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

Acquisition and Faith

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

A major theme of Scripture is to accent a Christian culture, and illustrate it.  This is partly done in offering critique about the dangers in a wholly human (nature) culture.  One of the secrets in understanding all this is to attend to the motivation factor.  The balance of selfishness (self) and altruism (others) makes an interesting study.  For example, the emphasis of a person may be so strong in self orientation that nearly everything is done to protect the interest of that individual.  Wealth may be sought for the purpose of accumulation.  The individual, or group of individuals (family or corporation), seeks wealth for the purposes identified by a closed entity for various reasons that may be identified as selfish. … Read more

God’s Family

January 29, 2018
Year 3, Day 29 | No Comments

If we human beings, who stand at the top of the elevation of earth’s creation, had miracle power to reach down to a lower level of creation, say to the apes, and in the gestures of the relationship and benefit to improve them, how far would we go to accomplish the purpose?  It would have to be something practical, something that reached the understanding efforts of the animal neighbors we were addressing and lifting to a level of relationship that would make the miracle worthy of the effort and follow up context, for both the animal and the human being.  The result would be presumed as gratifying by both the giver and the receiver, but if there is initiated rejection,… Read more

Individuality

January 28, 2018
Year 3, Day 28 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

Each person needs to sense the uniqueness of his or her own person.  It is true that no two persons are alike. There is that combination of all factors in us that differentiates us to God from all other persons – and to ourselves.  There is something in each person that taken alone, is alone with God.  With that personal factor, special for the individual and special for God, each person finds his or her own way to ultimate identity with God, or resorting to self without God.  We see the mystery in a parental relationship with children.  I have four children, and each one is clearly individualized from siblings.  Each one loves me, and I feel that love, with… Read more

God’s Expectations

January 27, 2018
Year 3, Day 27 | No Comments
Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

For some reason known only to him, God desired, and continues to desire, persons (self-conscious beings) with whom he can share his nature (which is supernatural).  It appears that this was a desire of God well before the first self-conscious human being was fabricated.  The results of that creative gesture we know as angels.  But something went wrong in the freedom.  Various theories have been offered for the matter including a belief that there was war in heaven.  The rebels were cast out, with their leader.  Earthlings are nagged with the result of Satan and devils.  These persons retain some of heaven’s context relating to god-like powers and influence.  That storied context will end in a final catastrophic encounter, some… Read more

Grace and Change

January 26, 2018
Year 3, Day 26 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

The sermon of the Apostle Paul in Athens, recorded in Acts 17 is the only one of its kind in the Bible. I believe it is masterful not only in its encounter with secularism and sophisticated reason and declaration, with its rhetorical excellence in structure and movement to conclusion, but as proof that the Apostle Paul was well educated, even scholarly, had applied that education to his life, thought, and faith.  He had worked through some of the most vexing questions that a Christian might face.  The trend of thought in the sermon was perceived by Wilbur Smith, an eminent Bible expositor in the mid-twentieth century as so outstanding he could not resist writing a book on its inspiration.  We… Read more

Contextual Scripture

January 25, 2018
Year 3, Day 25 | No Comments

Some of the details have escaped me, but I remember the conversation well.  I was asked to speak at a conference of counselors in California.  I received various invitations that were foreign to the common audiences faced by biblically oriented Christian professionals, but were advanced most often because there was a Christian on a committee that wanted one of us to offer a presentation to their group.  It would sometimes fall to me in that the invitation committee discovered that I had a terminal degree from a state university, was the president of an accredited college in San Francisco, had spoken to other conferences so I would be safe to be a presenter to their group – and I had… Read more

Resistance/Adaptation

January 24, 2018
Year 3, Day 24 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

What do we do now that technology has enveloped society?  At this writing, McLuhan felt the domination was closed a half century ago, but even he seems not to have perceived the depth and length of the seizure.  We have moved somewhat from the guidance of the specialists to the opinions of our in-group.  I am informed that some young people buy garments only after they have taken pictures of themselves in the try-on room, sent it to a group of friends, and gained their opinion through the iPhone.  The sale is decided by the opinions of the groups, the favored, the generational members, the party-liners.  We have become disappointed in the leaders, specialists, politicians, business people, even proven authorities… Read more

Wishfulness

January 23, 2018
Year 3, Day 23 | No Comments
Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

Birthdays are celebrated and I am not sure why except that they mark the march of a person from the cradle to the grave.  That is serious business, so we find the birth date marking more of the ending than the beginning.  Although present at the beginning, I don’t remember my birth.  I do sense my death.  During years of awareness the individual, if wise, prepares for the closing years and the ending of them.  If done well there is a legacy for his or her family (not primarily financial), an example for life to those who regard this person, and a sense of fulfillment that relates to self and others.  We are inspired by effective life models and evasive… Read more

Prayers That Sustain

January 22, 2018
Year 3, Day 22 | No Comments
Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

Scripture repeats the phrase a time of trouble several times.  It is a phrase deserving of study by the serious student, so to give some idea about how the world (nature) is managed by God, and the adjustments made by devout persons to the inevitable times of trouble.  The concept relates to times in various eras offering some insight relative to the end of all things – a final time of trouble.  When discussing this theme, and to escape the accusation of fantasy or religiosity, one remembers that both secular and religious sources predict the end of nature as we know it.  There are various secular scenarios to describe it from the clash of meteorites; the exhaustion of energy, especially… Read more

Recovery

January 21, 2018
Year 3, Day 21 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

The church should find a way to establish a Lost and Found Department for spiritual beliefs and experience.  It might include a factor of humor so as to avoid some controversy over: holier than thou attitudes, accusations of resistance to change; denominational preferences; biblical interpretations; and, whatever may be advanced as reason not to follow the unchangeable issues of Christianity.  We are reminded that God never changes, so we need reminders about that which appears, according to Scripture, to be permanent in the narrative of explanation and life practice of Christian faith.  It would include sub-divisions of Lost and Found in the Bible, Lost and Found in the church and/or denomination, Lost and Found in personal faith, Lost and Found… Read more

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