The Second Helvetic Confession is less well-known than the Westminster Confession of Faith or the Heidelberg Catechism, but with its Swiss roots and direct connection to John Calvin through Calvin’s correspondence and friendship with its author Heinrich Bullinger, the Second Helvetic Confession should not be overlooked in its importance to the Reformed faith.

I’ve been thinking about the Second Helvetic this week. Specifically, I have thought about one of the most famous lines from the Confession. In the first chapter, Bullinger asserts that the Scriptures are the true word of God. Nothing in that statement that anyone who claims “sola scriptura” would dispute. But before the chapter ends, he also says, “Wherefore when this Word of God is now preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe that the very Word of God is proclaimed, and received by the faithful…”

When we worshiped in Ossian, Indiana, on Sunday, I heard the very Word of God. I heard it again on Monday when I listened to Sunday’s sermon from a pastor who is a close friend but who lives far away. Continue reading →

I’m off to a presbytery meeting today and tomorrow. The expected response to such a statement is an eye roll at best, more likely an “I’m sorry” or “Can’t you say the dog ate your docket?”  In fact, though I have done my share of presbytery meeting eye rolls, we don’t have a dog, and I like presbytery meetings.

For the non-Presbyterians among you, a presbytery is a gathering of the elders (Greek word presbyteros) both teaching (pastors) and ruling (members of the session or elder board of a local congregation) in a geographical region. Think diocese or maybe a really big HOA. In our case it will be the pastors and congregational elders from the fifty-five denominational churches in Indiana, western Ohio, and Michigan (in reality, the lower third of Michigan). We are the Presbytery of the Midwest.

Yes, we have a docket, or agenda. We have committee reports to hear and lots of motions to be moved and approved by the 100+ in attendance. The Moderator will keep things moving and the Stated Clerk will make sure we do things decently and in order. The Assistant Stated Clerk will take minutes to remind us of all we did over the 10-12 hours of our Friday and Saturday meeting. Mostly motions are passed unanimously, but there are sometimes debates, occasional “nays,” and infrequent amendments, friendly or otherwise. Once in a while someone will call out “point of order!” if they think the Moderator or the Clerk are allowing something indecent or out of order. Continue reading →

Iguazu Falls, Photo: Wikicommons

Becky and I are planning to travel to Brazil this fall, and we are very much looking forward to the trip. We will spend about half our time visiting our friends, some of whom we have known for 25 years, in Belo Horizonte and the other half playing tourists, which we have never done in our many trips to Brazil. Specifically, we will be staying near Iguazu Falls (seen in the photo above) in the south of Brazil along the border with Argentina and Paraguay.

In addition to getting various reservations in order, both of us have gotten out our figurative oil cans to lubricate our rusty Brazilian Portuguese before the trip. Old CDs (remember them?) from long ago and some remarkably good You Tube courses that, like You Tube itself, were not around when we first began to learn some basic Portuguese nearly 25 years ago.

The vocabulary lists are like meeting a friend you haven’t seen in a long time. “Oh, yeah,” we say. So many things come back quickly. The grammar is still grammar. I will concentrate on past, present, and future tenses.  The past imperfect subjunctive will have to wait for another trip. Continue reading →

Morning Moon Through the Trees and on the Pond, April 23, 2025

For the past week or so, an old hymn writer has been a good companion on my morning runs. The sun lifts its head earlier each morning and my once dark route is now mostly light. Just before the sunlight begins to cast its shadows across the farm fields and ponds along the way, the birds commence a loud chorus of their favorite songs to fill the still chilly air. It is then that Maltbie Babcock reminds me “This is my Father’s world: the birds their carols raise, the morning light, the lily white, declare their Maker’s praise.”

The avian choir concludes the morning anthem about the time I douse the lamp on my light vest. Maybe the choristers are off to the coffee hour or have morning chores to which they must attend. The world grows quiet, but still Mr. Babcock speaks to me. By his counsel I am reminded to “rest me in thought of rocks and trees and skies and seas – His hand the wonders wrought.”

The words to the poem that inspired the hymn were published by his widow shortly after Babcock’s untimely and tragic death at age 42 in 1901. They had been written several years earlier, not long after the death of their infant first son. His life marked by sorrow, the hymn is much more than an ode to nature. Its understanding of God and his world grows deeper as the third stanza calls us to ne’er forget “that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.” Continue reading →

Psalm 131 is one of the Psalms of Ascent. I like it very much. One day last week Psalm 131 was among the morning psalms. It seemed as if it might be encouraging to some of my friends, so I shared it in email messages to those friends. But as I pasted the text of the psalm into the body of the email, a warning from Microsoft advised me that the tone of the passage was not to its liking.

Rather than comparing his soul within him to a weaned child with its mother, Bill Gates thought it might be better simply to say, “I am very sensitive.” The arrogant oligarch of Seattle thinking he might better at understanding human experience than the sweet psalmist of Israel (2 Samuel 3:21).

But it is not just Gates’ pedestrian prose that it is the problem. The poetry of the psalm is not describing a sensitive person; it is painting a picture of the person who has found rest in Christ. Continue reading →