Photography – Page 91 – Poetry, Short Prose and Walking

Sunday Walk 21

I started reading David Pawson’s Practicing the Principles of Prayer this past week. I am beginning to understand prayer as a human privilege. Since prayer is a conversation, it is also never done alone. In order to bring that point home, I keep reminding myself to vocalize my prayers with words, not just thoughts, even if I speak only in a whisper.

I suspect I’ve thought of prayer too often as some sort of mindless, staring-at-my-navel meditation. That, I see now, is done alone and it is not as valuable as I once thought. It has been an awakening for me to get past that. By awakening I don’t mean that “woke” stuff where sleep-walkers bend a knee to the idol-of-the-day, but a real awakening.

Ronovan Hester offers the challenge to use the rhyme word “star” in the C line of a décima having rhyme pattern ABBAACCDDC.

Ronovan's Decima Poetry Challenge Image — Ronovan’s Decima Poetry Challenge Image

Merry Christmas

Confucius is dead. Mohammad is dead. Shinto is dead. Buddha is dead, but Jesus is alive and therefore I can believe IN Jesus. I can’t believe in the others. They are all gone.
David Pawson, The Key Steps to Becoming a Christian, Part 3 (about 18:45)

I love the traditional celebration of Christmas on December 25th especially as Mario Murillo presented it yesterday in his post. However, placing the actual birth of Jesus at the beginning of the Jewish calendar, that is, on Nisan 1, opens up, for me, an unexpected fulfillment of prophecy.

Jonathan Cahn, a Messianic Christian pastor, made the case that Jesus was born on March 20, 6 BC. If you watch the 28 minute video, When Was Jesus REALLY Born??, (Jim Bakker Show November 12th, 2012), look for the following:
1) In the spring lambing season the shepherds would be in the fields at night attending the birth of the lambs.
2) These lambs from Bethlehem were the temple sacrificial lambs. By pointing out the sign of “a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12 NIV), the angel was telling the shepherds to also attend the birth of Jesus.
3) Central events in the life of Jesus occurred on Jewish holy days: the Lamb Selection Day (Palm Sunday), Passover (Crucifixion), the Feast of First Fruits (Resurrection), and Shavuot (Pentecost). If His birth were a similarly central event it would likely occur on Nisan 1, the beginning of the Jewish calendar.
4) The birth year of 6 BC is suggested by an unusual occultation of Jupiter by the Moon in the constellation Aries that the Magi, or Zoroastrian astrologers, would have noticed in the spring. This would point them to the birth (occultation) of a king (Jupiter) in Judea (Aries).
5) The Tabernacle took nine months to complete like the period from conception to birth of a baby. It was set up on Nisan 1, “on the first day of the first month” (Exodus 40:2 NIV).

As Jonathan Cahn mentioned at the end of the video every time we receive Jesus it is day one, a new beginning. That would include today, December 25th, as well. And so I wish you a Merry Christmas and a new beginning.

Events

The winter solstice doesn’t bother us.
It happens this time every year.
It comes and goes. A few might care to know,
But no one feels any fear.

A birth we celebrate about this time
That happened once in ancient days
Still moves the heart with joyful gratitude.
We rise with shepherds singing praise.

Cream of the Crop

This week for the Cosmic Photo Challenge Dale asks us to feature our favorite photos of the past year under the theme of “cream of the crop”. Above is a fall view of Lake Michigan from the top of the ravine at Lake Bluff, Illinois, and the other shows a cup of goji berry tea next to my prepared notes for a meeting.

What made me smile this past week (for Trent P. McDonald’s The Weekly Smile) was a realization of the significance of various personal events over the past year, some very small, which made possible other such events. By contrast many public events of 2020 were awful, but these more private ones I think of now as Red Sea moments (Exodus 14) where I had to go from one side to the other of some situation with a command to do so, or else. When I imagine what my life would have been like today if I had not obeyed these commands I am overwhelmed with joyful gratitude.

I doubt the Israelites felt comfortable crossing the Red Sea given those ominous mountains of water on both sides, but if they had not obeyed, they would have had to face the Egyptians behind them. Imagine their gratitude at the privilege of being guided from one shore to the other.

The realization that made me smile this past week was the sense that I was not alone and I might well have become lost if I didn’t go forward. There are those who might choose to explain such commands or guidance as the workings of my imagination. However, there is a difference between imagining how the Israelites must have felt to experiencing it oneself. Remembrance brings forth gratitude and gratitude put a joyful smile on my face.

Merry Christmas!

I am adding this post to Crystal Grimes Holiday Blogging Party.

Sunday Walk 20 – Advent

Michael Bublé, Silent Night

Listening to Crystal Grimes’ performance of her arrangement of “The Friendly Beasts” was the first time I think I’ve heard the song. However, it felt very familiar and beautiful. Merry Christmas! It is coming soon.

Gift

Take care that you are not deceived.
To gutters petty pleasures drift.
Think not on rights. It’s all a gift.
Forget what you thought you achieved.
Fake gold can only leave you grieved
since none has value in the end.
Note: Falsehood never had a friend.
Beware His wrath. Avoid the curse.
Avoid the path from bad to worse
where spirals flush the flesh they rend.

In Ronovan Hester’s Décima Poetry Challenge we are asked to use the rhyme word “gift” in the B line of a décima having rhyme pattern ABBAACCDDC.

This poem is a meditation on 2 Timothy 3. Although somber, rejoice. If you can see the Gift, stay the course and have a Merry Christmas! And if you don’t, there’s still time.

But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.
2 Timothy 3:13 King James Version

Change – Six Sentence Story

As Greg approached the store a woman sitting by the streetlight asked him for a dollar and he gave her one.

Inside the store Greg bought a single Christmas card for Bill who called him the day before from a distant part of the country complaining that no one wanted anything to do with him anymore. Greg knew long ago that the toxicity of alcohol had been triggering Bill’s eruptions of deluded omnipotence and he was even beginning to become aware of the devious sources manipulating his own personality. Without any expectation that what he was about to do would do any good Greg picked a card that expressed a humble message of joy and he decided to call Bill back on Christmas Eve to see how he was doing.

After paying for the card Greg saw a dollar bill in the change he received and gave it to the woman on the sidewalk. She tucked this additional treasure away with the others.

Denise offers the prompt word “change” for this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Crystal Grimes is hosting a Holiday Blogging Party to which I am linking this post.

GirlieOnTheEdge Denise Farley's six-sentence-stories icon — GirlieOnTheEdge Denise Farley’s six-sentence-stories icon

Resolutions

Chel Owens challenges us to write a funny, clean limerick about “resolutions”.

Those demons look deeply demented.
Based on deeds, none of them have repented.
Resolutions to keep
Are not won on the cheap.
With such demons you’ll turn up tormented.

Unfortunately I doubt that limerick’s funny. Here’s another attempt.

How I wish I could make resolutions
That would stick when they’re stuck in solutions
When solutions go weak
Resolutions will streak
At the cost of some nasty pollutions.

And that limerick doesn’t make any sense. Here’s another attempt.

Every plan I attempt goes to pot.
Every dream I cook up has a spot.
Resolutions today
May resolve in some way,
But they’re not, though, the kind that I’ve got.

And so I give up my resolution to write a limerick.

Linked to A Mused Poetry Contest.

Snappers’ Choice

When Alice saw the rabbit hole,
she wondered: “Do I dare to go?”
She went. Praise God. Raise gratitude.
She found her winding way back home.

Linked to Cosmic Photo Challenge where Dale offers the theme of “snappers’ choice”, or photos of my own choosing. These are pictures taken about a week ago near the beach.

Also linked to Trent P. McDonald’s The Weekly Smile. I was thinking this past week of Matthew 6:13, And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. (NIV)

I smiled when I thought the temptation from the evil one might be for me to get my own way (or its way) when instead I should be rejecting it. When I do get my own way, that is, when my own will was done, I wondered if that were also His will for me? And that made me suspicious of the lyrics in the song, I Did It My Way.

Ahh! Going down that rabbit hole made me smile all the more with gratitude as things started to make sense from that context. Now to find my way back home.

Crystal Grimes is hosting a Holiday Blogging Party to which I am linking this post. May all of you have a blessed Hanukkah and a merry Christmas.

Sunday Walk 19 – Festival of Lights

¹⁴Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. ¹⁵Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. ¹⁶Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
Matthew 5:14-16 King James Version

I read two impressive blog posts this past week about Christmas. Julie’s post (CookieCrumbsToLiveBy) associated “cancel Christmas” with Scrooge. Mario Murillo’s post pointed out the “supernatural power of Christmas”. There’s more going on with Christmas than meets the eye. I don’t want to miss it.

The thought of politicians, some of whom I doubt were validly elected given the evidence of voter fraud in the US, trying to come up with excuses to make it difficult for us to celebrate Christmas, or to discredit Christmas in some way, makes me want to celebrate Christmas all the more.

And I feel the same about Hanukkah, the Festival of Dedication (John 10:22), the Festival of Lights, that we are currently in. May the fire of your light pierce the darkness of night.