Tag: Matthew 12

Six Sentence Story: Fleeing From God

When the Lord told Jonah to tell the Ninevites to repent so He wouldn’t need to destroy them, Jonah got on a boat and fled in the opposite direction. An horrendous storm refused to calm until Jonah was tossed overboard to his death and burial in the belly of a whale.

The cost of disobedience is death.

However, after three days and three nights – after three sunsets and three sunrises – the fish vomited Jonah onto the shore and back to life so the Lord could tell Jonah once again to tell the Ninevites to repent so He wouldn’t need to destroy them. The sight of Jonah – who looked (and likely smelled) like the walking dead – and the reluctant words coming from his mouth freaked out the inhabitants of Nineveh to such an extent that they all repented and were spared against Jonah’s wishes.

It gets you nowhere fleeing from God.

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Denise offers the prompt word “need” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Stardust

Our words affirm who we think we are.

Beyond their truth values, they are powerful spells. They bless. They curse. Though others might get in the way, we ourselves are the ones who are blessed or defiled by what comes out of our own mouths.1

A song written by Joni Mitchell called Woodstock2 in 1969 influenced me through the early 1970s. In the final refrain is a declaration of what Mitchell thought we were.

We are stardust
Billion year old carbon

However, as I’ve come to realize, there is no natural way that we could be stardust and as a metaphor the idea is sentimental nonsense.

There are those who fantasize how that stardust to man might have happened, but the only thing they proclaim is their rebellion against a Creator. Dust from a supernova cannot get back together again no matter how often one waves a magic wand – or a professor’s hand – insisting on billions of years of evolution.

And yet, back in the 1970s, I had no problem believing such mythology. I had no more problem with it than an ancient Greek would have had with Zeus or a Hindu with Krishna. Those were the words spoken to me and those were the words I chose to listen to. Today, I repent of that misleading idolatry.

That our bodies come from the earth is true.3 However, the dust of the earth has never been stardust no more than it has ever been pixie dust.

The words we speak and the words we listen to matter. I can testify – first hand – that God is not mocked. What we sow we shall reap.4

I can also testify that repentance brings more joy than delusion, rebellion and disobedience5.

  1. Matthew 15:17-20 KJV – 17 Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? 18 But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. 19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: 20 These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man. ↩︎
  2. https://jonimitchell.com/music/lyricsprint.cfm?id=75 ↩︎
  3. Genesis 2:7 KJV – 7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. ↩︎
  4. Galatians 6:7-8 KJV – 7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. 8 For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. ↩︎
  5. Luke 15:10 KJV – 10 Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. ↩︎

Empty—Ovi Poetry Challenge

The stone was sealed. The guard was set.
With prophesied conditions met
His empty tomb’s our sign, so let
our praises rise with Him!

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Ronovan Hester offers the inspiration “empty” for this week’s Ovi Poetry Challenge. Also posted on Poet’s Corner.

Matthew 12:39-40 KJV – 39 But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: 40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.