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

Hell

April 25, 2019
Year 4, Day 115 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

There are several factors about hell that should give anyone pause before launching into a discussion about hades, or hell, or whatever the place may be that is characterized by punishment and the absence of God.  The Bible is our guide, and these Pages are designed in a context of belief that the message of Scripture is not to be amended.  Scripture is to be treated as inspired in a natural context although incorporating earthly standards related to life, language and devotion.  Scripture is miraculous adopting both mortal and immortal contexts with authority.  In simple words, for our theme, if Scripture offers teaching about hell, there is a hell that relates to the Scriptural meaning.  Hell is spoken of as… Read more

Thermometers and Thermostats

April 24, 2019
Year 4, Day 114 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

What is a person to do?  One group of analysts extols the improvements in society.  Another deplores the conditions and predicts dire consequences.  Clocks are pictorially set as advertisements for doomsday, moving at minutes and seconds before midnight that begins doomsday.  How is the ordinary citizen to know where we really are in society and time dimension?  Wise persons seek to know the alternative for what they have at the moment on the point at hand, because they know if it is from mankind it is in some way faulty and needs another dimension so to gain better insight and balance.  Sometimes a bad point is measured against a bad point so the issue may be worsened, and the followers… Read more

Fear

April 23, 2019
Year 4, Day 113 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

Like so many factors in our lives there are benefits gained from the admission of a factor, and some negative meanings that we would like to avoid.  We are not supposed to live in fear, or anger, or other responses we count as negative, even sinful, and warned about in Scripture as possible enemies to our lives. We ought to warm to faith, health, safety, responsibility – or other affirmative factors.  There is fear that is beneficial (perhaps educational) and fear that is destructive (distracting or mesmerizing) so as to prevent constructive response to this or that experience we must face.  A fearful person lives a miserable life, seeing some negative occurrence around the corners threatening safety, perhaps life itself…. Read more

Religion

April 22, 2019
Year 4, Day 112 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

Virtually everyone has a religion even if it is negative (nihilism), which is to say they have no god, but hold something relating to a spiritual affect – perhaps nothing more than meditation or self-orientation.  In this demanding spiritual or psychological motivation the thinking person seeks a religion (selfie) that he or she thinks is true, even undefiled.  This is understood, by way of humanizing to the fact that every person has a body. Some bodies are healthy, and some are distorted, diseased, perhaps will have only short lives because of the lack of health.  Biblical writers want readers to know that there is a healthy religion that will carry the believer through to a desired life end related to… Read more

Afterwards

April 21, 2019
Year 4, Day 111 | No Comments
Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

One of the benefits of involvement in Christian ministry, or any ministry involving relationships and more than passing contact with persons is to discover how many of those persons are normal in an acceptable context and odd, even supra-normal or subnormal in another.  Einstein was supra normal in brain function related to physics, but normal for educated persons in the general context of his generation emerging from the experience of the European Jewish community in the first half of the twentieth century.  Adolph Hitler was sub-normal in the extreme in his psychology that led to vast horrors negating his talents for workable movements in society, artistic values, and organizational skills.  Einstein did not know why he thought as he did…. Read more

Holidays and Holydays

April 20, 2019
Year 4, Day 110 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

Determined as it is by the phase of the moon in the West, the Easter celebration fell on the same day for both the Roman Catholic (west) and the Orthodox (east) Christian churches.  Some seemed to wonder how Christians could not agree with each other, even for the celebration of the day of Jesus’ resurrection.  If varied for so simple and noncontroversial issue as a day for the celebration of the great victory (life over death) of the Christian faith, what will happen when the complexities of doctrines, of life and learning are introduced to a public that generally wants only to live and let live?  Without the threats of the negative machinations of mankind, populations would manage fairly well… Read more

Paradox or Contradiction

April 19, 2019
Year 4, Day 109 | No Comments
Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

Even in some of the most simple and verifiable life contexts we might find we are faced with paradox (seemingly opposite concepts), and/or contradiction (genuinely opposite concepts).  They remind me of some of the joke games young people played decades ago in switching signs so that a left turn sign was substituted for a right turn sign on the street corner, and a left for a right so to confuse drivers.  Drivers were rightly irritated, but the basic fact remained – there was a turn that had to be made.  Life offers numerous signs that need to be interpreted for the direction we need, sometimes rejected but we know they will arise and require some toleration.  We prefer clarity and… Read more

Disappointment

April 18, 2019
Year 4, Day 108 | No Comments
Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

It takes mature discipline in our lives to overcome disappointments.  Many disappointments are related to small matters, and are often related to some of our preferences without regard for the variances in the human systems applied by others.  The disappointments addressed here arise gradually in the lives of persons related to their beliefs and contexts of life and matters to which they give attention.  The following comprise a list borne in our lives, and to which we may have much, little or no interest or influence. 1. Families are not as well integrated and close as Scripture affirms they ought to be.  Perhaps the family before the urban and technological age was closer integrated in the persons of the family… Read more

Time Distortion

April 17, 2019
Year 4, Day 107 | No Comments
Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

For the benefit of health, truth, safety and life in good context, time must be managed.  We do not commonly consider well that the context in which anything communicated to human lives is affected by context in time dimensions.  An idea, poor or excellent, may be overwhelmed, for good or ill by the context in which it is received.  That context includes a number of factors.  Here we consider the time factor. During my university student experience, well over sixty years ago, there was a study that came by me related to the sneaky way in which Americans were being indoctrinated for various purposes that, if they gave thought and consideration to the concepts, they would likely refuse the proposal. … Read more

Complexity

April 16, 2019
Year 4, Day 106 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

Our illustration for this Page relates to homosexuality/heterosexuality, a leading topic of discussion and contention as this is being written in 2014.  The context of the issues related to gender relationships rivals the complexity of drug addiction.  The simple life in the agricultural context has disappeared.  It is interesting that in a matter of just a few years the electorate in my home state moved from illegality of same-sex marriage, and was at the point of making it a matter of constitutional law to rejection of any amendment, and in the next legislature changing the state law to admission of same-sex marriage.  It all happened that fast.  There is no doubt that some highly controversial human practices are now making… Read more

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