How To Grow A Human Being

I finished reading the Bible through again this morning.  I have lost count how many times I have read it, something like 23 or 24 times.  No one could have convinced me of It’s meaning in my life, of the truth of the verse “It is living and active…”   I had to read it to find out the truths that It is living and life giving.  Just as no one could have convinced me I feel I write in vain because these words cannot convince you to read It.  Reading It is the only proof there is.  Am I somehow hinting toward a miraculous or transcendent reality?  No it is something far greater than that and in the realm of explaining Life.  This morning there is a soft gentle rain on.  As I sit here in the dark meditating upon the truth I cannot explain, the rain gives me an apt metaphor.  The Bible to a human is like good soil, cool rain and warm sun to a seed.  There is no way to be a true human being without continually reading the Bible.

Slow Down

“…to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery…which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

Colossians

One of the great mysteries of our life in Christ is that He dwells inside our physical bodies.  One of the facts of this mystery is that He comes slowly to every situation while our humanness rushes in.  We are first to look un-guarded, judge unsympathetically, participate without first counting the cost, respond in wrath, hold to a higher standard, give away emotion that belongs to another. 

The truth is that Christ comes in a whisper, in a gentle nudge in a soft reminder.  It always seems that to allow Him to fully live out His life inside our physical bodies that we must at all time enslave our physical responses thereby allowing time for Him to manifest Himself into our animations. 

You Won The Lottery

“…Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.” Philippians

The gift of our body is like winning the lottery.  Imagine the experiences that we live because we have this gift.  From love making to eating Krispy Kreme, from swimming to running, mountain climbing, art making, kissing, hugging grand children and generating warmth to a lover on a cold winters night.  But one day this glorious gift will be transformed into something Divinely glorious that if compared would make our current state akin to the poverty of wretchedness.  Who is this God that loves us so that allows “poverty of wretchedness” to be akin to winning the lottery!!! 

A healing Mind at its Center

“There is healing in this universe because there is a healing Mind at its center.”

Oscar Fisher Blackwelder

Night goes slowly and with each passing moment the ecstasy of anticipated dawn grows.  While reading scripture this natural miracle takes on an ever-increasing loveliness because in it is a simple picture of our life in Christ.  Birds begin to sing, colors begin to be, shapes and forms begin to emerge to hint of a coming reality that rivals Eden.  Yes this thinking up of morning and evening, night and day is much more devine than one might acknowledge.  To help us along why not try and delay dawn for a mere second.

It is ironic that we are born to move toward death because it contradicts our human instinct for survival and our God given faith of better days ahead.  The issue is remedied when we realize that physicality is but the dim of night and that eternity waits.  No one would suppose that the sun waiting over China would call into question that 12 hours later it will wait over us. 

Charisma

Our word charisma comes out of Greek antiquity and in 1 Corinthians Paul uses the word when explaining the gifts of the Spirit.

When using the word “gift” he uses the word charismata the plural of charisma, which is derived from the word charis, which means grace which means Devine gratuity or unmerited favor.  Ma means man so adding Ma to charis we get our word charisma.  This word in English can mean “a spiritual power or personal quality that gives an individual influence or authority over large numbers of people.”

Having explained this to the Corinthians Paul then immediately pens 1 Corinthians 13 or the love chapter. 

So it is easy to see the greatest “charisma” the Christian has to influence people is love and that love is a Devine gift of unmerited favor.  

The Fall Of Faith

There is a fall of faith.

A period when the summer of warm confidence

         fades.

The mountain peak of rebirth is a rumored

         memory.

And ones coffee now steams in the morning

And songbirds are drifting southerly one by one.

We sit in the rocker of the valley and gaze at

         the peaks of faith.

Did we actually move there beholding the Faces of God?

Fall has come upon us and somber bliss it is.

Because as sure as faith cools and winter winds gather

Spring is not a rumor or tale of wishful imaginations.

So rest in this fall from faith’s mountain

Because only in the fall are we assured there is a spring.

Pain

There are times when you feel as if every atom of your physical body is there only to inform you that it hurts.  It is a coma of pain that affords you no degree of separation from what is you and what hurts.  Pain can be life if it awakens you to the fact that every part of you exists, that you do have a lower back, legs and shoulders, fingers and a neck and each part is part of you.  However there is a point when pain ceases to provide you with the knowledge that you exists and begins to inform you that this is the process called dying, a process we are all in varying degrees of acknowledging.  This all may sound cynical or depressing but another way of understanding it is that of someone searching out all of his life and trying desperately to document that which he finds, a mere children’s story from a child of God.  “Where oh death is your victory, where oh death your sting?”