Please accept and embrace redundancy here as these are collected thoughts of mine through the years and, while the people may be mentioned more than once, each reflection is slightly different. There may also be different quotes and videos attached. Each link will take you to a post on Facebook.
hear this, you distant nations: Before I was born the Lord called me; from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name. He made my mouth like a sharpened sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me into a polished arrow and concealed me in his quiver. He said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor.” But I said, “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing at all. Yet what is due me is in the Lord’s hand, and my reward is with my God.”
And now the Lord says— he who formed me in the womb to be his servant to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to himself, for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord and my God has been my strength— he says: “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
This is what the Lord says— the Redeemer and Holy One of Israel— to him who was despised and abhorred by the nation, to the servant of rulers: “Kings will see you and stand up, princes will see and bow down, because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”
This is what the Lord says:
“In the time of my favor I will answer you, and in the day of salvation I will help you; I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people, to restore the land and to reassign its desolate inheritances, to say to the captives, ‘Come out,’ and to those in darkness, ‘Be free!’
“They will feed beside the roads and find pasture on every barren hill. They will neither hunger nor thirst, nor will the desert heat or the sun beat down on them. He who has compassion on them will guide them and lead them beside springs of water. I will turn all my mountains into roads, and my highways will be raised up. See, they will come from afar— some from the north, some from the west, some from the region of Aswan.”
In a shocking counterproposal to US POTUS 45/47's overture toward the acquisition of Greenland, the government of Greenland and that of Denmark have made their own offer.
Greenland will purchase the land of the USA and all of its territories with a onetime payment of 20% of the net worth of every American family to that family.
A typical American family, after calculation of debt, would receive nothing, but those in the upper income brackets could do quite well with this nontaxable capital boost.
Asked about the economic impact of this move, most employees leaving the Treasury Department yesterday shook their heads and replied, "No Comment."
Defense, State, and Justice Department officials declined comment.
The President tweeted that he would look at the numbers and consult his masterpiece, "The Art of the Deal."
He would also be in touch with his accountant.
Reached by phone, the top official at the Department of Education said that the staff were developing a new curriculum series on Greenland's heritage that would include every child in America learning to sing and pronounce, "Nunarput utoqqarsuanngoravit" the National Anthem of Greenland.
Someone played it for the Trump family dinner last night and the President was reported to have been doing his usual hand gestures/dance moves and tapping his feet while whispering, "Not bad."
Just finished listening to Matthew in the New Living Translation. Listening to the bible is a valuable experience because we hear the words the way most of the early Jews and Christians heard them - orally. Switching translations jars our preconceptions and forces us to hear it like it is fresh news, something we have never heard before --- Good News! Gospel! I confess that after some months in the Hebrew scriptures, which were exciting, the Advent message of Matthew's gospel was nothing short of exhilarating! Absolutely Exhilarating !
A grand crescendo followed by a great commissioning!
I kept hearing themes.
The Hebrew Scriptures: Stop chasing other gods. Love me; serve me; treat people well with justice and mercy. I have done much for you. I love you, but you keep forgetting me. I will deal harshly with you if necessary to bring you back to me. I am really disgusted with the way you are treating people and getting infatuated with religious practices that distort truth and inflict pain on humanity like sacrificing babies. Please give me some indication of a change of mind and heart so I do not have to bring you back through judgment ... anything, even a hint and I will relent. I cannot let all this injustice continue, but I will never forget or forsake you and by the way, you exist to extend my reach to all the nations. Bring all humanity to me so that you may worship me and enjoy my presence together.
Matthew's Gospel: Jesus pops up in history as an unlikely person in an unlikely time under unlikely circumstances and yet, at the right time, place, and situation to say: God is present with you. Stop complicating things. Stop looking for loopholes and start loving God and your neighbor. Everything commanded leads to that so, stop twisting the commands so that they mean something else. Get back to basics: Love God. Love others. Watch me and follow me and I will show you how. I give my life for you and I give life to you. If you have messed up, and you have, I will bring you God's forgiveness. You are not stuck with the old life. Turn around and follow me and invite others to come along as well. I'll be with you all the way.
Let us advance toward the overwhelming mystery, swim in its fluid enveloping, drown in its wonder, and find that we can breath underwater. Mystery is the essence of wonder and worship. We stand amazed in the Presence. The consuming heaviness of glory, the warmth of love, the irrationality of peace, the paradox of grace, the full embrace of Divinity, imminent and transcendent, incarnate in flesh, spread abroad in our hearts by the Spirit. Mystery - God's inner sanctum!
“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” ― Albert Einstein, The World As I See It
Jewish women and children from Subcarpathian Rus selected by the Nazi SS for death, walk toward the gas chambers of Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Death Camp (1940–1945). Those pictured include Jolan Wollstein of Szombathely, her children Erwin, Judith, Dori and Naomi, her non-Jewish governess Edith, Henchu Mueller Falkovics, Kreindel Vogel and her sister Sase Vogel and Rita Gruenglass. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Yad Vashem (Public Domain)
Russia approached from one side and the rest of the allies, including the USA from the other in 1945. We had to destroy the power that one nation had taken for itself to destroy humanity. We had to crush it.
But millions died before the Red Army reached a concentration camp in Poland.
My parents’ generation were called the greatest generation because they were the people who stared evil in the eye and declared, “This far and no farther.”
They stared down the Nazi threat to humanity and democracy. They crushed it.
But they were too late for many.
Theirs was also a generation that included many who stood on the other side of the issue. They and their parents became purveyors of injustice, cruelty, and iniquity, and perpetrated the evil that the rest of the world arose to oppose.
The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme was established by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/7, with a simple and stark aim: to “mobilize civil society for Holocaust remembrance and education, in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide”. The Programme has established a global network of partners and developed versatile initiatives including educational resources, professional development programmes, panel discussions and exhibitions. The Outreach Programme is an expression of the United Nations’ commitment to countering hatred, and to building a world in which everyone can live with dignity and in peace.
Millions of innocent people lost their lives because of their ethnic, cultural, religious, or national heritage. The great majority were Jews, but many others as well.
Eighty years is not enough time to put this behind us, especially with the rise and threats further rising out of hatred, racism. antisemitism, and bigotry in the world.
Our memories are not too long. They are far too short.
Naziism and Fascism were so atrocious that we delude ourselves into thinking that there are no people like that today.
We say we know better.
We say we have learned our lessons.
We are smarter and more sophisticated than the nation that previously produced some of history’s greatest geniuses of art, philosophy, music, and science.
And yet, we are too smart.
Do the victims of Bashar-al-Assad believe that?
We can take a windshield tour of the world looking down from the space shuttle and point, here, there, here, over there all day. The trajectory of our gaze will land upon some land or lands dominated by dictators and bullies.
Some are powerful. Some are “wannabes.”
Many want to be.
Racial supremacy, fanatical nationalism, religious persecution, totalitarianism, intimidation, and inequity all disguise themselves as noble movements and sentiments in the beginning.
We compose soundtracks and make banners to which we march toward the destruction of societies, institutions, and restraints that keep up from generating another Holocaust.
Or we sleep, as we did through several major genocides, including Rwanda
Photo) — Reuters — Candles mark the railway tracks leading to the Auschwitz camp during the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the camp. Poland, January 27, 2005.
Those candles are flickering.
Voices are going silent.
Recently, we honored the memory of Jimmy Carter. He held out to 100 as a peacemaker and advocate of the rights of people, but it came time to go. He passed the torch to us, to cry out for human rights. Have we renewed our commitment?
Evil can rise!
Evil does rise.
Evil is rising.
We cannot counter evil merely by assuming that our superior intelligence, corporate experience, or vocal leadership will take care of it. We have to take turns sleeping because someone must be awake at all times.
This act of remembering is no exercise in sentimentality nor futility. It is not merely an historical game of trivia. If we do not remember, we will not survive. Not all of us.
Don't forget to ask people to subscribe and stay in touch. I model more than a couple of techniques for engaging, connecting, and funneling here. Can you name any of them?
What is in a book? The book. The Torah, Law, measuring stick of life.
The reading of the prophetic word in scripture from David to Ezra and Nehemiah to Jesus to us proclaims, “Today.”
The prophetic word is God speaking, whether about the past or the future, focused on today – what to do today, how to live today, how to think about today.
David sang a song of praise for that word in his day. He sang the wonders of The Word in creation and then, in written form.
Psalm 19:1 - The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Nature is God’s troubadour announcing His glory to humanity. The activity of God in creation is true to His character and there is much to be known of Him through observation, meditation, and contemplation prompted by an appreciation of all that He has made. The old adage that we must stop and smell the roses is an appropriate reminder to look for examples of the glory of God in the work of His hands. Open your eyes and heart today to His voice in all that is around you.
Psalm 19:2 - Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.
One of the characteristics of God’s disclosure of Himself in nature is the consistency of the message. One of the characteristics of human beings as receptors of His message is our inattention and inconsistency in seeking Him through all He has offered us. Make up your mind to seek God today in the smallest things and He will show Himself clearly. There is much to be gained by reading the handiwork of God.
Psalm 19:3 – There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.
God’s truth, as disclosed in the cosmos, is universal. It is not given in isolation or exclusion. It provides a common language for humanity to talk about God and explore His ways. It provides a meeting place and point of contact for seeking His deeper and more specific revelation through His Word and through His Son. Prayerfully be on the lookout today for opportunities to seek God more deeply with others to whom He has spoken through His handiwork in creation.
Psalm 19:4 - Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun,
Even in creation, God is busy about the work of evangelism. His purposes are inclusive and magnanimous. He makes provision for every necessity and extends His reach to every man, woman, boy, and girl. He pavilions the sun to shine on all humanity. He sends forth His Word of life to every corner of the earth. If we are to join Him in His own work, we will adopt His priorities and mission.
Psalm 19:5 - …which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
The sun, sheltered against the backdrop of the cosmos, does not remain cloistered in its pavilion of safety. It emanates; it extends, it goes forth with purpose and clarity to fulfill its mission and run its appointed course. God made it to do so and to be so and He has made us to be a people of extended purpose and profound significance. As part of His creation, our voices are available for His voice to reveal Himself through us and in us.
Psalm 19:6 - It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat.
Consider the orderliness of God’s creative work in the cosmos. The rotations of the planets, moons, and stars proceed with a sense of direction that is consequential and graceful. Out of seeming chaos emerges an order that is indisputable. The changing relationship of the earth and the sun for example, forms a pattern by which we set our calendars and our clocks and order our lives. The heat of our private star brings light and life and through it, God speaks. How is your life radiating God’s warmth today in its appointed rounds?
Psalm 19:7 - The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul. The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple.
Having noted the general way God shows Himself to every person, we bring His very specific and personal self-disclosure into focus. Though present in creation in all of its truth, the written and spoken Word of God speaks with a clarity and grace that cannot be ignored. It marshals the forces of language to revive the soul and make wise the simple. In His Word, God describes and defines what He has made and why and shows us how to come into proper relationship with Himself and His creation.
Psalm 19:8 - The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes.
When things are right, they do not constrain but liberate us. Truthful precepts do not introduce legalistic bondage to our lives, but exuberant joy because they inform us who we are and how we relate to God and His truth. When God commands us, the lights go on, we no longer stumble in ambiguous darkness. Seek God’s truth in His Word today and expect radiant joy and you apply those truths to your life guided by the Holy Spirit.
Psalm 19:9 - The fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever. The ordinances of the LORD are sure and altogether righteous.
There is fear and there is fear. Fear can be irrationally muddled and deathly or pure and lifegiving. Fear of God is not a cowering dread or a fleeing terror as much as an awesome recognition that He is Other and in His holy brilliance, we are consumed but for His merciful grace. And that kind of fear never wears off. At the same time, what God orders can be counted as sure and certain and absolutely right. Bank on God today and turn from anything that views with Him for attention with extreme prejudice.
Psalm 19:10 - They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb.
Again, the psalmist is describing God’s ordinances, His disclosure of Himself through His revelation of covenant expectations. When God makes demands upon our lives, they are indications of His own holiness, and they are precious, sweet, and nurturing. They are signets of His love and call to us. He sets standards for us that are high because His esteem for us is high. We cannot attain to them in our strength, but He intends to come live them out Himself, in us and through us. This psalm is, after all, about God showing Himself.
Psalm 19:11 - By them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.
There are two functions of God’s ordinances toward us that are equally valuable and precious. One is to warn us. God’s warnings are not the results of His desire to “get us” or trap us in untenable situations. He deeply desires that we will avoid the pitfalls that He sees ahead of us in our sinful pursuits. The second is similar. The rewards of keeping God’s commands are intertwined with the deeds themselves. Obedience is self-rewarding because it draws us into a closer and more intimate love relationship with God.
Psalm 19:12 - Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults.
Search as you will, and you will find no place of error with God. There is no basis for correction in anything He has done or said. He is simply always, infallibly, right and all that He does is in plain view even though His purposes may at times be hidden. To the contrary, we of human seed work our sinful deeds under the cover of darkness. Like Adam, We hide our faults and ourselves. Our healing comes when we come into the light and acknowledge our need of mercy, hiding nothing from God. Begin today to be set free.
Psalm 19:13 – Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me. Then will I be blameless, innocent of great transgression.
The problem with willful sin is that it takes on a life of its own and comes to think of itself as the ruler of our lives. They begin to dominate us addictively. Willfulness then obliterates our free will, and we need divine deliverance. I am not certain what the great transgression might be but I suspect it is that place of no return where we stop praying the prayer of this verse and seeking the help of the only One who can keep us from sin, blameless, and innocent.
Psalm 19:14 - May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.
Without a doubt, this is one of the great prayers of the scriptures. In its words, if we mean them and allow our spirits to pray them, is all the power and grace needed to face any day. Words and meditations lead our deeds. The centering point for our lives is the pleasure of God. When we get to the place where this is the deepest, most delightfully resounding prayer of our hearts, we will find that God is our Rock and Redeemer. As fearfully holy and demanding as He may be, His presence is mercy, grace, and love to us.
Over 300 years later, the people of Jerusalem and Judah were taken into captivity in Babylon and Rabbinic Judaism was born.
In Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10, the people of the Torah have been separated from their home, their temple, and their holy book for 70 years. No they are home and they discover, in the rubble, the sacred, holy scriptures, the book of the Law. Ezra reads the law.
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 All the people gathered together into the square before the Water Gate. They told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the LORD had given to Israel. Accordingly, Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding. This was on the first day of the seventh month.
He read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand, and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people, and when he opened it, all the people stood up.
Then Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God, and all the people answered, "Amen, Amen," lifting up their hands. Then they bowed their heads and worshiped the LORD with their faces to the ground.
So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading. 8:9And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, "This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn or weep." For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law.
Then he said to them, "Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our LORD, and do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength."
When the prophetic Word of God is heard among a people who are suddenly free from their oppression and slavery, they stand, they weep, and, when they truly understand why the day is holy, they feast and rejoice.
Nehemiah 8:9 – “…This day is holy unto the LORD your God …”
Did it occur to you that there might be anything particularly special about January 26?
What might make it significant, historical or even holy?
On this day in history …
1564 – The Council of Trent establishes an official distinction between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.
1699 – For the first time, the Ottoman Empire permanently cedes territory to the Christian powers.
1765 – A British naval expedition arrives at and names Port Egmont in the Falkland Islands, founding a settlement there eight days later. (Arrival was 15 January 1765 O.S.)[8]
1788 – The British First Fleet, led by Arthur Phillip, sails into Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) to establish Sydney, the first permanent European settlement on Australia. Commemorated as Australia Day.
1808 – The Rum Rebellion is the only successful (albeit short-lived) armed takeover of the government in New South Wales.
1837 – Michigan is admitted as the 26th U.S. state.
1870 – Reconstruction Era: Virginia is readmitted to the Union.
1915 – The Rocky Mountain National Park is established by an act of the U.S. Congress
1918 – Finnish Civil War: A group of Red Guards hangs a red lantern atop the tower of Helsinki Workers' Hall to symbolically mark the start of the war.
1930 – The Indian National Congress declares 26 January as Independence Day or as the day for Poorna Swaraj ("Complete Independence") which occurred 17 years later.
1934 – The Apollo Theater reopens in Harlem, New York City.
1934 – German–Polish declaration of non-aggression is signed.
1950 – The Constitution of India comes into force, forming a republic. Rajendra Prasad is sworn in as the first President of India. Observed as Republic Day in India.
Born on January 26
1657 – William Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1737)
1722 – Alexander Carlyle, Scottish minister and author (d. 1805)
1861 – Louis Anquetin, French painter (d. 1932)
1877 – Kees van Dongen, Dutch painter (d. 1968)
1880 – Douglas MacArthur, American general, Medal of Honor recipient (d. 1964)
1891 – Frank Costello, Italian-American mob boss (d. 1973)
1891 – August Froehlich, German priest and martyr (d. 1942)
1905 – Maria von Trapp, Austrian-American singer (d. 1987)
1925 – David Jenkins, English bishop and theologian (d. 2016)
1925 – Paul Newman, American actor, activist, director, race car driver, and businessman, co-founded Newman's Own (d. 2008)
1929 – Jules Feiffer, American cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter, and educator (d. 2025)
1953 – Lucinda Williams, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1961 – Wayne Gretzky, Canadian ice hockey player and coach
January 26 is a Christian Feast Day for Saint Alberic of Cîteaux Blessed Gabriele Allegra Saint Paula of Rome Saint Timothy and Saint Titus
It is also ...
Australia Day (Australia) Duarte Day (Dominican Republic) Engineer's Day (Panama) Liberation Day (Uganda) Republic Day (India)
And it is a holy day to the Lord.
What does this prove?
Every day is special for many different reasons. Yet, there is one thing that makes every day special for all. It is the presence of God in the midst of it as He speaks and as we renew ourselves in His Word and covenant as the people in Nehemiah’s day did. What they did in one day, we must do every day.
As in Nehemiah’s day, we…
Stand in awe and reverence. We grieve and weep in regret and repentance, We feast and rejoice because God has spoken and is speaking.
God has ordained any number of odd combinations of things we call “paradoxes.”
One is the intimate relationship between joy and the strength that brings us courage to face the challenges of our lives.
We plant them as monuments of stone to remind us of the times God has brought us through difficulties and caused us to stand in strength beyond ourselves. It is strength and joy for which we can find no human explanation because it is entirely of the Lord.
Joshua built an altar of stones and, centuries later, Nehemiah called for a celebration. We are all called upon to remember and to move forward in the same strength.
These are sacred days. Whether we are feasting or fasting, we are building and being built up in the knowledge and experience of God’s joy.
It is the joy that comes from the Lord and the joy that flows through us as we serve Him and find our victories in Him. That is our strength. It is the joy of grace, gratitude, and generosity. It is a gift of God.
It is joy without grief even though our lives will have sorrow aplenty.
It is joy without guilt because it is sacred and holy.
When we look back on our journey in celebration, it gives us courage for the remainder of the journey.
Let us erect these monuments faithfully, regularly, and joyfully.
Some 500 years later, God speaks again, through the already ancient writings of Isaiah to “the today” that the people were experiencing when an itinerate rabbi took the floor, read, and sat to teach,
Luke 4:14-21 Then Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding region. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read,
And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
Their today and his today had come. God was speaking and fulfilling,
Today, Fulfilled in Your Ears
And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. -Luke 4:21
Something long-term and long anticipated was being fulfilled in Galilee. A Messianic promise was unfolding. t, Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit. His fame started spreading. It was time to give his mission statement and define his messianic ministry and its scope. Not everyone would be pleased.
He taught in the place where Jewish teaching was conducted, the synagogues. He was well received. He taught well. His message was compelling; his knowledge was impressive; his doctrine was sound.
He made it a custom to follow the customs of his elders. He was a regular attender, reader, and teacher in the synagogue.
On a particular day, the reading of the day was from Isaiah.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”
Everyone was looking at him as he sat down to teach. They were staring in anticipation. What would he say?
“This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.”
To the people there, those were gracious words, and they were amazed. They knew his earthly parents. Where did this young man find such gracious words?
But then, he started to make the application. That is where people often get angry. When the preacher begins to take the words of scripture and direct them toward the hearts and lives of the people, they feel threatened.
He began to imply that a Gentile might have more faith than they did. He began to suggest that his message of liberation and salvation might have broader reach than just the people to whom he was speaking. They got angry enough to stone him.
Following Jesus is open to all. It is an invitation to join him in delivering this same good news of release, sight, liberty, and Jubilee to all for, as the Spirit was upon him, he is with us and within us to accomplish these purposes. Our hearts and our lives are in lockstep with His heart and life for the poor, the captive, the blind, and the bruised.
Not everyone will be pleased, but Jesus will be delighted to have us come along.
Welcome, Jesus, Messiah! We shall follow you!
Hear it yet again, because it is for us today:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” - Luke 4:18-19
Now is today!
“…God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: …” Acts 10:38
To be anointed is to be a messiah. To be a messiah means to be anointed. Kings were anointed in Old Testament times. Saul was anointed as was David. The prophets told of an anointed one who would be the ultimate Messiah of Israel.
Jesus came as King, but, in Him, Messiah meant much more. Kings can be benevolent or malevolent. They can carry a concern for the larger family of humanity or be entirely parochial in their concern. They can lean toward violence or toward peace.
Jesus would first be a servant and a savior. His anointing was as redeemer, liberator, healer, and announcer of good news. His message would be, first, to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, but that was merely to set the stage for something larger and more universal.
The Spirit of God upon the one who had emptied himself, was the source of his power. He is the King who humbles himself in obedience.
He is the Master who serves.
He is the Lord who liberates.
He is the Anointed One of God.
Jesus is Messiah, to the Christian, God’s anointed. The word “Christ” in “Christian” means Messiah in Greek.
The name speaks of his character, his calling, and his mission and has implications for who we become as we align with Him.
In Nazareth, his hometown, Jesus takes up the mantle of a revolutionary liberator but refuses to use violence or coercion to accomplish his righteous ends. He wears the garb of a radical populist but refuses to be swayed by the fickle politics of His times.
He is, from beginning to end, God’s Anointed on God’s mission using God’s means and bringing God’s message.
And the truth is that God cares about the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, the blind, the bruised, and those so heavily in debt to life and sin that only a Year of Jubilee (the acceptable year of the Lord) will free them.
We must take these words somewhat literally and apply them at a higher level. When he speaks in the synagogue, he is talking about those who are oppressed in this world, but he elevates the meaning to include all of us who are bound by sin and absorbed by the constrictive cares of this dark world.
He includes the people who were excluded from the family of ancient Judaism and holds them up as examples of faith.
For that, people who were cheering him on, suddenly want to stone him for his offense.
They had begun to define themselves by comparing themselves to a common enemy. Jesus was ripping that from them. Anger burns when our sense of supremacy or normalcy is threatened.
One of the implications of the larger context of this story is that we must deal with Jesus. We cannot consign Him to a benign manger and silent angelic scenery. He is the backdrop to no landscape. He is the ONE anointed by God as the agent of reconciliation and redemption. Avoid Him and avoid life.
Jesus, Messiah, I need Your liberating power in my life today.
Where are we in this continuum?
We are in the midst of our today and God is speaking to our times. In fact, God has organized to church so that his prophetic word can still be spoken.
I Corinthians 12:28 And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues.
Stand in reverence to listen. Grieve and weep with regret and repentance. Act in obedience with a heart for grace, mercy, justice, peace, and righteousness. Feast and rejoice in the goodness of God.
Nehemiah 8:10 - “Nehemiah said, "Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength."
“ But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel: For I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake … As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.” - Acts 9:14-15; 13:2-3;
“But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his To reveal his Son in me, that I might prezzzach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.” - Galatians 1:15-16
Paul’s testimony is one of being sanctified by God for God’s purposes. Our stories are not different in that regard. Paul’s progresses from that point. Some of us fail to move beyond the starting place. Paul, however, recognized his separation unto God’s calling and responded immediately with submission and obedience.
God had something in mind for Saul from day one. He would transform his life that he might be set apart for a particular service. It was woven into the purposes of God that Saul would be lifted from his cultural identity and become the apostle to the Gentiles (thus the Greek name, Paul).
He would be sent forth into the world as a missionary and an apostle. Two words are synonymous and mean, "one who is sent."
Submission for Paul meant being what God had called him to be, going where God had called him to go, and doing and saying what God had called him to do and to say. It is no different for us.
We surrender our absolute self-will when we come to Christ and we need constant reminders that such surrender is at the heart of holiness. Submission to God opens countless doors of opportunity and becomes to very fount of joy and fulfillment once we have dealt with the artificial pain of surrender. Immediacy means no hesitation when God calls. Is He calling you today?
What will your response be?
The Commission
Luke 10:3 – Go your ways: behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves.
The costly commission to follow Jesus and to go forth as His ambassadors is so controversial as to appear adversarial. Jesus warns us to expect hostility and opposition. He does not say this to discourage us, but to encourage us. He does not intend to frighten us away, but to have us brace ourselves in the embrace of His grace and power.
“Go your ways,” He says, knowing that each of us has a path that is uniquely and wondrously ours. No two paths are exactly the same though they often intersect and frequently follow parallel courses. We may hesitate to go our ways because it is less risky to continue as we have been, sitting at the feet of Jesus in the cloistered environs of our religious retreats. But we must go. It is His commission.
“I send you,” He says and that gives us courage to go forth, knowing that we have been authorized and mandated we bear His Name and represent His kingdom. It gives us confidence and joy to know that we are not staggering through the darkness of meaningless humdrum. We have been sent.
“I send you forth as lambs,” He says. We are like baby sheep. We still need our shepherd. As we go from Him, we develop a new relationship with him. We discover that He has come along in a new way.
“Lo, I am with you always,” He assures us.
“… as lambs among wolves.” This is the scary part. It is dangerous out there to the extent that we really could lose some things along the way. And if the things we can potentially lose are dearer to us than the commission, we could lose everything. However, if we have relinquished our hold on the things of earth so that they “grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace,” then we have absolutely nothing to lose. We have died, as the scriptures say, and our lives are hidden with Christ in God.
Don’t be afraid of the wolves. Beware of them, but don’t let them stop you. Whatever you do, don’t miss the mission.
On this day in 1890 – Nellie Bly completes her round-the-world journey in 72 days.
She was a trailblazer!
Her real name was Elizabeth Cochran Seaman (born Elizabeth Jane Cochran. She took her pen name from Stephen Foster's song.
She was truly one of America's most extraordinary women, journalists, business woman, reformer, and adventurer.
It is well worth your time to hear Simon Whistler's talk on her life.
There is a bonus in the comments - a choral tribute to her life.
Born this day in 1882 – Virginia Woolf, English novelist, essayist, short story writer, and critic (d. 1941)
"Once you begin to take yourself seriously as a leader or as a follower, as a modern or as a conservative, then you become a self-conscious, biting, and scratching little animal whose work is not of the slightest value or importance to anybody."
"Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions — trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but there; so that, if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible? We are not pleading merely for courage and sincerity; we are suggesting that the proper stuff of fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe it."
Do not assume that all your troubles are a spiritual deficit in your life. They may, however, be a profound spiritual opportunity for asking deeper questions, exploring deeper waters, and seeking and knowing God more deeply.
Ronald Reagan used that quote with the Secretary General.
Mikhail Gorbachev responded, "You repeat that at every meeting".
Reagan answered, "I like it".
Gorbachev quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson: "The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
Who do you trust?
Start with someone trustworthy who has a high regard for truth and a keen sense of details and nuance.
If you find someone like that, watch them carefully.
If you cannot find that person, watch the one you can find even more carefully.
Regarding Regard for Truth
We must be vigilant.
We must be skeptical.
We must be somewhat stoic.
We must take issues in isolation from arbitrary groupings.
Attacking the honesty and character of our opponents is useless in these times. A plurality (NOTICE - I did NOT say "majority") of people have declared by vote or by words or by action, that it does not matter. They place greater weight on issues, outcomes, and validation of their own ideas - in reverse order of importance.
So, on this Wednesday in America , the The Politics of Compassion requires that we hammer away at those these, one by one, argument by argument, rational discussion by rational discussion, news item by news item. We must do the hard work of democracy to drive the decisions of a republic,
We cannot give our elected leaders a moment's rest. We cannot give them slack on issues. We cannot fail to resist where resistance is necessary, and we should support even scoundrels when they do what is right.
If no one else holds truth in high regard, people who do so, must continue to do so.
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Lying with Partial Truth
One way to lie without actually and blatantly lying is to over-generalize, ignore nuance, and marginalize details. It has been emerging as standard practice and is escalating.
The big problem is that many people choose to rely upon its practitioners as primary sources and form opinions and policies based on partial truths which, in balance, equate to major falsehoods.
Do not take any one sentence or paragraph that I, or anyone else says or quotes, as the whole balanced truth. Use it as a prompt to get more details. Avoid all shallow thinking. Be suspicious o slogans and derogatory names for public people or groups of people.
Dig!
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Biden's Pardon's Corrected or Prevented Injustices.
Trumps merely rewarded his allies.
That is merely, my humble opinion.
In the opening footage, a pardoned insurrectionist who was part of a corporate attack on Congress, police, and democracy is threatening to go home and do it locally to those he deems to be nefarious characters.
I do not come from a tradition that denies people communion or permits their participation.
My line of Baptists echoes the scriptural admonition.
"Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup." - I Corinthians 11:28
This act of self examination is vital to the personal encounter that each member has in the context of community as they gather as the Body of Christ.
That is what makes the eucharist or Lord's Supper, a communion of the saints.
I have no dog in many of the public square races.
Said and Recorded:
“I think we’re going to recommend that FEMA go away,” the president proposed while suggesting he would like states to take over FEMA's responsibilities individually." - POTUS
When Mr. Holman uses the phrase, "problems within the Catholic Church," is he glassing over the reality that the Pope is the pastor of many of the people that his boss is deporting - some to danger? I would think that the welfare of one's parishioners is a matter of Papal concern.
A Cowardly Flight from Fair, Equitable Diversity and Inclusion
Now is an opportunity to observe just how much courage and integrity American business has or lacks in the face of fairness, equity, and justice in the arena of diversity and inclusion.
Do not neglect to follow the money in mass deportations. Note the word, "charter." Also, be aware that many facilities are owned and operated by private companies. Who will be profiting from these cruel mass deportations?
Sure, Leave the Outrage to Us, But Keep Telling Us the Truth.
That is fine as far as it goes and as long as it does not go any farther than that. If the press is intimidated into silence or becomes an arm of the state, we have bigger problems than "snarkiness."
One day, on a lonely road, something happened rather suddenly that led to an immediate response.
God had something in mind for Saul from day one. He would transform his life that he might be set apart for a particular service. It was woven into the purposes of God that Saul would be lifted from his cultural identity and become the apostle to the Gentiles (thus the Greek name, Paul) and would be set apart and sent forth.
Submission for Paul meant being what God had called him to be, going where God had called him to go, and doing and saying what God had called him to do and to say. It is no different for us. We surrender our self-will when we come to Christ and we need constant reminders that such surrender is at the heart of holiness. Submission to God opens countless doors of opportunity and becomes to very fount of joy and fulfillment once we have dealt with the artificial pain of surrender.
Acts 9:1-6
New International Version
Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priestand asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
“Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied.“Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
The Conversion of Paul, the Apostle
Acts 26:9-21
“Indeed, I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things against the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And that is what I did in Jerusalem; with authority received from the chief priests, I not only locked up many of the saints in prison, but I also cast my vote against them when they were being condemned to death. By punishing them often in all the synagogues I tried to force them to blaspheme; and since I was so furiously enraged at them, I pursued them even to foreign cities. "With this in mind, I was traveling to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests, when at midday along the road, your Excellency, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and my companions. When we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, ’saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It hurts you to kick against the goads.' I asked, 'Who are you, Lord?' The Lord answered, 'I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But get up and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and testify to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you. I will rescue you from your people and from the Gentiles-- to whom I am sending you to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.' "After that, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout the countryside of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God and do deeds consistent with repentance. For this reason the Jews seized me in the temple and tried to kill me.
Psalm 67
May God be merciful to us and bless us, *
show us the light of his countenance and come to us.
Let your ways be known upon earth, *
your saving health among all nations.
Let the peoples praise you, O God; *
let all the peoples praise you.
Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, *
for you judge the peoples with equity and guide all the nations upon earth.
Let the peoples praise you, O God; *
let all the peoples praise you.
The earth has brought forth her increase; *
may God, our own God, give us his blessing.
May God give us his blessing, *
and may all the ends of the earth stand in awe of him.
Galatians 1:11-24
For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus. Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days; but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord's brother. In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie! Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ; they only heard it said, "The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy." And they glorified God because of me.
Matthew 10:16-22
“See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them and the Gentiles. When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved."
Pardon the clickbait. Zoom is a great tool. I swear by it and use it multiple times a day -- without injury.
Every so often, I have a catastrophe just to check and see if anyone is reading my streams, it seems.
Or, if I see you, only in my dreams.
Then, it beams upon me, what deems upon me:
These schemes are like the concussion in my head -
Half, the big CON of aging and the other half, an occasion for CUSSing.
I don't cuss and I am not conning you and the ION will last for eons.
Do not take the critic's pen again to critique this vain, faltering attempt at whimsical poetry. It is a TREE of possibilities waiting to emerge after all, and it did fall on my ...
... not yet dead head,...
When you get old enough, and you are already clumsy, you can have ZOOM accidents in Toastmaster meetings that are almost as dangerous as those the youthful face AND ...
When your battered head attached to your whiplashed neck says, "What the heck!" and seeks to reflect ....
It may not come out as a masterful work of literature or comedy.
But I assure you, it was comical -----------------------
The appropriate icon for this is the laughing face --- Indulge me.
-----------------------
Note, the reason I went to ER is because it is protocol when one hits ones head when one is on blood thinners. At least that is what everyone kindly assured me of to ease my embarrassment at wasting their time. ----------------------- Life Lessons - Join Toastmasters! Great community! Supportive people! Injuries are a very rare occurrence. ------------------------ Second Lesson - The real hazard was leaning back in my chair and have things tangled around the desk connected to things tangled around me.
Three opposites negate the power of fretting: Trust, delight, and commit.
We only have so much mental, physical, and emotional energy. If we spend it, it is spent. If we spend it fretting about something that takes care of itself, then we have wasted it.
Evil doers, their successes, their deeds, and their devices have an expiration date. We all do. They, as we, set their courses by choices.
We do not have to supervise their outcomes to ensure that evil is not rewarded or that it is left unchecked. It is not our job to meddle, and it wastes our energy.
While we are called to work for justice for others and to hold out the way of righteousness, repentance, and grace, it is not our assignment to exercise judgment - even within our own minds and hearts.
If a man we once knew to be evil turns, it is because something wonderful has happened in his heart. If not, it is deeply sad, but our ultimately sadness is for him and for the God who grieves for His loss of one He has loved and invited to return - a faded blade of grass and a withered herb.
"Fret not yourself because of evildoers; be not envious of wrongdoers! For they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb." -Psalm 37:1-2 ESV
Let me summarize:
When you have those principles in place, it is time to laugh.
Silliness makes me laugh, mostly, my own silliness.
Absurdity tickles my funny bone.
Tragedy triggers my latent gallows humor.
Comedies of errors have that effect.
Stupidity can often evoke a chuckle.
Poetic justice can bring me tears and laughter at the same time.
God laughs. In fact, I presume that humor flows from the very nature of God.
I suspect that the connection between tragedy and comedy in Greek drama was more God's idea than the Greeks'.
Now, God is not cruel in laughter as one who delights in anyone's destruction.
At the same time, God sees the humor in man's pride and sense of indestructibility.
God is our model for a healthy sense of humor when we are surrounded by the bellowing voices of confident evil.
God is laughing and inviting us to hold up a mirror on our lives and laugh with all of Heaven at the absurdity of our ways. It is a tool for our life-change. It is a prompting to turn around.
Don't lose your sense of humor at the absurd. God hasn't.
He is the original author of slapstick. It comes with a broken heart and tears for those who wander, but He does see the humor in it all as well.
... still reaching out to redeem and reconcile.
" The wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes his teeth at him, but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that his day is coming."
- Psalm 37:12-13 (ESV)
One word of advice: Recognize it, appreciate it, and participate in it, but don't over-analyze it.
“When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner residing among you. I am the Lord your God.” - Leviticus 23:22
"... remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world ... Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household ..." - Ephesians 2:12,19
"All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth." - Hebrews 11:13
What possibilities may be hidden in the unexpected places of your life?Is there one opportunity that will pass unless you act now?Is there one victory over procrastination you can have in the next 15 minutes?Is there one life into which you can speak encouragement today?Is there one thing that will make today significant within the power of your choices?
Pray for leaders to do the right things at the right time.
Solomon solidified his leadership through the exercise of practical wisdom. It was all he asked for from God, to have a discerning heart and mind. He was sought out for advice. As I have said in other articles, he was one of the earliest leadership consultants and personal coaches. People came to hear him and ask questions. Then they paid him.
All who make idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit; their witnesses neither see nor know. And so they will be put to shame. Who would fashion a god or cast an image that can do no good? Look, all its devotees shall be put to shame; the artisans too are merely human. Let them all assemble, let them stand up; they shall be terrified, they shall all be put to shame. The ironsmith fashions it and works it over the coals, shaping it with hammers, and forging it with his strong arm; he becomes hungry and his strength fails, he drinks no water and is faint. The carpenter stretches a line, marks it out with a stylus, fashions it with planes, and marks it with a compass; he makes it in human form, with human beauty, to be set up in a shrine. He cuts down cedars or chooses a holm tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. Then it can be used as fuel. Part of it he takes and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Then he makes a god and worships it, makes it a carved image and bows down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire; over this half he roasts meat, eats it and is satisfied. He also warms himself and says, "Ah, I am warm, I can feel the fire!" The rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, bows down to it and worships it; he prays to it and says, "Save me, for you are my god!" They do not know, nor do they comprehend; for their eyes are shut, so that they cannot see, and their minds as well, so that they cannot understand. No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, "Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals, I roasted meat and have eaten. Now shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?" He feeds on ashes; a deluded mind has led him astray, and he cannot save himself or say, "Is not this thing in my right hand a fraud?"
Even among most people who use images to represent God in these days, very few will claim that those statues are actual gods.
Every four years, we inaugurate a President in the U.S.A. It is either an initial inauguration or a reinauguration, one term at a time, two terms maximum.
That is it.
We get what we collectively ask for and must live with it. One might also say that we get what we collectively deserve whether we understand all that it means or not.
It happened today as it did four years ago and will again four years from now.
Some of us are please. Some of us are not. All of us are in the same boat with the leadership we elected.
If you pray, as I do, pray that whoever it is will make the right choices in the middle of crisis.
I would pray for more. I might pray for more. I want to pray for more, but I fear that I am not that great a prayer warrior.
Nevertheless, I might try.
In the words of one of America's greatest geniuses, Forest Gump, "That's all I have to say about that."
But I will be on my toes and I will be wagging my tongue and exercising my typing fingers because we do not get to sit back and let others make all the decisions between elections and inaugurations. We must be citizens and vigilant observers at all times.
I am not sure I ever have a thought completed until I write about it. I keep thinking and writing about Martin Luther King I am not finished.
If you want to make America great, make America what it ought to be.
This is such an encouraging and challenging message to keep on standing for truth, justice, righteousness, and love in obedience to God.
Martin Luther King — “But if Not” — Biblical case for non-violent civil disobedience — obeying God over men.
A study of Daniel and his defiance, in faith, and with respect, of the decree of King Nebuchadnezzar which, though lawful, defied God’s moral law.
“God grant that we will never bow before the gods of evil.”
Be faithful and God will watch over you.
Another take away, based on Job: Do I have an “if faith,” or a “though faith?”
Remembering MLK
I celebrate M.L. King Day every year like, to some extent, I celebrate the liberation struggle of every oppressed people through history and today. At one time or another, we are all the oppressed or we may be the oppressor. Our task is always to align ourselves where God is aligned, with the oppressed. We are called to be the voice of Moses in every generation whether we are among the “privileged” or whether we, like Fannie Lou Hamer are just “sick and tired of being sick and tired.” It is never about one man or one voice or one people. It is about all of us and, for me, it is about following Jesus.
Another great speech on this day of remembrance is Dr. King’s last:
“If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
That is the key question.
If you want to make America great, make America what it ought to be.
If you are looking for a great speech to hear today, here is one:
“But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.” — Amos 5:24
It is as if Amos were here with us today. His words sing out the song of “judgment” or “justice.” It is a strong word for what happens in a community or a nation when God works through people and leaders to set wrongs right and to create a society of fairness, equity, and compassion.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached with such a calling to leaders and vision for the future. Echoing the words of Amos, the prophet, he portrayed God’s judgment as refreshing and cleansing.
And so it is.
As of this writing, the author of this essay has no idea who, in your time, is about to be inaugurated the next President of the United States. What he does know is that Amos 5:24 is the highest calling for his leadership of this nation.
He also knows that without your prayers and encouragement, the task is too awful and daunting for any man or woman. However, as he leads a people who pray for, work for, and long for justice, truth, and righteousness, his leadership will be like that of Dr. King who called himself nothing more than a “drum major for justice.”
Let us encourage that in all our leaders by walking in step with the rhythm of truth and swaying to the sweet song of a compassionate society, rooted in God’s call and founded upon the law of love that Jesus taught us.
The Strength Behind a Movement
As a preacher, I would say that there are two ways to know me.
Listen to my sermons.
Watch my life.
See where they agree and forget the resume and the introductions. I am who I am at the intersection of my preaching and my living.
That is how it was with Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Junior is important because, Daddy/Pastor Martin Luther King, Senior was such a vital part of the mix that made MLK Jr. He too, was a powerful preacher who lived what he preached.
“Strength to Love” is a book of ML Jr.’s sermons that provide us with a glimpse into the heart and mind of one of the greatest men of the twentieth century.
Martin Luther King was 39 when he died.
My oldest son is 40 at the time I write this in 2023.
39 years old.
That is all. I am always in awe of how much he did in such a short time.
It is amazing.
By that time, the whole world new his name. He was a Nobel Peace Prize winner. He had set a movement in motion that would change history.
He was already my hero.
That sentiment has grown as I have grown older. His humanity, his motivation, his depth, his sacrifice, even his flaws have all reinforced his greatness in my mind.
I love Dr. King because of his intellect, faith, imperfections, vulnerability, sensitivity, consistency, and commitment to a cause greater than himself.
I love Dr. King as a follower of Jesus, as a fellow pastor, and as a man who struggled with the meaning of his times in the light of theological realities.
I honor Dr. King as an overcomer who believed that all unmerited suffering was redemptive.
I honor and love him because at the core of his philosophy was a rugged theology of and commitment to love.
I honor and love Dr. King because he demonstrated that peaceful resistance to evil can be more powerful than violence or force.
He lived out that dimension of Jesus’ example meeting external strength with inner strength, accepting the consequences of taking a stand, and offering one’s life in the service of God and others.
We live in an era when it is respectable to honor Martin King, but everything he taught and demonstrated is up for grabs. We are drifting into the very old notion that only force can accomplish good and that the only security we can know is that of worldly power.
But that kind of power shifts, waxes, wanes, and changes hands. The strength Dr. King knew and demonstrated was this: the strength to love.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a human being, flawed like the rest of us, sometimes troubled, but overcoming in every attitude and action. He was playful and fun-loving and found joy in sorrow and in the work to which he had reportedly been reluctantly called.
In the end he said, “I just want to do God’s will.” It was as if he saw his own death.
His dream became the dream for a generation to come after him. It was not so important for him to go to the promised land because he saw it. It became a promised land for all people.
It was all wrapped in his theology and his theology was wrapped in love.
It is a good thing that we pause today to reflect upon this great American life, this Christian life, because what he dreamed and lived has significance for all of us.
His legacy has freed many of us in ways we do not even realize.
My ancestors were never slaves to white masters or to racist public policy. But mine were slaves to the institution of slavery and the attitudes of racism, to hatred, bigotry, and perversion of the gospel of Jesus.
“Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. “ Psalm 119:18
Before you read, pray.
This grand and simple prayer is an expression of expectation and faith. Our level of discovery in scripture will seldom exceed our level of expectation.
It is seekers who find according to Jesus.
David expected wonderful things from the law of God. He, in turn, found wonders beyond anything he could have dreamed.
Dr. Martin Luther King said,
“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”
Dr. King, approached the scriptures to be instructed and informed. As he formed his philosophy of non-violence from the example and teaching of Jesus, so we must be willing to be shaped and molded by words we have never read along staircases of truth we have never traveled.
Dr. King also said on the night before his death,
“I just want to do God’s will”
In the same way, we must approach God’s Word in search of His will with a desire to receive it and do it whatever it may command.
Dr. King once wrote,
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
Much worse is willful ignorance and arrogant stupidity. Our prayer over scripture and our reading of the same must not be arrogant and all-knowing. We come to God for instruction and apart from that instruction, we remain willfully ignorant.
We must come humbly, willingly, and prayerfully.
The psalmist speaks of his own longing for God’s Word in verse 20 and of God’s rebuke for the arrogant who think they already know it all in verse 21.
“My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy judgments at all times. Thou hast rebuked the proud that are cursed, which do err from thy commandments.”
In verse 24 he speaks of God’s laws as his counselors. Because that is so true, we bow before God before we even open his Word, asking that He guide us and teach us.
Martin Luther King, whose birthday we commemorated this week, is but one example of what God can do through the life of a person who comes prayerfully to the scriptures for instruction and enlightenment.
Martin Luther King taught us the difference between a politician and a prophet.
A politician is pretty careful not to go against his/her allies.
A prophet will speak truth to power even if the powerful are his/her friends or allies on some other issue.
And a prophet will do it in love.
— — — — — — — — — — — -
The fact that we have not heard something does not prove that it has not been said and said often. It simply means that
it has not been said to you, in your presence, or when you were listening,
it has been said on a “channel” you are not tuned to,
it has been drowned out by other voices including those who say it has not been said, or
it has not been considered sensational enough to report and be re-tweeted.
So, in case any of those are the case:
Peaceful, orderly, non-violent protests are as American as apple pie and peanut butter, acceptable, commendable, and often necessary for maintaining our freedoms.
Violence and destruction are never acceptable and not in the tradition of the great leaders of the American civil rights movements or of Dr. Martin Luther King and others who took beatings but never gave beating.
That being said, let us act as conscience and truth dictate and stand for what it right, while loving and respecting each other as people made in the image of God.
Conflicting Statements?
Are these conflicting statements?
“He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword?”
“I came not to bring peace, but a sword.”
“Blessed are the peacemakers….”
I think not.
Martin Luther King Jr., theologically and Gandhi, philosophically, embraced the ethic of non-violence as a lifestyle and means of social change.
Jesus meant it.
King demonstrated what it meant to bring a sword to the party … but it was not King bringing the sword in hand to use against others.
Nor was it Gandhi.
Nor was it Jesus.
People said, in my day, of King, that whenever he had marches, there was violence, implying that he caused the violence.
He did not cause it; he responded to the daily violence being inflicted on humanity. He confronted and condemned it.
But it followed him and Gandhi and Jesus.
So … they “brought swords” not of their own nor for their use … but to be used against them.
One need not shy away from the label of a Christian pacifist and non-violent resister of injustice because of the sword quotes of Jesus.
One must respond as Jesus did — to resist the evil, but not the edge of the sword.
And King did not just stand for the abuse, but, like Jesus, moved toward it ….
And led the way for each of us …
to resist evil even at the cost of our own blood.
That is how we become peacemakers in a world of violence and injustice.
Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God — a favorite life verse of mine with a fresh bluegrass interpretation that you’ll love and sing and an even fresher insight from verse 1:
What if we live in an environment where pride, arrogance, and chauvinism blunt the force of the prophetic and compassion message of God to a people who are very religious but have forgotten from whence they have come (the house of slavery)? He gives two admonitions:
1. Keep proclaiming the message if only the mountains and hills will listen — faithfully proclaim.
2. Practice the message yourself : “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God …”
Micah 6:1–8 “Hear what the LORD says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the LORD, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for the LORD has a controversy with his people, and he will contend with Israel. “O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me! For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery; and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised, what Balaam son of Beor answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the saving acts of the LORD.” “With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
The American Dream for All
Langston Hughes said it with compelling insight. The American Dream is a great dream, but the dream is only worth its full weight if it is available to all to pursue and all are encouraged to pursue it.
The dream is bigger than the dreamers or the founders or any who have ever pursued it or expressed it. It is bigger than all of us … and it is a great dream.
“O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath — America will be! Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain — All, all the stretch of these great green states — And make America again!”
Sometimes I have more to say when I reflect on the memory of one of my greatest heroes, Martin Luther King, Jr.
I love Dr. King because of his intellect, faith, imperfections, vulnerability, sensitivity, consistency, and commitment to a cause greater than himself.
I love Dr. King as a fellow believer and brother in Jesus Christ, as a fellow pastor, and as a man who struggled with the meaning of his times in the light of theological realities.
I honor Dr. King as an overcomer who believed that all unmerited suffering was redemptive.
I honor and love him because at the core of his philosophy was a rugged theology of and commitment to love.
I honor and love Dr. King because he demonstrated that peaceful resistance to evil can be more powerful than violence or force.
He lived out that dimension of Jesus’ example meeting external strength with inner strength, accepting the consequences of taking a stand, and offering one’s life in the service of God and others.
We live in an era when it is respectable to honor Martin King, but everything he taught and demonstrated is up for grabs. We are drifting into the very old notion that only force can accomplish good and that the only security we can know is that of worldly power.
But that kind of power shifts, waxes, wanes, and changes hands. The strength Dr. King knew and demonstrated was the strength to love.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a human being, flawed, sometimes troubled, but overcoming in every attitude and action. He was playful and fun-loving and found joy in sorrow and in the work to which he had reportedly been reluctantly called.
In the end he said, “I just want to do God’s will.” As if he saw his own death, his dream became the dream for a generation to come after him. It was not so important for him to go to the promised land because he saw it. It became a promised land for all people.
It is a good thing that we pause today to reflect upon this great American life, this Christian life, because what he dreamed and lived has significance for all of us. His legacy has freed many of us in ways we do not even realize.
The Night that RFK Announced the Death of MLK
I was just browsing, looking for that quote from Aeschylus on the awful grace of God. Naturally, most links were to Bobby Kennedy’s speech on that terrible night in 1968 when he had to inform the gathered crowd of the death of Martin Luther King, whose holiday is coming soon. He was advised not to attend the rally for fear of violence. He went anyway. As we near the observance of Dr. King’s birthday and commemorate his life, I think Kennedy’s words offer and fitting tribute and reminder. I think that at this very time, with so much tension and violence in the world, these are two voices that must be heard.
What Aeschylus said was, “He who learns must suffer, and, even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.”
He wrote these some 525 years before the birth of Jesus. He was the father of Greek tragedy and, in play, “Seven Against Thebes,” laid the burden of human evil at the feet of human beings. Acts of wickedness, he suggested, arise from ambition, greed, and human frailty. Human beings are responsible for their own behaviors. Some lead to great suffering, but there is more meaning to suffering than the laws of consequences.
Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King both taught the world that practical wisdom, forged in suffering, can and does result in justice, righteousness, and equity. Both showed us, as well, how powerful movements for justice and peace can arise from the suffering of those who choose to face it with dignity.
King once said that all unmerited suffering is redemptive.
That is the social backdrop for this reminder of a very personal truth. The ancient words of Aeschylus both haunt and heal the soul. They had spoken to Kennedy in his hour of deepest grief. They speak to us today with penetrating insight into the nature of our humanity and the loving kindness of a God who shapes us through adversity.
Aeschylus, the playwright had wrestled with reality and had come to a conclusion that could not be accounted for by his culture or religious setting. We don’t want this blessing, but God finds a way to deliver it to us. Wisdom, the kind that makes a difference in the world, the kind that makes a difference in us, is a gift, a gracious bestowal of a gracious God who speaks to us amidst the turmoil of our times and our individual torment. The world is at war. The economy is in spasm. The future is uncertain.
Yet, we can embrace, against our will and out of our despair, our own pain as a means to a greater end. It is an overused cliché, but we can grow bitter or better. It is our choice. If we grow better, fairer, kinder, more compassionate, and more passionate for justice, the world can also get better — no matter how grim the prognostications of our times may be.
Here is the printed speech by RFK:
Ladies and Gentlemen — I’m only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening. Because…
I have some very sad news for all of you, and I think sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.
For those of you who are black — considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible — you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.
We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization — black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love.
For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.
But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond these rather difficult times.
My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.
(Interrupted by applause)
So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, yeah that’s true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love — a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it’s not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.
(Interrupted by applause)
Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.
Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people. Thank you very much. (Applause)
Robert F. Kennedy — April 4, 1968
Some Quotes
King was only 39. 39! So young, so wise, so gifted. My own sons are over 39. Imagine all he could have done, said, and written. I think of all my growth in the last 18 years of my life. And yet, I cannot conceive of having grown and given as much as he did in his first (and only) 39. I am humbled by the reality that we much invest as much of ourselves as we can, each day we live, in service to God and others. I am humbled and I am challenged. I may not accomplish a fraction of what he did, but I will place one step in front of the other and move forward.
“They told us we wouldn’t get here. And there were those who said that we would get here only over their dead bodies, but all the world today knows that we are here and that we are standing before the forces of power in the state of Alabama saying, ‘We ain’t going to let nobody turn us around.’”
“I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because ‘truth crushed to earth will rise again.’ How long? Not long, because ‘no lie can live forever.’ … How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
‘Our God is Marching On!’
Speech delivered on March 25, 1965, in Montgomery, Alabama, at the end of the Selma-to-Montgomery march.
Thanks for staying with me this far.
These are thoughts I have written and collected through the years about one of the most influential people in my life.
Imagine a wedding where the guests get gifts as well as the bride and groom.
Whenever God throws a party, everyone present gets presents.
In John 2, we see Jesus working his first miracle in Cana. He turned water into wine. It was not a bad demonstration at all. Everyone enjoyed that and everyone noticed.
John 2:1-11
On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.
When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine."
And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what concern is that to me and to you? My hour has not yet come."
His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."
Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, "Fill the jars with water."
And they filled them up to the brim.
He said to them, "Now draw some out, and take it to the person in charge of the banquet."
So they took it. When the person in charge tasted the water that had become wine and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), that person called the bridegroom and said to him, "Everyone serves the good wine first and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now."
Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.
If Jesus were interested in developing a repertoire for a traveling road show where he did tricks to entertain the crowds, this would be a real crowd please. But this was the first and last time he did this as far as we know.
This miracle had a very specific, time-sensitive, purpose-driven reason for its accomplishment. The need did not arise again. He could move on to other signs.
In 1 Corinthians 12:1-11, the Apostle Paul is dealing with a group of people who have seen some wonderful signs, miracles, and gifts to and through people. They have become very attached and attracted to the most visible gifts and manifestations of God’s power.
He addresses those attitudes with one overarching teaching. There are a variety of gifts, but they all come from one Spirit.
Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be ignorant. You know that when you were gentiles, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak.
Therefore, I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says "Let Jesus be cursed!" and no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit.
Now there are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit, and there are varieties of services but the same Lord, and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.
To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of powerful deeds, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.
All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.
“To one,” he declares, and then, “to another,” but “to all.”
Let’s pick out some talking points:
We need to DIFFERENTIATE what Paul is describing and IDOLATRY.
“…you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak.”
Idolatry is about manipulating God to get what we want from God or something we call a god.
We need to DILLINIATE what is Spirit-led and what is IMMITATION.”
“…no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says "Let Jesus be cursed!" and no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit.”
The result of a profound manifestation of the Spirit of God can be seen and heard in the sincere declaration of Jesus’ lordship. This is how we know if the gifts come from God or are just cheap imitations.
We need to DISTINGUISH between what is INDIVIDUAL and what is universal.
“Now there are varieties of gifts.”
God varies things. God is creative. God works with creative people to make them more creative. God has an infinite treasure trove of gifts to give when needed to people who will use them.
“…but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. …”
The common denominator is God. We must not confuse God’s manifestations and varieties of expression with God himself as the source of these things. It is the same God.
We need to DETERMINE that our gifts and callings come from the one who INDWELLS us.
All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.”
The capacity to do more than we can, utilizing the special long-term or situation abilities God bestows upon us, flow from the Holy Spirit who dwells in our lives. That Spirit is sharing us, teaching us, informing us, inspiring us, igniting us, empowering us, and using us to accomplish God’s purposes according to God’s will.
We need to DEDICATE these gifts to the INCLUSIVE common good of all.
“To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”
When God gives us a spiritual gift, it is not for us alone. First, it is for God’s glory, but then, it is for the good of all.
God shows up and everyone benefits.
The bottom line is that God gives the gifts through the Holy Spirit. God chooses, distributes, enlivens, activates, and participates in developing people and the church as a tool for and expression of the Kingdom.
Idolatry is self-centered, but Spiritual gifts keep our focus on our one-another consciousness.
Let’s take a moment and check in with today’s psalm, number 36.
“For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light.” – Psalm 36:9
One of the first lighthouses ever built, certainly one of the most famous, was the Lighthouse of Alexandria in 280 BC. Situated on the Egyptian island of Pharos, it was at one time thought to be the tallest structure on earth at 383 - 440 feet. Many lives were rescued because of its existence.
Its purpose was the same as that of all lighthouses: to warn ships away from dangerous shores and guide them in the night.
No ship’s captain ever complained about a lighthouse getting in his way or inconveniencing him in his journey. Many a lighthouse has saved many a life.
It was all for others.
James 1:17 says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”
Man-made lighthouses point us to the reality of God’s gracious willingness to warn us and guide us because He loves us. He desires life for us and in His light, we see light.
Philippians 2:15 says that God bestows blessings upon us, that we “be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world.”
Not only does God provide light for our journey, but He appoints us as His people to shine in a dark world where there are many unseen dangers and unmarked shores.
By taking this stewardship of light seriously, the church and its people have helped to lead many lost ships and crew into a harbor of safety.
What could be a greater blessing than to be in God’s light and, in that light, to see lightv Surely, it is a fountain of life.
God is generous with us in a way that not only benefits believers and the church, but the world at large. Our Old Testament lessons today is from Isaiah 62:1-5.
God is building a City of God in the world, the Kingdom where he will dwell with us, the New Jerusalem, the new Zion descending from Heaven. God is inviting all people to come and to become citizens. As the promise was made to ancient Israel, it is extended to all that Jesus invited to come.
For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until her vindication shines out like the dawn and her salvation like a burning torch. The nations shall see your vindication and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give.
You shall be a beautiful crown in the hand of the LORD and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her and your land Married, for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.
The word for gift, I often remind folks, shares the same root that is used to build the words, generous, grace, gracious, thanks, eucharist, and joy.
O, the doctrine of spiritual gifts is one that reveals God’s grace and joyous love to the world and invites us to participate in a great celebration to which we are encouraged to invite all people.
Let us end where we began:
Imagine a wedding where the guests get gifts as well as the bride and groom.
Whenever God throws a party, everyone present gets presents.
Born this day in 1779, Peter Mark Roget, was a British physician, natural theologian, lexicographer and founding secretary of The Portico Library. He is best known for publishing, in 1852, the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, a classified collection of related words.
I have been helped, assisted, aided, supported, reinforced, encouraged, facilitated bac ked, promoted, guided, bolstered, furthered, fostered, advised, sustained, and benefited by his work.
When your heart belongs to God and is, essentially set on the purposes of God, a new shaping begins to take place. None of this is perfected in time and space, but, to the extent that it is dominant reality of our lives, it does effect our desires.
Our desires exist at multilevel layers. They are not all-together free of corruption, but neither are they all-together corrupt. We must listen to our emerging desires, inner stirrings, and subliminal awareness because it is often at that layer that our minds, hearts, and spirits are sorting out the scriptures and insights that God is giving us through many sources all at once. It is those desires that we want Him to fulfill because they are His desires and they are our deepest desires.
Out of those desires flow the legitimate dreams, visions, and plans for the future He purposes for us.
"May he grant you your heart's desire and fulfill all your plans!"
(Psalm 20:4 ESV)
Listen to your desires and prayerfully examine your plans. Do not dismiss them, but dig deeper into them. Examine them in the light of scripture and prayer, peeling away the layers until you discover what God is saying to you in and through them.
Something in us longs for a sense of conclusion as long as that conclusion is culmination of purpose. Sainthood presupposes purpose and closure in accordance with purpose. Let us live with the peace that in the last chapter of our lives, God has determined to bring precious meaning and to fulfill His purposes in us.
"Precious in the sight of the LORD
is the death of his saints."
(Psalm 116:15 ESV)
We were told what to do, not how to do it. All we got was this:
"Freely you have received; freely give."
The big hint, then is, that we have received something that, when we give it away, brings healing, resurrection, liberation, and cleansing to broken people in a broken world.
The Master didn't say to spend endless hours figuring it out. We learn as we go and grow.
"That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus." - Ephesians 2:7
"'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse."
So observed either Clement Clarke Moore or Henry Livingston, Jr.in this poem published anonymously in 1923.
What seemed so magical in the roaring 20s reflected a sense of urgency, expectancy, and wonder experienced by Mary and Joseph as they awaited the birth of a son.
“The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there …”
In hope, the poet observed, that something special would happen. Someone would come with special gifts and a twinkle of the eye.
“The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar plums danced in their heads.”
Even asleep, the children were dreaming. Joel predicted that old and young would dream and see visions.
"A Visit from St. Nicholas” is special, but a visit from God rocks the world.
The world had longed for it, pined for it, and suffered for want of it. Jesus came at the right time and in the right place.
The air of anticipation had reached a fever pitch and yet, His coming was a grander surprise than the delightful presents under the tree.
Unlike most of us, God never turns His head to avoid looking at the unpleasantness of the poor, the ugliness of the broken, or the raw pain of the oppressed.
He gazes into the eyes of the disenfranchised and hears the cry that they utter. Perhaps our greatest opportunity to reflect God's presence to the poor today begins with looking people in the eye and hearing their voices.
"Praise the LORD, you that fear him; stand in awe of him, O offspring of Israel; all you of Jacob's line, give glory. For he does not despise nor abhor the poor in their poverty; neither does he hide his face from them; but when they cry to him he hears them. " - Psalm 22:22-23, NRSV
"But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere." - II Corinthians 2:14
I am making this Stephen Foster Memorial Day to commemorate the day he died in 1864. What sad and beautiful songs he wrote.
Foster died tragically from accident, suicide, or some other trauma that left him bleeding from the neck at the age of 37. None can know what he would have become or how he would have evolved.
What he was was a poet and a musician who left a large body of heartfelt mournful and joyful music.
Was he an abolitionist? No one knows. Was he a critic of society? Not as it would seem. Was he a reformer? Not yet, yet, yet was yet to be.
He was an observer and interpreter of the hearts, lives, experiences, and emotions of people.
That was a great contribution in and of itself.
Foster taught my soul to mourn and celebrate at the same time.
Things are as they are and to know that is to both grieve and to rejoice.
Sad, that he died so early. Glad, that he left so much of himself with us.
Notable works
"Beautiful Dreamer" "Camptown Races" "Hard Times Come Again No More" "My Old Kentucky Home" "Oh! Susanna" "Old Black Joe" "Old Folks at Home among others...
More at https://pastortomsims.blogspot.com/2025/01/remembering-stephen-foster.html
Excerpts
I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair, Borne, like a vapor on the summer air; I see her tripping where the bright streams play, Happy as the daisies that dance on her way. Many were the wild notes her merry voice would pour. Many were the blithe birds that warbled them o'er: Oh, I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair, Floating, like a vapor, on the soft summer air.
I long for Jeanie with a day-dawn smile, Radiant in gladness, warm with winning guile; I hear her melodies, like joys gone by, Sighing round my heart over the fond hopes that die:— Sighing like the night wind and sobbing like the rain,— Wailing for the lost one that comes not again: Oh, I long for Jeanie, and my heart bows low, Never more to find her where the bright waters flow.
I sigh for Jeanie, but her light form strayed Far from the fond hearts round her native glade; Her smiles have vanished and her sweet songs flown, Flitting like the dreams that have cheered us and gone. Now the nodding wild flowers may wither on the shore While her gentle fingers will cull them no more: Oh, I sigh for Jeanie with the light brown hair, Floating, like a vapor, on the soft summer air.
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Weep no more, my lady, oh! weep no more today! We will sing one song For the old Kentucky Home, For the old Kentucky Home, far away.
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Gone are the days when my heart was young and gay, Gone are my friends from the cotton fields away, Gone from the earth to a better land I know, I hear their gentle voices calling "Old Black Joe".
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All up and down de whole creation Sadly I roam, Still longing for de old plantation, And for de old folks at home.
As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."
Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."
Acts 8:14-17
Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. he two went down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit (for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus). Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.
Flair for the Dramatic
Our God has more than just a flair for the dramatic. He uses drama at every turn to communicate the mysteries of His truth. Two great dramas are interwoven into the history of Christianity and give us insight into God’s ways with humankind: baptism and Lord’s supper. Both of these present the story of redemption with such vivid poignancy that men and women through history have been drawn to their compelling message But that is not the whole of it. Everything God does evokes worship.
A Flair for the Dramatic
God stepped out on stage
And every member
of the orchestra
knew it was He.
He took the baton in hand
And breathed forth
UPBEAT.
Down came the baton
DOWNBEAT.
And the pattern was given
With every eye upon Him.
The strings
The horns
The percussionists
The LIGHTS
Yes, the lights!
The dancers,
The actors,
The Children,
The artists !
Suddenly, the stage was filled
With performers.
And He conducted them.
And every art
And every part
Conformed to the rhythm of His Baton.
And someone in the audience remarked,
“He certainly has a flair for the dramatic.”
And all creation applauded.
Psalm 22:10 - From birth I was cast upon you; from my mother's womb you have been my God.
This is the psalm of the cross, which our Master chose to identify with us as He bore our sins. There were three great acts of emptying in His earthly life. The first was His birth. He divested Himself of all His self-sufficiency as God and became dependent upon God –even in Mary’s womb. The second was His baptism-temptation where He conspicuously stood in the place of sinners to face every life temptation and overcome only by the power of the Spirit and the Word. Finally, the cross – and there, He remembered who He was and who He trusted. We must trust God also.
A family of doves built a nest in a flower basket on our patio. I have mentioned this in several contexts and they taught me many lessons. With great interest, we watched as that family, and later, others, came and nested there, hatched their young, and sent them on their way. The site of doves descending is a wonder of nature. The vision of the Spirit descending is a wonder of super nature.
There was little reason for Jesus to be baptized except to fulfill all righteousness and to identify with sinful humanity in preparation for His sacrificial death on the cross. However, as He stepped into the nest of human experience and began to bear the burden of our frail weakness and disobedience, He was affirmed by the Father and knew the pleasure of His purposes.
As little birds stumble out of the nest and first began to fly, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to face temptation as we face it. He committed in His baptism to be as vulnerable as those He came to save. By the power of the same Spirit and Word available to us, He stood in the face of Satan’s lures.
The baptism of Jesus speaks of His credibility and ties to us as our elder brother, the first born of a new creation. Where He leads, we can follow, because He has avoided none of the steps we must take. As He identified with us in His baptism, so we identify with Him and His redemption in ours. As His Spirit descends upon us in the new birth, we can ascend. Because He has been in the valley of temptation, we can be victorious. Because He has born our sins, we can be free.
Born this day in 1907 – Abraham Joshua Heschel, Polish-American rabbi, theologian, and philosopher (d. 1972).
Quotes from WikiQuote
The time for the kingdom may be far off, but the task is plain: to retain our share in God in spite of peril and contempt. There is a war to wage against the vulgar, the glorification of the absurd, a war that is incessant, universal. Loyal to the presence of the ultimate in the common, we may be able to make it clear that man is more than man, that in doing the finite he may perceive the infinite."The Meaning of Jewish Existence" in The Torch (1950)
He who is satisfied has never truly craved, and he who craves for the light of God neglects his ease for ardor, his life for love, knowing that contentment is the shadow not the light. The great yearning that sweeps eternity is a yearning to praise, a yearning to serve. And when the waves of that yearning swell in our souls all the barriers are pushed aside: the crust of callousness, the hysteria of vanity, the orgies of arrogance. For it is not the I that trembles alone, it is not a stir out of my soul but an eternal flutter that sweeps us all. No code, no law, even the law of God, can set a pattern for all of our living. It is not enough to have the right ideas. For the will, not reason, has the executive power in the realm of living. The will is stronger than reason and does not blindly submit to the dictates of rational principles. Reason may force the mind to accept intellectually its conclusions. Yet what is the power that will make me love to do what I ought to do?Man Is Not Alone : A Philosophy Of Religion (1951), Ch. 24 : The Great Yearning; The Yearning for Spiritual Living
The greatest problem is not how to continue but how to exalt our existence. The call for a life beyond the grave is presumptuous, if there is no cry for eternal life prior to our descending to the grave.Eternity is not perpetual future but perpetual presence. He has planted in us the seed of eternal life. The world to come is not only a hereafter but also a here-now.Man Is Not Alone : A Philosophy Of Religion (1951), Ch. 26 : The Pious Man; Our Destiny is to Aid
We do not step out of the world when we pray; we merely see the world in a different setting. The self is not the hub but the spoke of the revolving wheel. It is precisely the function of prayer to shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender.Man's Quest For God : Studies In Prayer And Symbolism (1954), p. 7; Heschel would later use this analogy in several minor variations in other writings.
Pagans exalt sacred things, the Prophets extol sacred deeds.The Earth Is The Lord's : And The Sabbath (1963), p. 14
We forfeit the right to worship God as long as we continue to humiliate negroes. … The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.Telegram to President John F. Kennedy (16 June 1963)
The Biblical words about the genesis of heaven and earth are not words of information but words of appreciation. The story of creation is not a description of how the world came into being but a song about the glory of the world's having come into being.The Wisdom of Heschel (1970), p. 150
There is immense silentagony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty. The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the Prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a freesociety, some are guilty, but all are responsible."The Reasons for My Involvement in the Peace Movement" (1972); later included in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity (1996)
Man's sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is the servant of God.As quoted in The World's Religions (1976) by Sir James Norman Dalrymple Anderson, p. 61
Worship is a way of seeing the world in the light of God."The Light of God" in I Asked for Wonder : A Spiritual Anthology (1983) edited by Samuel H. Dresner, p. 20
The focus of prayer is not the self. … It is the momentary disregard of our personal concerns, the absence of self-centered thoughts, which constitute the art of prayer.Feeling becomes prayer in the moment in which we forget ourselves and become aware of God. ... Thus, in beseeching Him for bread, there is one instant, at least, in which our mind is directed neither to our hunger nor to food, but to His mercy. This instant is prayer. We start with a personal concern and live to feel the utmost.As quoted in Judaism (1998) by Arthur Hertzberg, p. 300 Variant: "It is the momentary disregard of our personal concerns, the absence of self-centered thoughts, which constitute the act of prayer."
We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers.As quoted in SQ : Connecting with Our Spiritual Intelligence (2000) by Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall, p. 15
The Sabbath (1951)
There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.Prologue p. 3
In our daily lives we attend primarily to that which the senses are spelling out for us: to what the eyes perceive, to what the fingers touch. Reality to us is thinghood, consisting of substances that occupy space; even God is conceived by most of us as a thing. The result of our thinginess is our blindness to all reality that fails to identify itself as a thing, as a matter of fact.Prologue p. 5
The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred momentsPrologue p. 6
Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time.Prologue p. 6
Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of year. The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals; and our Holy of Holies is a shrine that neither the Romans nor the Germans were able to burn.Prologue p. 8
The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.Prologue p. 10
The Prophets (1962)
📷One must forget many clichés in order to behold a single image. Insight is the beginning of perceptions to come rather than the extension of perceptions gone by.
One must forget many clichés in order to behold a single image. Insight is the beginning of perceptions to come rather than the extension of perceptions gone by. Conventional seeing, operating as it does with patterns and coherences, is a way of seeing the present in the past tense. Insight is an attempt to think in the present. … Insight is knowledge at first sight.Introduction
The striking surprise is that prophets of Israel were tolerated at all by their people. To the patriots, they seemed pernicious; to the pious multitude, blasphemous; to the men in authority, seditious.Volume 1, p. 19
To Hosea, marriage is the image of the relationship of God and Israel. ... Idolatry is adultery.Volume 1, p. 50
Why were so few voices raised in the ancient world in protest against the ruthlessness of man? Why are human beings so obsequious, ready to kill and ready to die at the call of kings and chieftains? Perhaps it is because they worship might, venerate those who command might, and are convinced that it is by force that man prevails. The splendor and the pride of kings blind the people."The idolatry of might," Volume 1, p. 159
"The gods are on the side of the stronger," according to Tacitus. The prophets proclaimed that the heart of God is on the side of the weaker. God's special concern is not for the mighty and the successful, but for the lowly and the downtrodden, for the stranger and the poor, for the widow and the orphan.Volume 1, p. 167
The prophets never taught that God and history are one, or that whatever happens below reflects the will of God above. Their vision is of man defying God, and God seeking man to reconcile with him.p. 168
It is an act of evil to accept the state of evil as either inevitable or final.Volume 1, p. 181
The opposite of freedom is not determinism, but hardness of heart. Freedom presupposes openness of heart, of mind, of eye and ear.Volume 1, p. 191
Freedom is not a natural disposition, but God's precious gift to man. Those in whom viciousness becomes second-nature, those in whom brutality is linked with haughtiness, forfeit their ability and therefore their right to receive that gift. Hardening of the heart is the suspension of freedom.Volume 1, p. 191
Who Is Man? (1965)
📷Wonder, or radical amazement, is a way of going beyond what is given in thing and thought, refusing to take anything for granted, to regard anything as final.📷Love of ultimate meaning is not self-centered but rather a concern to transcend the self.📷Acceptance is appreciation, and the high value of appreciation is such that to appreciate appreciation seems to be the fundamental prerequisite for survival.📷My power of probing is easily exhausted, my words fade, but what I sense is not emptiness but inexhaustible abundance, ineffable abundance.📷We manipulate what is available on the surface of the world; we must also stand in awe before the mystery of the world.📷Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaninggreater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe. Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme.📷Faith is not belief, an assent to a proposition, faith is attachment to the meaning beyond the mystery.📷Accustomed to think in terms of space, the expression "being points beyond itself" may be taken to denote a higher point in space. What is meant, however, is a higher category than being: the power of maintaining being.📷The Torah has not imposed upon Israel a tyranny of the spirit. It does not violate humannature.📷The strength of faith is in silence, and in words that hibernate and wait.
Wonder, or radical amazement, is a way of going beyond what is given in thing and thought, refusing to take anything for granted, to regard anything as final. It is our honest response to the grandeur and mystery of reality our confrontation with that which transcends the given.Ch. 4
It would be a contradiction in terms to assume that the attainment of transcendent meaning consists in comprehending a notion. Transcendence can never be an object of possession or of comprehension. Yet man can relate himself and be engaged to it. He must know how to court meaning in order to be engaged in it. Love of ultimate meaning is not self-centered but rather a concern to transcend the self.Ch. 4
Ultimate meaning is not grasped once and for all in the form of timeless idea, acquired once and for all, securely preserved in conviction. It is not simply given. It comes upon us as an intimation that comes and goes. What is left behind is a memory, and a commitment to that memory. Our words do not describe it, our tools do not wield it. But sometimes it seems as if our very being were its description, its secret tool.Ch. 4
The anchor of meaning resides in an abyss, deeper than the reach of despair. Yet the abyss is not not infinite; its bottom may suddenly be discovered within the confines of a human heart or under the debris of might doubts. This may be the vocation of man: to say "Amen" to being and to the Author of being; to live in defiance of absurdity, notwithstanding futility and defeat; to attain faith in God even in spite of God.Ch. 4
The sense of meaning is not born in ease and sloth. It comes after bitter trials, disappointments in the glitters, foundering, strandings. It is the marrow from the bone. There is no manna in our wilderness. Thought is not bred apart from experience or from inner surroundings. Thinking is living, and no thought is bred in an isolated cell in the brain. No thought is an island.Ch. 5
Ultimately there is no power to narcissistic, self-indulgent thinking. Authentic thinking originates with an encounter with the world.Ch. 5
Human being is both being in the world and living in the world. Living involves responsible understanding of one's role in relation to all other beings. For living is not being in itself, but living of the world, affecting, exploiting, consuming, comprehending, deriving, depriving.Ch. 5
There are two primary ways in which mans relates himself to the world that surround him: manipulation and appreciation. In the first way he sees in what surrounds him things to be handled, forces to be managed, objects to be put to use. In the second way he sees in what surrounds him things to be acknowledged, understood, valued or admired.Ch. 5
Fellowship depends on appreciation while manipulation is the cause of alienation: objects and I apart, things stand dead, and I am alone. What is more decisive: a life of manipulation distorts the image of the world. Reality is equated with availability: What I can manipulate is, what I cannot manipulate is not. A life of manipulation is the death of transcendence.Ch. 5
Acceptance is appreciation, and the high value of appreciation is such that to appreciate appreciation seems to be the fundamental prerequisite for survival. Mankind will not die for lack of information; it may perish for lack of appreciation.Ch. 5
As a result of letting the drive for power dominate existence, man is bound to lose his sense for nature's otherness. Nature becomes a utensil, an object to be used. The world ceases to be that which is and becomes that which is available. It is a submissive world that modern man is in the habit of sensing, and he seems content with the riches of thinghood. Space is the limit of his ambitions, and there is little he desires besides it. Correspondingly, mans consciousness recedes more and more in the process of reducing his status to that of a consumer and manipulator. He has enclosed himself in the availability of things, with the shutters down and no sight of what is beyond availability.Ch. 5
Exclusive manipulation results in the dissolution of awareness of all transcendence. Promise becomes a pretext, God becomes a symbol, truth a fiction, loyalty tentative, the holy a mere convention. Mans very existence devours all transcendence. Instead of facing the grandeur of the cosmos, he explains it away; instead of beholding, he takes a picture; instead of hearing a voice, he tapes it. He does not see what he is able to face. There is a suspension of mans sense of the holy. His mind is becoming a wall instead of being a door open to what is larger than the scope of his comprehension. He locks himself out of the world by reducing all reality to mere things and all relationship to mere manipulation. Transcendence is not an article of faith. It is what we come upon immediately when standing face to face with reality.Ch. 5
The perceptibility of things is not the end of their being. Their surface is available to our tools, their depth is immune to our inquisitiveness. Things are both available and immune. We penetrate their physical givenness, we cannot intuit their secret. We measure what they exhibit, we know how they function, but we also know that we do not know what they are, what they stand for, what they imply.Ch. 5
Man is naturally self-centered and he is inclined to regard expediency as the supreme standard for what is right and wrong. However, we must not convert an inclination into an axiom that just as man's perceptions cannot operate outside time and space, so his motivations cannot operate outside expediency; that man can never transcend his own self. The most fatal trap into which thinking may fall is the equation of existence and expediency.Ch. 5
The supremacy of expediency is being refuted by time and truth. Time is an essential dimension of existence defiant of man's power, and truth reigns in supreme majesty, unrivaled, inimitable, and can never be defeated.Ch. 5
Authentic existence involves exaltation, sensitivity to the holy, awareness of indebtedness. Existence without transcendence is a way of living where things become idols and idols become monsters. Denial of transcendence contradicts the essential truth of being human. Its roots can be traced either to stolidity of self-contentment or to superciliousness of contempt, to moods rather than to comprehensive awareness of the totality and mystery of being. Denial of transcendence which claims to unveil the truth of being is an inner contradiction, since the truth of being is not within being or within our consciousness of being but rather a truth that transcends our being.Ch. 5
Essential to education for being human is to cultivate a sense for the inexpedient, to disclose the fallacy of absolute expediency. God's voice may sound feeble to our conscience. Yet there is a divine cunning in history which seems to prove that the wages of absolute expediency is disaster. Happiness is not a synonym for self-satisfaction, complacency, or smugness. Self-satisfaction breeds futility and despair. Self-satisfaction is the opiate of fools.Ch. 5
New insight begins when satisfaction comes to an end, when all that has been seen, said, or done looks like a distortion. … Man's true fulfillment depends on communion with that which transcends him.Ch. 5
In our reflection we must go back to where we stand in awe before sheer being, faced with the marvel of the moment. The world is not just here. It shocks us into amazement. Of being itself all we can positively say is: being is ineffable. The heart of being confronts me as enigmatic, incompatible with my categories, sheer mystery. My power of probing is easily exhausted, my words fade, but what I sense is not emptiness but inexhaustible abundance, ineffable abundance. What I face I cannot utter or phrase in language. But the richness of my facing the abundance of being endows me with marvelous reward: a sense of the ineffable.Ch. 5
Being as we know it, the world as we come upon it, stands before us as otherness, remoteness. For all our efforts to exploit or comprehend it, it remains evasive, mysteriously immune. Being is unbelievable.Ch. 5
Our concern with environment cannot be reduced to what can be used, to what can be grasped. Environment includes not only the inkstand and the blotting paper, but also the impenetrable stillness in the air, the stars, the clouds, the quiet passing of time, the wonder of my own being. I am an end as well as a means, and so is the world: an end as well as a means. My view of the world and my understanding of the self determine each other. The complete manipulation of the world results in the complete instrumentalization of the self.Ch. 5
The world presents itself in two ways to me. The world as a thing I own, the world as a mystery I face. What I own is a trifle, what I face is sublime. I am careful not to waste what I own; I must learn not to miss what I face. We manipulate what is available on the surface of the world; we must also stand in awe before the mystery of the world. We objectify Being but we also are present at Being in wonder, in radical amazement. All we have is a sense of awe and radical amazement in the face of a mystery that staggers our ability to sense it.Ch. 5
Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe. Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple: to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.Ch. 5
Faith is not belief, an assent to a proposition, faith is attachment to the meaning beyond the mystery.Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by awe. Awe precedes faith; it is the root of faith. We must be guided by awe to be worthy of faith. Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the world becomes a market place for you. The loss of awe is the avoidance of insight. A return to reverence is the first prerequisite for a revival of wisdom, for the discovery of the world as an allusion to God.Ch. 5
In his great vision Isaiah perceives the voice of the seraphim even before he hears the voice of the Lord. What is it that the seraphim reveal? "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory." Holy, holy, holy — indicate the transcendence and distance of God. The whole earth is full of His glory — the immanence or presence of God. The outwardness of the world communicates something of the indwelling greatness of God. The glory is neither an aesthetic nor physical quality. It is sensed in grandeur, but it is more than grandeur. It is a presence or the effulgence of a presence. The whole earth is full of His glory, but we do not perceive it; it is within our reach but beyond our grasp. And still it is not entirely unknown to us.Ch. 5
In English the phrase that a person has "a presence" is hard to define. There are people whose being here and now is felt, even though they do not display themselves in action and speech. They have a "presence." … Of a person whose outwardness communicates something of his indwelling power or greatness, whose soul is radiant and conveys itself without words, we say he has presence. Standing face to face with the world, we often sense a presence which surpasses our ability to comprehend. The world is too much with us. It is crammed with marvel. There is a glory, an aura, that lies about all beings, a spiritual setting of reality. To the religious man it is as if things stood with their backs to him, their faces turned to God, as if the glory of things consisted in their being an object of divine care.Ch. 5
Being is both presence and absence. God had to conceal His presence in order to bring the world into being. He had to make His absence possible in order to make room for the world's presence. Coming into being brought along denial and defiance, absence, oblivion and resistance.Ch. 5
Being points beyond itself. Accustomed to think in terms of space, the expression "being points beyond itself" may be taken to denote a higher point in space. What is meant, however, is a higher category than being: the power of maintaining being.Ch. 5
Being is either open to, or dependent on, what is more than being, namely, the care for being, or it is a cul-de-sac, to be explained in terms of self-sufficiency. The weakness of the first possibility is in its reference to a mystery; the weakness of the second possibility is in its pretension to offer a rational explanation. Nature, the sum of its laws, may be sufficient to explain in its own terms how facts behave within nature; it does not explain why they behave at all. Some tacit assumptions of the theory of insufficiency remain problematic.Ch. 5
The idea of dependence is an explanation, whereas self-sufficiency is an unprecedented, nonanalogous concept in terms of what we know about life within nature. Is not self-sufficiency itself insufficient to explain self-sufficiency?Ch. 5
Being is transcended by a concern for being. Our perplexity will not be solved by relating human existence to a timeless, subpersonal abstraction which we call essence. We can do justice to human being only by relating it to the transcendent care for being.Ch. 5
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
📷Religion is critique of allsatisfaction. Its end is joy, but its beginning is discontent, detesting boasts, smashing idols. … The ultimate is a challenge, not an assertion. Dogmas are allusions, not descriptions.📷Those who are open to the wonder will not miss it. Faith is found in solicitude for faith, in an inner care for the wonder that is everywhere.📷Each soul seeks the ladder in order to ascend above; but the ladder cannot be found. … Be what it may, one must leap until God, in His mercy, makes exultation come about.📷The system of meanings that permeates the universe is like an endless flight of stairs. Even when the upper stairs are beyond our sight, we constantly rise toward the distant goal.📷There are many creeds but only one faith. Creeds may change, develop, and grow flat, while the substance of faith remains the same in all ages. … The proper relation is a minimum of creed and a maximum of faith.📷In the realm of faith, God is not a hypothesis derived from logicalassumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. To rationalists He is something after which they seek in the darkness with the light of their reason. To men of faith He is the light.📷Faith is something that comes out of the soul. It is not an information that is absorbed but an attitude, existing prior to the formulation of any creed.📷It is a distortion to regard reason and faith as alternatives. Reason is a necessary coefficient of faith. Faith without explication by reason is mute, reason without faith is deaf. There can be a true symbiosis of reason and faith.📷Those who trust develop a finer sense for the good, even at the hight cost of blighted hopes. Charmed by the spell of love, faith is, as it were, imposed upon their heart.
The Torah has not imposed upon Israel a tyranny of the spirit. It does not violate human nature. On the contrary, the road to the sacred leads through the secular. The spiritual rests upon the carnal, like "the Spirit that hovers over the face of the water. " Jewish living means living according to a system of checks and balances. We are not asked anything that cannot be responded to. We are not told: Love thy enemy, but Do not hate him, and positively: "If thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again." (Exodus 23:4)."No TIme for Neutrality", p. 77
The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God. One cannot pray unless he has faith in his own ability to accost the infinite, merciful, eternal God."No TIme for Neutrality", p. 107
Society today is no longer in revolt against particular laws which it finds alien, unjust, and imposed, but against law as such, against the principle of law. And yet we must not regard this revolt as entirely negative. The energy that rejects many obsolete laws is an entirely positive impulse for renewal of life and law."No Religion is an Island", p. 264
Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy. And yet being alive is no answer to the problems of living. To be or not to be is not the question. The vital question is: how to be and how not to be? The tendency to forget this vital question is the tragic disease of contemporary man, a disease that may prove fatal, that may end in disaster. To pray is to recollect passionately the perpetual urgency of this vital question."No Religion is an Island", p. 264
One of the results of the rapid depersonalization of our age is a crisis of speech, profanation of language. We have trifled with the name of God, we have taken the name and the word of the Holy in vain. Language has been reduced to labels, talk has become double-talk. We are in the process of losing faith in the reality of words. Yet prayer can happen only when words reverberate with power and inner life, when uttered as an earnest, as a promise. On the other hand, there is a high degree of obsolescence in the traditional language of the theology of prayer. Renewal of prayer calls for a renewal of language, of cleansing the words, of revival of meanings. The strength of faith is in silence, and in words that hibernate and wait. Uttered faith must come out as a surplus of silence, as the fruit of lived faith, of enduring intimacy. Theological education must deepen privacy, strive for daily renewal of innerness, cultivate ingredients of religious existence, reverence and responsibility."No Religion is an Island", p. 264
Religion is critique of all satisfaction. Its end is joy, but its beginning is discontent, detesting boasts, smashing idols. It began in Ur Kasdim, in the seat of a magnificent civilization. Yet Abraham said, "No," breaking the idols, breaking away. And so every one of us must begin by saying no to all visible, definable entities pretending to be triumphant, ultimate. The ultimate is a challenge, not an assertion. Dogmas are allusions, not descriptions."No Religion is an Island", p. 264
This is the predicament of man. All souls descend a ladder form heaven to the world. Then the ladders are taken away. Once they are in this world, they are called upon from heaven to rise, to come back. It is a call that goes out again and again. Each soul seeks the ladder in order to ascend above; but the ladder cannot be found. Most people make no effort to ascend, claiming, how can one rise to heaven without a ladder? However, there are souls which resolve to leap upwards without a ladder. So they jump and fall down. They jump and fall down, until they stop. Wise people think that since no ladder exists, there must be another way. We must face the challenge and act. Be what it may, one must leap until God, in His mercy, makes exultation come about."No Religion is an Island", p. 266
It seems as though we have arrived at a point in history, closest to the instincts and remotest from ideals, where the self stands like a wall between God and man. It is the period of a divine eclipse. We sail the seas, we count the stars, we split the atom, but never ask: Is there nothing but a dead universe and our reckless curiosity? Primitive man's humble ear was alert to the inwardness of the world, while the modern man is presumptuous enough to claim that he has the sole monopoly over soul and spirit, that he is the only thing alive in the universe. … But there is a dawn of wonder and surprise in our souls, when the things that surround us suddenly slip off the triteness with which we have endowed them, and their strangeness opens like a gap between them and our mind, a gap that no words can fill. … What is the incense of self-esteem to him who tastes in all things the flavor of the utterly unknown, the fragrance of what is beyond our senses? There are neither skies nor oceans, neither birds nor trees — there are only signs of what can never be perceived. And all power and beauty are mere straws in the fire of a pure man's vision."The Holy Dimension", p. 329
He who has ever been confronted with the ultimate and has realized that sun and stars and souls do not ramble in a vacuum will keep his heart in readiness for the hour when the world is entranced, awaits a soul to breathe in the mystery that all things exhale in their craving for salvation. For things are not mute. The stillness is full of demands. Out of the world comes a behest to instill into the air a rapturous song for God, to incarnate in the stones a message of humble beauty, and to instill a prayer for goodness in the hearts of all children."The Holy Dimension", p. 330
Faith is sensitiveness to what transcends nature, knowledge and will, awareness of the ultimate, alertness to the holydimension of allreality. Faith is a force in man, lying deeper than the stratum of reason and its nature cannot be defined in abstract, static terms. To have faith is not to infer the beyond from the wretched here, but to perceive the wonder that is here and to be stirred by the desire to integrate the self into the holy order of living. It is not a deduction but an intuition, not a form of knowledge, of being convinced without proof, but the attitude of mind toward ideas whose scope is wider than its own capacity to grasp. Such alertness grows from the sense for the meaningful, for the marvel of matter, for the core of thoughts. It is begotten in passionate love for the significance of all reality, in devotion to the ultimate meaning which is only God. By our very existence we are in dire need of meaning, and anything that calls for meaning is always an allusion to Him. We live by the certainty that we are not dust in the wind, that our life is related to the ultimate, the meaning of all meanings. And the system of meanings that permeates the universe is like an endless flight of stairs. Even when the upper stairs are beyond our sight, we constantly rise toward the distant goal."The Holy Dimension", p. 330
Instead of indulging in jealousy, greed, in relishing themselves, there are men who keep their hearts alert to the stillness in which time rolls on and leaves us behind. … those who are open to the wonder will not miss it. Faith is found in solicitude for faith, in an inner care for the wonder that is everywhere."The Holy Dimension", p. 331
Only straight discovering in the nearest stone or tree, sound or thought, the shelter of His often desecrated goodness, the treasury of His waiting form man's heart to affiliate with His will — this is the rapture of faith. It is an echo to a pleading voice, a reply to the inconceivable in all beauty."The Holy Dimension", p. 331
Faith is an awareness of divine mutuality and companionship, a form of communion between God and man. It is not a psychical quality, something that exists in the mind only, but a force from the beyond."The Holy Dimension", p. 331
Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but the endless, tameless pilgrimage of hearts."The Holy Dimension", p. 332
Those of faith who plant sacred thoughts in the uplands of time, the secret gardeners of the Lord in mankind's desolate hopes, may slacken and tarry but rarely betray their vocation."The Holy Dimension", p. 332
He whose soul is charged with awareness of God earns his inner livelihood by a passionate desire to pour his life into the eternal wells of love. … We do not live for our own sake. Life would be preposterous if not for the love it confers. Faith implies no denial of evil, no disregard of danger, no whitewashing of the abominable. He whose heart is given to faith is mindful of the obstructive and awry, of the sinister and pernicious. It is God's strange dominion over both good and evil on which he relies. … Faith is not a mechanical insurance but a dynamic, personal act, flowing between the heart of man and the love of God."The Holy Dimension", p. 333
Not the individual man nor a single generation by its own power can erect the bridge that leads to God. Faith is the achievement of many generations, and effort accumulated over many centuries. … There is a collective memory of God in the human spirit, and it is this memory which is the main source of our faith."The Holy Dimension", p. 333
Faith is not a thing that comes into being out of nothing. It originates in an event. In the spiritual vacancy of life something may suddenly occur that is like the lifting of a veil at the horizon of knowledge. A simple episode may open sight of the eternal. A shift of conceptions, boisterous like a tempest of soft as a breeze may swerve a mind for an instant or forever. For God is not wholly silent and man is not always deaf. God's willingness to call men to His service and man's responsiveness to the divine indications in things and events are for faith what sun and soil are for the plant."The Holy Dimension", p. 333
The riches of the soul are stored up in its memory. this is the test of character, not whether a man follows the daily fashion, but whether the past is alive in his present."The Holy Dimension", p. 333
Only those who are spiritually imitators, only people who are afraid to be grateful and too weak to be loyal, have nothing but the present moment. The mark of nobility is inherited possession. To a noble person it is a holy joy to remember, an overwhelming thrill to be grateful, while to a person whose character is neither rich nor strong, gratitude is a most painful sensation. The secret of wisdom is never to get lost in a momentary mood or passion, never to forget a friendship over a momentary grievance, never to lose sight of the lasting values over a transitory episode."The Holy Dimension", p. 334
Much of what the Bible demands can be comprised in one imperative: Remember!"The Holy Dimension", p. 334
There are many creeds but only one faith. Creeds may change, develop, and grow flat, while the substance of faith remains the same in all ages. The overgrowth of creed may bring about the disintegration of that substance. The proper relation is a minimum of creed and a maximum of faith."The Holy Dimension", p. 335 - 336
In the realm of faith, God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. To rationalists He is something after which they seek in the darkness with the light of their reason. To men of faith He is the light."The Holy Dimension", p. 337. Heschel made similar statements in earlier writings: The great insight is not attained when we ponder or infer the beyond from the here. In the realm of the ineffable, God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light of reason. He is the light. Man Is Not Alone : A Philosophy of Religion (1951)
Faith is something that comes out of the soul. It is not an information that is absorbed but an attitude, existing prior to the formulation of any creed."The Holy Dimension", p. 337
Reason is not the measure of all things, not the all-inclusive power in the inner life of man. The powers of will and emotion, the realm of the subconscious lie beyond the scope of knowledge. The rush of reason is an effort of limited strength. Faith is not the miniature of thinking but its model, not its shadow but its root. It is a spiritual force in man, not dealing with the given, concrete limited, but directed upon the transcendent. It is the spring of our creative actions."The Holy Dimension", p. 337
All action is vicarious faith."The Holy Dimension", p. 338
Reality is not exhausted by knowledge. Inaccessible to research are the ultimate facts. All scientific conclusions are based on axioms, all reasoning depends ultimately upon faith. Faith is virgin thinking, preceding all transcendent knowledge. To believe is to abide at the extremities of spirit."The Holy Dimension", p. 338
There is neither advance nor service without faith. Nobody can rationally explain why he should sacrifice his life and his happiness for the sake of the good. The conviction that I must obey the ethical imperatives is not derived from logical argument but originates from an intuitive certitude, in a certitude of faith. There is no conspiracy against reason, no random obstinacy, no sluggish inertia of mind or smug self-assurance entrenched behind the walls of believing. Faith does not detach a man from thinking, it does not suspend reason. It is opposed not to knowledge but to backwardness and dullness, to indifferent aloofness to the essence of living. … It is a distortion to regard reason and faith as alternatives. Reason is a necessary coefficient of faith. Faith without explication by reason is mute, reason without faith is deaf. There can be a true symbiosis of reason and faith."The Holy Dimension", p. 338
The account of our experiences, the record of debit and credit, is reflected in the amount of trust or distrust we display towards life and humanity. There are those who maintain that the good is within our reach everywhere; you have but to stretch out your arms and you will grasp it. But there are others who, intimidated by fraud and ugliness, sense scorn and ambushes everywhere and misgive all things to come. Those who trust develop a finer sense for the good, even at the hight cost of blighted hopes. Charmed by the spell of love, faith is, as it were, imposed upon their heart."The Holy Dimension", p. 338
Trust is the core of human relationships, of gregariousness among men. Friendship, a puzzle to the syllogistic and critical mentality, is not based on experiments or tests of another person's qualities but on trust. It is not critical knowledge but a risk of the heart which initiates affection and preserves loyalty in our fellow men."The Holy Dimension", p. 339
Faith opens our hearts for the entrance of the holy. It is almost as though God were thinking for us."The Holy Dimension", p. 339
To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain the sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the mystery by which we live. Who is worthy to be present at the constant unfolding of time?"The Holy Dimension", p. 341
The Zookeeper's Wife (2008)
📷Man is a messenger who forgot the message.📷Every moment is great, we were taught, every moment is unique.Quotes of Heschel from The Zookeeper's Wife : A War Story (2008) by Diane Ackerman
Man is a messenger who forgot the message.
The search of reason ends at the shore of the known.
The stone is broken, but the words are alive.
To be human is a problem, and the problem expresses itself in anguish.
I have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas. This is to me the supreme Hasidic imperative: Don't be old. Don't be stale.
In my youth, growing up in a Jewish milieu, there was one thing we did not have to look for and that was exaltation. Every moment is great, we were taught, every moment is unique.
Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God. (Revelation 3:2)
Harry was discouraged. He fostered such high hopes for progress when he began his life of discipleship. Along the way, he had not met all of his goals. He had experienced the limitations of the flesh and had felt the sting of rebuke. Now, as he evaluated his spiritual progress, all he saw was regress. He had the right answers. On the outside, he seemed like an ideal Christian. On the inside, he was spiritually dead and emotionally drained.
"What's the use?" he muttered as he threw up his hands in despair.
Then for some reason, he began reading the book of Revelation. His eyes fell upon these words of Jesus to a church whose spiritual condition sounded much like his own. Sardis looked alive on the outside, but was dead on the inside. Jesus' words to that church spoke to that glimmer of spiritual life in Harry's heart.
"Be watchful .."
Harry had to admit that he had not been paying much attention to his spiritual life. His personal devotions were routine if present at all. He was too busy to be watchful. The words of Jesus were a wake up call to his heart.
"… strengthen the things which remain…"
There was a spark still flickering in his heart. Harry sensed that God was calling him to fan it into a flame, to build on his strengths, and trust Him for the rest.
" …that are ready to die …"
He understood that this was a serious matter - that he could lose whatever spiritual vitality he had. He was not willing to let go of his relationship with Jesus, no matter how casual it had been.
When setbacks come, the Accuser tempts us to retreat farther. He lies to us and tells us that there is no more to lose. Jesus says to strengthen what remains and be faithful to Him amidst the rubble of our failures. He makes the promise to overcomers that they can wear white garments of righteous servants. Harry decided that day to become an overcomer. What will you decide?
On this day in 1926 – Crown Prince Nguyễn Phúc Vĩnh Thuỵ is crowned king of Vietnam, the country's last monarch.
He was also known as Bảo Đại, "keeper of greatness."
As an irrelevant aside, I learned this during my years in San Jose from my Vietnamese friends about kings and teachers:
"The teacher bows to no one but the king and
the king bows to no one, but his teacher."
If a Vietnamese person addresses you as "Teacher," you have been greatly honored.
On this day in 1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a "War on Poverty" in the United States.
Johnson, a Roosevelt "New Dealer," envisioned a Great Society that would be sparked by local activists and initiatives, especially young adults who would be activated in cities through programs such as VISTA.
In fact, the legacy of the war on poverty policy initiative remains in the continued existence of such federal programs as Head Start, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), TRiO, and Job Corps.
That being said, most of what remains and was implemented were simply programs that might be considered bandages, many of which were eliminated during the Clinton administration through the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, which President Bill Clinton claimed "ended welfare as we know it."
The truth is that Johnson's most profound Great Society initiatives were never fully implemented because of the escalation of the War in Vietnam which robbed him of his legacy and meant that his vision could never be fully tested.
Let us begin!
Type something today.
You might as well make it something worth reading.
Perhaps it could be an acronym for QWERTY.
I am not eligible to win the contest for best.
Quintessentially Quirky.
Wistfully Wonderful Written Words.
Existentially Effective.
Resplendent in Regalia.
Tenuous and Tentative on the Tongue and in Type.
Yearning - always Yearning.
Born this day in 1902 – Carl Rogers, American psychologist and academic. My university psychology professor spent so much time trying to debunk Rogers in favor of Skinner that it drove me toward him.
"If you cannot make knowledge your servant, make it your friend." - Baltasar Gracián y Morales, Born this day in 1601, who also said:
"When you counsel someone, you should appear to be reminding him of something he had forgotten, not of the light he was unable to see."
and ... "Honorable beginnings should serve to awaken curiosity, not to heighten people's expectations. We are much better off when reality surpasses our expectations, and something turns out better than we thought it would. This rule does not hold true for bad things: when an evil has been exaggerated, its reality makes people applaud. What was feared as ruinous comes to seem tolerable."
and ... "Readiness is the mother of luck."
and ... "Many owe their greatness to their enemies. Flattery is fiercer than hatred, for hatred corrects the faults flattery had disguised
and ... "Politeness and a sense of honor have this advantage: we bestow them on others without losing a thing."
On this day in 1982 – Breakup of the Bell System: AT&T agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions.
On this day in 1912 – The African National Congress is founded, under the name South African Native National Congress (SANNC).
On this day in 1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a "War on Poverty" in the United States.
Johnson, a Roosevelt "New Dealer," envisioned a Great Society that would be sparked by local activists and initiatives, especially young adults who would be activated in cities through programs such as VISTA.
In fact, the legacy of the war on poverty policy initiative remains in the continued existence of such federal programs as Head Start, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), TRiO, and Job Corps.
That being said, most of what remains and was implemented were simply programs that might be considered bandages, many of which were eliminated during the Clinton administration through the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, which President Bill Clinton claimed "ended welfare as we know it."
The truth is that Johnson's most profound Great Society initiatives were never fully implemented because of the escalation of the War in Vietnam which robbed him of his legacy and meant that his vision could never be fully tested.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.
There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.
He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him.
He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.
But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.
(John testified to him and cried out, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'")
From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.
The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.
(Subsequent Quotes from KJV)
Some of these words are pre-Christmas settings, some post-Christmas, all for Christmas year-round.
God Spoke
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” John 1:1-3
God spoke. He has always spoken. There was never a time when God was not speaking. His very nature is revealed in His Word and His Word is inseparable from Who He Is.
God Is. God speaks.
These are two basic corollaries of any Christian theology.
When God speaks things come into existence. All that is was once spoken by God. Nothing has been made apart from His Word. His Word is living. His Word is a person. His Word is as real as He is.
As we celebrate the birth of Jesus, we must know that He is first of all, the Word of God, co-equal and absolutely reliable. He is the heartbeat of God’s will, the expression of God’s love, and the demonstration of God’s purity and holiness.
Christmas is about celebrating the Word of God in Jesus Christ and is most appropriately celebrated with an open Bible and an open heart.
Christmas drives us back to the scriptures to seek understanding of the ways of God. It prompts us to yearn for deeper understanding in the pages of the Bible that we might ascertain God’s eternal purposes and His plan for the people of His world. We become like the Magi, seeking the wisdom of the ages.
Decide now to make this a Bible Christmas by beginning with the eternal preexistent Word and orienting your understanding around Him.
God has spoken. Let us listen.
The Lights on the Tree of Life
“In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” John 1:4-5
Your community is lighted with beautiful reminders of the Christmas season. Some lights may be coming down. Some remain. The colors shining in the night can be seen from afar and even from space. They are at the same time happy and holy, gaudy and dignified. They serve as reminders of joy and correctives to the harsh edges that so often dominate the landscape of our cities and our lives.
It is clearly, visibly, and festively Christmas where we live and the light is shining in the darkness.
In fact, it is in the darkness of night that we most often venture forth from our homes to view these lights and celebrate the profound contrasts that they afford.
From simple candle lights in the windows of homes to magnificent displays in the public squares, we behold temporal illustrations of eternal reality: The evergreen trees which live long through Winter when planted in the soil of the earth are types of the tree of life which is planted in the fertile soil of God’s truth. In and from that life, which is Christ, flows the life and light of men.
And that light shines in the darkness beckoning men and women who live in darkness to come.
To those outside on the cold dark streets of our cities, shivering from the frosty darkness that envelopes them, the flickering lights from a Christmas tree in the window of a warm home serve as an invitation to come to something better. They softly hum the call of God to enter into His brightness and the warmth of His presence. They sway to the melody of each sweet carol, “O come, let us adore Him.”
The light is shining and it is, indeed, the light of men.
The Unknown Light
“That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: “ John 1:9-12
The lights on the trees are synthetic. Though lovely in their appearance, they are temporal and will fade away, burn out, or be immediately extinguished as they or their power source is broken. They are not true lights.
They do not shine universally, but only within the close proximity of those who light them. There are dark places where their ambiance is not known. There are pockets of despair in the world where the lights of Christmas have never been lit.
But the true light shines on every man while in pervasive blindness, there are many who do not and will not see. Hardness of heart and bitterness of spirit obscure the view of those for whom the light is intended.
We live in a land of shadows and distortions where every ray of light is filtered through our prejudicial thinking and blind ambition. We stumble in our assumptions and trip over our own dark thoughts oblivious to the Light that has come into the world and is already shining on us.
Many there are who do not recognize him when confronted by Him, who sing the songs of Christmas, hang the decorations on their trees, gasp at the beauty of the colors of the season, and greet one another with manufactured cheer. Yet they do not see him to whom all the signs and symbols point.
Those who do become the children of God, and playfully unwrap their spiritual gifts around the tree of life.
With which company of celebrants will you number yourself this Christmas?
Seeing the World through Incarnation Eyes
“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” - John 1:14
There is a vision without which, we are blind and lifeless.
It is the vision of one who sees us as we are and envisions our world from the inside out and the outside in.
The Incarnate Lord made His dwelling among us. Literally, He pitched His tent here.
I had read about California all my life, seen it on TV and in the movies, but I only truly experienced it when I moved here many years ago.
But the vision message of this verse is not that God learned to experience our life by becoming flesh, but that He made it possible for us to experience Him and to behold His glory.
We have a new vision of God because of Jesus and can now view the world through His eyes because He dwelt among us as one of us.
So, must we dwell among the people, indwelt by Christ that they may behold His glory as we see then through His eyes.
The Miracle of Christmas
“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. “ John 1:14
As God speaks, flesh is formed, holy flesh, incarnate divinity, whimpering wonder, tiny testimony to His love and presence. It is a miracle. God spoke in this little bundle of flesh and blood as helpless as He was with more profound clarity and unmistakable volume than in all of history. God performed the miracle of Christmas.
One night in Bethlehem, as the light shone in the darkness, the Word, eternal and perfect, became flesh and began to dwell among us.
He began as we begin. He grew as we grow. He struggled as we struggle. He was tempted as we are. He overcame as no man ever has before or since. In all ways, He was like us, yet without sin.
And we saw something in him we have never seen before in any man as we saw it in Him, the glory of God.
It had been reflected off the face of Moses, but it emanated from Jesus the Christ. The people could not look at Moses and live. We live by beholding Jesus.
It was the glory of the unique, only begotten of the Father, the eternal Word of God. It was real glory we saw, real light, and true life. It was glory that is full of grace and glory that is full of truth.
No where else in the drama of the cosmos have grace and truth been so compatible in one event. Truth lands on earth with the piecing weight of uncompromising reality and shouts, “Here I am.” This is it!” Grace creeps into our lives and settles our hearts. It injects truth into our souls without sting or invasion and speaks compassion to our hearts..
Truth may seem harsh, but grace and truth are as welcome as Christmas and are, in fact, what Christmas is all about. This is the miracle of Christmas is that the truthful, loving Word of God has become incarnate in human form and we can see Who God is in all of His glory and live.
I have often gained insight by experiencing these things for myself in my own flesh.
But the vision message of this verse is not that God learned to experience our life by becoming flesh, but that He made it possible for us to experience Him and to behold His glory.
We have a new vision of God because of Jesus and can now view the world through His eyes because He dwelt among us as one of us.
Everything we see and experience is something that he has seen, heard, known, and felt. And we have beheld his glory along with all he has beheld, through his eyes.
It is a fresh perspective on everything.
Jesus has come to dwell in our hearts. Through us, he still dwells in this world and can be seen by people who look at our lives. Incarnational vision is about how we see people and how people can see Jesus in us.
In my recent years of struggling with physical ailments, I have seldom prayed for them to just go away.
hat does not mean I have not prayed for healing, but healing in the form of maximum wellness, optimal wholeness, strength, and eventual complete healing with one stipulation: I have not wanted anything to just go away until it had achieved its maximum benefit for me, for others, and mostly, for the glory and Kingdom of God.
This is not a brag or a statement of personal holiness. in fact, it is quite selfish on my part. It is an assessment of the question: What do I really want out of life? What is going to bring the greatest pay-off? What is best?
Here, below, is a man who did not suffer because of sin (Heavens knows I have suffered because of sin more often than I wish to tell), but for glory.
The greatest glory was achieved through his healing in this case.
And there was great rejoicing and awe.
John 9:1-12,35-38
As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, saying to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, "Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?" Some were saying, "It is he." Others were saying, "No, but it is someone like him." He kept saying, "I am the man." But they kept asking him, "Then how were your eyes opened?" He answered, "The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, 'Go to Siloam and wash.' Then I went and washed and received my sight." They said to him, "Where is he?" He said, "I do not know." Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" He answered, "And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him." Jesus said to him, "You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he." He said, "Lord, I believe." And he worshiped him.
God makes a big promise to David and his progeny. He has chosen someone to lead his chosen people. We have a chosen leader for a chosen people who are on a special mission in the world. The promise is embellished here and intended to promote vast expansion of the influence of God-worship.
You spoke once in vision and said to your faithful people: *
“I have set the crown upon a warrior
and have exalted one chosen out of the people.
I have found David my servant; *
with my holy oil have I anointed him.
My hand will hold him fast *
and my arm will make him strong.
No enemy shall deceive him, *
nor any wicked man bring him down.
I will crush his foes before him *
and strike down those who hate him.
My faithfulness and love shall be with him, *
and he shall be victorious through my Name.
I shall make his dominion extend *
from the Great Sea to the River."
In response to the promise, David responds with a declaration of faith. He affirms his relationship with God as a son and a father.
"He will say to me, ‘You are my Father, *
my God, and the rock of my salvation.’"
God agrees regarding that relationship. God reaffirms the covenant and all that it entails. It is permanent. It is passed on from generation. The choice has been made. The instrument of declaring divine glory has been entrusted to a nation with a special leader.
It is rooted and grounded in love and God is the guarantor.
"I will make him my firstborn *
and higher than the kings of the earth.
I will keep my love for him for ever, *
and my covenant will stand firm for him.
I will establish his line for ever *
and his throne as the days of heaven.”
Yet, there is a warning. This intimate and familial relationship means that the Father may discipline the child. The old adage, “This will hurt me more than it hurts you” seems like hyperbole, but it is real.
It creates agony for God to harshly punish, but if that is what is required to bring back the straying sheep and protect them from danger, that is what will be done.
“If his children forsake my law *
and do not walk according to my judgments;
If they break my statutes *
and do not keep my commandments;
I will punish their transgressions with a rod *
and their iniquities with the lash;"
There is a limit to this judgment and chastisement, The limit is love. God’s love will never fail for God’s chosen ones. Nor will that love allow God to forget the enduring promises.
But I will not take my love from him, *
nor let my faithfulness prove false.
I will not break my covenant, *
nor change what has gone out of my lips.
Once for all I have sworn by my holiness: *
When God says David’s line will endure, then David’s line will endure. God’s people, God’s abiding witness – these are done deals.
‘I will not lie to David.
His line shall endure for ever *
and his throne as the sun before me;
It shall stand fast for evermore like the moon, *
the abiding witness in the sky.’”
If you are looking for some type of security, you have come to the right place. God has placed the integrity of eternity on the line.
But covenants are two ways. Here we find that this psalm has a place for lament. David and David’s people have broken faith with the covenant that keeps them secure. It is a mournful matter.
So, the complaint is that God, who promised to never cast off the chosen leader and chosen nation has done so.
Why, because the chosen ones have forgotten the One who chose them.
The people are singing their part and God’s part in this hymn.
They are trying to look at their plight from their perspective and from God’s perspective. It creates a point and counterpoint.
We are rejected, they feel.
You are not rejected; you are being chastised. Chastisement is often experienced as rejection. That is short-term experience only.
"But you have cast off and rejected your anointed; *
you have become enraged at him.
You have broken your covenant with your servant, *
defiled his crown, and hurled it to the ground.
You have breached all his walls *
and laid his strongholds in ruins.
All who pass by despoil him; *
he has become the scorn of his neighbors.
You have exalted the right hand of his foes *
and made all his enemies rejoice.
You have turned back the edge of his sword *
and have not sustained him in battle.
You have put an end to his splendor *
and cast his throne to the ground.
You have cut short the days of his youth *
and have covered him with shame."
Paraphrase
The people pray.
The people plead.
Life is short.
Show us your lovingkindness.
We long for the good old days of our relationship.
Stop hiding. Get over your anger. Show us your love again.
We are dying. We need you and we worship you.
Please turn the lights back on.
--------------------------------------------
"How long will you hide yourself, O LORD?
will you hide yourself for ever? *
how long will your anger burn like fire?
Remember, LORD, how short life is, *
how frail you have made all flesh.
Who can live and not see death? *
who can save himself from the power of the grave?
Where, Lord, are your loving-kindnesses of old, *
which you promised David in your faithfulness?
Remember, Lord, how your servant is mocked, *
how I carry in my bosom the taunts of many peoples,
The taunts your enemies have hurled, O LORD, *
which they hurled at the heels of your anointed."
This is the experience of a people in pain, chastised, disciplined, yet loved. They are seeking to understand present reality against the backdrop of eternal renewal.
Thus, they say and sing:
Blessed be the LORD for evermore! *
Amen, I say, Amen.
Now, here comes Ezekiel, but its centuries later. This must seem like rejection on steroids. Jerusalem is under siege. The people are going to be marched into Babylon.
The upheaval of circumstances will send their faith into spasm and God’s answer is a man laying on his side in the dirt for months and months and then, not getting up, but turning on the other side.
The God of surprises who appears to be rejecting us, but is truly preserving us, is going to do a new thing in the next seventy years.
God is going to deepen the understanding of what the covenant has been about and fashion a fresh Judaism out of the old. Every new thing is built upon something old, the religion of the desert, of the conquest, of the United Kingdom, and now, siege.
Faith under siege!
Hear the words of the prophet;
Ezekiel 4:1-17
"And you, O mortal, take a brick and set it before you. On it portray a city, Jerusalem; and put siegeworks against it, and build a siege wall against it, and cast up a ramp against it; set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it all around.
Then take an iron plate and place it as an iron wall between you and the city; set your face toward it, and let it be in a state of siege, and press the siege against it.
This is a sign for the house of Israel.
Then lie on your left side, and place the punishment of the house of Israel upon it; you shall bear their punishment for the number of the days that you lie there.
For I assign to you a number of days, three hundred ninety days, equal to the number of the years of their punishment; and so you shall bear the punishment of the house of Israel.
When you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side, and bear the punishment of the house of Judah; forty days I assign you, one day for each year.
You shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, and with your arm bared you shall prophesy against it.
See, I am putting cords on you so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have completed the days of your siege.
And you, take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them into one vessel, and make bread for yourself.
During the number of days that you lie on your side, three hundred ninety days, you shall eat it. The food that you eat shall be twenty shekels a day by weight; at fixed times you shall eat it. And you shall drink water by measure, one-sixth of a hin; at fixed times you shall drink. You shall eat it as a barley-cake, baking it in their sight on human dung.
The LORD said, "Thus shall the people of Israel eat their bread, unclean, among the nations to which I will drive them."
Then I said, "Ah Lord GOD! I have never defiled myself; from my youth up until now I have never eaten what died of itself or was torn by animals, nor has carrion flesh come into my mouth."
Then he said to me, "See, I will let you have cow's dung instead of human dung, on which you may prepare your bread."
Then he said to me, Mortal, I am going to break the staff of bread in Jerusalem; they shall eat bread by weight and with fearfulness; and they shall drink water by measure and in dismay. Lacking bread and water, they will look at one another in dismay, and waste away under their punishment."
Another definition of faith is the capacity to see promises from a distance and greet them as reality.
"All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them." - Hebrews 11:13
Abraham, Issac, Jacob, and Jospeh provide the examples. All embraced hope. All left something behind. All reached forward. All considered themselves resident aliens on this planet. All kept moving toward their true home.
Hebrews 11:13-22
All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return.
But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.
Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.
By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac. He who had received the promises was ready to offer up his only son, of whom he had been told, "It is through Isaac that descendants shall be named for you." He considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead-- and figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.
By faith Isaac invoked blessings for the future on Jacob and Esau.
By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, "bowing in worship over the top of his staff."
By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave instructions about his burial.
The Vision Our vision is to fully witness the redemptive, collective power of government, faith-based organizations, and families partnering together for vulnerable children. The Mission City Without Orphans exists to bridge the needs of the foster and adoptive community with the tangible resources within our cities.
You can also consider fostering children, adopting, or supporting people in your community who do so.
Every little bit helps. Thank you for your support. I’ve included information about City Without Orphans below.
The Vision Our vision is to fully witness the redemptive, collective power of government, faith-based organizations, and families partnering together for vulnerable children.
The Mission City Without Orphans exists to bridge the needs of the foster and adoptive community with the tangible resources within our cities
Psalm 68:5
A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling.
Deuteronomy 10:18
He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.
John 14:18
I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
1 Thessalonians 2:17
But, brothers and sisters, when we were orphaned by being separated from you for a short time (in person, not in thought), out of our intense longing we made every effort to see you.
James 1:27
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
Simple, honest, caring, respectful, low-key, God-confident εὐαγγελίου (Announcement of Good News - Evangelism)
Insights from today's Psalm.
"Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!" -Psalm 34:8 ESV
How does do people take a taste of God?
That is what most people do before coming to faith.
They taste. They listen. The do some reading. They investigate. They hang out with God's people. They involve themselves in discipleship. They ask questions and explore.
At some point they come to a crisis of belief and decision.
Then they make one of four decisions:
1. Yes. I will follow Jesus! I want to do it now. We call that the "low hanging fruit."
2. No, but I am still open - just not convinced.
3 Not now - I am postponing the decision.
4. No. I can't buy into that at all. I am walking away.
It is not our job to set and enforce the timing on the crisis of belief and decision or to assume that everyone is at that moment in the moment we meet them or the first time we share the message of Jesus and His call.
Our job is to invite, "Taste and see that the Lord is good."
It is also our job to keep inviting. ----------------------------------------
The rest of the Psalm:
Psalm 34 Benedicam Dominum
I will bless the Lord at all times; * his praise shall ever be in my mouth.
I will glory in the Lord; * let the humble hear and rejoice.
Proclaim with me the greatness of the Lord; * let us exalt his Name together.
I sought the Lord, and he answered me * and delivered me out of all my terror.
Look upon him and be radiant, * and let not your faces be ashamed.
I called in my affliction and the Lord heard me * and saved me from all my troubles.
The angel of the Lord encompasses those who fear him, * and he will deliver them.
Taste and see that the Lord is good; * happy are they who trust in him!
Fear the Lord, you that are his saints, * for those who fear him lack nothing.
The young lions lack and suffer hunger, * but those who seek the Lord lack nothing that is good.
Come, children, and listen to me; * I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
Who among you loves life * and desires long life to enjoy prosperity?
Keep your tongue from evil-speaking * and your lips from lying words.
Turn from evil and do good; * seek peace and pursue it.
The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, * and his ears are open to their cry.
The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, * to root out the remembrance of them from the earth.
The righteous cry, and the Lord hears them * and delivers them from all their troubles.
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted * and will save those whose spirits are crushed.
Many are the troubles of the righteous, * but the Lord will deliver him out of them all.
He will keep safe all his bones; * not one of them shall be broken.
Evil shall slay the wicked, * and those who hate the righteous will be punished.
The Lord ransoms the life of his servants, * and none will be punished who trust in him.
