Dale offers the prompt “a cold start” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.
Below are pictures of snow taken some years ago to help all of those in northern climates get ready for winter.
In South Carolina, it is cool, but not this cold. These pictures remind me of one reason why we moved south although there were times that the snow was beautiful and I do miss those.
I woke up in the middle of the night with an idea for a great story. I take no credit for the idea. It suddenly manifested, but I was tired. It was like I found a shiny treasure on the ground and all I had to do was pick it up, but I was tired.
Since it was a great story and it kept repeating, I eventually did get out of bed and started typing. I wrote the following sentence.
Then Timothy said something else as if it all depended on his words, but it didn’t all depend on his words.
I knew I should have written more before I went back to bed, but I was tired. Since I knew what I should have done, but didn’t do it, I disobeyed. When I finally woke up and read that sentence, the bare bones of the great story, I realized I lost it. I am left with a reminder that disobedience brings consequences. Sure God loves me and all, but if I don’t want to receive a great story by waking up long enough to write it down how can I receive what I have chosen not to receive?
Here’s the point of this essay: Can I get that story back with my own mental abilities?
I don’t think I can, but that is because I don’t think these things come from my own mental abilities in the first place. I’m not a materialist. That noodle on top of my head can only do so much. All this applies to you as well, of course. Even if we pooled our heads together and used our best efforts we could not come up with that great story again.
Hopefully I finally learnt my lesson because this was not the first time I was too tired to receive a blessing. Knowing my tendency to get tired, I have even kept a notebook by the side of the bed so I have less excuse not to write what comes from dreams or even from thoughts upon awakening, but I still get tired.
I’ve got to stop letting my body tell me what to do.
If you really understand that you can’t get there from here you will not waste any time trying to do so. In the case of my story, I will wait for fresh inspiration and stay awake next time.
Inspiration comes from God. If you don’t believe in God, it doesn’t matter. Inspiration still comes from Him. However, those who deny God lose a Way Maker. He’s still there but they have to delude themselves by inflating their own abilities or the abilities of nature to pretend to get stuff done without Him. There’s nothing like delusion to help one come up with ways to go from there to here or here to there forgetting that without God, most of the time, you can’t get there from here or you’d wish you hadn’t if you did. Without God we get lost.
There are many ways people try to get there from here without God. Here are a few that come to mind.
You can’t get a starry universe from a big bang
Since an orderly universe exists those seeking to explain how it got here without God have a lot of explaining to do. Some think a big bang might work. If you are trying to get order out of chaos an explosion has to be the worst starting point.
To make a star after the big bang makes a mess you need a cloud of gas. Gravity brings the gas together, but only if it can overcome the pressure to expand by somehow staying cool. Assuming you do get enough gas compressed that it becomes a thermonuclear accident waiting to happen, you then need a star to come along and blow itself up to ignite that “protostar” so it can blow itself up as well.
At least that is how I understand the alleged process which suggests to some that the laws of physics can’t explain star formation.
You can’t get reality from simulations
The whole point of artificial “intelligence” is to reduce human intelligence to machine-executable instructions. Then human beings could be thought of as made in the image of a machine, rather than made in the image of God.
A simulation takes this further and reduces reality itself to computer code. For me a simulation nightmare would start with the thought of a teenager in his basement in a galaxy far far away deciding to simulate a universe and suddenly I find myself in it.
That’s when I’d wake up.
You can’t get a diversity of creatures from mutations
It is amazing how often those who want to get where they’re going without God rely on decay processes to do so.
In the case of biological evolution, if you want a new kind of creature without God creating that creature you start with a creature and hope random mutations will turn the creature into something else before the mutations decay the creature to the point that it can no longer reproduce.
Mutations are decay processes. They don’t add information; they destroy it. On the way to extinction one may get a large variety of the same kind of creature, mutated, for sure, but one doesn’t get a new kind of creature with a lot of fresh information for mutations to destroy.
One is always racing against the clock when one relies on decay processes or has to counter them. Having a gazillion years to get it all done doesn’t really help. All it does is give those decay processes more time to decay stuff.
Conclusion
Face it: you can’t get where you want to go without God’s assistance. Without God, you can’t get there from here. With God, you have a Way Maker. Without Him, why bother?
Just because I wake up with an idea, a gift from the Holy Spirit, for a great story does not mean I can go back to sleep and come up with that story again later on my own when I am awake. I didn’t get that story in the first place on my own. All I could do on my own is write it down, that is, receive it.
I will have to wait for the Holy Spirit to offer something new, perhaps, something like this essay as a kind of repentance for my disobedience.
Six days were all creation took
as Moses noted in his book
and then God rested. Stop and look
and see what He has done!
Who would have thought of it at all?
A universe! Then came the fall.
We messed things up, but do recall
He came and rescued us.
______
Ronovan Hester offers the inspiration “rest” for this week’s Ovi Poetry Challenge. Also posted in Poet’s Corner.
The poem was also inspired by Michael Wilson’s note from the summer of 1975: “God can do and will do that which no man would ever think of trying.”
Neil recalculated using a different ratio of aligned nuclei in his controversial water-hydrogen model. Fifteen minutes later the results gave him the number he was looking for, 7576.3, with intermediate computations validating the steps, but with an uncertainty of 21.2. He wanted a tighter uncertainty before submitting his paper to the Institute, but the main result, regardless of the uncertainty detail, was well below Hardy’s upper bound of 7670.
Neil’s wife called from downstairs, Earth to Daddy, pizza’s ready!
His daughter also called, Earth to Daddy, pizza, pizza, pizza!
Neil walked down the stairs, picked up his giggling daughter, kissed his smiling wife and led a prayer of thanksgiving over the food knowing that, whatever the uncertainty, his family had much to rejoice over.
______
Denise offers the prompt word “detail” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
Dale offers the prompt “through an opening” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.
These are all older photos over many years. In the first photo, I imagined the clouds making an opening for the sun to shine.
In the second, the rocks made an opening for the plants to grow.
In the third I imagined the cracks between the stones forming the Western Wall in Jerusalem made an opening for petitions.
We used to sing a simple song
and both of us would sing along.
Though it was soft with lyrics strong
we sing that song no more.
Though other songs have come and gone
the songs that I still linger on
are soft and simple, deeply drawn
from one song long ago.
______
Ronovan Hester offers the inspiration “thankful” for this week’s Ovi Poetry Challenge. Also posted at Poet’s Corner.
This poem now also appears on Spillwords.
I wrote this poem in the Ovi form after listening last Friday evening to Jimmy Webb‘s song MacArthur Park sung by Richard Harris before I knew this week’s inspiration word. I am thankful for all the songs.
George listened to Anton say, Those in Hell want to be there. This convinced George that Anton hung onto reality by only a looney link since why would anyone ever want to be in a place like that?
When George died and went to Hell he became a prominent commander in Satan’s army commissioned to nuke the daylights out of Heaven. By contrast when Anton died he went to Heaven.
George exhausted himself throughout his eternity attacking Heaven in every which way he could imagine with extreme prejudice. However, Heaven being what it is, Anton noticed none of it.
______
Denise offers the prompt word “link” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
I got the idea that I put in Anton’s mouth that those in Hell wanted to be there from the following passage in The Great Divorce.
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. (C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, page 75)
Dale offers the prompt “any two colors” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.
My two colors are blue and white. Some other colors slipped in, but they are primarily blue and white.
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 