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

Culture and Witness

February 10, 2018
Year 3, Day 41 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

Let there be no doubt about it, the culture as represented in clothing adopted by the general society, called casual by those that favor it, and grungy for those who do not differentiate variety in the casual style, has affected Christians, both personally and in the congregation in the new millennium.  There have been many clothing styles during my lifetime, some that have come and gone, and taken as signs of whether or not the person is a fuddy-duddy or with it in modernization.  Of the breaks with moving changes that generally mark society, some have not been adopted by the elders in society and church attendees.  At this writing casual has been adopted across the board for young and… Read more

Holy Spirit

February 8, 2018
Year 3, Day 39 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

Mankind is everywhere faced with a complexity of forces too great for us to fathom fully so to know and predict with assurance and accuracy.  Society appears to have something of a latent feeling that the marvels of science (intellectual search for evidence, causes, and understandings leading to human action) will work us out of our problems in life, and we will find a holy grail that meets our needs.  That grail is generally perceived to be lengthy, healthy life with resources adequate to human needs, with some means to manage nature’s furies.  Developed societies have moved in that direction of learning, understanding and making applications, with some success, but never enough to meet the objectives.  Part of an understanding… Read more

Open Secret

February 7, 2018
Year 3, Day 38 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

Christianity may be humanly understood in two ways.  The first is fundamental to persons and God.  That is the individual person takes a genuine step of faith in the redemptive plan of God.  Basically that refers to the understanding that the penitent person acknowledges failure in his or her nature to meet the standards of God for acceptance.  This is summarized and characterized that the person is, in the simple word, a sinner.  This is followed by an effective faith that changes the nature of the person.  This is simplified in the words of Jesus to Nicodemus: Ye must be born again. (John 3)  Taken genuinely and personally the individual is promised immortal award with God.  It is a spiritual… Read more

Outside In / Inside Out

February 6, 2018
Year 3, Day 37 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

Although we know much about it, truth may not be adequately understood for what it is.  There is large flexibility in truth meaning that we may miss, if we gain the context of it at all.  The same problem appears for love.  All genuine love comes from the nature of God.  We love God because he first loved us. (John 4:19)  This is a divine love reflected in human love.  Divine love is included in other definable factors in the nature of God, like holiness, so becomes larger than love alone.  We can make the same statements about truth that we make about God’s omniscience.  All this taken together is persuasive to us that there is one God.  God is… Read more

One / Many

February 5, 2018
Year 3, Day 36 | No Comments
Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

We continue with the concept of human conduct and human worth, from God’s point of view and the varieties of perceptions advanced by human society either in theory or practice.  Often theory and practice are out of synchronization with each other, but that hypocrisy is not strange to the human race.  We often contend an affirmation and practice another.  We even use hypocrisy (contradiction) in serious problem- solving so go to war to end warfare, or use lies to counter lies, or cheat to counter cheating against ourselves.  God opposes warfare, but may utilize the insistence of society to meet problems through massive killing and suffering.  He proposes to assist us through the bloodshed, and the following reconstruction.  This assistance… Read more

Faith Partners

February 4, 2018
Year 3, Day 35 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

Faith continues as our theme for this date, with the sub-theme of the problem of faith in a natural world that is unfriendly to presumed blind faith.  Any faith not founded on a creative constitution is blind.  In this context, faith is blinded by demands of nature in the human experience.  Christian faith is not blind, nor is it a guarantee that all is well, or expected to be, in the natural environment.  In a book review, Sam Sacks quoted from the short stories of Don DeLillo about the dangers of earth.  For DeLillo, astronauts are looking out of the hatch of their spaceship in outer space at the end of World War III.  Horrorstruck, one says to the other… Read more

Know Thyself

February 3, 2018
Year 3, Day 34 | No Comments
Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

The statement of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians is reflective of several factors that pertain to anyone among his readers – humility, imperfection, ignorance, and mystery in addition to the implications about the nature of God to supply whatever is needed and missing in Christian life.  Our attention here will relate to the mystery of affirmation.  Christians are called to the ministry of affirmation, and even that has a mystery that we can perceive only in part.  There may be Christians called to the public place to battle for faith, God, righteousness, and their inclusions, as observed in John the Baptist or the Apostle Paul, but the vast number of persons are to live a peaceful life of affirmation… Read more

Evaluation As Judgment

February 2, 2018
Year 3, Day 33 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

Can Hell be redeemed?  Judgment (ultimate evaluation) is not a privilege or obligation for mankind.  We haven’t the necessary omniscience (knowledge), omnipotence (power), virtue (holiness), objectivity (truth), and whatever else is necessary to make even just determinations in the confines of nature.  How would we have any claim to be able to determine the meaning of hell, of God’s evaluations (judgments) for what is meaning outside of time and physical substance that we lump together as nature?  Scripture informs the reader that there is a place called hell, that it is a place that God has reserved for conscious beings he will not accept in his kingdom.  The place of hell is noted as lasting in the eternal perception, as… Read more

Aging To Sublimity

February 1, 2018
Year 3, Day 32 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

The news for August 7, 2013 published the results of a poll of Americans about the age to which they would like to live before they die.  The most popular choice was ninety years.  The visions of age, senility, dependence, physical appearance, marginality, weakness, health were presumed to be too threatening after nine decades of a life.  There would be, in the light of the threat of debilitation, a sort-of politeness to the younger society to depart so as not to place too heavy burden on the younger generations in caring for those no longer able to contribute to the maintenance of society.  Some of this short summary includes the public response to the publishing of the statistics.  The whole… Read more

Leadership and Integrity

January 31, 2018
Year 3, Day 31 | No Comments

Christians tend to trust others, or they want to.  They are often naïve about the business of trust, so they misinterpret some people, documents, situations, even life itself.  The attitude is so attractive that it is not easy to fault it in that it makes persons generous, enhances presumed motivations, warmed by the concept that my word is my bond, or we agree on a handshake.  I like this approach on bond and handshake and have practiced it, when accepted, for all of my life.  I am, in my tenth decade of life, near to concluding financial agreements related to a friend in a business broken by a severe recession.  It has cost my retirement reserves, but when I signed… Read more

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