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

Contextual Living

January 25, 2017
Year 2, Day 25 | No Comments

From a poll taken of lettered historians in 2010 it was a surprising discovery that the number one current interest for historians related to religion and history.  This was a significant shift from former priorities, and interests of first concern for cultural differences in world societies.  It also raised religion from low status in evidence of causes.  One historian cast it: The place of religion in history must not be left only to the devout.  Christian historians apparently agreed and welcomed engagement.  This new emphasis generated from the confrontation of Islamic forces with the west after the turn to the 21st Century.  Many Islamic believers tend to identify non-Islamic nations as either Christian to which many attach aggressive pagan reputation,… Read more

Death’s Reputation

January 24, 2017
Year 2, Day 24 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

Death does not have a respectable reputation.  Scripture declares it an enemy of mankind, and one of the two ultimate enemies to be destroyed – Satan and death.  Even without Scripture, death does not fare well in human opinion.  Life is the prize.  So mankind fights to live, commonly even when we are vegetating, unable to serve anything, even self.  Law sees the execution (death) of the criminal as being the ultimate in punishment – life taking.  An enormous fortune is devoted to medicinal science and hospital care to stave off death, even for a few weeks or months.  Even so, there is a growing sentiment for drug induced death.  It will grow as the society finds it difficult to… Read more

Mirrors from God

January 23, 2017
Year 2, Day 23 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

This was written on one of my birthdays, edited years later.  The first Page (Volume 1) for the date was written just after the death of my dear wife, on January 15, 2001.  Our children tried to cover my lament on that birthday after their mother had flown away.  They still do, more in silence than in words unless I broach the point – going on two decades of observances.  I am comforted.  With her, my life was happy.  I now report, on answering questions about my personal status, that I am content.  My joy is in the Lord, my family, and my dream is for some permitted reunion.  That reunion will not likely be anything like reunion we know… Read more

“Prayers” That Follow

January 22, 2017
Year 2, Day 22 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

Apparently, the passage in Second Samuel offers a vignette of how God functions relative to mankind in common grace.  There are secondary lessons in the passage about King David’s day-to-day relationship with God for the administration of Israel; the ugliness about warfare and revenge, especially in God’s eyes; and, the lesson about human dignity in the story of Rizpah, a woman who went well out of her way to protect the bodies of murdered men from vulture ravaging.  All factors had an influence on the restoration of prayer effectiveness, after three years of drought in Israel.  The story provides a prophet’s understanding and explanation of why mankind is visited with sorrows, and how we can emerge from them.  The sorrows… Read more

Rediscovering Renewal

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

Not enough is said about the need for renewal.  That factor is a requirement for just about everything that is found in nature.  The seasons renew the earth.  Even human beings renew themselves, or ought to, in their jobs, their marriages, their minds – in everything, even in the births of children.  We are aware of the end when renewal is no longer possible – life is over.  My car needs renewal, my house, my clothing, my marriage, my life.   The omission of renewal, or an effort of the wrong kind, will spell, at best, a kind of lateral experience which plugs along, and makes things do.  Nearly everything directs toward ending.  Even at best, the consequences are unacceptable, unless… Read more

Addiction

January 20, 2017
Year 2, Day 20 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

A free society finds it difficult to deal with addictions.  It becomes even more difficult when the society lightens its views: on values, on cultural and educational context, on family life and solidarity, and on the matter of self-discipline (self-control).  The idea of addiction implies there is a loss of self-control, and that the addiction has become so influential that self-control will be difficult to find (or rediscover) and install for the individual who is addicted.  Some areas of professional life seem more vulnerable to personal addictions, like drugs and alcohol, than others.  Entertainers, for example, seem to be caught more commonly in these than business persons.  Business persons may become addicted to money (greed).  Sexual addictions cross all contexts. … Read more

Mortality’s Limits

January 19, 2017
Year 2, Day 19 | No Comments
Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

We seek to extend nature’s life years.  This generates from affirmative and idealistic motivations, the highest of which, for us, is respect for the gift of life.  Life is a divine miracle.  We admire it no matter from whence it was formed or created.  If mankind truly perceived life, as God meant for it to be, we would not waste it, kill it, soil it.  We would nurture it better than we do, would maintain something of the wonder of it felt at the birth of a child, even the birth of an animal.  We would see in it meaning for God.  It is too complicated and ephemeral for lesser origin.  To physical life was added a soul of consciousness… Read more

Love Missed by The World

January 18, 2017
Year 2, Day 18 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

There is considerable overlap in many secular and spiritual values, even overlap in emphases.  The spiritual environment is not a secret, and it can be adapted by those who do not engage the author of it.  For the secularist, vital factors are left out from the spiritual context, but the humanistic model can include, and rather effectively employ, many of the values from the patterns of the Christian model. Much of history has been just that, and may have confused redemptive Christianity with attitudes and works.  I reviewed the story of an avowed atheist who raised his family in the Christian context, so to prove openly that unbelievers in God can, without faith, achieve lives of high value and concern… Read more

Mind Over Matters

January 17, 2017
Year 2, Day 17 | No Comments
Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

We return to the matter of context in our lives.  Context relates to the wholeness in one’s life, especially as it relates to the culture he or she lives in, and the special context for the individual in the choices the person makes in subtracting or adding this or that factor from general culture.  Context becomes a personal thing.  A person will not be well understood without some knowledge of the context, known to self and interested others.  Perhaps this may be illustrated in the experience of Eugene Nida, whose death was reported this morning (8/30/2011) in the news.  I became interested in Nida more than fifty years ago, as I became more and more knowledgeable of the increasing circulation… Read more

Evaluation

January 16, 2017
Year 2, Day 16 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

It is well that we understand judgment as the word ought to be used in interpreting Scripture, extended to our own experiences.  The primary meaning for this Page today relates to evaluation.  The point made by the Apostle Paul, in the passage above, is that if we are strict enough with ourselves, so to evaluate our lives and follow proper procedures for application of the faithful parts of those evaluations, we are freed, under God, from the judgment of others, and finally of negative evaluation from God.  We need to be reminded that for many the judgment of God will be: Well done thou good and faithful servant. (Matthew 25:21-23)  A statement of approval is a judgment just as a… Read more

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