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

Faith

February 4, 2019
Year 4, Day 35 | No Comments
Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

Faith is a New Testament word used twice in the KJV version of the Old Testament and scores of times in the New.  The word faithful is used much more generously in the Old Testament, but even then it appears in the majority of instances in the poetic books.  This does not take away the place of faith in the Old Testament, as noted through extensive repetition in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews in the New.  The pre-Christian generations utilized faith in a forward thrust that ultimately took a central focus in a messianic expectation.  In the advent of Christ as Messiah, the Christian perception added the expectation in the finished work of Jesus Christ.  This resulted, for Christians, in… Read more

Know Thyself

February 3, 2019
Year 4, Day 34 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

We remember that the emphases of God are often made from a different direction than that from mortals.  This relates to values, and values are problematic for mortals.  Our reference here is to faithfulness, and the understanding of values in the applications of Christian principles.  Judas was unfaithful to Christ and his disciple friends.  Demas was unfaithful to Christ and to the Apostle – for a time.  Absalom was unfaithful to God and his father, David.  Jonathan found a way to be faithful to his friend David, to his father and to God.  Jonathan had character and nobility. What a friend Jonathan was, likely to every person admitted to his life.  World patterns of faithfulness and unfaithfulness would make a… Read more

Solutions

February 2, 2019
Year 4, Day 33 | No Comments
Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

When a person has arrived at a point of maturity – that point related to self-decency so adjusting to what is in life context, intelligent behavior, contributing to society (others), gaining spiritual perception with related duty, and modeling a life of fulfillment that includes problem solving – what is left to be troubling to the person’s spirit?  There are several nagging matters that are seldom discussed, but ought to be.  One is the prevailing feeling of personal failures.  It takes several directions.  If it was poor judgment, say in a business venture, we fuss with self.  Why did I not do this or that?  Why did I do this or that?  The inner debate continues even after learning a lesson. … Read more

Sublimity To Death

February 1, 2019
Year 4, Day 32 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

The Apostle Paul, growing old and maintaining his views of realism and spiritual integrity, seemed eager toward the end of his life to use his personal, professional and spiritual insights to prepare his closest colleagues to take over his ministries, add their own increasing influence, and contribute to generations in advancing the gospel.  That included evangelism and the exposition of the victorious life in faith as outlined in Scripture.  It is observed in daily experience.  The above verse falls into the context of the preceding verses referring to the hope of Christ.  Hope in Scripture refers to immortality, and its certainty in the forerunning experience of Christ’s resurrection.  It is referred to in I Corinthians 13:13 as among the greatest… Read more

Leadership/Followership

January 31, 2019
Year 4, Day 31 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

Considerable attention has been given to the nature and function of leadership, but relatively little to followership.  At the end of the story, each leader is evaluated on the effectiveness of his or her follower individuals or groups.  Asked to write a book on Christian leadership, I soon felt that no adequate treatment could be given to the subject without some attention to those persons being led.  Followers have a mysterious relationship to leaders that make something of leaders in the followers. This makes an excellent secular study in the leadership of Washington and Lincoln, or Eisenhower whose effectiveness in the European/African theater of World War II, with the followership/leadership of some of his Generals and other officers in the… Read more

Bubbles and Bumps

January 30, 2019
Year 4, Day 30 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

Scripture treats the economics of business like it treats other institutions formed by mankind, important but secondary to the personal development of the individual.  Society is important, even vital, to world community, but also secondary to the development of the individual.  Freedom and liberty belong to the consideration if the individual means to take responsibility for self to self, to society, and to God.  This is so important that God permits his own human creation to make decision for or against the creator.  There is something of mystery in it.  We may not have quite grasped the importance of the self to the self, so we may make ill-advised decisions, waste our limited time span, violate our space and parents… Read more

God’s Family

January 29, 2019
Year 4, Day 29 | No Comments
Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

We return to the consideration of the family of God.  God’s children are found in both creation (physical) in the world to earth’s citizenship context which closes in death, and by adoption (spiritual) in heaven’s citizenship context opening to immortality into God’s kingdom. (Galatians 4:5)  All his children maintaining eternal fellowship with him must pass through both gates, physical and spiritual.  The physical ends in death, but for the spiritual there is immortality that is partly characterized by presence.  That God creates is perfect, and remains perfect, unless by some factor it is betrayed, in which situation it can be redeemed by the creator.  Whatever he does is not dissolved or lost, unless that created, capable of losing legacy, is… Read more

Individuality

January 28, 2019
Year 4, Day 28 | No Comments

I am unable to let go of last year’s emphasis on the one and the many.  There is an individual plan for every person that includes God in earthly life, and that plan carries over into the social life of the person.  I belong to the one individual (personal) with God, and I belong to the many (social) with God.  I am guided by the context of intimacy with God that is not to be interpreted as a part of society, although it has much to do with my conduct and attitudes in society.  Persons may lose themselves in the intimate role – aloneness with God.  They may seek a life context in the earthly sojourn to nourish the effort… Read more

Awesome Wonder

January 27, 2019
Year 4, Day 27 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

In several other Pages in this lengthy series, covering four college years of personal conversations between the reader and me, I have referred to sublimity, sometimes reverie that may become special for devout persons.  To acknowledge that one has experienced it is to make the person open to an accusation of a kind of senility or fantasy that he or she wants to avoid, so as not to be written off in areas in which the person wants to make contribution.  It is worth dealing with in this series, principally for those, perhaps few or many in number, who experience spiritual sublimity, or hear about it from the witness of another.  I mention elsewhere that for a space of about… Read more

Two Graces

January 26, 2019
Year 4, Day 26 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

Anyone following my oral and written rhetoric becomes aware that I believe firmly in both common and divine grace.  One of the duties of Christians is to integrate the two in order to achieve holistic context for mortality and immortality, right and wrong, success and failure, truth and falsity, peace and conflict, love and hate – for one life in all matters.  The factors of thought, faith and life may be extended, finding their ends in conduct that identifies the person somewhere along the double lined continuum until death, after which all meaning is in the grace of God.  All this is measured somewhere in the attributes of God’s nature, beginning with the love of God for all of his… Read more

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