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

Books

December 21, 2019
Year 4, Day 355 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

It is clear from Scripture that God chose to use language as an important, even vital, form to communicate with mankind relative to virtually everything necessary to life.  Moses was ordered to write information, for blessing or cursing, so that history would testify of God to unborn generations.  The reference in Exodus 17 is to record the destruction of the Amaleks so to document that God is willing to permit warfare as society chooses it.  Mankind, even in common grace from God, is prone to use warfare to resolve differences.  If that is our way we will have it.  God permits some folly.  It is likely that his involvements reduce some horrors.  He will have a kingdom where there will… Read more

Humility and Life

December 20, 2019
Year 4, Day 354 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

In this four years series I have referred several times to ordinary (common)life.  I wanted one page to be entitled: Mundane, but have decided against it for no other reason than readers might denigrate the word to something that I do not mean at all.  After reading a devotional from Philip Ryken I feel persuaded to use commonplace.  I resonate with stories of tiny events in life that lead to large commitments.  Ryken’s devotional piece used the word commonplace as I would have used mundane/ordinary, but his has greater affirmation to it, even if it refers to the ordinary, the even numbers, the regular, the expected, the melding of human conduct with a mixture of God’s undramatic ways found in… Read more

Addiction

December 19, 2019
Year 4, Day 353 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

Readers offering close attention to these Pages will catch my high regard for biblical maturity as a life pattern for daily experience and integrity in both natural and spiritual context.  When translators of the King James Version of Scripture came to the word reflecting the growth of persons toward the ideal they chose the English word, mature, for the purpose.  Many persons live self-guided from the example of ideal models they perceive have done well – the reach toward better life formation.  This higher life is best modeled for us in Jesus Christ, but there are others.  Our reach should exceed our grasp.  To seek to be like unto the life of Jesus is not to say we will, in… Read more

Life

December 18, 2019
Year 4, Day 352 | No Comments

Life is a gift.  We did nothing in ourselves to gain it, and we live for some years in having it sustained by others, preferably parents, to gain adulthood and become the channels of God for the gift of life to the next generation of children.  The process is also a gift carrying part of the temptation for us to look upon life as reason for entitlement.  That which we receive as gift and benefit is presumed in entitlement to be in some way owed to us – almost as if life had been imposed and someone is responsible to gratify us in the imposition.  So if it is not provided we have been overlooked, perhaps deliberately denied, and that… Read more

Healing Life

December 17, 2019
Year 4, Day 351 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

In a half page article reprinted in several sources William C. Moyers of the eminent Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation wrote: Treat addictions as the illness that it is.  The sub-lead to the article reads: Not as lack of character or as a result of poor upbringing.  The implication of the article is that addiction is only an illness that needs human healing process to normalcy.  Like so many persons, both humanists and theists, the problems of addiction (and other human problems as well) there is an over-simplification in human experience.  Some problems dominating a person’s life are slotted in a way that makes the issues either/or rather than both/and.  Further, the addiction may lean more directly in one direction or… Read more

Earth Endings

December 16, 2019
Year 4, Day 350 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

Predictions for the end of the earth multiplied during the twentieth century, and continuing in the new millennium, largely related to global warming.  At the end of his recital of an ending to the earth, the Apostle John said, (but in more sophisticated prose than current conversation): Don’t worry about it.  (Revelation 22:11)  If we may take Scripture for its purpose, we have only one ultimate concern – to be prepared for outcomes for earth and mankind in the course of events through the provision of God. For those seeking affirmative experience through identity with him there is triumph.  The matter is as clear as that.  The transition may include smooth or difficult transport.  The consequences are described as negative… Read more

Progress Heroics

December 15, 2019
Year 4, Day 349 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

Whatever human theme we choose, of substance, there needs to be explanation about what is meant, what is included, perhaps what is excluded in the discussion to understanding.  For Christians there needs to be understanding what is heroic to society and what is heroic to God.  It may even include contradiction within and between secular and spiritual contexts.  What is heroic to this person is folly to another.  In general terms, nearly everyone agrees that beliefs and/or acts are heroic if they entail sufficiently large risk to the persons engaged of their own free will, or giving good report of any engagement forced on them. The real heroes of society and God are those who give themselves, without self-interests as… Read more

Contraries

December 14, 2019
Year 4, Day 348 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

Thought and action in progression are often caught in contraries, in differences introduced by competent and good people convinced in their conclusions which seem true for them and acted upon by them, but contradicted by the next persons in their context of truth that differs from the previous presenters.  A column I reviewed several years ago recalled Emily Dickinson’s statement: Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.  The same column quoted Stanley Kubrick of movie fame: The very meaninglessness of life forces man to make his own meaning.  Which is it – meaningless or ecstatic?  Dumb animals have meaning when mankind gives meaning to them – as pets, as labor, as source for products (milk/hides)… Read more

Awe and Worship

December 13, 2019
Year 4, Day 347 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

My life has taken turns along my journey, now pointing to the end of an earthly sojourn – turns that I did not imagine at the outset of my professional life.  While in high school and not thinking about Christian ministry or the church, I was invited to consider several options.  The music teacher wanted me to go to the Westminster Choir School, and take a degree from Princeton.  One person wanted me to join a group, The Flying Squadron, sponsored by one of the major auto companies that put young people through major departments as something of a modest participant to measure the ability of the young candidate to be trained to enter a department in which the employees… Read more

Christianity

December 12, 2019
Year 4, Day 346 | No Comments

In the Junior Series for this date we discussed the legitimacy of using the term fundamental in describing what is basic to the understanding of that we seek and learn.  Fundamental to water, as we experience it, is that two atoms of hydrogen (gas) are joined in some way to an atom of oxygen (gas) and we conclude with water (liquid).  That is basic (fundamental) to the compound.  But we can do many things with water after we gain that liquid in purity.  We can sweeten it, give aroma to it, boil it, freeze it even offer it in a different form and call it: heavy water.  (One of my college instructors, a Christian, was a part of the team… Read more

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