Tears In A Bottle

I've used this graphic before - although I have no idea what source. In that blog two years ago, "I Still Miss Her," I wrote of my sister-in-law, Janice Grove. She was one to share the good news of Jesus' resurrection and the promise that faith would keep us eternally. 

I really like the way my sister-in-law worded Pascal’s Wager (the emphasis is her own) on her own blog in 2011:

“I WOULD RATHER LIVE THINKING THERE IS A GOD AND DIE TO FIND OUT THERE ISN'T THAN TO LIVE THINKING THERE ISN'T A GOD AND DIE TO FIND OUT THERE IS.”

She found the answer October 18, 2011. I missed after that - and found that I still miss her, painfully, often afterward. I could speak to her about many subjects - and we shared a love for family history, to the point we referred to it as genealogy. We filled in many blanks.

She is on the very top of my mind, has been since last Friday, when her beloved husband, Kenneth Grove, made the same discovery she did.

There is so much to be told about our husbands, separated when they were pre-schoolers. In and out of a children's home in Maumee, Ohio during the first part of World War II, then separated by a divorce where their father took the two older sons to Oklahoma, leaving her husband, the youngest, with their mother. There wasn't a reunion for thirty-five years, after all three brothers had grown children.

Can you see how many tears our Lord has put in His botttle, how much is written in His book? And there are two less people who share our interest in sharing the work of the Lord. She would have loved discussing Pascal's wager in another blog:

An atheist commented as to how surprised Christians are going to be when they die and find there is no God.  To me, that shows he hasn’t thought through his own argument.  If death is the end, no eternity beyond, Christians will not be surprised, nor will anyone else.  However, if Christians are correct, eternity does exist as explained by them, I would not want to be an atheist.  Of course, that’s Pascal’s Wager.

My concept of the “play it safe rather than risk being sorry” is to study what is offered about God.  Others have done so and chosen different religious views.  I will but simply state my own beliefs and their source.

I still run across other articles, opinions, studies, refutations, and debates on Pascal's Wager, such as this one just two days ago. Check out Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy's "Pascal's Wager about God." It opens with:

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) offers a pragmatic reason for believing in God: even under the assumption that God’s existence is unlikely, the potential benefits of believing are so vast as to make betting on theism rational. The super-dominance form of the argument conveys the basic Pascalian idea, the expectations argument refines it, and the dominating expectations argument gives a more sophisticated version still.

 I will admit I've given you a lot of background and a lot of reading. I hope it makes you thinkk about what you would say if, as Paul was, you are brought before an authority, as Agrippa was, and you have the opportunity to explain what you believe, and why, as Paul did before Agrippa - and I give you more to read in Acts 26. Will you start an outline now? What do you believe about what the Bible says about Jesus - and why?