Daily pages of reflection...for knowledge, understanding, to wisdom
Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

Church

March 26, 2017
Year 2, Day 85 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

God has permitted me to be related both to the Church, and to Higher Education in general society for all of my professional life, and into semi-retirement at 65 years – to a variety of extended projects both religious and secular.  In semi-retirement, I was part of business with my sons, and also with a Christian friend.  Because my experience, even as a lad, has been closely related to ministry, education and business, I feel comfortable in speaking about professional life, its successes and failures, its foibles and follies, its mysteries and uses.  It seems to me, I could not have been better located to invest my life than experienced.  My observation of life in some other countries made me… Read more

Semantically Speaking

March 25, 2017
Year 2, Day 84 | No Comments

One is impressed at the style and form of Scripture.  There is considerable difference between the secular evaluation of the language, the style, the content presentation of the Bible, and the Christian evaluation.  For the Christian, Scripture belongs to the miracle class of things.  Miracle comes from some place outside nature’s realm, so is not fully subject to human evaluation, except for its effects.  Scripture comes from God, and that which comes from God relates to miracle, at least at its base, and may then be affected by natural course.  For example: translations come from mankind, so the translations may have to be treated with more concern than the original.  The miracle (revelation and related meaning) in a translation is… Read more

Tiny Miracles

March 24, 2017
Year 2, Day 83 | No Comments
Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

There is serious doubt that we understand miracles.  Remarkable human events are often termed miracles, when in fact they are natural, but appearing so few times in the context of mankind that they are labeled miracles.  So marvelous they seem like miracles.  No genuine miracle can be accounted for in human or natural (person or nature generated) terms – as noted in other Pages.  Those following these Pages on this theme know that my view is that nearly all matters in the experience of mankind may be accounted for in nature’s terms (man or nature ordered, usually explained in orderly or scientific evaluation); in providential terms (God directly influencing mankind’s conduct and nature’s forces in accomplishing purpose); and, miracle terms… Read more

Miracles and Nature

March 23, 2017
Year 2, Day 82 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

I was in Hawaii with my wife when one of the periodic vomiting of earth’s innards occurred there.  The earth erupted.  It was noted in the newspapers as a volcanic eruption and there was nothing that could keep me from seeing it.  I drove to the site, but was stopped two miles or so short of the rim where authorities, scientists, and tourists were permitted to observe and study the event.  My wife did not feel up to the hike to the site, but insisted that I go.  I did, and the experience was breathtaking.  The deep red lava spewed upward like a fountain, and flowed like a river toward the lower levels of the site.  There was some noise… Read more

Media and Words

March 22, 2017
Year 2, Day 81 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

We have always been somewhat mesmerized by media.  This grows out of our feeling of rapture about communication, something the archaeologists have found scrawled on the cave walls.  We are driven to communicate, which grows out of relationships with others.  The media may be simple conversation and touch, which was the major system for millennia.  We learned that we can leave messages on clay, or open cliffs.  When language developed we chiseled messages on wayside rocks or in clay.  We wrote on vellum (skins and leather); and later made papyrus as a cheaper more plentiful product.  Copyists multiplied writings in long laborious days of writing.  A few centuries ago the printing press was invented, and the story expanded exponentially.  Through… Read more

Success for Society

March 21, 2017
Year 2, Day 80 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

It is something of a given in the sports world that the winners in this decade will be replaced by the winners of the next decade, just as the winners in this one replaced the winners in the last one.  During one decade, when I lived in San Francisco, the 49ers football team under Bill Walsh was king of the hill.  The team floundered for some years after him, but is better at this writing – comforting.  The winners of the first two Super Bowls in football, the Green Bay Packers, were decades away from similar honors to follow.  They are currently doing very well.  They will be replaced.  There appears to be a flow here that wisdom might include… Read more

Lostness and Hell

March 20, 2017
Year 2, Day 79 | No Comments
Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

Of all the issues one might write about the least attractive relate to hell and human depravity.  In managing that burden the Christian is confronted with a series of problems relating to the matter.  Addressing an effective solution is difficult in: the horror, the ugliness, the challenge to human perception, the meaning of divine plan, and the context of skeptics in every generation.  A person may attend a church and never hear a word about hell, although Scripture provides extensive teaching about it.  Understandably the topic, if true, is so encompassing that it arises in serious contexts about human life and death.  Jesus spoke many words about the abhorred subject, so we must address the issues if we are contextual… Read more

Wholehearted

March 19, 2017
Year 2, Day 78 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

A word like wholehearted (2 Chronicles 25:2; Joshua 14:8 NIV) needs careful study and understanding.  One is rightfully arrested by it.  Scripture uses it in a context of righteousness.  The person is, by biblical standards, free of distractions from the important matters, of meaning leading to success – success as God counts life success.  General culture tends to broaden word meaning.  We could suggest many concepts of Scripture that require additional explanation because of common word dislocations related to all contexts in our lives.  Long ago, it was a surprise for me to discover how many contexts are used for the word church.  I see that the Muslims have their churches.  No, they have their mosques, and prefer that word. … Read more

Friendship

March 18, 2017
Year 2, Day 77 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

We return to the topic of friendship.  It is an important concept and relationship, and may not be fully understood in its meaning either spiritually or physically.  We are most interested in spiritual definition as initial meaning, for in that friendship all the good of mortal friendship is included.  Friendship is a problem solver from the experience of two friends to the relationships of nations.  A friendly country tends to solve problems with friendly countries.   Problems between non-friendly countries are made larger than they are, even escalating to the point of warfare.  More needs to be learned about personal and national contexts. When we discover the depth and beauty of friendship, as God would have it, we are surprised how… Read more

Guiding Light

March 17, 2017
Year 2, Day 76 | No Comments
Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

In polls of secular students it was discovered that they, without faith, differed widely on the right or wrong of various historical events, some of which included mass murder.  A large percentage found no difficulty with some culture forms like the human sacrifices of the Aztecs and others.  That was the culture and that was the way things were managed to fulfill the community sense of right and wrong, or of acceptance with their gods.  Human sacrifice was the highest thing they felt could be accomplished.  Since one human would not be sufficiently valuable, hundreds might be sacrificed on the same festival occasion.  One of the greatest curses we have commonly visited upon ourselves is the belief that values are… Read more

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