USS Arizona Memorial

My friend Becky from Hawaii sent me these nice cards of the Arizona Memorial.

The USS Arizona Memorial, located at Pearl Harbour in Honolulu, Hawaii, marks the resting place of 1,102 of the 1,177 sailors and Marines killed on the USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941 by Japanese imperial forces and commemorates the events of that day. The attack on Pearl Harbor and the island of Oʻahu was the action that led to the United States' direct involvement in World War II.

The memorial, built in 1962, is visited by more than one million people annually.^[1] Accessible only by boat, it straddles the sunken hull of the battleship without touching it. Historical information about the attack, shuttle boats to and from the memorial, and general visitor services are available at the associated USS Arizona Memorial Visitor Center, which opened in 1980 and is operated by the National Park Service. The sunken remains of the battleship were declared a National Historic Landmark on 5 May 1989.

150th Birth Anniversary of Paul Wallot

Paul Wallot (26 June 1841 Oppenheim am Rhein - 10 August 1912 Bad Schwalbach) was a German architect of Huguenot descent, best known for designing the Reichstag building in Berlin, erected between 1884 and 1894. He also built the adjacent Palace of the President of the Reichstag, finished in 1904, and the former Saxon Ständehaus state diet building of 1906 at Brühl's Terrace in Dresden.

This stamp on the maxicard and the card itself were issued on 4^th June, 1991 being the 150^th Birth Anniversary of Paul Wallot the famous architect of Germany.

Thank you Merja.

The Mechanised Celestial Globe by Jost Bürgi

Jost Bürgi, or Joost, or Jobst Bürgi (February 28, 1552, Lichtensteig, Switzerland – January 31, 1632), active primarily at the courts in Kassel and Prague, was a Swiss clockmaker, a maker of astronomical instruments and a mathematician.

The maxi card and the stamp on it with the nice appropriate postmark displays one of Jost Burgi’s most famous creations, The Mechanised Celestial Globe, made 1594 in Kassel, now atSchweizerisches Landesmuseum in Zurich.

In astronomy and navigation, the celestial sphere is an imaginary sphere of arbitrarily large radius, concentric with a particular celestial body. All objects in the observer's sky can be thought of as projected upon the inside surface of the celestial sphere, as if it were the underside of a dome or a hemispherical screen. The celestial sphere is a practical tool for spherical astronomy, allowing observers to plot positions of objects in the sky when their distances are unknown or unimportant.

Thank you Merja.

Lighthouses of Estonia

Estonia is a small country with a surprisingly long coastline. Surrounded on 2-1/2 sides by water, it faces the Gulf of Riga on the southwest, the Baltic Sea on the west, and the Gulf of Finland on the north. There are two large islands in the Baltic, Saaremaa and Hiiumaa, and countless small islands. To guard these coasts, Estonia has more than 70 lighthouses and a well-developed lighthouse administration. Its major port, formerly called Reval, is now the Estonian capital of Tallinn.

Estonia was part of the Russian Empire until the end of World War I in 1918, and then it was incorporated into the Soviet Union from 1940 to 1990. Thus the older lighthouses are from the Russian Imperial period, and some of the newer ones are of Soviet construction. An example from the imperial period appear at right: the old Suurupi lighthouse, built in 1760.

Lighthouses in Estonia are operated by the Estonian Maritime Administration. In Estonia, a lighthouse is a tuletorn (fire tower) or amajakas.  These three maximum cards show three of the many lighthouses in Estonia.

Thank you Ella.

Badain Jaran Desert

The Badain Jaran Desert is a desert in China which spans the provinces of Gansu, Ningxia and Inner Mongolia. It covers an area of 49,000 sq. kilometers (19,000 sq. miles). By size it is the third largest desert in China.

This desert is home to some of the tallest stationary dunes on Earth. Some reaching a height of more than 500 meters (1,600 ft.) although most average at around 200 meters. Its tallest dune is also measured, from base to peak, as the world's third tallest dune and highest stationary dune in the world.

The desert also features over 100 spring-fed lakes that lie between the dunes, some of which are fresh water while others are extremely saline. These lakes give the desert its name which is Mongolian for "mysterious lakes". It is also crossed by one river, the Ruo Shui ("weak water"), which has formed an alluvial plain in the desert.

Thank you Aki for this card.

Easter Greetings

Easter Greetings from Kate in Belarus. Thank you Kate.

Good Friday

My friend Karoly sent me this card for Easter. It is a depicts a folk motif for Easter.
Today is Good Friday. For many years I had wondered what was good about Good Friday, when the day is really one of mourning. It was then that I came across this article that tells one about just this enigma - what is good about Good Friday?

Why do we call Good Friday “good,” when it is such a dark and bleak event commemorating a day of suffering and death for Jesus?

For Christians, Good Friday is a crucial day of the year because it celebrates what we believe to be the most momentous weekend in the history of the world. Ever since Jesus died and was raised, Christians have proclaimed the cross and resurrection of Jesus to be the decisive turning point for all creation. Paul considered it to be “of first importance” that Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and was raised to life on the third day, all in accordance with what God had promised all along in the Scriptures.  

On Good Friday we remember the day Jesus willingly suffered and died by crucifixion as the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. It is followed by Easter, the glorious celebration of the day Jesus was raised from the dead, heralding his victory over sin and death and pointing ahead to a future resurrection for all who are united to him by faith.

Still, why call the day of Jesus’ death “Good Friday” instead of “Bad Friday” or something similar? Some Christian traditions do take this approach: in German, for example, the day is called Karfreitag, or “Sorrowful Friday.” In English, in fact, the origin of the term “Good” is debated: some believe it developed from an older name, “God’s Friday.” Regardless of the origin, the name Good Friday is entirely appropriate because the suffering and death of Jesus, as terrible as it was, marked the dramatic culmination of God’s plan to save his people from their sins.

In order for the good news of the gospel to have meaning for us, we first have to understand the bad news of our condition as sinful people under condemnation. The good news of deliverance only makes sense once we see how we are enslaved. Another way of saying this is that it is important to understand and distinguish between law and gospel in Scripture. We need the law first to show us how hopeless our condition is; then the gospel of Jesus’ grace comes and brings us relief and salvation.

In the same way, Good Friday is “good” because as terrible as that day was, it had to happen for us to receive the joy of Easter. The wrath of God against sin had to be poured out on Jesus, the perfect sacrificial substitute, in order for forgiveness and salvation to be poured out to the nations. Without that awful day of suffering, sorrow, and shed blood at the cross, God could not be both “just and the justifier” of those who trust in Jesus.   Paradoxically, the day that seemed to be the greatest triumph of evil was actually the deathblow in God’s gloriously good plan to redeem the world from bondage.

The cross is where we see the convergence of great suffering and God’s forgiveness.  Psalms sings of a day when “righteousness and peace” will “kiss each other.” The cross of Jesus is where that occurred, where God’s demands, his righteousness, coincided with his mercy. We receive divine forgiveness, mercy, and peace because Jesus willingly took our divine punishment, the result of God’s righteousness against sin. “For the joy set before him” Jesus endured the cross on Good Friday, knowing it led to his resurrection, our salvation, and the beginning of God’s reign of righteousness and peace.

Good Friday marks the day when wrath and mercy met at the cross. That’s why Good Friday is so dark and so Good.

Justin Holcomb who is an Episcopal priest and teaches theology at Reformed Theological Seminary and Knox Theological Seminary wrote this nice article.