Theory of the Universe or Kissing or Watermelons

Do you ever wonder why humans keep making truth claims about the universe, something we have basically explored only with our mind?  Thinking about something in no way leads us to know it.  The best way to understand this is to think about kissing.  If you have ever kissed a lover, you will understand.  For those of you who have unfortunately never kissed a lover a watermelon will do. 

Knowing, surely knowing, is about as reliable as watermelons.  I’ve picked out as many bad ones as good ones while always looking at the same evidence.

The Kiss by Rodin

Tweets and Peeps Psalm

The woods always teem with singing in the spring and every lowly life hums with joy.  The earth has once again turned nearer the sun and warmth is on its way to every nest and hole.  Something tells me that they have been commanded thus, “If the humans fail to sing praise for My gifts your melodious tweets and harmonious peeps will be My Psalm!”  Either way God is fulfilled this morning.

Peter Max, my favorite artist as a kid

Am I Alone? Ebony Blue Says No!

How desperate to know God, to know a new thing, a new revelation that is not of me.  God to know You, You must reveal Yourself to me.  I can no more conjure You up than the atheist can rationalize You away.   You have to be known by knowing You and You have to create and give the knowing to me.  When I most seek to know You I am most left to my own devises as if I were looking for light in the lint of my robe.  Your Word is forever and forever the first and most significant way by which You will reveal Yourself to me and by which I can come to know You.  But even Your Word sometimes leaves me dull and dim and meaning that would confirm You are as elusive as the night sounds.  This dark morning I am left with my coffee, my consciousness and the shallowness of my own thoughts.  I am left alone with my own faith! 

No… “faith comes from hearing and hearing from the word of God.”

Even in the aloneness of my faith I find faith because faith is not invented by my own consciousness or sub-consciousness but is a gift from You through the reading of Your Word.

I turned briefly away from my computer and was confronted with an ebony blue of early dawn.  The color was so profound at that moment that it confirmed all the above.  I was suddenly in the presence of God Almighty and was in great need of praising and thanking Him.  It is just like God to find me dim this morning and reveal Himself in such stark truth, as only an artist might understand.  I AM THEREFORE EBONY BLUE AM.

Something uncanny, the moment I acknowledged You were, regardless of all my current experiences to the contrary, You revealed Yourself to me anew.  

Thomas Cole's The Voyage of Life Manhood

 

The Rains Inauguration

I am deep in the forested mountains of east Tennessee.  It is raining.

If we lived on a dry earth, dirt and sand all about and a drop of rain fell from the sky what joy would fill the world.  We would take the drop of rain, clothe it in the finest robe, blow our finest horns, sit it upon a throne, place a golden chain around its neck, a scepter in its hand and declare it the new “King President” of all our earth.  None on earth would match its splendor.  “King Presidents” keep falling on my head.  Who is this that loves in such extravagance that He sends king presidents by the infinite trillions?

Bibbity Bobbity Boutique

There is a shop at Disney World named the Bibbity Bobbity Boutique where young girls can go and for $60 be transformed into their favorite Disney princess, Ariel, Moulin, and Snow White complete with gown, makeup and glitter in their new hair.  Our churches should be more like this, Christ will take us all, whores, addicts and high society and transform us into the finest princess in the land, the ultimate bride of the groom, the heir of God Almighty.  The only catch, He does it free of charge.  Why is church not more like this?  It is the exact story of the Bible.  It is the love that is extravagant, the forgiveness that is complete, the acceptance that is genuine, the sincerity that is honest, the fairy tale that comes true…it is my testimony!!!

A Sliver

A hotel room.  I sit in a sliver of sun, curtain cracked.  It is quiet, the hum of everything barely audible.  It is good that the sun was made; for even a sliver of it is enough to alight Your word and my world and You, as if by magic, awaken me to wonders untold.  My world, so dark moments ago, can by a sliver, be illumined to the whole cosmos. 

I spent yesterday at Daytona Beach walking the haunts of a misspent youth.  I have not been here since I came with Danny Taylor, 37 years ago.  I was so young and immortal, illegal and wasted.  Yesterday I hobbled alone down the beach thinking of how I use to run for display, agile and lithe, exhibited like the legend in my mind.  Today the legend has long been put to grave and replaced by goodly sons and daughters.  The trade, bittersweet, but the value is without price.

There is a depth to man that makes the cosmos seem like a shallow shadow.  This depth is explored only by holding the hand of God, a sliver though when juxtaposed against eternity.