Opus 2026-260: Embrace the Frustration

I think we all have come to plateaus and walls in our lives.  We are making progress.  We are enjoying life at its current level.  Wham!  Life barges in and stops us in our tracks.  To be honest it isn’t always a sudden trauma.  It may be something that sneaks up on us when we are not paying attention.

I had a change in my life that kept me away from playing my guitar and leading in worship.  Years later when I tried to pick it up again I found that my fingers had grown stiff, my memory was vague and my voice was creaky.  Because I could still join in congregational singing I was okay.  Then my voice got worse. I was facing the abandonment of music.

It was frustrating.

I am working on the chords but it is an uphill battle.  I decided to work on something my fingers seemed to be able to do and explored playing the melody line.  It worked in the key of C but most songs are written in other keys . What to do?  Many songs I loved were written in five flats.  If you are not into music it is like putting your Oreos into single serving pickle jars.  You need someone else to open them.

I chose not to let the frustration rule.  I used to joke that I would give anything to be able to play the piano…except the time and effort.  Since I have plenty of time for naps I decided I had nothing to lose and started putting in the time and effort.  It has been working.  I can now turn to any song in the hymnal and play it so that a generous soul would admit that they recognized it.

I will never be professional.  I don’t need to be.  My musical discernment is at a low enough level that I can enjoy what I am doing and hope to improve as I go.  I assume God is able to read the joy in my heart with His ear plugs firmly inserted.

How many other areas of life can I seek to conquer?  How many mountains can I try to climb?  Time will tell.  Let me encourage you to look at areas of frustration and start putting in the time and effort to defeat the frustration.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-238: Of Two Minds

I am coming out of a part of my down cycle.  There are days in which I can go for long periods of time content to stare at the wall and daydream.  I tend to think of it as classic nursing home mentality.  I could be content to just veg out and not struggle with anything but getting enough fiber in my diet.

There are other times when ideas seem to be lined up waiting to pop into my head.  The issue is finding enough time to write them down.  That leaves nothing for developing them and making them coherent.  Then I top out and head down again.

I have grown used to it and accept that there is little I can do about the down times.  One reason is that when I am overcome with ennui I don’t care about doing anything about anything.  There is still that little voice down inside poking me in the ego and saying, “Get up and do something. Take that first step.”  I am good at ignoring that little voice.

Which will it be?  One side says writing on Blogger is enough.  The other side says, “No. Explore some other platforms.  Go out in a blaze of glory.  Have posts lined up so that you are dead for a month before anyone knows it is over.” 

If you are getting old I am sure you know the feeling of your teenage attitudes locked in your wheelchair body.  Sometimes it is a drag.  Other times it is a glorious challenge. I wait to see what the rest of the day holds.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-192: Change Is Forced on Me

I replace my laptop about every three years. We are past that time and so I set my son on a search for something that would not crash in the first month. That brings changes and adjustments in at least two areas.

First, I need to install the software I want and tweak things so that they work. In the process you have a constant battle with Microsoft trying to force itself into what you want. There is always a learning curve. Part of that is finding where they hid everything to be helpful. Others are changes and you can’t find out why.

Second, software. It has been my practice to purchase a new copy of Word Perfect with each computer. They have been playing the old Find-the-Feature game that they do every time. I finally decided to bite the bullet and move to LibreOffice. I am hoping that I will only need to play the game once. I am already finding a lot of features that don’t seem to be available but I am soldiering on.

There will be a lot of hiccups. A gracious reader informed me that my posts were coming up blank. Who was to know that Blogger would make adjustments without asking. I think I figured that one out but in the process I find other things tweaked. I have always published my full post so you don’t need to click “read more”. Now that seems to be the way it is. That always irritates me but I may not fight that battle.

I have made connections I never bothered with before. I got my printer going on WiFi instead of by cable.

I connected my stereo with Bluetooth. Only the future will determine how extreme I will get with this.

Thanks for your patience on my journey.

Now to see if this gets through in readable fashion.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-147: Another Reading Project?

Back in the days before wokeism became predominant I used to read a lot of fiction.  Alas, the lockstep ideology in the publishing industry has destroyed what used to be a great pastime.  The requirements for feminized characters who tend to be of untraditional sexual orientation and the great combat skills they seem to have gets a bit boring.  I am leaning toward nonfiction more often.

That presents its own problems.  Much of the nonfiction is also politically correct and tediously predictable.  I used to be able to get recommendations from others who read a lot but the books they have recommended to me and I have read are not as awesome as I was led to believe.

What is a man to do?

I am going back and reading things I read years ago.  Thomas Sowell’s Conflict of Visions is always worth a reread.  C.S. Lewis is rewarding.  The current book I am planning on working through is Idols for Destruction by Herbert Schlossberg.  It is copyrighted in 1983 but views society like it was written tomorrow.  He starts off like this,

“The technological flowering and economic expansion of the 20th century has been accompanied by an astonishing growth in pessimism, even despair.”, p. 1

I read it twenty years ago and took notes.  It seems worth reconsidering.  I doubt if you will find it in the library but I think it is worth your time.

I have several long term reading adventures going on.  My hope is I live long enough to finish them but knowing me I will keep adding more to expand the list.  Does that lead to immortality?

Schlossberg, Herbert.  Idols for Destruction.  Nashville:  Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1983.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-129: I Found a Label

Recently I wrote a post about theological labels.  I don’t know if this will be put online before or after that because things tend to be confusing at times.  Having said that I think I came across a label for me this morning.  I am a member of the Puny School of Theology. Another title might be the Pathetic School of Theology.

I don’t come to this point by disparaging myself or belittling my efforts to understand God and to interpret his word.  I don’t back off from any of my positions, at least I don’t think so.  I come to this point because as I’m sitting in the dark contemplating the glory of God I become more and more aware of how puny and pathetic my words are in trying to describe Him.

I think that in human terms, He tends to look down and smile like a benevolent grandfather, pat me on the head, and in His own way, chase me around the couch.  I speak, of course, as a grandfather.  I think of my grandson when he’s in a Zorro phase.  If he plans ahead, he comes into the house with some kind of a cape on, a hat, and of course, a sword.  Now his cape may not be the flowing black one that Zorro wore, his hat may look nothing like that fine headpiece in the movies.  His sword may be nothing more than the tube from the center of Christmas wrapping paper, but he is Zorro personified.

I greet him as if he’s Zorro.  We engage in robust and enthusiastic sword fights.  Back-and-forth, we go across the room.  At times I chase him.  At times, he chases me.  I’ve even been known to take away his sword, then give it back to him.  I can remember the days of being Zorro.  At no time did I actually believe it, but I enjoyed.  I know my grandson realizes that he is not Zorro, but he still challenges me to a duel, knowing that there is no way he can win, knowing that I will not take unfair advantage of him.

Sometimes I tend to think of God that way.  He lets us pretend that we are Zorro.  He may even really enjoyed it in ways that I can’t understand, but neither one of us ever forgets who God is and who Zorro isn’t.

I’ve also been known to be a member of the French Foreign Legion.  I’ve been an NBA star.  I have performed unbelievable feats.  They are unbelievable both of you and to me, but I enjoyed every minute of it.  I also enjoy my puny attempts at theology because I know that eventually, probably in eternity, God will straighten me out, we will put down our wrapping paper swords and we will commune friend with Friend.

Hmmm...  Maybe the Zorro School of Theology

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-096: Get Organized

How would you organize your Legos, assuming you have Legos?  Yesterday I almost fell into the trap of trying to sort out all the wheels and put them in one place.  It’s a trap because my grandchildren are not old enough to understand the concept of sorting.  The day will come.  When it does, I can expect some conflict.

How do you sort Legos?  It depends on your maturity and your personality.  Do you start with size?  Do you start with color?  How about shape or purpose?  It’s going to be different for everyone and if you leave them available, someone might come along to help you get things where they really belong.

I remember, we could always tell when my grandmother had been to our house.  We could not find anything in the kitchen.  She tended to re-organize things when she was there, and since at that point, she wasn’t really in touch with reality, it got very creative.

It may be that you will only be able to organize small parts of your world like which pocket you put your change in.  For bigger things, like your sox it may be up to someone else.  Relax.  You will live to tell about it but I wouldn’t advise saying a word.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-070: New Terms: Needles

I find recently that I have been using a phrase that I don’t think I’ve frequented before.  I know it’s not original with me.  I don’t know if I heard it somewhere recently, what put it in the front of my mind or whether it just emerged from the murk of my magic eight ball.

The phrase is “move the needle”.  You can express it different ways such as “move your needle”, but the idea is the same.  The concept is that needles on seismograph’s, audio equipment VU meters and such respond to show when there’s a sudden disturbance.  Most of us are stuck somewhere in the middle and our needles just don’t move.  We need a challenge that comes from discomfort or crisis.  It seems that only that will move our needle.

Another way in which the needle moves is demonstrated by the needle of our fuel or our temperature gauge in the car.  They are bound to move.  The question is are we watching to see when we need to do something about it.

So maybe a new phrase might be, “watch your needle”. Or we could say “take care of your needle”.

Life brings change, or it should if we’re still alive.  Pay attention, fill up with gas, have your oil changed, and get on down the road.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-040: Producing the Gold

We have a process which we go through as God develops His people.  We get occasional glimpses of the process.

(Pro 25:4 KJV)  Take away the dross from the silver, and there shall come forth a vessel for the finer.

We often refer to this as related to tribulation, hard times, persecution.  We look at it as the way in which God builds godly character.  But that is more the end process.  It totally ignores the earlier steps to getting pure gold or silver.

The days of picking up gold nuggets in the stream bed are gone.  People still pan for gold and I understand can possibly make a daily wage at that, but it is not something that’s just sitting there waiting to be gathered in.  Modern gold, along with silver and anything else that’s a precious metal, has to be dug out of the Earth and go through a long process.

Of course, the first step is mining the rock that contains the oar.  This is a long, difficult and dangerous process.  It requires tunneling in the right place and dragging large amounts of rock out of the ground.

I believe the next step is to crush the ore.  This is something which was very difficult before we had the industrial revolution.  It involves massive weights and big machines smashing down on the rocks and breaking them up into smaller, manageable pieces.

Then you have to heat the rock to the point where the metal liquefies and runs out to be gathered together.  In that condition it might have some uses, but it is still a long way away from being a pure product.

Then you get to the process described above.

After you have the pure product it still might have limited usage.  Pure gold is a wonderful thing.  It does not corrode.  It is malleable.  It is also too soft to be of use in much besides jewelry.  Gold coins say on the front, I believe, that they are something like 99% pure gold.  It is that one percent that is added that makes them useful in anything except decoration.

Iron is a wonderful product.  It has many uses . But it does not become steel until you add a bit of carbon and possibly other elements.  It is those added elements which can give it whatever qualities you’re looking for.

If you look back through the history of the Bible, you see God preparing people through the same process.  Out of the entire population of the Earth only Noah and his family survived the flood.  Consider that the mining process and flood as the crushing of the rock.  From that rock comes an impure element.  It had to be separated and the impurities removed.  You might consider Israel going to the promised land and being told to cleanse it a similar process.  Then you get to the real refining.

I am not an expert on this obviously, but my picture is that you have to continually heat the gold and skim the dross off the top.  It is a long process.  I think of the times of the prophets as they kept calling Israel to repent, and Israel pretty much laughed in God‘s face.  Yet we always see reference to the remnant.  There is always a remnant.  When God sends in the Philistines or the Chaldean’s or the Babylonians to decimate the population, the remnant survives.  The remnant multiplies.  The remnant is once again heated up and dross is removed.

Eventually, the children of God get to the point where they’re ready for the Messiah.  Again, it is only a small remnant that respond.  Paul used to get upset because there were so few Jews that responded to the gospel.  Of course, if you look at the number of Gentiles that responded out of the total population it was always a small group also.  Somewhere in here you add in the alloys. Those are the materials which add the needed quality to the pure metal.

Enter the Holy Spirit.  It can be a long process.  For most of us it is still going on at an individual level.  I cannot speak for God, but I believe there is a sense in which He is preparing people for eternity.  At one point they were called the children of Israel.  Now they are called body of Christ.  I don’t know what we will be called in the language of Angels, but I hope to find out.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-038: Uncharted Revelation: Common Denominator

I’m breaking off bits and pieces as I try to find the reason why so many people focus on the book of Revelation.  I just read over the first four churches addressed in chapter 2, and it seemed like there was a pattern at least in three of them, a pattern of praise mixed with admonitions to do better.

Part of that admonition is to never give up reaching for the higher level.  There’s always growth available to us.  As an old man, that’s something I need to be reminded of.  I want to rest on my laurels.  I want to be relaxed and unhurried.  A bit of that is OK, but we always need to realize that we could do better.

Look at the church in Ephesus.  They are praised at the beginning.  As they are giving each other high-fives, and patting each other on the back, He then says, “But this I have against you….”  That seems to be the pattern in these churches.  So you can see that as much as we may have been doing right, so far, and Jesus acknowledges that we have done good things, we need to get on with the job.

Of course I am spiritualizing a bit here.  I’m taking what was said to a specific church in the Middle East 2000 years ago and addressing it to us today, specifically to me.  I think that’s part of the reason why we have these letters.  Have you ever asked yourself why did the Holy Spirit choose to preserve these specific writings for us today?  I think most of us understand the idea of them being inspired as they are written to the recipients, but why preserve them if there’s not something for us to take and find application for.  Some people can belittle that as spiritualizaion. I would say it’s simply applying God‘s word as He intended.

So get with it.  I was having a conversation with a lady about the joys of retirement.  I was focusing on the fact that it gave me more time for worship and focusing on the things of God.  I think that’s true.  The problem is that when we use that as an excuse not to turn up the fire and keep seeking new skills and new insights.  It was a good conversation.  It was a good reading of Revelation.

I hope Revelation continues to surprise me.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-571: Advent Calendar: Day 12, Time to Move?

Let me spiritualize the experience of the shepherds. Spiritualizing is where you take passage of scripture and look for things which are probably not really intended, but provide some insights into life. Consider,

Luke 2:8 (KJV) And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

I want to focus on the word “abiding that is used in the KJV. When I read this, or at least stop to think about it, my mind went to the statements of Jesus about abiding in him and the promise that he would abide with us if we did. The word and it’s essence simply means to live inside or to locate at a place. It has the connotation of focusing on that place and making that place central to who you are.

The shepherds or where they were supposed to be, watching the sheep. You can only do that out in the fields. I guess in modern times you might set up some cameras and watch it on a monitor, but the idea is you need to be there to help them when they run into problems. You need to guard them. That requires abiding in the fields. That is well and good.

But what happens when the symbolic angels appear and tell you it’s time to move on, at least temporarily. What happens when God speaks to us in the spot where we are serving or comfortable and says, it’s time to get out of your comfort zone? The shepherds could’ve stayed where they were in discussed the awesome display that God had given them. They could’ve just ignored it I guess. In order to make that impossible God sent a whole host of Angels. God made all of them, see it. God made it almost impossible to ignore.

So they went.

be alert to see if God is calling you to get up and move. As I said before that could be a permanent change or just a temporary move. It could be just an adjustment. The thing is, we are to be obedient to the leadership of the Holy Spirit.

Merry Christmas and joyful obedience.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-534: New Lego Pieces

One morning my grandson, who was spending the night and most of the day with us, called me in because he was having a problem.  There was no note of crisis or panic, but obviously he needed my great wisdom and insight to deal with a difficulty.

I proceeded into the living room and sat down beside him and asked, “What’s the problem?”  He was playing with his Legos and he pointed down into the box and asked a question, “What’s that?”  Legos now come in so many variations it could have been a real mystery.  Now my first vision was to see a piece that looked like a corner of a castle, but he would know that.  So I looked closer and there was this dark shadowy object beside the castle corner.  When I got even closer, it turned out to be a hornet.  Fortunately, it was a dead hornet.  Fortunately for us, I’m not sure the hornet appreciated his condition.

I proceeded to extract the carcass, check to make sure that the boy didn’t want to keep it for something, and then took it to the trash can.  Mission accomplished.  I had removed something that didn’t belong there.  I fulfilled my purpose for the morning.

Of course you know I’m going to make some kind of spiritual application out of this.  It seems to me that often times there are bits of theology or tradition that exist in our basket of Legos.  To anyone who is paying attention it should be obvious that they don’t belong.  Sometimes people aren’t paying attention, or should I say most of the time.  When they do notice a problem, they tend to feel they need to call someone else to work it out.  Could my five-year-old grandson have removed the hornet?  Probably. If it had been my granddaughter she probably would’ve picked it up with some tweezers and run around and chased her brother with it.  But he wanted to sit by and let me take care of it.  Since I’m a grandfather and need to be needed, I was OK with that.

But what happens when the person who should be removing dubious material on their own refuses to take that step?  What happens when you read something in Sunday school material or a book somebody lent you or on some kind of billboard?  Too many people just automatically accept it and work it in as part of their world view.  What often happens also when they call someone else to come and straighten it out?  That person is part of the conspiracy and tells him no, that belongs there.

So when you have someone questioning the physical resurrection of Jesus, you need to quickly get rid of that hornet.  It doesn’t belong in any Christian’s library.  When you hear them talking about a divine spark within them that they need to reach on their own effort to raise themselves to divinity, after you get through looking at them with that look, tell them you’ll pray for them in their misguided thinking.

You don’t need the professionals to tell you what the Bible says.  And with a good dictionary, you won’t need them to tell you what it means either.

God gave us the word so that we could learn and research on our own.  He sent the Holy Spirit to help us tell the difference between a dead hornet and a castle corner in our spiritual Lego world.  You make the application.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-525: Divine Poker

I really enjoy in depth discussions of theology and belief.  I guess a better way of saying it would be I love to argue about the things of God.  A lot of people are put off by that.  They don’t want to be forced to accept the there are people who disagree with them.  I think there’s a great fear that they might find they are wrong and they don’t want to change what they believe.  Of course that’s my biased view.  I could be the one living in a world of illusions.

For some reason, the Lord turned my thoughts to playing poker.  I quit playing poker years ago when I realized that I enjoyed it so much that I was on the verge of addiction.  I didn’t play it that long, but I played it long enough to sense it’s seductive power.  So although I remember enjoying it, I never can remember which is a stronger hand, a flush or a straight.  If you know instinctively, then either you’re not addicted or you played too much poker in your life.

I was thinking about the rounds of betting.  Everybody has to ante up, put in your chip or you don’t get to play.  You have to have skin in the game.  Then if I remember correctly, you go around and people have an opportunity to raise, see (meet someone else’s raise) or fold.  This goes on until everyone who is still serious is not willing to raise the bet anymore and then you compare your cards.

In poker at this point, you have one winner and everybody else loses everything.  If you’re having a theological discussion, it’s totally different because you might have a winner, or someone who thinks they’re a winner, but in addition to that everyone gets to keep everything that was thrown out in the pot.  If your mind is turned on, and your heart is open, everybody wins.  You may not like what you hear, but if the scripture that is offered is quoted accurately, you have the opportunity for the Holy Spirit to speak to you and cause you to grow spiritually.

One of the reasons I think that people don’t like to disagree on theology is because they don’t like to be made uncomfortable.  If your theology is right, if you are genuinely trusting in Jesus, as you should, then you lose nothing except the chance to grow.  If your theology is flaky, then you may need the offerings that others are putting out there.

So don’t look down on people who disagree with you theologically.  It will challenge your faith. It will cause you to grow.  And it might even get somebody saved.

Want to argue about it?

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-507: Uncharted Revelation

I am beginning an attempt to work my way through Revelation and find some sense in it.  I do so with no organized system of eschatology.  I have no chart showing all the stages of the tribulation and have an open mind as far as when the rapture takes place.  You might say it is uncharted territory for me.

I cannot guarantee that I will have the persistence to work all the way through.  I cannot guarantee that I will have something to say about every portion.  I’m doing this for myself.  I have worked through Revelation before, but always with more skepticism than seeking.  I’m going to see if I can change that.

I look at it as a challenge.  When I go out to dinner with someone or enjoy a meal at their house there are times when I am challenged to try something new.  Sometimes it is a new use of chickpeas at a Mediterranean restaurant and you get double thumbs up.  Once at a church potluck, it was pickled pigs feet and I have not forgiven the person who recommended it to me as a delicacy. There are some things that you never know until you try.  There are other things that are not worth the effort.

Part of this is my journey through old age.  I’m coming to think that one of the ways we can keep our minds sharp is by challenging it and making it to work.  I expect Revelation to be a challenge.

Wish me luck.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-495: Growing in Fear

One of the mysterious expressions in the Bible is the admonition that we should fear God, and it’s given as if this is a good thing.  Fear is good?  It can be.

When I was first born I was probably pretty much startled by everything.  You could think of it as a form of fear.  My brain was just a bunch of mush.  My physical coordination was not even a dream because I didn’t know such a thing existed.  My eyes couldn’t focus.  I saw this something waving around in front of me.  Little did I know it was my own hand, and I knew so little that I probably didn’t even know to be afraid.  But I was capable of being startled and surprised.  I would cry or laugh, depending on how the gas was moving through my body.

When I got to be a toddler, I could be startled again.  You could jump out of the corner and scare me.  My grandchildren do this to me all the time.  They love to catch me napping in my chair.  Yesterday my granddaughter just came up and stood about 6 inches away and stared at me until I woke up.  I won’t say I was afraid, but I was certainly scared.  When I hide around the corner and catch them unexpectedly we have the same scenario.  Again, this is a type of fear, but it’s based on knowledge that I’m secure.

All of that changed as I moved into being an older child and adolescence.  Suddenly, my fear of my father became a very real thing.  I knew that if I stepped out of line there would be repercussions.  I was spanked a few times, but being a good child, it wasn’t a big issue.  One thing that kept me in line was a dread of my father’s anger.

Let’s fast forward to my adulthood . I still had a lot of respect and fear of my father, but since I could out run him and had my own car, I wasn’t particularly afraid.  As I moved onward in adulthood, there was a less and less reason for me to have any reason to run away.  I see a very real parallel between that and the relationship between my son and I.

Fearing God goes through these stages.  As a child, I would sing the song, “Jesus loves me” and have a lot of fun with it.  I might sing father Abraham, and dance in circles.  It never occurred to me that the God of the universe might someday be mad at me.  I have gone through the different stages and I’m now at that point where I can sit down in the presence of the Creator of the universe and not even think about lightning bolts.  I don’t worry about swarms of locust coming out of the dark in the morning.  I don’t expect a plague to hit me.

Fear can be a wonderful thing when you know the source of that fear and know about His loving kindness.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-474: PBPWMGINFWMY

Acronyms have grown exponentially in recent times because of social media.  We all know lol.  Some of us are familiar with TL; DR.  The title of this is one of the originals which means, “Please be patient with me, God is not finished with me yet.”

As I was getting ready to go refill my coffee cup I was talking to myself, which is a mark of sanity on a dark porch in the morning, and I told myself that I was anxious to get back and see what else God had to say to me this morning.  The thought occurred to me that these morning dialogues are part of the process of God still whittling away at the knots in my grain and trying to refine me into something that will fit into eternity.

That brought to mind the opening quotation.  I am now 78.  The number keeps getting bigger.  With it come more and more limitations.  With it comes greater weakness.  In spite of that, or because of that, God is still working on me.  What a glorious place to be.  As the world finds me of  less value, God rubs his hand, picks up his chisel and continues to enjoy the process of sanctifying my character and clarifying my mind.  I think He enjoys the challenge I present.

This is a bidirectional declaration.  It is directed outward towards those around me.  It is both an apology and an explanation.  Directed inwardly.  It is a comfort and an anticipation.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-473: The Myth of the God Box

I have made the statement which I know is not original to me, that people often try to put God in a box.  We often find that we are making God in our image instead of seeking to know what it means that we are made in His.  That causes a lot of distress and distortion in our lives.

I have been enjoying reminding myself about how I need to take down the box that I have built around God.  Much of that involves removing the box that other people have put around God with their traditions and their personal opinions.  I had a new insight this morning.  It’s new to me.  It may not be new to you.  Like so much that comes to me in my Eureka moments you may have already known it, but you just didn’t tell me.

It suddenly hit me that what I was really doing, was tearing down the box that I had built around myself.  It started with the idea that God doesn’t need me to take a box down from around Him.  He’s quite capable of removing that box Himself.  He can penetrate it and speak to me.  His Holy Spirit is living within me and speaking to me through His written word.  God has no problem, breaking out and reaching out.  The problem we have is the barriers that we build to keep Him away.

Think of the type of boxes that we can build.  One might be all mirrors.  In this case, all the light that comes, our direction is reflected and never gets to us.  It can be a box painted black, and the surface by it’s very nature just absorbs everything that hits it.  It can be of the hardest metal, or the hardest head and just doesn’t pay attention to truth that does penetrate.  That sounds a lot like the parable of the soils.

So I think I am going to work on getting myself out of the box instead of worrying about God being confined.  It seems a logical choice.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-454: Fantasy of the Phone Booth

On meditating on the attribute to God and focusing on the Holy Spirit as the Paraclete, I look at the meaning.  I think of the Greek word which has the idea of one who comes alongside to help.  It’s translated as helper and counselor and comforter.  I’m sure there are other applications.  It has to do with the idea of possibly an attorney who is there to bail us out or to give us advice.

So how does that apply to me and my day-to-day life?  The Holy Spirit is there to assist me to live in righteousness.  In the process things change.  I don’t think that God is going to change the entire universe just to make me happy or to make me fit in.  There’s also a sense in which God is not going to do a Superman transformation on me.  I’m not hustling into a phone booth to emerge in a total different costume to play a totally different role.  The way in which it seems to work is that He gradually changes me by making small but radical adjustments.

My problem is I want a phone booth experience.  I want radical overnight transformation.  I’m an introvert.  Sometimes it seems like life would be so much simpler if I were an extrovert.  I don’t think God is going to make that transformation.  I think what He’s going to do is teach me how to reach out, to come out of my shell, to have more confidence in my public appearances.  He is going to gradually transform me.

So change is in the works.  Growth is happening.  But you will notice they have removed all of the bone booths that used to be on every corner.  Consider that an example of how we should be growing spiritually.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-453: So Few Gurus

There have been three people that I can think of that I used to be able to take at face value.  I could listen to what they said, fill out my deposit slip, and take it to the bank.  It was very helpful to know that other people had done their homework and thought issues through.

Today as I sit and contemplate life, two of those voices have been silenced.  Rush died several years ago.  I always believe that if he said something, then he had done his due diligence and what he said would be true.  It was always possible that I might disagree with his interpretation, but even that was a rare event.  Then they took Charlie.  I hadn’t listened to him as much as I listened to Rush, but I had the same feeling of incorruptibility.  He did his research.  He consulted the information on both sides.  He knew the biblical truth and he came to conclusions.  The third person is still alive and I’m still listening, but I’m noticing that age is taking its toll.  Memory isn’t what it used to be.  Discernment is being watered down.  He still is a fountain of information, and I listen.  It’s just that I can’t accept everything as being well thought out.

So I am forced back to doing my own research.  I always did it to a degree anyway, but there’s a point where you can’t research everything.  There’s a point where you have to take people’s word for things that you don’t have time to track through the weeds.  Those trustworthy voices are getting scarce.  I’m already finding that in my understanding of the Bible more and more of what I thought I believed is tradition and the Bible is very clear that those traditions are not dead center.  So I am having a great time researching different things, seeing verses that had skipped my attention before, rejoicing in the fact that God is still leading me and that I am still growing.

When it comes to other areas, politics, economics, science, and such I have to take other people‘s words for it.  I recently reread a book by a guy named Kuhn who talked about the development of science and the keyword he had was “paradigm”.  It was my second reading.  It had a lot of great ideas in it.  Ultimately, though, he dealt into things that were beyond my current understanding, and I’m not willing to spend the time trying to research it.  I run into this more and more.

As my ignorance quotient ratchets higher I find that knowing the basics is always more important.  If I know the basics of biblical truth, and what God has already made clear it puts me in a position to have an effective baloney meter.  So I keep reading, contemplating, praying and trusting that God will make me an effective servant.  The same sense of seeking overflows into other disciplines and make growth almost a guarantee if we keep thinking.

May today bring something new into your world.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-358: Spiritual GMO

God looks at us and sees our hearts.  When the Holy Spirit moved upon us, when the blood of Jesus washes us, there is a change that takes place.  I think most believers accept that, but I’m not sure that we understand how deep this goes.

The thought came to my mind of scientists reaching down into the DNA of plants and tweaking the code in the DNA.  In the process they come up with new plants and new varieties.  They are playing God.  They really don’t know what the results are going to be.  The scary thing about this is that they could release upon the world a new variety that might destroy a food crop that we depend on or do something else with the environment.

I think about God, who knows what He’s doing, reaching down deep into your spiritual DNA, whatever that might be.  Picture Him making little tweaks that would set up a whole new chain of developments in your future being.  It might start sequences in your spiritual growth that you would have never even dreamed possible.  God has that ability.  And I think that God does that.  This is part of the sanctifying process.  This is God actively turning us into what He wants us to be.

The future is going to be awesome for each of us as we grow in grace.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-341: The Big Picture

I just returned from a four day trip to stay with friends in Reno.  After four days of getting up with the dawn, 5:30 Reno time, I find myself having to readjust to being in Texas.  I enjoyed the trip.  I would do it again.  Hopefully I will do it again.  I say that in the face of a trip was immersed in constant conflict.  Every leg of the flight had some major issue about getting where we wanted to go.  That ranged from having to change planes after everybody was on because of mechanical difficulties to having to go all the way across the Las Vegas airport and getting to my connection flight just in time to get on.  It was such a short time that my baggage was not able to be transferred and I had to wait for it to be delivered to my home.  It didn’t get lost.  It just didn’t get on the plane because the plane took off before it got there.  It was an interesting trip, but I found myself more and more relaxed with every seeming obstacle to success.

I’ve come to accept the idea that I need to look at everything that I face in the context of the big picture.  In church terms that would be saying keep in mind Providence.  In my every day lingo, it is looking at what I’m facing as compared to eternity, to whatever number of years, I have left alive, to what real difference will it make tomorrow.

I have always been somewhat laid-back and non-aggressive.  That’s part of my personality.  It was also only on the surface.  Underneath there was always a building tension when things would get in my face or go sideways.  I think I’m finally learning to realize it’s no big deal.  I’m starting more and more to look at life as an adventure in these last years that I have.  There are things that I may never get done.  OK, so what?  There are things that I will get done.  Praise God.  I walked and talked about how we want God‘s will.  Part of that is relaxing when things don’t go the way we want them to go or according to our plan.  Our job is to be obedient.  Not successful.  Oh, success is a good thing.  I would like to see more of it.  But I will not be measured in eternity on how good my lawn looks or whether I was able to figure out how to unclog the sewer.  The big picture is, if you excuse the expression, bigger than that.  I need to grow to fit the picture not expect the picture to shrink to my level.

homo unius libri