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

Answers And Attitudes

July 14, 2017
Year 2, Day 195 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

Thoughtful persons want to know the best processes for discovering truth, and what is the truth at the end of the processes.  What is the truth?  Is it only partial?  They would prefer to know the truth, more than the various points of view that may be interpreted as truth.  What are the facts, known and unknown, and where do we go from here?  Does the evidence suggest one conclusion, or variant interpretations?  What is fact?  Is it the same in all situations?  Does history change the facts?  Is truth found only in scientific investigation?  Are there other routes, perhaps to other conclusions?  Are there realities one process can find, and another has no clue, or mysterious clues?  Writing about… Read more

Backsliding

July 13, 2017
Year 2, Day 194 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

There are a various words used to explain or define reversals in beliefs and conducts related to Christian faith and life.  Like most factors in Christian life there are similar and analogical factors in natural life.  The prisoner sent to prison for thievery is instructed while in prison about what is wrong about thievery, what he needs to believe and do to avoid incarceration again after completing the present sentence.  He acknowledges the truth of what he hears, and may be given parole before his sentence is fulfilled.  Many of these persons will steal again.  Caught again, they will again go to prison.  They are now known as recividists, which is the penal system’s term for backsliders.  Having functioned wrongfully… Read more

Personal Influence

July 12, 2017
Year 2, Day 193 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

We need to be reminded that we do not pass through life’s span without influencing others, and influenced by others.  I have heard several stories of women who gave birth to stillborn babies – dead at birth.  The experiences brought out a range of responses that were poignant.  One mother began a movement to comfort women who faced the heart wrenching experience.  Those infant dead were nothing to the world, but gave, for some mothers, a life changing attitude toward themselves and what they would do with some of the time of their lives.  They learned that the experience wasn’t lost to life meaning and activity. I was arrested in my spirit when after more than forty years I was… Read more

End Time

July 11, 2017
Year 2, Day 192 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

It is only in the last century or so that sufficient evidence has emerged indicating time had a beginning, and will have an end in the dimension we know it.  We little realize how large it was in the first century a.d. to hear the person, Jesus Christ, talk at length about the end of time.  He preached an end time message, committed his disciples to the embellishment of some details, and made clear that the creation will convene in another context than time.  Most persons seem not to take the point of endings too seriously.  They see such an event so far in the future as to give them no currency of interest, even if true.  Earth science scholars… Read more

Suffering

July 10, 2017
Year 2, Day 191 | No Comments
Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

Suffering has many faces and revelations. It means one thing to this person and something else to that person. On occasion the truth about it to the one is not the truth about it for the other. This means the helping individual must be alert to the complexities, and adapt accordingly – in the compassion of Christ. Some persons encountering suffering have been so offended by the approach of helpers that lifetime friendships have been lost. To analyze suffering from theological points of view may be far afield from humanistic perceptions. Evaluations must be made within the context of the individual’s life formation. God relieves us from making judgments about others, reserving such matters to him, so excused from judgment… Read more

Little Foxes

July 9, 2017
Year 2, Day 190 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

We need to remember that the Bible, more than any other major work in literature, ranges in scope over all of personal and social life.  We are so taken with perceived great needs, problems and distractions of society that we may miss the details of the single life, details that may mean something major to the effectiveness of that life for the self and for other persons in that life.  For example, marriage and the family are important to the peace, love, health, and general context of our lives occupying many additional factors for effectiveness and happiness.  Yet at this writing, a study receiving some popular circulation shows that nagging between a husband and wife is a major factor in… Read more

Success Meanings

July 8, 2017
Year 2, Day 189 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

Reading widely, even in carefully prepared materials, one is faced with large contradictions related to facts, trends and conclusions.  From several sources, even under the same document covers, there appear reports/stories that amount to contradictions: 1) This Group is Trying to Address the Marked Growth in Religion in America.  2) This Group is Trying to Address the Marked Decline of Religion in America.  Which is it, growth or decline?  Similar statements have been made about education, business, families, and other themes in their own contexts, and with sub-divisions of them.  Newspapers are asserting: America is in Serious Decline in Public Education.  First in the world after World War II, American education ranks seventeenth in 2010.  American Education is the Choice… Read more

Meditation

July 7, 2017
Year 2, Day 188 | No Comments
Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

Deliberate devotion to God and prayer experience may be commonly overlooked privileges and duties of sincere Christians.  There are two large considerations for the careful Christian to follow in this context.  One is the simple, but highly useful prayers and readings offered in scheduled and unscheduled minutes of our lives.  But, the most important is what might be perceived and termed the prayerful spirit.  This is, I believe, the fulfillment of the Pauline statement: Pray without ceasing.  The orientation is known to the persons who gain it, and to be sought by those who do not.  It is not measured by time modules, or number of prayer requests, or any other human measure.  It is related to an attitude, but… Read more

Getting It

July 6, 2017
Year 2, Day 187 | No Comments
Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

If I were entering professional life today, as a professor and/or minister, I would want to have a somewhat better orientation than I had at the beginning of my own professional experience, on what is really happening to, and with, individuals and society.  In a variety of ways I would repeat the guidelines not well accented that would both help me in practical applications for personal problem solving and a better grasp for what is happening to people and institutions.  I want to know the influence of God upon the general society, including the Church (persons of the general society incorporating the gospel of Christ as the major context for their lives).  The population seems somewhat disfigured.  If society were… Read more

Popular Decline

July 5, 2017
Year 2, Day 186 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

It is difficult to find excuse for good persons, of faith in God, giving time and resources to the changes they want to make in the cartons of their souls – their bodies.  The resources of medical science could be better spent in relieving the suffering of persons, rather than augmenting some part of the human body in the context of beauty or preference.  Celebrities encourage the public for augmentation surgery.  The poor may use cheaper routes, like tattooing.  Tattooing has become an industry, so the public is distracted from the body given of God to some odd demand inside a person to make of self a billboard.  The drawings and words are often garish, or present a garish impression. … Read more

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