I needed to pull some steel staples from a corner post. The garden fence was coming down and was going to be ‘recycled’ as a fence for the upcoming chicken yard. A prison exercise yard with out weights and the tough guys with fur are usually on the other side of the fence.
The first time I had chickens a half century ago, I was pleased with the eggs and felt like a real small farm owner. One day I looked north from the kitchen window and saw a fox running next to the north fence line with a pillow in it’s mouth! Very new at agronomy I quickly realized the big white object was a chicken. Time for a chicken yard my neighbors informed me. Now, half a century later, a new chicken yard was being planned with the old inadequately high garden fence.
The deer ate our snap peas, beans, tops of the broccoli and brussels sprouts last season. Some of the flowers were nipped in the bud but the Kale was OK. Figures. Time to put in all wood posts and 7 ½ foot coated fencing. That fence would ‘discourage’ the deer and we would be able to eat fresh veggies this summer.
Thus the old perimeter fence was in process of removal and as it was bent around the corner posts, it was held on by those steel brads/ staples very firmly, top and bottom. It was my job to remove them and help roll up the old fencing. The damaged fencing had to be yanked out and flattened to take to the scrap yard along with the barbecue, T posts, truck rims. Those things had reached the end of their service life.
I had to lie down on the grass to pry out that spiked metal with a judiciously placed screw driver. A hammer assisted the placement and the prying went well. I was pausing after setting my ‘lever’ and looking at our home and being pleased and astonished..again..at what had been done in a half century at this homestead. White siding with sun ray blue half moon trim over the gable ends and upper windows.
I always said I wanted to go as Matthew did in Green Gables. Out by the fence just falling over I was in the perfect place with the perfect spirit to realize this was eminent. Bright sun and the spring weather was in the high sixties. I laid my head back, on my side I surrendered and reached out with my arms for Jesus and held tight. It was right, it was perfect and Julie and Soren would find me just as I had spoken to them about this scenario. I soon awoke to the son in my face and felt relieved and disappointed. Not now but the beauty will never leave me
The staple came out, the spikes came out and the post was free of it’s burden. Once again Jesus had touched me and told me how he loved my surrender and it was pretty good.
Everyone, I mean everyone had to learn the basics when we were children. It’s obvious even to an old man like me. Riding a bicycle for example. Did anyone climb on to a 10 speed racing bike and right away began strongly climbing hills with it? Of course not. So how did we get to that point of an understanding and skill to pull it off (starting with a smaller bike with training wheels of course) There had to be a teacher, an adult with knowledge and strength coaching, encouraging and helping us do so.
Another example: Writing and understanding language that is written. No one, not even Einstein, can do so right out of the gate of childhood. First huge flash cards, gentle words and skill as a teacher-parent to help us. The the writing part (my handwriting can use some improvement) but as sloppy and ill formed the letters are, imitating the adults writing words to teach us. Maybe even holding our child’s hand to help. It works, it’s the way things are done for every child ever born.
As adults, we still need this training. Some call it school or primary, secondary, college an upward learning which still needs an adult with knowledge and skill to ‘hold our hands’ to continue learning. As an example: I can now play stringed instruments, my son plays a full drum kit. He learned from movies and instruction from books and a few other drummers. Not me perse. A side note; the piano is considered a percussion instrument! How did I and they learn how to do this? Another Adult who knows these things. In my case, even bowing the violin while I attempted to finger the notes. Such off key and bumbled sounds caused my kind friend an excellent fiddle player, Bill Hinkley, to wince but so did my learning bicycle riding cause some laughter and kind advice. At least I did not fall off the violin.
‘So easy when you know how’, is said. These are simple thoughts that I am just reminding us of reality, so obvious, we do not even have it cross our minds. Even potty training. Teaching is a skill not all of us have but potty training is a skill that all parents realize they must do. It’s one of the first classes along with eating spinach.
When we are all grown up adults (except me who took longer to want to grow up), we seek a purpose and a reason we are alive. It’s the big question which opinions abound to answer. Often as we are getting older, we get serious.
Some of us do not want a complex answer. We look to an older adult that has some answers. Why are we here? How are we here? There even is a book which starts with those very words! Here is the the name of that book which many dismiss as ludicrous. The Bible.
As I have stated before: It is a book that is written by adults and if you don’t want to read it, please don’t dismiss or talk poorly about it. Wait until you become an adult and can think clearly. Read it, ask questions and understand what it says. It’s the only clear and rational explanation for why we are here.
There are also many other books which address the reason we are here and what to do about it and I have read a few of them. Many of them say we are here because of a random event that occurred long ago and we are also a result of randomness.
These too are books made by and for adults to read. Most of them are made up stories that are fun to read. Akin most really intriguing fiction that engages our imagination. All of those fiction books, tell us there is no purpose to life except to enjoy it and die. What’s the point of that? We hunger for meaning to our lives, not oblivion. I asked a friend that I swim with what he thought happens when he dies and he replied, “worm food” When he gets older, I can speak to him again about hope and faith. I pray this will occur. God knows these things.
The Bible tells us our God of all, created us just to give us the choice of loving Him or not. After all, Love can’t exist without a choice to love. Why do you think there is the Father and the Son? Both God and both in love. We question the Bible, some dismiss it, some read and understand it. It is a book that shows us why we are here, and how we got here.
At first reading it can be challenging. That’s the best part! You will be intrigued and read it over and over again. You can start anywhere in it. A good place to start is the book of John. It’s in the New Testament in the last half. This book tells us the real meaning of life and why we are living. It is an older book,written by many authors, and they all have the same subject, and the same Hero.
Darwin and Dawkins and other writers and philosophers, desperately write fiction to assuage their fear of there actually being a God that knows more and than they do. Most intelligent people do not believe a big firecracker from nowhere created us. None of them say where that fireworks came from. It’s God that created us to love Him and one another.
No one knows where God came from, ask Him when you see Him. It’s easy to say that, Its the hardest and most fascinating thing I have ever tried to understand, and realize what I am to do about it.
When that love overcomes us, It’s pretty good. Norman Peterson / Jack Gator
1. Thanks to Gregory Koukl for his writing to help me understand a few things.
There was a time when I felt my whole world was justified to be the sum of trauma and loss. The way I used that world was unknown, to me. I never wanted to be reminded of my failures with Julie or our kids for that matter. An adamant speech repeated over many times when I was in a conversation with family. “Don’t remind me of that!” would come from me and finally, after a particularly intense conversation with Julie and Soren, I said it again.
My denial of my failures to be a good man to Julie because of my past, were the driving force behind my dominating conversations. I did not want to be reminded of failures because I thought I was powerless to prevent them. It was someone else driving the boat. So I would blame Julie for reminding me of my failures, thus pushing against the only thing she could say. Things that hurt her inside. Things an insensitive man would blame on his old world. Not growing but living in limbo thinking nothing would change me. There was a way, a way to freedom from myself. It was desired and it was coming.
It, perhaps is well described in Latin: “Incurvatus et se.” A fancy way of saying a way of living that always curves in on itself. Seeing everything in life as affirming ourselves or not. Usually affirming our poor behavior as a product of our reacting to past ‘unpleasantness” and powerlessness to prevent the unpleasant things. Using that memory behavior to tell someone who cares about us to stop telling us about our behaviors. A convenient scapegoat, really not upfront on the memory radar. Just on top of the charts and navigation aids within.
A weak child making a decision for the rest of his life to not show compassion or weakness to anyone. Alone inside the orphanage of my own making and in charge of it. “If you tell me that my room needs painting in the orphanage, you are wrong!” “Don’t remind me of those times there, you were not there and never will be!”
As though I always have the last word and have an excuse for controlling conversations. Tromping on the feelings of my wife, because I, once again, do not want to be reminded of that long ago decision to be unable to help anyone. Let alone, myself.
Now, the reality of my young son’s courage and truth speaking in that moment, it stunned me. Change was afoot, change as obvious as change rattling around and around in the clothes dryer. Revealed truth, painful truth beyond this writing. Trying to remember every precious, angry word from a son. Desperate to heal his father from yet another curving around to short circuit tenderness and understanding. Anger at me as my fear and anger from so many years ago watching my father beat my mother. She was having an affair with one of dad’s coworker in the local department fire station. Powerless then and now… truth dawning finally within. Not powerless, not leaning on my own limited understanding. I knew out of this confrontation things would never be the same again. The fear, the blaming of others, the violent emotion of facing failure and using it to disconnect from my loved ones.
That wound was leaving, leaving footprints behind, oh yes. The footprints of disguise and confusion were leaving their lives and soon, the thing would be out of sight. Only memory and yet another hidden path to a new bond and yet another strength that we all desperately needed to be cleansed. Wanting that white robe, washed in the blood of the lamb. It’s pretty good.. Norm Peterson / Jack Gator
We have heard the command many times in ‘Star Trek’ for the Enterprise space craft to go as fast as it can to watch where no man has gone before, or to catch somebody that can almost go that velocity in outer space. The speed of light is a measurement as is a cut of precision in a 2 x 4. Measurements great and small are the concept of our minds. We measure everything we live with: “what time will you be here?” “How many of those do you need?” “How long will this trip take? (one minute driving, an hour walking as does my phone map app says) Incidentally, electricity and radio waves travel at the same velocity, speed of light. Why?
Why do we then measure, or try to measure the distance of stars? Because we want to put them all in our concept of time. Absurd lengths as the speed of light and the star group of Alpha Proxima is only four light years away! It’s the closest one to us, let’s get going and see what is around it, at 36 thousand miles per hour it will only take 78 thousand years! That’s where Voyageur is headed after leaving our solar system some time ago. It has a record of Chuck Berry’s ‘Johnny Be Good’ aboard. No record player though. If they get it it will only take four years for them to call us back via radio and ask us how to use it! Light and electrical waves travel at the same velocity. Who do you think set that up? Again, 186 thousand miles per second. Six times around earth in one second. Close to 2 seconds to the moon and back. Eight minutes for sun light to reach us. So when you see the sun it is actually 8 minutes past what you are seeing. It’s quite a distance when I think of those things. And that’s just our neighborhood.
There is research on a warp drive which is much akin to surfing (I surfed for the better part of a year at Hermosa Beach in California) You just ride the wave in an Alcuberre space craft which would only take 20 years! Of course, the space craft is a gram sized wafer. Theoretically of course. Smallish. Coach class only.
We do not understand infinity because we live and think in time. As Novatian stated in the third century (200 to 263 A.D.), “All our thoughts, will be less than He, all our loftiest utterances will be trivialities in comparison to Him”
Of course, being locked into time ourselves, we can’t really understand eternity (unless you are Stephen Hawking who is now dead, eternally) He tried to. We try when it is a convenient time in our comfy chairs or even listening to a sermon about the infinite God. We misuse that word infinite as it is convenient to bring eternity into our reasoning. “It took him infinite pains to paint that!” or “She had unlimited patience with her class” Really? Or as A.W. Tozer puts it, “ We say unlimited wealth or boundless energy” which for us is absurd and only applies to an infinite being.
I asked a question as I was flying over the East Coast, close to D.C. It was a clear night and I figured each street light represented two people. I saw lights all up and down the eastern seaboard. I asked our Lord. ‘How can you count every hair on our heads?’ “Easy He said, it’s a finitenumber”. Oh of course silly me. Enlightening and a very quick response to a fairly decent question.
Why do we do this with our words and thoughts? It’s a toss out in speech or writing to trivialize something we can’t understand. Whether we admit or not, everyone contemplates eternity and even the atheist states that they will be eternally dead as though eternity was a really long period of time.
One of my favorite songs is “Strong Love” and it has the lyrics to describe God as Neither height, nor depth nor length or width can separate us from His strong love” Rightly said. Closely sung and experienced, we are singing about four dimensions which, of course, include eternity. It’s fun to think about our eternal God while eating breakfast and reading one of my favorite books of Dr. Tozer. At some point (another measurement) I reach for my coffee and take a sip and contemplate the day’s schedule.
Much akin to a 20 amp circuit breaker in the gray box, my mind goes to a familiar place and things inside that box. A safer place. A place that has measurement in hours and days and even split seconds as hearing the micro-wave beep finish the now warmed fore mentioned cup of coffee. A place that the circuit breaker is allowed to safely trip and allow some ‘time’ to redirect concentration.
How about this riddle: ” What is always coming but never arrives?” Tomorrow.
So have fun with the Eternal Revenue Service that only asks for everything you are, everything you have and everything you think and believe. In turn, if you are truthful on your return form and are genuine in your giving everything, then our Lord will give you love and joy and eternal life. It’s pretty good.
A sunny and cold February morning while the temps are single digits and the parlor stove at my back is going well. I am up early and typing to share these things with the world.
The stats in my dashboard tell me there are 12 countries or so that have read these short missives. I am satisfied. My coffee cup by my left hand and the keyboard in front of me.
It’s early and still dark and I have my headphones on and I am listening to singers from Kansas City praising the Lord . A Live broadcast.
“From the garden, to the desert, to the mountain, to the Heavens. It’s The story, the story of the Glory of God.” It brings me back to singing those spontaneous chorus’ as we worshiped at church’s all through the state. The Wellspring team.
There are times now when I can capture those precious moments that occur spontaneously where I now work in video production. Just a week ago I got a shot of a singer on stage right
“Ready 3, take 3” Simple com instruction and that shot, taken briefly makes it out to the broadcast that goes to the side screens, the lobby and perhaps the Web-stream to many around the world. It’s the best I can envision coupled with my tears at it’s beauty and perfection of worship at it’s best.
All of you have experienced these stunning events. Your eyes filled with sudden tears and briefly overcome with unexpected glimpses of beauty and eternity. Just for you, right then and right now.
I try to share them as best I can. A butterfly’s close kiss, the sunset or sunrise that takes your breath away. Too quickly to grab a camera and share it with loved ones.
Treasure that lingers, forever yours. A gift from our Lord. It’s pretty good. Norm Peterson / Jack Gator.
There is a value that was known to be true on an old guitar that I own. I figured it was worth at least what I paid for it, perhaps even more due to inflation. I bought it fresh out of the Navy after another one, just like it, was lost in shipping. It was being shipped to my duty station overseas, not too complicated. Most likely very tempting to someone in the Mediterranean post office I thought. As far as anyone knows, it was never found. Well, it was found by someone. Finders keepers.
After discharge, I went to Schmidt music in downtown Minneapolis where I had it shipped from and they offered a replacement! “I’ll take that one there on display” I have had it since 1967 and recently wondered what it was worth. I paid four hundred dollars for it. Now it is worth twenty thousand or more. Not for sale. It sounds quite nice and powerful. It’s a big Martin D-28, made of Brazilian Rosewood which wood is illegal to possess if you come back into customs. Playing it overseas might be a bit dicey.
So, a pleasant surprise for my insurance agent. I do not wish to sell it as it sounds perfect and it has a lot of history for me. Even down to the small ash burn on the face from decades ago. It needed now needed a little work, but the Martin company warranties it for life to the original owner. Nice feature. The bridge was warped and coming up and the pick guard was warping as well. Free fix. Labor and parts. New strings were needed after the repairs. Total bill was little over ten bucks.
Not long ago, another thing was always seen by me as almost worthless and recently I found it was worth more than I could even imagine. I then sold it to my new best friend and incredibly, He told me I may use it as long as I wished! Not only that, but He paid a price to me that was more than I can even bear to think about or understand fully.
My friend had been killed a while back and left this purchase as a memento to me to remind me of it’s worth. It is in writing and clear as the night sky on a moonlit and cloudless evening. Oh yes, my friend is still around. He was dead for three days and came back to life! Amazing, impossible, but true! A miracle. you may know whom I am writing about if you have had the guarantee offered to you. Take Him up on it, it’s never too late.
The ‘object’ discovered by me that suddenly was revealed to me as precious and warrantied forever. It’ s myself. The only stipulation to the warranty is that I am required to give myself to my friend, all of me even my thoughts and actions. All of them. Past and present. A lot of bad ones. Debts to my friends Father. My friend’s Dad has seen all of those things and His son Jesus, offers to pay if I ask Him to.
All of me given freely, and in a similar way my wonderful friend did the same thing before I met him. Impossible, and yet true. Hundreds of people saw that happen. He gave it all away. Just for me and you. My soul is a bit warped too and can be repaired as my builder gives a lifetime warranty It is written in a book that I read over and over to learn more about Jesus that did not have anything to be forgiven of by His Father. A perfect Son that offers His life for ours. Sort of a ransom type of thing.
In that book, the contract, the blood covenant to me is clearly revealed. What a warranty and testament! So I will see My friend again when I die and He brings me to live with Him, forever. It’s an incredible warranty! Perhaps you don’t know who He is. I will introduce you to Him if you wish. If you already know Him, I would really like to chat with you. If you don’t know Him, same offer. Always a choice of ours to make friends and love Him and his perfect ‘repairs’ . Most likely I will get to play and sing with a ‘big band’ of other musicians on a dance floor made of flaming glass! It’s pretty good.
I think good preachers should be like bad kids. They ought to be naughty enough to tiptoe up on dozing congregations, steal their bottles of religion pills, and morality pills, and flush them all down the drain. The church, by and large, has drugged itself into thinking that proper human behavior is the key to its relationship to God. What preachers need to do is force it to go cold turkey with nothing but the word of the cross—and then be brave enough to stick around while it goes through the inevitable withdrawal symptoms. … Robert Farrar Capon (1925-2013),
Genuine controversy, fair cut and thrust before a common audience, has become in our special epoch very rare. For the sincere conversationalist is above all things a good listener. The really burning enthusiast never interrupts; he listens to the enemy’s arguments as eagerly as a spy would listen to the enemy’s arrangements. If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will find that no medium is admitted between violence and evasion. You will have no answer except slandering or silence. …G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936),
Was there a moment known only to God, when all the stars held their breath, when the galaxies paused in their dance for a fraction of a second, and the Word, who had called it all into being, went with all his love into the womb of a young girl, and the universe started to breathe again, and the ancient harmonies resumed their song, and the angels clapped for joy?
…Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007)
O be calm and quiet all by yourself is hardly the same as sleeping. In fact, it means being fully awake and following with close attention every move going on inside you. It involves a self-discipline where the urge to get up and go is recognized as a temptation to look elsewhere for what is really close at hand. It is the freedom to stroll in your own yard, to rake up the leaves and clear the paths so you can easily find your way.
…Henri J. M. Nouwen (1932-1996)
Here is my examination at the beginning of Advent, at the beginning of a new year. Lack of charity, criticism of superiors, of neighbors, of friends and enemies. Idle talk, impatience, lack of self-control and mortification towards self, and of love towards others. Pride and presumption. (It is good to have visitors – one’s faults stand out in the company of others.) Self-will, desire not to be corrected, to have one’s own way. The desire in turn to correct others, impatience in thought and speech. The remedy is recollection and silence
Dorothy Day (1897-1980),
Everything is made to center upon the initial act of “accepting” Christ (a term, incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him we need no more seek Him. This is set before us as the last word in orthodoxy, and it is taken for granted that no Bible-taught Christian ever believed otherwise
A. W. Tozer (1879-1963)
It must be admitted that a few clergymen glory in the contrast between their status and that of ordinary Christians. They accept obeisance as a natural right; they monopolize public praying; they learn how to keep themselves in the limelight. There is something about the pastoral office which makes the temptation to egocentricity especially powerful. This is partly because the successful preacher is regularly praised to his face. His mood seems a far cry from that of Christ when He girded Himself with a towel and washed the feet of His followers. Elton Trueblood (1900-1994)
I am tempted briefly to capture and quote this collection of wisdom from my heroes of the world of words. The unsung often, and the missing books of education in truth. I can tell they have read others I do not even know enough about, yet I seek them on the shelves of the local libraries. Order those books from other libraries that cater to education in nearby colleges and bastions of wisdom.
If the change jar has enough weight, it is tempting to purchase them used from the jungle named retailer that ships them right to my mailbox. At the end of our driveway sits the simple metal half domed box. A clever ramped mount keeps it intact when the snowplow comes by and only throws the mail on the road without doing in the box itself.
Books, the bastions of wisdom, way beyond the courage of Tindale and smugglers to bring the Word itself, printed illegally in hidden shops and stowed in ships dunnage to the people eager to read truth.
Now I badger the local librarians for the aforementioned authors to be loaned to me. A few of them are pleasantly surprised that a patron would request them. They help search for these treasures. I do too when they are busy. Remember the card catalogs?
Breeze past the books of fiction thrills and romance novels and films. I do enjoy “As you wish” as a guide for the treasures among the drivel however.
Read the local paper with mug shots of apprehended near-do-wells for real self back patting as I do. The news is interesting but not knowledge. Gossip in nice clear ink and I do like the full sized papers that snap open. I pretend I am on an old trolley in England, getting conversation starters for the morning club with my friends.
Books, hard bound and weary found at second hand stores. Treasure hunting at it’s best.
I was reading an introduction to a nice book that was a gift and came across that word, Lectio Devina. [to practice what you read and understand]. Wisdom and truth given by Christ not just for realizing truth, given as life paths to be more like Him.
Just the other day, I was working on putting new handles on a wheel barrow. Quite a few carriage bolts and nuts involved in the process. It was going pretty well, I managed to put them all in order and even get some new ones to replace the rusted ones. I put the handles on after a lengthily process of removing the old ones. Putting needle nose vice grips on the old rusty bolts and keeping them from spinning the rusty carriage bolt tops. The barrow itself is rather rusty and the holes weak. It went pretty good nonetheless.
Finally, putting the new wooden handles in place, I found the holes drilled in them did not correspond with the old handles! The hardware person assured me that all those handles were the same for every application. They weren’t. I had to drill out two of them that were off by 20mm. . Finding the drill bit in my somewhat disorganized tool drawer by size and then carefully marking the place to drill with a center punch, I managed to make the correct holes.
The process started over again the this time, it worked until it became time to mount the wheel. Those holes did not work and the mounting is tricky to start with. The mounts have to swivel a little to accommodate the angles and those holes were off as well. I started to loose patience and pulled up the wheel, dropping the shims and the sliding mounts all at once onto the floor and preceded to start throwing things around. Tools and parts. Julie was there by then and was ‘disappointed’ in my behavior. I Felt justified in my frustration and she observed, I was not acting as I have written about, talked about, even advised on this behavior problem.
We were both upset, to put it mildly, and after lying on the grass outside the shop, I began the process of first beating myself up about my behavior and then had enough sense to go out to my spot in the middle of our garden and speak to our Lord about this pattern of frustration. Gently He reminded me to put into my life the things that I quote from Scripture to others. It was humbling and began a healing in me. The next morning I began reading a recent book that was a gift and found the perfect instructions to follow. Lectio Devina. [Practice what you read and preach].
Old words from Latin that are relevant right here, right now. There are many of us that believe wisdom is for us to speak and write about and be hot shot scholars that know many things about scripture.
Behaviors, attitudes and good things our Lord tells us about every day. Love your neighbors, be generous, be kind and always listen to that still, small voice in our spirit. I have to die to my own excuses, perceived righteous behaviors and judgment of others. The hardest one for me seems to be my judgment of myself that is the wrong way to go about changing my behavior.
Sound familiar? Take this to heart as I have revealed a weakness of my own. Let this truth go deep and stir up our minds and all our behavior. Understanding that all of us need to realize that faith means more than belief. I can understand how to use tools, but the one tool I am still learning to use better is the spirit of our Lord.
There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus. He is the judge of all things, but he does not condemn. After all, the thief on the cross simply said, “remember me when you come into your Kingdom” Jesus knew what the man said. I look ahead to meeting that man as well. He was at his last breath but knew the Lord and forgiveness for his life and sins.
How it applies to me? I have more time before my last breath. Norm Peterson / Jack Gator
With thanks to Matt Meher composer, for his singing truth and beauty recordings while I write
We are made in his image. We breath in every breath Twenty five Sextillion molecules which get fed into sixty thousand miles of veins, arteries and capillaries. And the 1+1+1 = 1 made it all within us. As far as we can see into the universe. It is now seen as at least 93 billion light Years long or wide, whatever you want to try and imagine as impossible to comprehend.
God spoke it to existence by the way. How big or small is the Lord of creation?
I read a lot and some things stick a bit longer in me such as I have mentioned, meditating on simple things such as “who are you Lord and who am I praying to?” 1. I have also read about a church that Frederic Buechner searched for. He visited them all nearby. Lutheran, Methodist, Catholic, Presbyterian, New age, Old age and all the rest. He finally settled on one called Smokey Mary’s.
It was a large cathedral type with constant incense burning and smelled like Christmas. At the stage or platform as it is called, were the leaders and priests/clergy dressed in elaborate ways that seemed as the Micado was in production. There was chanting in Latin or perhaps Russian. It seems to me Frederic was seeking Holiness, mystery and something incomprehensible to him. It worked and the mystery was there. I would like to visit there too. “Never loose a Holy curiosity” 2.
No flannel graph Bibles to be seen. Otherworldly approaches to everything of religion and faith in an incomprehensible worship of the God of creation. A good start. There was no preaching with words that we have grown used to and even doze a bit thinking about Sunday dinner. Sin, Transfiguration, repentance and such. We just breeze by listening sometimes and once again, try to imagine what God meant when he stated we were made in their image.
I wear flannel shirts sometimes. I could be stuck to a graph in two dimensional purgatory for all I know. I heard His voice once, saved my life but I did not see Him or a burning bush either. I know I have been blessed beyond my comprehension many times and the only answer to that is my purpose is to tell everyone I can about the love of God.
What does He look like we all wonder. I stood and stared at the ceiling of the Sistine chapel and the finger of God reaching towards Adam. It worked as an image for a while. The best that Michelangelo could come up with. Anthropomorphic, to keep us all a little calmer when thinking of a million galaxies and it’s creation. By one word. A planet in the unfashionable spiral arm of the Milky Way. Orbiting a yellow dwarf star at 161,000 miles per hour. Every second our star burns 4 million tons of matter into fusion energy (E=MC2) Oh yes, we spin at 1,000 mph. What a creation. Just for us, perfect except for the north and south poles. Hard to live there.
1. Frederic Beuchner Also with many thanks to Henri Nouwen, Mark Batterson, and Tycho Brahe
Two men we have heard of, and perhaps even read their writing. Secular and worldly writers both of them. Superman religion is an opiate of the people and illusion, no future. Also evolution that man has worked himself up from the brutes against terrific odds. You can justify your voracious ways. It’s easy to understand these viewpoints which totally ignore the necessity of us to answer the questions which we all have within. Why am I here? What or who made the universe? How can something come from nothing? What is the meaning of life?
Everyone has these questions, everyone. It is easy to deny them though because spiritual things are not seen in this world unless we look for them. We are blind and deaf to the truth. What is Christmas all about anyway and what is black Friday?
I remember Christmas in downtown Minneapolis from my early days while I walked around the biggest department store in the Twin Cities. Daytons. Every large window from the sidewalk had everything anyone desired, Model trains and such for myself and my youthful friends. Beautiful stuff. Exotic clothes, hats and shoes. Appliances unknown along with the latest TV sets and phonographs. Dazzling. We would walk around the store which is a city block square.
The best food. There it was, on the top floor, a restaurant serving food that was totally unadvertised and you had to know it was there to go. Exquisite, tasty and classy linen and crystal water glass’
In a very stretchy analogy, I liken this dichotomy to the secular vs spiritual in our society. After all, like the windows in this story, the world is always right before our eyes. Everything you think you would want is on show. Even other people we lust for because of their shape or the clothing they wear. Wallets full of other peoples money, car lots filled with shiny new vehicles. The latest models that are styled right from Holly wood movies to you. A car that appears to be a knockoff of a Formula 1 racer.
Fast food shouted from the freeways on huge, tall billboards. Exit now! get twenty Grey Bastille French burgers! They’re neatly sliced, and the pastry on the buns is exquisite. Everywhere the world beckons us to experience fulfillment and joy from horse racing to the Indianapolis 500. Advertising has reached another new level. not only at Christmas.
It doesn’t work. There is always someone richer or seemingly famous and beautiful that has a much nicer spouse and life than us. Look at the National Perspire at the grocery check out. Envy on our face as we gaze at the latest scandal with the beautiful wife of the revealed grassy knoll shooter. That doesn’t work either. Pick up a “My home and garden are better than yours” magazine or Readers Disgust and laugh at yourself and your pitiful life. There is hope though! Akin to the hidden treasure atop the department store, there is treasure in our world. Affordable treasure for your life. It seems like a steep price tag but the warranty goes forever. And it can be given away and still held!
The real world is indeed filled with fulfillment, joy and adoration. Our King and possessor of all things seen, felt and seen will give us this treasure and it is yours to experience and hold, forever. It is the treasure we all yearn for and once we have it, we can’t wait to give it to others.
Christmas is rightly focused on giving. The celebrations with bells and choirs and candles light the way to the best gift given. Wrapped in cloth and as delicate and astonishing as the perfect gift.
Sign up with an oath to share and enjoy with others that deserve this treasure as much as you do. You will hear our Creator tell you things and again and again; tell you that you are His treasure and gift from Him and His Son. We must give up on the old, lustful world inside of us and open our hearts to truth and reality, forever. This gift never goes out of stock, it becomes more beautiful the more you give it to others. It cannot be ordered from Amazon or found on eBay. There is a catalogue that has all the details and is available in stores throughout the land. It is also found in bedside drawers in hotels!
It is handed to you as your heart beats strongly and joy and tears overflows. It is truly the gift that keeps on giving. It’s pretty good. Norman Peterson /JackGator
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