Matthew 16:1-3 KJV [1] The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired him that he would shew them a sign from heaven. [2] He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. [3] And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?
Matthew 5:3 KJV [3] Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus was, is, and will be a physical reality of human history. His part in our story is so elemental that it cannot be said enough—Jesus means “God saves.”
By definition and reality, the Holy Spirit is more ephemeral. Our definitions of him are often more similes than portraits.
He is like a dove
He is like fire
He is the air in our lungs and our souls (not a metaphor).
Look for God, the Triune, interventional, rescuing God.
For an unspecified amount of time I have had a homework assignment I cannot complete.
How could you transmit the story of God becoming a man and living among humans to die for our ordinary and terrible actions, our helplessness and death? Then triumphing over death and rising again to rescue us and give us a home forever in a safe and wonderful place?
How would you do that in pictures? Without a common language? How would you send that message out to people far away who did not know you, have a common language and who had never heard about Jesus?
Yesterday I wrote a sincere, non-resistant, genuine email to John “JL” Schellenberg about his long-held but fallacy-ridden philosophy that a group of fictional people refute the existence of God. I made it simple, personal, and I referred to my own experience and Sesame Street.
No answer.
I am experiencing Schellenberg Hiddenness.
I am pretty bummed. So much so that I will have to consign my thoughts to the philosophical non-existence of a benevolent, interventionist Schellenberg to a part 2 post.
If you can get him to respond or have evidence he is there, please let me know ASAP!!!
When I was in college I loved a boy who was very lovable but just wanted to be friends.
I wrote him a letter about elephants which seemed engaging at the time because I was so young, but now seems to have been cribbed from the movie Green Card.
Oh well, so much for originality.
Now that I am older, I have original stories, but the Boy-i-love calls stars into being and sees into my soul, what is the point of words and letters?
What can I possibly say that he doesn’t already…know…
(Psalm 139:3-4 KJV [3] Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. [4] For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.)
(This screenshot I have of a child I want to raise) I would tell him that I am lost without him
I would tell him I will keep calling the number to get her to me
I will tell him I cannot stop looking for him
Like David in Ps 139, like the Shula…Shuna…mite woman
Here is my most interesting thing—I constantly long to see you
Face-to-face at last
Song of Songs 3:2-3 KJV [2] I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. [3] The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?
First, I was hit hard by your story, your extreme youth, your face in the photo, then I was hit by the strangeness of the term.
Is this, like the MAID, the pharmaceutical death, and the ornate Cross on the logo, another Canadian difference? What is this “enichement?”
Google corrected my search twice to “enrichment,” before I found the true meaning.
The similarities are haunting—two young men go willingly to their deaths.
One buys drugs at a local pharmacy and dies in a funeral home.
The other endures the torture of a Roman execution.
Both are entombed.
But what happens after that depends entirely on the power of the older man
To be
The Resurrection and the Life.
John 11:1,3,14,21-26 KJV [1] Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. [3] Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. [14] Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. [21] Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. [22] But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee. [23] Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. [24] Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. [25] Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: [26] And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?
I have been working on something lately that (tragically)
Reminds me of you
It started with the question of how “you” could transmit hope to a distant “stone-age” tribe
What symbols would “you” need to
Stand in for Man
Stand in for Woman
Stand in for child
Stand in for God
Stand in for Pain-Brutality-Disenfranchised-Sorrow
Abandonment. Near total abandonment.
By now you recognize where I am going with this—Substitutionary Atonement
For the lamb, the goat, the chicken, the child, the man, the monster
Living then dying inside the universal symbol for In-all-my-years-of-law-enforcement….
This is what ellipsis is for
All the Williams of Heaven
We will see each other again
And this time you will tell your whole terrible story
Through the Universal Translator
God with us.
Matthew 18:3-7 KJV [3] And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. [4] Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. [5] And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. [6] But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. [7] Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!
Matthew 23:37 KJV [37] O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
When Peter announces (post-Resurrection) that he is “going afishing” Gospel of John, KJV,
Jesus has been betrayed
Jesus has tortured
Jesus has been murdered for us
Jesus harrowed hell
Jesus rose from the dead
And then he comes back!! Sees his peeps! Breaks bread with them!!
And then Peter and I go afishing.
What are we thinking? Well, gotta eat
Normal life has to start back up some time?
Then, if we are blessed. Jesus confronts the subtext—
Nothing will ever be just “normal” again
Jesus is in the room
And it is our job to notice
Swerve
And become…
John 21:1-4 KJV [1] After these things Jesus shewed himself again to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias; and on this wise shewed he himself. [2] There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two other of his disciples. [3] Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They say unto him, We also go with thee. They went forth, and entered into a ship immediately; and that night they caught nothing. [4] But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore: but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus.
