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 Understanding

October 22, 2019
Year 4, Day 295 | No Comments
Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

We choose, or lapse into, our capacities for giving and receiving.  If wise we balance our lives so to gain not only what we need to do, but how we will believe and perform.  This has implications for just about everything we are and mean to become.  We determine, or fall into, a pattern that includes the public/privacy of our daily lives, the spending/savings of our stewardship, the needs/desires of our personalities, the disciplined/casual factors we decide to follow – and other comparisons/contrasts that taken together determine the course of life for us in style, values and meaning related to desired ends.  They form our characters, personalities, activities – all summarized as the degree of maturation that we gain for… Read more

Stock Market

October 21, 2019
Year 4, Day 294 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

There is an underlying feeling of praise and blame related to many important and necessary factors in our lives.  We tend to identify ourselves, and the factors related to us (like family, or company, or education) with our successes, but tend to blame other factors than ourselves (perhaps family, or company, or education) for our failures.  One of the large fault-makers is related to the economy.  Sometimes it is the economy competent to advance or reduce our dreams, as I have observed firsthand in upturns/downturns during my lifetime.  Generally alert and careful persons managed well enough to find meaningful life in both knowing how to abound and to suffer want.  (Philippians 4:12-18)  The Apostle Paul blamed no one or thing… Read more

Learning Mentoring

October 20, 2019
Year 4, Day 293 | No Comments
Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

Through mentoring, persons find a way to invest and continue themselves in skills and values in the beneficiary person – often registering results more than a generation beyond the lifetime of the mentored.  This is a little perceived principle in human life ordered of God.  There is a mysterious attachment that has spiritual meaning in progression that is ongoing.  It is related to biography before and after any event.  This point is treated in the first verses of Hebrews, Chapter Seven.  When Abraham was mentored by Melchizedek, and Abraham paid tithes (the illustration of the principle) the descendants from Abraham are credited with the act – appearing from the loins of the father.  In this is also found the matter… Read more

Learning Leadership

October 19, 2019
Year 4, Day 292 | No Comments
Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

This is being written on the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November, 1963.  I remember the day well in that I was, with my wife, and the wife of a prisoner at McNeil Island in Washington State standing at the dock to take the ferry.  The man from whom I received the ferry ticket asked if I heard that the President had been shot.  I had not.  We arrived at the island and when I saw the flag at half mast, I said to the ladies: The president is dead.  Fifty years have elapsed, and serious evaluation has been raised on the meaning of Kennedy to history.  It appears to be agreement that he… Read more

The New Man

October 18, 2019
Year 4, Day 291 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

Counselors are often ambivalent about what is sometimes called the new man.  According to the people who write about the subject the new man differs from the old in that he is supposed to be more sensitive (especially to women and children); more domestic (assuming general house and kitchen duties); more nurturing (change the baby, read to the children, talk to them, listen to them); more patient (considerate of others likely accepting some personal inconvenience); and, so the list proceeds.  God begins by informing us that the good man is defined by God, and that God is active in making good persons, so those men must have some communication from God. (It is acknowledged here that Scripture above refers to… Read more

Honey In Humor

October 17, 2019
Year 4, Day 290 | No Comments
Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

The nation has, at this writing, been amazed to discover how dependent life is on the bees.  A tragedy has occurred in nature since the turn of the new millennium that has caused dramatic decline in the bee population.  Programs are in design to recover the decimation, and crops are endangered because of the loss.  City dwellers are being permitted to create hives in their backyards.  The fear of being stung has given way to the realization that without the bees we are bereft of honey for food, but of the enormous service performed by bees in flight from bud to bud to give pollination to crops and reproduction.  Without them there are major crops that will fade and die. … Read more

Sermons

October 16, 2019
Year 4, Day 289 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

After decades during which I took courses in rhetoric and homiletics, prepared sermons and speeches for many occasions of varying purposes, taught the principles of sermon/speech creativity in composition and delivery, and experienced the effects of sermons, the following is offered with strong conviction.  The sermon spoken, perhaps read, from thousands of churches with varying theologies is more important to persons and society than we generally realize.  The consideration begins with the character and life of the person delivering the sermon.  That life is, in itself, a sermon modeled, and is vital to message outcomes.  A sermon must have a text, or its offer as a sermon is doubtful.  It may be a good speech with moral meaning, but it… Read more

Public Opinion and Electorates

October 15, 2019
Year 4, Day 288 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

Public opinion is both the raw material for beginning leadership and the finished product for followership electorates.  Persons tend to support that they believe in, and what they believe in is highly influenced by emotion and reason – and leadership.  Leaders tend to succeed when they take seriously their duty to hear the citizens so to know the field they must respect and influence to success for vision they communicate.  We need to know the quality of the clay to determine the quality of the vessel being formed.  So while working with what is given, wise potters add what they can give to the material, some water for now, a bit of pigment or paint later, with firm or gentle… Read more

Animals and Heaven

October 14, 2019
Year 4, Day 287 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

Animals are perceived as domesticated or wild.  Many animals can be domesticated to some degree, but many maintain a wild streak that can break out even with loving caretakers.  Circus goers enjoyed seeing acts of tamers with their animals.  Animal rights persons are often offended at the use of animals as objects of entertainment and tamers as exploiters of living vertebrates born to freedom.  So attached are some persons to animals that they treat them with royal fare and bury them at great expense in graveyards.  In 2014 Pope Francis comforted some children by telling them that they would have their animals in heaven so giving great comfort to the children, perhaps also to parents who would share heaven with… Read more

Christianity and Education

October 13, 2019
Year 4, Day 286 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

When taken seriously, education, formal and informal, serves humanity well.  Educated persons tend to live longer, provide better informed leadership in society, offer more than ordinary culture, call upon the uses of search for success in achieving objectives, and move persons more in the direction of intellectual control and objectivity above emotions.  There are other advantages – like creativity.  Omission and evasion of education is found in many students at any age, but often marked among the young, who are at the height of their energies, health, passions, potentialities, and just about whatever else relates to the development of fully furnished persons.  They may waste those raw factors in distractions – commonly perceived as being the culture of youth.  Many… Read more

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