Meekness

August 31, 2018

Year 3, Day 243 | No Comments

Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

To be persons of understanding we need to have a fair and honest share of acceptance, patience and humility that point to openness strong enough to hold convictions and life directions while honestly offering goodwill to those in opposition to our beliefs and actions. This pattern is well illustrated in Moses, straightforward with Pharaoh, in a civil exchange, and waiting out the program of God that would free the people. Moses, brought up in a royal household, never lost the fact he was a son of Israel. At an appropriate time he wanted to address the matter of the slavery and suffering of his first people. He did what he set out to do gaining support even of lay Egyptians…. Read more

Wanting To Want To

August 30, 2018

Year 3, Day 242 | No Comments

Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

Human beings are often victims of their own contradictions and paradoxes. We want to believe in God, but we have our own reasons and/or feelings for not doing so. There are basketsful of reasons, perhaps excuses for doing or not doing just about anything. We call them by various terms, those that we see or feel, and we don’t give a much attention even to recognition of some matters that need early resolution if life is to give us what we desire of it. We miss proper motivations, opportunities, values, and the like because of our delays, uncertainties, laziness, ignorance, underdeveloped character, relationships, virtues, and that story too can be expanded in the story of human fault lines. Once we… Read more

Wisdom’s Window

August 29, 2018

Year 3, Day 241 | No Comments

Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

We rightly wonder what wisdom is, how to use it with skill, why it is so respected but made impotent in the face of human problem solving and conduct appropriate to its meaning. If informed about biblical story the reader can easily feel the impact of conversations between the father, David, and the son, Solomon, on the meaning and value of knowing the facts, understanding where they lead and having wisdom to interpret their meaning to the conduct of people. Solomon carried this writing of his father to his writings and actions in the reign he engaged after the death of David. The summary outline of the wisdom literature of Scripture is found in the seed of the 49th Psalm. … Read more

Encountering Worry

August 28, 2018

Year 3, Day 240 | No Comments

Perhaps all of us have heard someone say to us: Don’t worry. We may not be worrying, but the glib friend thinks we may be worrying, or will worry. It may be said in jest: Not to worry. The situation in such an instance is usually simple so may set up an entertaining exchange. It is said that Martin Luther was something of a worrier. He was confronted one morning with his wife dressed in mourning garb. He wanted to know who had died. His wife answered matter-of-factly: God! When he remonstrated with her about the joke, she replied: You have been going around with such a worried manner that I was sure that God had died. There are persons… Read more

Humanism

August 27, 2018

Year 3, Day 239 | No Comments

For the celebrity, John Kennedy, Jr., his wife, and her sister, the funeral ceremonies in several Catholic Churches were well attended and received world coverage. People lined the streets outside the Churches, and along the curb near the residence of the young Kennedys. Even some reporters (Dan Rather and Barbara Walters were the best known) permitted their own public tears and addressed the dead John Kennedy in heaven – united there with his mother especially). They seemed to believe he could hear what they had to say. Their words were gracious and assuring for the memory of young Kennedy, and for family members preceding him. Those persons were declared to be somewhere on the Elysian Fields. If we were to… Read more

Experiencing God

August 26, 2018

Year 3, Day 238 | No Comments

This Page will require more than usual concentration, consideration and response than most of the other Pages in this series. We are dealing with experience, and experience is sufficiently related to eternal perceptions more than we may have imagined. The main concept, for our purposes here, relates to the time factor that is so meaningful to the creation, and we relate it to earth experience. We relate it to our understanding of all things earthly. Einstein, as we have noted elsewhere, believed time had a beginning so time itself was as much a part of whatever started the natural context as was anything else in the human experience. For the Christian the Creator of time was God. For the humanist… Read more

Inclusive Education

August 25, 2018

Year 3, Day 237 | No Comments

Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

There needs to be some method found to educate the public in all nations that the way to social problem solving is found in a moral (value) pattern for personal and social conduct. Scripture makes clear that God has a general (universal) approach to the world that works even for those persons (individuals) and nations (social groups) who do not acknowledge God or any spiritual context to human life. Part of the context of the evolutionary theory presents a case for creation and humanity – that what we have has arrived to us through a flow of natural forces offering the present earth and cosmos that appear in our self-conscious experience. It is interesting that the general view of evolution… Read more

Experiencing God

August 24, 2018

Year 3, Day 236 | No Comments

Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

It seems to normal secular perceptions, even for many persons of faith, an odd claim that mankind can experience God in their personal lives. Many millions do claim such experience, and others believe that God may involve himself in some large social event like a flood in which there are no lives lost, or the recovery from a pandemic threat to health. Stories have been written about the unaccountable cause for ending circumstances related to the black death of centuries ago that may have taken a third of the European population, or the end of the flu epidemic following World War I that may have taken more American lives than the war. Doubters about God argue that if he existed… Read more

Perception

August 23, 2018

Year 3, Day 235 | No Comments

Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

It requires a divine inspiration of prophets to work through the movements, machinations, and matters of daily life in the disturbing flow of the history of mankind. Much of history is affected by prevailing carnality. During my lifetime eminent careers, both from those at home and abroad, have been ruined or sullied by the sin factor. It registers on social programs. This negative perception is widely held even by the masses of persons who do not include Deity in their lives. Even though that factor is not understood and/or played out effectively in recorded history, common citizenry is often guilty of negative contexts of thought and conduct. This sort of reckless life challenges values for history. Fault is destructive in… Read more

Affirmation

August 22, 2018

Year 3, Day 234 | No Comments

Both spiritually and physically the life-successful person lives by affirmation, not by negation. Scripture often includes in the discourses of Jesus the negatives of leading or authoritative persons and follows with the affirmations of Jesus. Often the negatives are shrouded in questions that imply the questioner already knows the answers he and his colleagues believe to be the acceptable ones – and is trying to trip-up the visiting peripatetic evangelist. Often Jesus poses a question, perhaps to keep the discussion on a high level. There is commonly a mixture of objectivity and closed mindedness among his listeners. On some occasions Jesus and the disciples move on to another venue and on others the questioners drop away – or act in… Read more

Monthly Archives: August 2018