Dale offers the prompt “the returning of the light” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.
The top photo is yesterday’s rising sun over the Atlantic Ocean from southern Florida.
A few minutes earlier than the top photo, the bottom one shows the sun rising out of the ocean (not literally 🙂 ) cropped to focus on the clouds and waves near the sun.
We pray for God’s intervention in our lives, then congratulate ourselves rather than God for the results.
Jerry Bridges, The Practice of Godliness, (page 101)
We pray to God for something to happen. It happens. However, since it is always possible to concoct some explanation for what happened that does not involve God, we forget about thanking Him. Do we think He wasn’t listening? Do we think He wasn’t involved in that event? If we do, why did we even bother praying?
Bridges adds, “Thanksgiving is a normal result of a vital union with Christ, and a direct measure of the extent to which we are experiencing the reality of that union in our lives.” (page 103)
If we are not thankful after something we explicitly prayed for, and we take Bridges seriously, does that mean we may not have a vital union with Christ?
Earlier I had no idea what to write for this post. I prayed. Afterwards much of what’s in this post came to mind as well as suggestions for revisions.
Now, finishing the post, I do not want to be thanking some sentimental imitation, some Greek muse, some forest faerie, some earth mother goddess, some pan-psychic cosmic consciousness for what happened. I hope none of them were involved. To the extent any were, I apologize for the results.
I prayed to God, Adonai, specifically, to Yehovah (the Father) through Yeshua (the Son, Jesus,) in Ruach HaKodesh (the Holy Spirit) (Ephesians 2:18). I thank God over and over again with joy.
Even if nothing had come to mind for this post, and none of it did in the ways I expected it would, I would still thank God, because I prayed, grateful that I can pray, accepting responsibility for any mistakes I made.
That’s my testimony of thanksgiving.
Weekly Parashah Readings
Parashah: Tetzaveh 11 Adar, 5782 – February 12, 2022
Torah: Exodus 27:20 – 30:10
Haftarah: Ezekiel 43:10-27
Brit Chadashah: Hebrews 13:10-17
Resources: Chabad, Hebrew4Christians, Weekly Torah Readings, Calendar
The Lord resides within his mind,
or so he thinks, but not his heart.
His wheelchair today won’t start.
The internet goes blank. He’s blind.
He rises standing there to find
rebellion as his mental mesh
is torn revealing fallen flesh.
Knocked down his demons seek the door.
His heart’s been cleaned renewed now for
a will aligned and temple fresh.
Ronovan Hester offers the rhyme word fresh to be used in a C-line of a décima having rhyme pattern ABBAACCDDC for this week’s challenge. I am thinking of Psalm 51:10.
Gerald deciphered the script covering the small tablet. The scribe who wrote it did not anticipate that he would have a reader four thousand years in the future. Indeed, given the evils of the conquering lord whose forces had killed almost everyone in his own house, all the scribe hoped for was the world’s imminent end.
At that end, when the real Lord appeared, every tear would be wiped away as praise and thanksgiving joined in an eternal caress. The scribe prayed for mercy, or so Gerald imagined reading now between the lines of the tightly written tablet.
In the meanwhile the currently reigning lord of calamity was busy devouring the land with no time to waste on mercy.
Denise offers the word “scribe” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. And Eugenia offers the word “caress” for her prompt this week.
Dale offers the prompt “from my window” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.
In the top view, taken a year or so ago, the water is on the outside dripping down. In the bottom it is condensation on the inside.
After opening the shades in our apartment in southern Florida over the last few days there was enough condensation to write the message below.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
Proverbs 3:5-6, New American Standard Bible
And do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He will make your paths straight.
The opposite of trusting in the Lord and listening for the Shepherd’s voice is autonomy. Autonomy is trusting in my own understanding and goodness. The delusion that I am doing something good is what drives me down the road to hell powered by those good intentions.
As C.S. Lewis pointed out in The Great Divorce, a tale of deluded shades who preferred hell to heaven, either we say to God, “Thy will be done,” or God says that right back to us.
The following video from Answers in Genesis Canada shows how human autonomy pervades our culture, and perhaps even our own personal worldviews, in rejecting the Lord by following our own understanding justified by a belief in our own goodness.
Weekly Parashah Readings
Parashah: Terumah 4 Adar, 5782 – February 5, 2022
Torah: Exodus 25:1-27:19
Haftarah: I Kings 5:26-6:13
Brit Chadashah: 2 Corinthians 9:1-15; Matthew 5:33-37
Resources: Chabad, Hebrew4Christians, Weekly Torah Readings, Calendar
This hazy morning’s white with snow
that’s covering the summer grass,
depositing a fluffy mass.
May spring appear and let things grow.
The winter’s beautiful although
it’s much too cold with silent chills.
I’d rather sleep than look for thrills
while running out about the park
where footsteps leave a foot deep mark,
unless that’s what I hear He wills.
Ronovan Hester offers the rhyme word “mass” to be used in the B-line of a décima having rhyme pattern ABBAACCDDC for this week’s prompt. Eugenia offers “hazy” for her prompt this week.
George loved to stir-fry Steve’s faults. Every now and then he force-fed Steve a taste. Steve himself had a kettle of righteousness in which he boiled every embarrassing detail he could recall or invent from George’s past.
Although this provided some satisfaction for these two friends, it never satisfied them long enough to stop.
Since so far nothing major happened neither expected anything to wear down as a result of their mischief. When it did both knew the other side needed to apologize though neither knew how they could bring themselves to forgive should that happen.
Denise offers the word “wear” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
Dale offers the prompt “shades of grey” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.
The top photo is a sunrise coming through silhouetted palm trees. The bottom is an afternoon storm coming in over the Atlantic Ocean.
The lighted path and the sunrise (though not shades of grey) provided contrast hopefully accentuating the darkness in the rest of the photo. These photos were taken some time ago.
If the eighteenth-century botanist, looking for the first time through the old idols of Linneaus’ fixed and timeless classification into the new perspective of biological evolution, felt a sense of liberation and of light, it can have been but a candle-flame compared with the first glimpse we now get of the familiar world and human history lying together, bathed in the light of the evolution of consciousness.
Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry, Harcourt, Brace & World: 1965, page 72
Owen Barfield’s literary estate associates him with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. When I was trying to understand Saving the Appearances in the 1970s as an undergraduate in a Catholic college I wrongly lumped him with theistic existentialists such as Gabriel Marcel or Martin Buber and social critics such as Jacques Ellul or Ivan Illich. As I saw it they were the good guys offering guidance. I recently read the book again to try to see what went wrong in my own thinking at that time.
Barfield has this to say about Jesus, “If we accept at all the claims made by Christ Jesus concerning his own mission, we must accept that he came to make possible in the course of time the transition of all men from original to final participation; and we shall regard the institution of the Eucharist as a preparation – a preparation (we shall not forget) which has so far only been operant for the sidereally paltry period of nineteen hundred years or so.” (pages 170-171)
As a philosopher with a captive audience he did not have to bother trying to convince his readers with much evidence, whether biblical, logical or empirical, for why we “must accept” his assertions. I wonder today if he had a clue what the mission of Jesus was. By “paltry period” I suspect he thought we still had millions, or even billions, of years of consciousness evolution before us. What I realize today is when one takes the ancient myths of evolution seriously, in spite of the evidence of entropy going against them, one begins dismissing or distorting the Creation, the Fall, the Death, Burial and Resurrection of Jesus and the Last Days.
Why people find the myths of evolution believable, indeed why I used to believe them looking forward to some Age of Aquarius, is not clear to me. If one likes believing such things one might glibly talk about an evolution of this or that as Barfield does of consciousness. If one doesn’t, one could think of such beliefs as a centuries long buildup to the fulfillment of prophecy in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 where Paul predicted a rebellion preceding the day of the Lord.
Admittedly I did not understand Barfield as an undergraduate, but today I wonder just how much there was worth understanding. His stature as an authority made me think that reimagining his own beliefs was more important than reading the Bible. That helped lead me astray. I forgive him for that, knowing that I need forgiveness as well.
Weekly Bible Reading: Romans, 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians
David Pawson, Romans, Part 10, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Part 11
Bible Project, Romans 1-4, Romans 5-16, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians
Weekly Parashah Readings
Parashah: Mishpatim 27 Shevat, 5782 – January 29, 2022
Torah: Exodus 21:1-24:18
Haftarah: Jeremiah 34:8-34:22
Brit Chadashah: Matthew 5:38-42; 17:1-11
Resources: Chabad, Hebrew4Christians, Weekly Torah Readings, Calendar
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 