The Great Abruption

I am in a hotel room far from Fair Haven but in old familiar haunts.  I am getting old, slept fitfully, am up way too early, an ice pack on my back, sitting drinking coffee and stumbling through The Word looking for feeling better.  My body getting old is sorrowful and aggravating, my mind aging is scary.  Your mind thinks about your body getting old and feels sorry for it and you.  Your mind getting old has nothing to think about its plight, it is it, it's thinking it’s old and it knows it.  Unsettling.  I am here for the funeral of a young man.  These two experiences seem to be similarly weighing on me, their death has unsettled me.

Death is an abruption, a sudden breaking away from the mass of us, the living.  There is no preparation for it even when we know it is coming.  It is the most difficult separation because it is so permanent.  But we do not lose hope.  It is only as permanent as the earth, the sky, mountains, and the stars, all of which hold for us a certain sense of the infinite.  But they, like everything on earth, are not permanent.  They too will abruptly end.  And then our hope happens, we, and the dead bodies left here, will be made new again, in bodies too glorious to imagine.  The abruption here will not really be a breaking away from a mass here but a rejoining a mass there, a permanent, infinite, heavenly glorious mass of joy and delight.  And we, being made new, will be joined once more, with You Three, forever and evermore, in completeness, a brand new, without blemish, wholeness…in a twinkling, the greatest abruption of all no time. 

I sit in a hotel room and write this to myself. 

Eight years ago our daughter came home from the 
the hospital still deeply involved in the 
the greatest struggle of our family's fight with the abruption.

 

Adoration Serenade

This is an image of a single cell.  The image is exquisite, an art beyond mortal wit.  I am listening to Penthouse Serenade by Nat King Cole…and wondering why all of humanity is not falling at Christ’s feet in Adoration Serenade.  Oh, the joy of knowing God and seeing and hearing His yearning call.  

Sitting in a hotel room far from Fair Haven.

 

Where Are We Going?

My lover and I rarely start to leave home that we don’t have to go back in the house at least once to get something we forgot.  After going back two times yesterday, I told her there would come a time when we would just keep going back and forth until we were sitting in our truck thinking we had just arrived home and go back in and stay.  I am glad Someone is keeping track of where we will eventually go.  

Years ago, biking in Aspen, when we at least
thought we knew where we were and where we 
were going.  

 

The Exuberant Silly Side of God*

You are so wonderful in how You ordain to come to us, in clouds, fire, a staff, golden boxes, and now a donkey.  It seems You have such a joy of being, an exuberance that bursts forth in power, glory, and sometimes, silliness.  This story reminds me of the coin in the fish’s mouth You had Peter catch to pay the temple tax (Matthew 17:24-27), or the mud You spread on the blind man's eyes to make him see (John 9:1-12) or the heads on fire of Pentecost.  Like Father, like Son!  There is a little bit of the theatrical in You Three, a touch of the comedian.  This adds to Your Glory and my admiration and enjoyment of our relationship.  There is nothing You can’t do.  I should remember this.  Your Word reminds me of it.  You control the wind, water, rocks, the future, sky, fire, fish, and donkeys. And You ask me to believe in You, and You will be this in my life.  This is all part of the deal of being Your child, I get to be a part of Your story, its holiness and glory, and its fun and silliness.  Exuberance is one of Your greatest characteristics, and because of this, it becomes a part of my praise and worship.   When I have a ringside seat to the greatest show on earth put on by the Three Greatest Gods on Earth, I should act, live, and have happy, joyful, joyous, delighted, gleeful, excited, exhilarated, animated, jubilant, exultant, ecstatic, blissful, enraptured, rapturous, rhapsodic, in rhapsodies, intoxicated, transported, on cloud nine, in heaven, in paradise, in seventh heaven; informal on top of the world, over the moon, on a high, buoyancy, cheerfulness, sunniness, breeziness, jauntiness, light-heartedness, high spirits, exhilaration, excitement, elation, exultation, euphoria, joy, joyfulness, cheeriness, gaiety, jubilation, sparkle, effervescence, vivacity, enthusiasm, irrepressibility, energy, animation, life, liveliness, vigor, zest, bubble, bounce, pep, zing, chirpiness, peartness, gladsomeness, blitheness, blithesomeness, good cheer**; responses toward You for allowing me to see them.  

* On reading Balaam's donkey story in Numbers  **All the substitute words for exuberance in the Thesaurus.    

Sissy's dog Odie at our home.  Oh if 
dogs could talk.  Well, they can if Someone wants 
them to.

                                                                                                                         

 

True Grit Truth*

Grit is what makes a male a man.  One doesn’t become a man, he chooses to be one, a constant choice of becoming.  I have known men who were 12 and boys who were 41.  The biggest obstacle to manhood is obedience.  Obedience is very difficult.  It takes real courage, strength, and a character willing to constantly deny himself and be different than his base instinct urges him to be.  All males continually plead with themselves to be lesser than they can be, that voice calling them to the path well trodden.  Men “enslave their bodies” to do what is right, just, and honorable in absolute obedience.  But obedience to Who.  To Him who Himself had to suffer under obedience even unto death.  The most worthy example for males seeking to be men.  He is the True Grit Truth.       

*Still reading the grumbling boys of Numbers.

This is not him.

   

The Ever After is the Point

*I am not what you would call a flag-waving patriot, “That ain’t me.”  But I will say this, I love America.  In its God-given state, I have been given the freedom to be what I desire.  The greatest freedom is the freedom to restrain my freedom by a set moral code that lies outside myself.  To demand of myself a moral living that takes into account God, and my fellow man.  America does not give me this freedom as my founding fathers knew, they are endowed by my Creator.  It is by accepting this, this Creator, that I must seek to not only know Him but to ensure I follow Him so that I am the man and American I must be.  This freedom leads to all other freedoms.  This is easily understood by driving on the interstate, all of us acting in the best interest of all the others and, in so doing, acting in my best interest, not to mention the lesser freedom of being able to drive anywhere I want to go.  In America, I am totally free, which must mean I restrain this freedom because of my Creator and for the benefit of all my fellow Americans.  Only in this can we all live happily ever after!  The ever after is the point.  It’s the Creator and me together at last. 

*On reading Number’s account of the children denying this most basic freedom.    

I glanced up and saw this golden line that is an image 
here but a great reality to me.

 

  

 

The Promised Land*

I live in a Magic Kingdom.  Love, gravity, sunlight, hearing, electricity, fixed stars, oxygen, plants, apple trees, cars, kissing, rain, seeing, lift, vibration, wind, yeast, watermelons, conception, roads, grain, touch, movies, Siri, water, fire, consciousness, sugar, life, satellites, dirt, and Krispy Kreme to name a fraction.  Who in all of history would not leap at the chance to live in my world?  I exist in a time and place where my safety, security, abundance, convenience, and access have never been greater.  

*On reading Numbers and the people's grumbling outside the Promised Land.