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

Asked and Unasked

July 14, 2019
Year 4, Day 195 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

In the process of continuing education, the serious citizen should perceive something future.  It is large because more is included than it is for the person looking downward (daily survival), rather than to the horizon (future life).  Humanly speaking the horizon ends at death, but extends in generations.  Even in this there is mystery.  One may perceive solutions for the future but fumble them.  We believe education pushes back the veils, but attitudes fight/support the goals.  Every individual needs to include future life context.  Presuppositions are atmospheres, which is to say water – in which the solids float in life.  There is an aroma that comes from the gas – when it leads us to truth and a stink when… Read more

Backsliding/Recidivism

July 13, 2019
Year 4, Day 194 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

We may not sense how largely our early years take hold of us, and drive us in the directions and approaches we find forming our lives.  Numerous times we hear persons say: I determined not to grow up being like my mother (or father) and now, when I think about it, I do think and act like she did – and I still don’t like it.  Most persons communicating about their parents are more positive, and those disappointed in some way prefer not to muddy the memory of their parents by communicating perceived omissions, or their own conduct related to family, conduct that followed separation from their parental homes.  My four children have followed the intense Christian faith of their… Read more

Orientation

July 12, 2019
Year 4, Day 193 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

Virtually every person finds an orientation in currency for functioning in the world.  It begins with preoccupation of self which we interpret as innocent in a baby/child.  The baby is oriented to heat and cold, to hunger and food, to cuddling and cooing/crying, and sleeping.  For the child, life emerges and registers in the family context.  Wise parenting accents life affirmatives and gently works on managing negatives – a vital factor in forming life.  As the child forms self-consciousness the person becomes responsible for self.  A bit soon in time he or she begins to think less as a child, especially in puberty years, and more as grown up, sensing that maturity is important, but not yet wise enough to… Read more

End Time

July 11, 2019
Year 4, Day 192 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

We return to the confusing prognostications about future events and the consequences for mankind and creation.  By its nature already difficult, the problem of projecting and interpreting future events and their management is exacerbated by many changing factors impacting any projections.  Even God is a changing factor in the patterns of his applications.  If we knew enough we would likely discover that a major reason for Israel’s forty years delay in getting into the Promised Land was caused by his grace to the Canaanites whose cup of evil was not yet full.  God doesn’t change his mind, but he adapts to our alternatives.  Eternal context has a nodding interest in time dimensions.  We are often helped or stalled in nature… Read more

Suffering

July 10, 2019
Year 4, Day 191 | No Comments
Section of Adoration of the Magi, artist unknown

It is important for human beings to understand that they will not, in their mortal context, understand fully either the thoughts or actions of mankind or God.  No matter how extensive and well-ordered we may be in managing the circumstances of our lives, we are without complete answers in our thoughts about some major life factors.  They are so incomplete in the light of complexity and evidence that it becomes easy to doubt any proposals or answers suggested.  We have words like paradox, contradiction, conflict, mystery, even atheism to cover our ignorance or inability to explain some of the largest factors of nature, conscious life, and God.  God, if God exists, is the most difficult theme for us to manage. … Read more

Little Things

July 9, 2019
Year 4, Day 190 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

Generated by a man of God, rationalization became a serious matter in Abimelech’s kingdom.  Abraham presumed it a little thing.  The human mind muddles lives when it casts belief and conduct beyond basic truth in linear contexts of thought. The Zeigarnik effect is an illustration of the way the mind works in variegated ways.  That effect, named after a Russian psychiatrist who ferreted it out, shows that a waiter can remember orders he has not served more readily than those already served.  Elaborated studies show that as many as ninety percent of the persons studied could remember tasks that are not done better than those they had completed, and to which they had given closure.  That which is undone offers… Read more

Know Thyself

July 8, 2019
Year 4, Day 189 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

We commonly hold skewed understandings about life meaning and geography.  Some of us ought to leave the community of our birth as soon as parentally prepared and convinced that our visions demand removal from our communities of birth.  The lead editorial in Books and Culture for September/October, 2014, entitled Stranger in a Strange Land by Collin Hansen, accents the benefits of settling in one’s home community for life – to benefit for giving and receiving to and from family and neighbors.  Hansen rightly points out that there must be those who move from place to place if the world is to be evangelized as the Scripture insists it must be.  The Apostle Paul became a world traveler, and drew to… Read more

Mediation

July 7, 2019
Year 4, Day 188 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

We little understand God’s meaning of mediation.  Since we can do nothing for God, except that which he asks us to do in cooperation with his purposes with us, and that relating to advantage for us, we may be helped with some understanding of the gestures we make that are identified as spiritual matters in the course of life.  God does not need our prayers, praise, thanksgiving, meditation, and whatever we might form to show our reverence, faith, dependence, expectations, and any other factor related to satisfactory life and hope (immortality) related to existence in love and faith.  All this is not a charade, a superstition, a useless factor of spiritual life.  God deals with us in a mediation that… Read more

Getting It

July 6, 2019
Year 4, Day 187 | No Comments

We return to the knotty problem of morality that includes how to identify it, and how to make it effective in life.  A man was found in Europe to have hidden in his dilapidated house a cache of art objects that had been stolen worth many millions of dollars. They had been bought, donated or stolen before and during World War II largely under the aegis of Adolph Hitler.  There was search for these originals for decades since 1945.  When reviewed by the eminent TV program, 60 Minutes, the engaged attorney noted that the real matter included the morality of treating stolen goods, but that the case may not be strong because the law is not designed to deal with… Read more

Change

July 5, 2019
Year 4, Day 186 | No Comments
Section of Adoration of the Magi, artist unknown

Evaluation of the church must be approached from various directions.  We remember that these Pages differentiate between the Church (a spiritual entity), and the church (a human institution).  There is an interrelationship that is developed in Scripture so that the general reference to the church does not always take into consideration the dual meaning of the spiritual/social connection.  That meaning is implied in the separation of church and state, as civil government acknowledges that God has priority in the life of his followers – with the understanding that church members will be valued citizens in earth governments.  Scripture supports that expectation.  It is not always easy for either the church or the public authorities to apply the basic assumption of… Read more

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