Longing

Tomorrow I will start the New Testament.  I love the Old Testament but year after year I have the same experience.  As the months drag on after Eden, after Noah, Ruth and the Psalms, Isaiah and Jonah I begin to long for Bethlehem, for the ancient story of The Star, of Mary on the long, lonely road to the town of her betrothed’s ancestors, for the water into wine, the restored harlot, the prodigal son.  I long for Jesus, for Him walking on the sea, multiplying the bread and fish, for His broken and willingly dead body.  For Mary Magdalene racing to the empty tomb, Peter diving fully clothed into Galilee and for Jesus floating away on the clouds. 

I will eat these words.  Feast!  And in a few months I will find myself once again longing for Eden.

Giotto, who is renown for advancing the skill of depicting real space, painting of
Christs Ascension

Do You Really Want To Live Under Constructed Reality?

Malachi 4

The end of the Old Testament, thousands of years, thousands of verses, thousands of words all proclaiming,

There is a God, He loves us, and He has made a plan for us to spend eternity with Him. 

The alternative.  You believe whatever.

Now comes 400 years of silence between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

Enough time for anyone to make a decision on what you’re gonna believe. 

Our brain is a marvelous organ able to construct reality out of anything.  That’s why God never calls us to a “knowing of Him.”  God is too unbelievable for our brains to construct a reality around Him.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God…” Ephesians 2:8

Salvador Dali's
The Persistence of Memory

For The Love Of God

Malachi 3

I am never as good as I need to be.  I am never as good as I want to be.  But why, in a purely evolutionary sense, am I even concerned with good much less being good.

Be imitators of God, in everything you do, because you are his dear children.  Ephesians 5:1

I can’t get past the example of God lived out by his Son, Jesus the Christ. 

God who will save me from me who always wants my way?

“And He (Jesus) will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi (remember we are Priests) and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the Lord offerings in righteousness.  Malachi 3:3

I sat a goal for myself to create a work with the theme of "For the Love of God" after Damien Hirst's diamond encrusted skull.  My work is 10,000 decigrams of sugar cubes overlaid with 24k gold.  The thought is how much pleasure God's invention of sugar brings humans and the value of the gratefullness for that gift of pleasure.

How’s Your Go-Between Working

Malachi 2, I Peter 1-2

“But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people.  You are royal priests…” 1 Peter 2:9a

Who is a priest?  Believers!!! They are intermediaries between humans and God, ministers of God to humans. 

‘And now, this commandment is for you, O priests.  “If you do not listen, and if you do not take it to heart to give honor to My name,” says the Lord of hosts, “then I will send the curse upon you, and I will curse your blessing…For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge, and men should seek instruction from his mouth; for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.”’  Malachi 2:2,7a

Priest, see how many people “seek instruction from your mouth” today.

Hannah Presenting Samuel to The Priest Levi
unknown

The “One Among”

Malachi 1

“Oh that there were one among you…” GOD, 1:10a

God, like the Marines, is always looking for one good human being.  Why?  One committed believer can change the world.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Katie Davis.

God looks out over every landscape, yours, mine and Malachi’s, to see if there is “one among” all the others who is completely committed to serving Him. 

Oh sweet God of Heaven, if only I could be the “one among!!!”

Caravaggio's The Calling of St. Matthew

0.0000000000000001% You

Zechariah 14, I Peter 2:18-25, Revelation 2:1-7

I am studying for teaching, preaching and myself

There are great mysteries in all of life. 

The atoms that make up your body are 99.9999999999999999% empty space and none of them are the ones you were born with.

Who and where are you? (thanks Jason)

“Then the Lord, my God, will come, and all the holy ones with Him! And it will come about in that day that there will be no light; the luminaries will dwindle…And the Lord will be king over all the earth; in that day the Lord will be the only one, and His name the only one.”   Zechariah 14:5a-6, 9

Mysteries can produce in us unbelievable gratefulness or cynical unbelief.  Either way there’s God and 0.00000000000000001 you.

Whistling Whistler

Zechariah 9-13

Have you ever been whistled at by a lover?  That melodious song of affection and beauty sounding like “sweeeet-sweeeeeeeeet!!!”

Makes your heart swim like butter in hot syrup.

“And they will drink, and be

         boisterous as with wine;

And they will be filled like a

         sacrificial basin… 9:15

Their heart will rejoice in the

         Lord.

I (God) will whistle for them to

         gather them together… 10:7-8

They will call on My name

And I will answer them;

I will say, ‘They are My

People

And they will say, ‘The Lord

Is my God.’”  12:9

Doesn’t God just love us!!!

James Abbott Whistler's Harmony in Pink and Grey