Can You Say, "I'm Sorry"?

Genesis 1-3

It begins!!!  There is a magic about our beginning that fills us with rapturous joy long forgotten by our old calloused heart.  We are jaded and steeped in modern doubt that blinds us to birds and babies lips.  We got sent to time out and instead of saying “I’m sorry” to our Daddy, we continue to sit in the corner of contemporary doubt pouting and playing with our enlightened navel. 

“therefore the Lord God sent him our from the garden of Eden…” 3:23

The world is filled with God and with His exquisiteness and is an open playground of delight if we would only by faith believe. 

Believe!!!

The Fall And Expulsion Of Adam And Eve
by Michelangelo

The Most Valuable Object In The Universe

Revelation 20-22

It is finished!!!  Really?

“Heaven and earth will pass away but my (Jesus) words will never pass away.”  Mark 13:31

It all culminates and then every human will be assigned an eternity with or without God.  Come to God!!!

But in the mean time we have the Holy Spirit and the most valuable physical object in the known and unknown universe; the Bible.

“For the word of God is alive and powerful.  It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow.  It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.”  Hebrews 4:12

Start again!!! Really?

YES.

Lindau Bible
How we should believe!!!

Hell Lit Off By Lint

Revelation 15-19

We sit and ponder Revelation.  We are unaccustomed to such vile, wicked violence juxtaposed against such beauty and hope.  Our lives are spent in fattened isolation, cupboards and storage buildings full, mind numb and heart dead with amusement.  Hell and Hopes coming and even now rages across our cosmos while we sat collecting lint for our evening entertainment.

Images of Revelation
by Stefan Lochner

Wicked Beasts And Floods Of Blood

Revelation 10-14

If we could station ourselves in space and view the earth we couldn’t imagine the destruction that’s coming.  From the Arctic to the Antarctic this blue orb will be flayed and fed to the beast and washed down with blood. 

“and I (John) saw another angel flying in midheaven…and he said with a loud voice, “Fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come; and worship Him who made the heaven and the earth and sea and springs of waters.” 14:6-7

There is still time to get off this sinking planet.  Come to the Good!!!

Baby Proof

Revelation 5-9

A Christmas morning.  I sit on a bitter cold porch as a Christmas day dawns grey and filled with the knowledge that winter is upon us.  A Baby has been born, 2000 years ago and in Him is the complete and only hope of every human.  There’s hell coming.  And He is the only One that can save us!!!  A Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger is going to grow up rule the universe.  

The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse
by Albrecht Durer

Bathing In Light Or Soot

Revelation 1-4

Revelation translated means “to take the lid off.”  It is a book that reveals what is going to occur in the future.  It begins by addressing the seven churches in Asia Minor in a professorial manner that also speaks to the historical movements within church history.  It also indicts the falsehoods in the churches.  There are two results of falsehoods.  One comes to their senses in the falsehood, rejects it, and seeks earnestly to find the Truth, or one wholeheartedly embraces the falsehood and begins to bath in the entanglement of death and lies. 

“I (Jesus) advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire, that you may become rich, and white garments, that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see…Behold I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My vice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with Me.” 3:18, 20

Saint John On Patmos
right panel of the Saint John's Altar Piece
by Hans Memling

PEACE In Wee Ears

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.  Luke 2:7

Once upon a time we hear a tale as the wee’st of lads that forever seals our eternity in faithful belief and saves us from our sins.  The verse is sewn into our hearts with tiny drops of blood as though a Baby’s hand was pricked or His foot nicked.  We believe because “swaddling clothes” is as sweet a sound as slips from our lips or sings into our wee ears.

Nativity
by Murillo

There's No Coast Guard In The Universe

Ship wrecked in the stars.

I John 4-Jude

False teaching and false teachers are the central theme today.

“These men are those who are hidden reefs…clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.” Jude 12-13

America is filled with false churches, false leaders and false followers.

You never know if you are false until you know Who is True.  

The Conjurer
by Hieronymus Bosch

If YOU Can’t Account For It You’re Saved

II Peter 3-I John 3

Do you doubt? Some live with this thorn in their flesh, they continually live in fear that they are unsaved!  I confess that I struggle. 

John’s letter is deeply concerned with this and encourages us.

“And by this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.” 2:3

There are two commandments, love God with everything you are and love others as you love yourself.   I experience this as I experience all things; I am growing to love God and others.  I love more today than in the past and I hope to love more in the future because I have found fulfillment in it now and in the past.  And the one truth overarching it all is that I am fully aware that I, self, didn’t, couldn’t and wouldn’t do it!  Someone is transforming me from the inside out and I, by faith, believe that to be God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas
by Caravaggio
see caption on December 19ths blog image

Are You Abnormal?

I Peter 3-II Peter 2

“but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you…” I Peter 3:15

Did you get that?  They will ask you!!!

A life lived in Christ, loving all those around you and finding great joy in your salvation is astoundingly attractive to an unredeemed human.  People will ask you to defend it because it is so utterly out of the norm.  If you are not experiencing this phenomenon it may be that you are part of the norm.

Christ Reveals The Sacred Heart To Saint Margaret Mary

There Is Iron In The Blood

James 4-I Peter 2

To The American Church

HOPE…one of the most powerful gifts from God, but one that is often misappropriated.  It elected a president because it is the empty spot in most Americans.  We have attached our hope to our wealth and it has left our souls bankrupt.  Americans own 40% of the world’s wealth and consume 80% of the world’s pain medicine.  But our gluttonous desire for pleasure cannot be met by our own wealth; we now have to borrow other’s wealth, 16 trillion dollars, to assuage our need for hope. 

“Your gold and your silver have rusted; and their rust will be a witness against you… You have lived luxuriously on the earth and led a life of wanton pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter…knowing that you are not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with the precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.”

James 5: 3a, 5; I Peter 1:18-19

If you are going to place your hope in precious metals, the iron in Christ’s blood is your best bet.

No Title
pure gold in pattern on wall
by Richard Wright winner of the 2009 Tate Modern

Always Read The Footnote

Hebrews 13-James 3

“So speak and so act, as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty.” James 2:12

“The entrance into heaven is a result of the work which Christ alone did, yet the enjoyment of heaven and its rewards will be proportionate to what the believer did for Christ in his life of faith on earth.  Salvation is undeserved mercy obtained by man because of Christ’s work, but the rewards are given in proportion to the believer’s mercifulness on earth.”

At times the footnote is clearer than the Word and all the more indicting.  

Christ The Judge
by Fra Angelico

Pleasure Gluttons

Hebrews 10-12

Two days ago I asked, “how do you make men moral?” and declared through scripture that only God through Christ can do this.  This is true but after salvation we are still left housed in this body whose only desire is for pleasure.  Even as a redeemed human it is lunacy to believe that humans will naturally choose right.  We will choose pleasure.

“All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” 12:11

In a world that now shuns all forms of corporal punishment it might be good to take to heart the following verses;

“It’s a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God…For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives.” 10:31; 11:6

Bacchus
by Caravaggio
One of my favorite artists but this images has troubled me since I first encountered it in
under-graduate school.  It is an image of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and is associated
with ecstasy, frenzy and liberating oneself from restraint.  It is troubling because I have
a strong sensitivity to the artists intent.  Caravaggio had two sides.  If you look at his work
he was one of the greatest painters of Christian content and yet he lived a life trapped in the
body of addicted drunkard.  Such ecstasy and excess in one human being.  Only
an artist can can bear the passions and furies of such contradictions of the soul.

Intercession

Hebrews 5-9

The dark days of reality will now set in, as the past will forever remain present.  Humans hurt humans and we will once again sew old rags on old wine skins to balm our conscious so we can do better and in someway we will advance; we will remedy with that which cannot be a remedy.  But in the quiet silence of dawn’s dark we will know that we are messed up and helpless to mend!!!

“Hence, also, He (Jesus) is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.”  7:25

Someone has to mend.  We were torn from God in Eden.  Someone has to sew this broken down old sinner to God and we’d better pick Someone who Lives To Do It!!! 

Christ As Mediator
artist unknown
Christ showing His wounds to God His Father
as proof of His right to the role of Intercessor

Who Decides Right and Wrong?

Philemon-Hebrews 4

The entire cosmos is a moral construct...stars stay put; the sun is warm; forests are to be protected; murdering children is wrong and good cells fight bad cells.

Who established it?

To that Being goes all honor and glory.  Every human will answer to that Being and no human can answer, “I measured up!”

In this time of national mourning we will quickly move to human remedies- mental health care, gun control, stricter access codes and more, all the while failing to acknowledge the base issue. 

Who establishes right and wrong?

“For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are,

yet without sin.”  Hebrews 4:15

That’s Moral Authority

Strozzi Altarpiece
depicting Christ giving the Gospel
to man thereby establishing forever His
moral authority

How Do You Make Humans Moral?

II Timothy 2-Titus

How do you make humans moral?

“But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.  For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God…

For we also were once foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating on another.  But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.”

II Timothy 3:1-4; Titus 3:3-6

I CAN’T, YOU CAN’T, WE CAN’T, THE GOVERNMENT CAN’T!!!

Only God through Christ can regenerate humans!!!

Good And Evil Angels
by William Blake

The Good Hands Person

I Timothy4-II Timothy 1

Paul finishes one letter and then begins his last and the sincerity of love he has for Timothy seeps through the pages into our own hardened hearts.  Paul’s death is eminent but there is no sign of the melancholia of questioning.

“For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.”  II Timothy 1:7  

Paul has learned that love is the greatest disciplined power on earth.  It captured him and;

“…I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He (Jesus) is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day.” 12

Paul knows his life is in Good Hands!!!

Beheading of Saint Paul
by Algardi
Tradition holds that Paul was beheaded in Rome by Nero.

Swatting The Hornets Nest (With A 75,000,000-Mile Long Stick)

II Thessalonians 2-I Timothy 3

My Bible uses a three-page footnote to explain Paul’s commands  (I Timothy 2:9-15) concerning women in the Church.  That’s a longer footnote than the one explaining the Triune God.  Paul definitely knew women were from Venus, but I don’t think he realized he was from Mars.

Post Script I:  75,000,000 miles is the distance from Mars to Venus.

Post Script II:  Some of the best parenting advice for parents with toddlers to any age including children with their own children which has served my wife and I excellently for 27 years:

 “If you don’t work, you don’t eat.” II Thessalonians 3:10b

The Temptation
Adam and Eve by William Strang

I'm Beat; Where There's A Will...

I Thessalonians 3-II Thessalonians 1

Some day’s we’re so hard up against it we can’t seem to find the will. 

“Rejoice always;” I Thessalonians 5:16

I rejoice that there is never a breath I draw that You haven’t first made oxygen in abundance to fill it.  

Winter
by Andrew Wyeth

Being Yourself

Colossians 3-I Thessalonians 2

“For you recall brethren, our labor and hardship, how working night and day so as not to be a burden to you, we proclaimed to the gospel of God.”  I Thessalonians 2:9

Paul always seems to be working, running, exhorting and laboring.  What ever happened to, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”?

One of the greatest truths of the life; trying to be good is an ever increasing burdening chore, but living the life of love in Christ is an ever increasing being yourself.  Being yourself is the lightest yoked burden you will ever have to carry. 

Big Self Portrait
by Chuck Close done in 1967 when he pioneered hyper realism painting.  Below is another self portrait done
a few years ago after he suffered a collasped spinal artery which left him paralysed
and wheel chair bound.  God has sewn into artists the will to create and
he foud a way to do it.  

It's The Law Boy!!!

Philippians 4-Colossians 2

Philippians closes out with many of the most quoted scriptures of the saints and Colossians begins by once again confronting the age-old problem of religious law keeping.

“Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch...are of no value against fleshly indulgences.” Colossians 2:21-23

Do you want a law to keep?

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control: against such things there is no law.”  Galatians 5:22-23

Saint Paul The Apostle
by Adamo Tadolini on the facade of
 Saint Peters Basilica in Rome

Simulacrum

Ephesians 6-Philippians 3

“Not that I (Paul) have already obtained it, or have already become perfect, but I press on…forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”  Philippians 3:12-14

Simulacrum is a Latin word used by artists to denote an attempt at a likeness of something that has failed to exactly capture it.  Today art making has become so elusive because we are trying to capture concepts that can barely be conceived by our human minds. 

Such is the Christian quandary; we are trying to live in order to obtain the “upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

Hymn
by Damien Hirst, atheist, but
with a full conceptual understanding of the concept of the human being.
Such a meaningful title for a great work.

Kissing Well Is Great Theology Practice

Ephesians 3-5

“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children…walk as children of light (for the fruit of light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth), trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.”  5:1,8b-10

You know why we have feelings?  Because at times The Word is so glorious it bypasses our mind to be most fully understood by our heart.  It’s like kissing; kissing is known only by the heart. 

Such is this entire passage, chapters 3-5.

The Kiss
by Gustav Klimt

Predestination

Galatians 5-Ephesians 2

We have to deal with the doctrine of predestination or limited atonement and this is as good a place as ever.  We are all predestined to be saved by God who is “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9 Some of us, by the freewill granted to us by God, will refuse His plan of predestining us to be with Him eternally.

There we dealt with it!!!

I would have rather focused on this.

“It was for freedom that Christ set us free…if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law…But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no Law…

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the love of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us…For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand , that we should walk in them. 

Galatians 5:1a, 18, 22-23; Ephesians 1:18-19; 2:10

The church would be better served if we focused on our predestined good works than on our predestined election.  

Standing Man Standing Women by Stephen DeStabler
one of the best "good works" I have ever seen.  I still remember the day i saw it some 30 years
ago in Kansas City Kansas.  I turned the corner and there it was.  Unbelievable!!!

The Five Man Electrical Band Gospel

Galatians 2-4

"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law..." 3:13

The Five Man Electrical Band sings the letter to the Galatians.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeT5otk2R1g

This was the gospel as I knew it in the sixth grade.  Thanks dad!!!

The Five Man Electrical Band

Prove It !!!

II Corinthians 12-Galatians 1

Paul continues to defend his authenticity and that of the gospel.  We also need to defend our faith and our Lord.

No one can prove the gospel but one thing we can defend, a changed life.

You see Paul didn’t change his life his life was changed.  That’s our defense; we are significantly and profoundly changed in a way that is unexplainable by human standards.

Adoration of the Trinity
by A Durer

Pucker Up

II Corinthians 8-11

“…for God loves a cheerful giver.” 9:7

God is the most cheerful giver.  I can imagine that when He invented lips He ignored all the mean things we might say with them and focused instead on our being able to use them to kiss.

I bet that made Him cheerful for a thousand years!!!  They sure have lived up to all His hype.

The Lovers
by Man Ray
also called The Lips and The Lips Over Hollywood

Try Describing “Besides Yourself”

II Corinthians 3-7

“For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are of sound mind, it is for you.”  5:13

Have you ever experienced life in a way that your body was an inadequate vehicle.  Your body seemed to limit your experience because it was bound to something your Spirit was freed from.

To quote an old movie, “Your soul was writing checks your body couldn’t cash.” 

Paul has this relationship with God that is so utterly profound that he, Paul the human, struggles, not only to live it but even to describe it.  He is living a life that is

besides himself.

The Creation of Adam
by Michelangelo
I often think of this when I  consider our daily walk with God through Christ.  The ecstasy of being made
alive by God, to be reborn through Christ is a daily gift that I am certian rivals that of Adam's first
conscious thought of "I have been made alive!"

Post Script:That is Eve under God's left arm.

The Scent Of A Wife

I Corinthians 16-II Corinthians 2

“But thanks be to God who…manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place.  For we are a fragrance of Christ…” 2:14-15a

Paul is so worried that he has offended the Corinthians.  We have all known the desperation that our love was misinterpreted.

It’s hard to misinterpret the smell of lilacs, the mountains at 10,000 feet or the scent of your wife at 3 a.m…

even harder the fragrance of the love of Christ in you.

"Can you smell that smell..."

God Can Only Love

Sunday School Lesson

“…and shall fear the Lord and His goodness…” Hosea 3:5b

Why would we fear the Lord’s goodness?  An evil Lord would demand our imitation by threat.  A loving Lord, loves us, not because we are lovable but because He Is Love.  This causes us to experience a deep sense of gratitude leading to imitation.  A good God is to be more feared than an evil one; we must love the unlovable!!!

Post Script:  Fear of God means reverential awe!!!

The Prodigal Son In Modern Times
by Joesph Tissot

How We Will Spend Our Time In Glory

I Corinthians 15

Ever read a verse in the Bible and wonder how you missed it?

“…for star differs from star in glory…” 15:41b

Humans have spent a fair amount of time gazing at stars.  It’s hard to imagine how God is going to make them better in glory.  I guess we’ll be gazing a lot more!!!

A lesser known starry night by Vincent vanGogh
Starry Night On The Rhone