Tag: #seeking-God

Whose Body?

(A bit of wisdom from my dear friend Ken Needham)

“While the surgeons and most of the nursing staff were excellent, there were a couple of exceptions—people who had some knowledge and experience who “knew what was best for me” but were not listening to me. It is MY body. I have inhabited it all my life and I know it well. Their intentions were no doubt good but listening to them worsened rather than improved the situation. This started me thinking about the Body of Christ, the church. There are those who “know what to do”. They are trained, they have experience—but they are not listening to Him, and we are His body. Are you listening to Jesus? Do you know His will? Are you going to be part of what He is doing as we enter each new day, or are you coasting along thinking that you are in charge and know what to do?” —Ken Needham

Happy Birthday Prof. ‘Tollers’

He would have been 120 years old today, but when he passed in 1973, J.R.R. Tolkien was just getting started. I think he would tell us that Heaven is a far nicer place than earth—or Middle Earth. Of all the quotes I’ve ever collected (aside from Scripture) the one that rang most personal came from him. If you’re an artist or writer, it rings ever truer. Enjoy.

“The Gospels contain a ‘fairy-story’, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful and moving: ‘mythical’ in their perfect, self-contained significance; and at the same time powerfully symbolic and allegorical; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable Eucatastrophe. [The Gospels are not artistic in themselves; the Art is here in the story itself, not in the telling. For the Author of the story was not the evangelists. ‘Even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written’, if that story had been fully written down.] The Birth of Christ is the Eucatastrophe [‘Great Happy Ending’] of man’s history. The Resurrection is the Eucatastrophe of the story of the incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the ‘inner consistency of reality’. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.

“It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be ‘primarily’ true, its narrative to be history, without thereby necessarily losing the mythical or allegorical significance that it had possessed. It is not difficult, for one is not called upon to try and conceive anything of a quality unknown. The joy would have exactly the same quality, if not the same degree, as the joy which the ‘turn’ in a fairy-story gives: such joy has the very taste of primary truth. (Otherwise its name would not be joy.) It looks forward (or backward: the direction in this regard is unimportant) to the Great Eucatastrophe. The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind; but it is pre-eminently (infinitely, if our capacity were not finite) high and joyous. Because this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men – and of elves. Legend and history have met and fused.”

—J.R.R. Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories”, Epilogue

Happy Birthday, Prof. “Tollers”.

—j

“Behold I Am Wise!” (or not…)

“The proper study of the Christian is God. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy which can engage the attention of a child of God is the Name, the Nature, the Person, the Doings, and the existence of the great God we call “Father”. It is a subject so vast that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep that our pride is drown in its infinity. Other subjects we can comprehend and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-contentment and go our way with the thought, “Behold, I am wise!” But when we come to this master science, finding that our plumb-line cannot sound its depth, that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought, “I am but of yesterday, and know nothing!”  —C.H. Spurgeon

God made us lamps of his light, not salesmen or customers of His fire. He fits no category, exceeds every attribution, defies all description. He’s immeasurably more than the object of our study—He’s the subject of the universe itself. He’s “the superlative of everything good you choose to call Him”, Rev. Lockwood preached—yet we still tread the waters of the Sea of Him seeking to stay afloat, waters in which He intended us to drown.

Our God is an Awesome God.

—j

 

[Photo: Albert Einstein’s office at the time of his death]

POTD: A Prayer for Yom HaShoah

What can we say to God in the face of the horrors of the Holocaust? Let’s pray...

Glorified and sanctified be God’s great name throughout the world,
Which He has created according to His will.
May He establish His kingdom in your lifetime and during your days,
And within the life of the entire House of Israel, speedily and soon;
And say, Amen.
May His great name be blessed forever and to all eternity.
Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted,
Extolled and honored, adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One;
Blessed be He, beyond all the blessings and hymns,
Praises and consolations that are ever spoken in the world;
And say, Amen.
May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life, for us and for all Israel;
And say, Amen.
He who creates peace in His celestial heights,
May He create peace for us and for all Israel;
And say, Amen.*

אמן

*Mourner’s Kaddish

Photo: Janusz Korczak Memorial, Yad Vashem, Israel
Do not forget his name.

Priorities in a Suicidal World

“Nothing can extinguish it. To the end of time it shall be there and shall always manifest itself, and men must never lose heart because of that. All [mankind’s ideas and struggles to create his own utopia] are absolutely worthless—the society in which utopianism is the great pursuit is the one that is about to commit suicide. The great guarantee that human life is always worth creating, always worth bringing into this world, always worth living is that there is built into it an indestructible awareness that life belongs to eternity and not to time. [This] shines with an incredible brightness in the one place in the world where you would not, under any circumstances, expect to find it surviving. The Catacombs.” —Malcolm Muggeridge, Firing Line #433, with W.F. Buckley, Jr., Sept. 6, 1980, PBS

We can preach politics or we can preach Jesus.

We can rage against the machine or we can love like Jesus.

We can trumpet conspiracies or we can comfort like Jesus.

People need Jesus.

Learn, live, preach, love like Jesus.

It’s what’s important—it’s what will last.

It comes at great risk and sometimes great cost, but it’s the one and only thing that can fix the world, one heart—one life at a time.

Remember.
—j

‘The Last Great Defenders’

“As Christians [in America], our challenge is to go back as close as we can to the Gospel and truly be the church. Increasingly, we’re likely to be a counter-culture. As that happens, we will be the last great defenders of reason, truth and human dignity, with the task of defending [the Faith] not just theoretically…but practically, as the early church did… Our privilege will be to repeat that story in our time.”

—Os Guinness (World Magazine, June 29, 2013)

Love like Jesus—never stop.

And vote Biblically.

Blessings,
—j

POTD: Truth or Dare

When people invent their own truths and live by them, almost always they expect others to conform—chaos and conflict are guaranteed to follow. Then comes the finger-pointing: radical movements, inept and hypocritical politicians and worse. But as believers, we know where we stand—we stand on God’s truth. Or do we?

Scripture tells us God’s standard of evil and good, and it’s easy to say we agree with it. But it’s also true that we manage to invent and rationalize ways to live by our own standards while still praising His. The truth is, our own flesh is as devious and rotten as the people we criticize as lawless evildoers.

Before our righteous indignation erupts today at the evil infesting the world, take a moment to pray with King David, who so wisely understood the necessary state of the human heart—lest we, too, hate like haters hate, and by the same standards—our own.

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

—King David, Psalm 139: 23-24

POTD: Bigger than Covid, Cabals and Despots

Take a deep breath. Let it out—slowly. Relax. Read. Something infinite, eternal permeates the trembling world—it’s greater than everything, and forever will be. Read it slowly—read it out loud. Tell yourself the story…

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair bowed down with care
God sent His son to win;
His erring child He reconciled
And pardoned from his sin.

O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong;
It shall forevermore endure
The saints’ and angels’ song!

Could we with ink the oceans fill
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above
Would drain the oceans dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong;
It shall forevermore endure
The saints’ and angels’ song!

—F. M. Lehman

Amen.

The Starting Point of World Change

POTD: The true starting point of world change. Let’s Pray…

Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will turn back to you.
Save me from bloodguilt, O God,
the God who saves me,
and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart,
O God, you will not despise.

—King David, Psalm 51:10-17

Thank you, Lord.

The Creed of Revolt

Satirist Steve Turner was something of a prophet concerning the creed of the current—or any—modern revolt…

“CREED”by Steve Turner
This is the creed I have written on behalf of all us.
We believe in Marx, Freud and Darwin
We believe everything is OK as long as you don’t hurt anyone, to the best of your definition of hurt, and to the best of your knowledge.
We believe in sex before, during, and after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy is OK.
We believe that taboos are taboo.
We believe that everything is getting better despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated, and you can prove anything with evidence.
We believe there’s something in horoscopes, UFO’s and bent spoons;
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha, Mohammed, and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher although we think His good morals were bad.
We believe that all religions are basically the same–at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.
We believe that after death comes the Nothing
Because when you ask the dead what happens they say nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied, then it’s compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Khan.
We believe in Masters and Johnson.
What’s selected is average.
What’s average is normal.
What’s normal is good.
We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between warfare and bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors and the Russians would be sure to follow.
We believe that man is essentially good.
It’s only his behavior that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.
We believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust.
History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth.
We believe in the rejection of creeds, and the flowering of individual thought.
 
Post-Script: If chance be the Father of all flesh, disaster is his rainbow in the sky, and when you hear State of Emergency! Shooter Kills Ten! Cops on Rampage! Protesters Go Looting! Bomb Blasts School! It is but the sound of man worshiping his maker.
More to come…