Hope

When asked to give a reason for the hope that you have one should remember the beginning and the end of that passage found in I Peter 3.  It begins by saying “But in your hearts revere God.”  No proper response can be given for hope if one does not hold the Author and Perfecter of that hope in reverence.  And the last part, “do it with gentleness and respect.”, also requires a love of our neighbors born out of our love for God that sees everyone as His child whom He wishes to save.  In these, both lie our own acknowledgment that we were once outside that hope and in fact had no hope inside of us.  That hope was authored and ordained by God and “that God demonstrated his love toward us in this, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” And them.  

Traveling With Fire

All is quiet, my lover and dog sleep as the Great Tennessee, hidden in darkness, rolls silently west, as will we today.   The last of our fire, started two days ago, is fading embers.  Humans use to travel with fire, a smoldering ember packed tightly in fiber to bring life to their new destination.  I keep a flame going in our home in the west, year around the flame burns.  I think it is the primal in me, that vestige against cold and dark that has so haunted humans and driven us to bank the essentials.  The Ancient Text lies beside me—banking the Most Essential.  The Fire is going. 

           

The Theology of a Red Apple

I joy in reading the Old Testament passages on Solomon’s building of the Temple, beauty, fine materials, composition and concept abound.  I consider deeply what that means juxtaposed against the New Testament’s passages declaring us the new temple of God (I Corinthians 3:16; 6:19).  We are compelled to look at these Old Testament passages to give us some knowledge as to what the newer passages mean to us and what bearing they should have on how we live Christianly.  A reflection of the beauty of the original Temple should be apparent in our own lives.  The beauty of love for God and for our fellow humans is our principal concern however it would behoove us to require a new or renewed sensitivity to beauty as seen in our physical world as well as that created by our human hands?  Awareness of beauty, be that art, a mountain peak or a beautifully formed red apple draws us toward God and how our own lives should be lived with sincerity.  This awareness has one other benefit, it creates in us an ongoing and prolonged sense of gratitude and gratitude cultivates love.  However, the crux of this is “awareness.”  Being aware is one of those human traits dulled and often lost by a culture more and more deadened by technological devices that keep us locked in a virtual world held in our hands.  A Googled apple can never approach the beauty of a real one nor draw us toward God in thankful gratitude.       

Being in time with The Being outside time

Oh how quickly the miraculous passes to the mundane, the healing to the hearing of the alarm clock.  Time moves on and we and our emotions in lock step to it.  It is disconcerting to once weep with healed loved ones and moments later satisfy hunger pains by eating an apple—absurd you think and oddly unrighteous you feel.  But time is itself a miracle, conceived and invented so that we might be, for without it there is nothing there for us to be—in.  And even as we tiredly reach to turn off the alarm we marvel at human’s ingenuity of creating devices to measure time and rudely awaken us to a new time; day; “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”  I told you time gave us a place to be “in it” but also a place to be with The Being to rejoice and be glad with.    

Last Sundays hike in time.

Tears: Salt Water Reliquaries

Tears.  No greater human physical mystery exists than that of tears.  Our greatest moments seem always to be baptized in them, we never run out and they often seem to be prompted by some power released in us approaching the divine.  Tears seem to be ripe with our human feelings as if the aching realness of our life’s meaning is contained in these salt-water reliquaries.  As a concept tears are a sincere manifestation of what is happening to us, as if they are capable, as material, of carrying the burden of the meaning of our feelings.  In the process of meditating on the glory that we cry one considers the theological enormity of the truth that tears are the only part of our physical humanity, as we exist currently, that will make it to heaven* which makes tears the greatest physical manifestation of our existence. 

* “You have collected all my tears in your bottle.  You have recorded each one in your book.”  Psalms 56:8.  Yesterday I made a significant deposit into His bottle of mine.  

T God IF Filled With 60 Minute Hours

It is Friday, the close of the workweek, the opening of the weekend.  Friday, Saturday and Sunday are warm beaches in winter, soft lovers in hard times.  They are for gathering winds that will fill your sail for next weeks work and quiet times given over to supplication and meditation.  They are peace for busy souls and minds, days without deadlines, and hours that bump into hours that actually seem to hold 60 minutes.