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

Society and Persons

March 21, 2018
Year 3, Day 80 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

On a CBS news program, for Mother’s Day, 2014, the story was told of a family with something of a bizarre history.  The father, a certified anthropologist, was researching a primitive tribe near the headwaters of the Orinoco River in South America.  It required significant effort to get to the tribe, but the professor was tenacious for purpose, and proceeded with his appointed task, in an accepting spirit for the culture odd by nearly all standards of modern society.  One of the young women, barely out of her childhood caught his attention.  They synchronized well, and cared for each other.  They were married, and he took his young bride to America when he returned home.  She adapted, or appeared to… Read more

Lostness

March 20, 2018
Year 3, Day 79 | No Comments
Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

Early in the life of the Church (spiritual), following the Ascension of Jesus, the Apostles remained together as a group, in Jerusalem, launching the ministry of Christ to go into the world and preach the gospel.  They later dispersed in the various directions of the compass to do what they could in the rapidly expanding church movement (institutional).  Samaria, formerly shunned by Jews, received the gospel.  The Apostles sent Peter and John to minister abroad and organize appropriately. Paul launched world ministry. Proof of the need for such oversight came quickly with Simon, a magician highly profiled because of the tricks of his trade. They seemed to give credence to his extravagant claims of his own authority.  However, the message… Read more

Wholehearted

March 19, 2018
Year 3, Day 78 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

Never has the general society or the church had so much information availability as we do.  We are told that there is an information overload that is so great that we may be going in circles, arriving at some starting point again that sends us on another search.  One of the reasons we like many sports games is because they have a beginning, middle and end that completes the hour, two or three that they may require.  Games like Chess (requiring intellect for problem solving), or Monopoly (requiring perception of finance), or electronic games (requiring skill in maneuvering so to dispose of enemies to the end of winning) remain popular.  They begin, pay out, and end with win or lose. … Read more

Hospitality

March 18, 2018
Year 3, Day 77 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

I never heard a sermon on hospitality.  I have heard and offered sermons on friendship and fellowship which are the larger themes related to hospitality.  But, hospitality deserves its own treatment because of its biblical status, and the results favoring God and Christian life-forming that hospitality brings.  In advising the Roman Christians, the Apostle Paul included a number of attitudes and conducts relating to the application of Christian principles to daily life in relationships with others, both with those in faith and those without.  One of these is hospitality.  The Apostle was taken with the preparation of others he felt gifted for ministry, as he was with Timothy and Titus.  He groomed them both, even repeating that he wrote to… Read more

Guiding Light

March 17, 2018
Year 3, Day 76 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

There is continuing tension between generations.  The causes are several and no generation appears free of some faults that exacerbate the problems.  The problems are sometimes the difference to be found in the larger formation of a life for good or ill.  Parenting helps in understanding the issues. Parenting is not really a mystery, although it is so in many families.  One of the problems, for modern society, is that our day-by-day, even moment by moment experiences have revved us.  Those not revved up seem to get less done than those that are.  That need to be recognized, and the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of life pressures must be evaluated.  The mature person does whatever is necessary for proper life, by… Read more

Vanishing World

March 16, 2018
Year 3, Day 75 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

The world as currently known in any generation will change.  It has vanished repeatedly.  The world I grew up in was the world influenced by World War I and the Great Depression.  It changed again after World War II into a massive move toward wealth, urban/modern life context and into a technological maze dominated by a materialistic humanism in America.  All has been touched by an amended world: education, governments, families, even crime.  Crime is now found in the psychologically troubled and misfits, in sophisticated moguls, in educated hackers of electronics, in world-savvy men and women who are fraudulent in the context of their expertise, both public and private in nature.  Unwilling to return to that which has preceded current… Read more

World Christians

March 15, 2018
Year 3, Day 74 | No Comments
Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

One of the reasons God designed a faith context for human-beings, may have been that the large physical/spiritual context for mankind is too complex for us to understand fully, and well beyond mortal ability to confine it to many languages/cultures.  I have long believed this to be true, but it accented even further my belief in reading the annual letter of Ken Myers, sent to the subscribers of his Mars Hill Audio at Christmas, 2013.  The Mars Hill interviews and written materials are excellent, addressing a large variety of themes of interest to Christian listeners and readers.  My alert is that they may be too sophisticated for general readers.  This observation applies for much of the literature that addresses vital… Read more

Malaise

March 14, 2018
Year 3, Day 73 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

A common personal and social/emotional disease is malaise.  What is malaise?  The dictionary offers what appears to be a paradox as a definition.  The Oxford Dictionary states: a condition of lassitude, without the development of a specific disease.  It is assumed to lead to some bodily discomfort for the individual.  The word grows out of the prefix/word mal.  Those acquainted with the etymology of mal know that is stands for bad.  So it is that we have formed words like malice, malevolent, malign and malefactor.  These have sinister meanings in them.  Lassitude is defined as: the condition of being weary; a flagging of the body or mental powers; indifferent to mental exertion; weariness.  Ruskin captured the human condition when he… Read more

Evidence

March 13, 2018
Year 3, Day 72 | No Comments
Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

There are not many verbal ways available to mankind for proving anything.  Even when we have proved something in one context, it loses its authority in the next, and may become fable – true at one time, but not so currently.  It may return to its former favorable status at some future date.  God is identified in the Christian context as being the source, in his nature, of love and truth as well as being omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent – favorite subjects for theologians.  Lay persons seem generally accepting with how God functions with mankind so leaving intellectual search to the specialist.  In general, the Christian simply wants to know how to apply Christianity to daily life and personal faith… Read more

Differences

March 12, 2018
Year 3, Day 71 | No Comments
Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

The differences between cultures, nations, relationships, and a score of other factors of relationship are troublesome, so troublesome that they lead to differences of meaning and consequences.  Those differences also lead to various negative responses including, jealousy, prejudice, conflict, and other negatives – even to warfare.  The horrors of warfare in death, upheaval, destruction, mongrel conduct, disorder, and the like are deplored by all persons, but entered into because of human pride, revenge, misunderstanding, differences, ambitions and other factors made negative to international thought and conduct – that could have been managed without immense losses that conflicts inherit.  After warfare, for example, the enemy becomes an ally.  Following the War of 1812, the Americans and British have become significant allies;… Read more

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