surely must encompass all of existence, and the sad fact is that you can’t squeeze meaning out of matter. It is often said that the Fathers adopted the science of their Time, but this is not true; the Fathers strenuously combatted many aspects of the science of their day because they were in opposition to the truths of the Faith. As Blessed Seraphim Rose states, the scientific problems with Evolutionary theory are secondary; the real problems with Evolution are theological. With Evolution, you essentially have the resurgence of the Pagan Cosmology which the Fathers opposed.