Opus 2024-196: Bread

All cultures have some form of bread.  It may take different shapes and be prepared with variety but it is still a grain product.  With the gluten craze it is becoming less popular but I don’t think I will ever get used to a hamburger on a lettuce bun.  Two thousand years ago it was the staple of many cultures.  That is true for the Bible cultures as well as the rest of world.  That is why the allusion to bread is so common.  

Jesus engages this thought when teaching about His mission.

John 6:58 (KJV) This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.

Think ancient Middle East.  The bread of that day was much more nutritious.  You can still find its descendents if you look.  Have you ever tasted heavy European breads?  They are awesome.  Today we have empty calories in most of what we eat.  Get your cultural and historical thinking caps on when you hear statements from the past.

When Jesus said He was the Bread of Life He was not talking about Wonder Bread.  He was talking about a necessity for life, eternal life.

You might want to add the Living Bread to your shopping list.

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-195: Gods

We have been introduced to pagan ideas of God.  Often we are not even aware of it.  I think of The Force from the movie, Star Wars, and how it is an expression of the eastern religions, and their idea of God.  To them God is not a person.  He is simply a force with no right or wrong, no good or evil, just a force.  How this force affects us depends on us, not upon the force.

We also have the Greek idea of gods.  We find this in Hollywood celebrities, Talking Heads and authority figures.  We look at those who are powerful.  We want to be like them because we want to be powerful.  It’s not because they’re righteous or holy, or worth looking up to but because they’re above us and we want to be like them.  Actually we want to replace them.  That goes back to the conversation Eve had with the Serpent.  

(Gen 3:5 KJV)  For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

The Bible view of God is that he is omnipotent and all powerful and all those other things but he is still a person.  We may not be able to understand Him or the depths of His personhood, but He is still a person.  As a person, He relates to us as persons.  We have the example of Jesus to learn what God is like.  We don’t have to guess.  We don’t have to try to create a narrative.  God has communicated.  Now we listen.

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-194: Unisex Comfort

Since we are being deluged with gender identities it seems to me that the day of men’s and women’s restrooms are numbered.  The number will soon be changed to a need for 72 different bathrooms.

What this will force upon us is one big unisex bathroom.  As an old man with nothing to prove and little to show, the thought does not drive me crazy.  We already have enclosed toilets and the higher class places have partitions between urinals.  I have enough of a mind left to know I should zip up or pull up my pants before facing the world.  We might need to add litter boxes and newspaper but it is doable.  I have not noticed that cats and parakeets are self conscious about body function.

The Progressives call it progress.  The rest of us call it nonsense, but who listens to us?

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-193: Machines

I wonder if the world we live in and our individual lives are represented best by a Rube Goldberg machine.  Think of how complicated and how much nonsense seem to be involved in one of those machines and yet ultimately it completed the task that needed to be done.  Do you see any parallels in your life?  

God created the world.  God made man.  Originally everything was perfect, until it wasn’t.  Satan messed it up.  Everything was thrown out of whack.  And now, we are in the midst of finding a solution.  We may go through many different stages.  We may follow many weird roads.  But ultimately under God’s guidance, we will arrive at the destination.

He knows where we are going.  He knows how to get there.  Just because the current situation does not make sense to us does not mean it is not perfectly clear to God.  A jigsaw puzzle was once a perfect picture.  Then, for fun, someone decided to cut it up.  When you dump it out of the box for the first time it makes no sense but time will bring a solution.  He even provides a picture on the front.

Rube Goldberg machines are fun to watch.  Get in the habit of enjoying the chaos of life.

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-192: Poetry and Life

I was thinking about Lord Byron as a poet.  Why?  I have no idea.  I find that I do not care about poetry and have no opinion about who is a great poet.  I wonder how many other areas of life I have no real concerns about.  I can fake sports conversations as long at it doesn’t require knowledge of recent events or teams.  Cars are to get places without walking so I am not overly concerned about engines and styles.  

On the other hand I can’t get enough of my grandchildren and I would tell you about them but I know the look of eyes glazing over.  I keep telling myself I need to learn to enjoy poetry but then my grandson wants to go out an play on the rock pile.

I am sure Lord Byron would understand.

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-191: Thoughts on Music

The product of enthusiasm is not the same as the product of inspiration.  I am going through a stage of buying old CD’s in thrift stores and seeing what they have to offer.  One thing I am looking for is music from my past that I enjoyed and can still enjoy but have no access to any more.  Another interest is in listening to groups that I have never followed and hope that I will find some nuggets in the pile.  

There is a lot of very boring music out there.  One interest I have is Christian music that is helpful in worship.  Most of the contemporary music we are hearing in church today is the product of people excited with music and possibly in love with God.  It is not the music of genius or of inspiration.  It lacks that very special ingredient that makes it worth listening to a second time.  To be honest, it lacks worth in listening the first time.  It reminds me of the songs my grandchildren make up as they are playing in the living room.

I can say the same thing for the secular music I have been exploring.  I will go through an entire album and feel like it contained nothing that reaches into the depths of creativity or else it was being so creative that it was pointless.  Most “artists” have a pattern in their music.  Once you hear the first, you have already met the rest.  There are exceptions.  I put those aside to listen to again.  Maybe I will find some pieces that work into my inner being.

I am most familiar with traditional church music.  When you think about a well known song writer like Fanny Crosby and consider she probably wrote hundreds of hymns, it should slow you down when you consider that a hymnal with 800 different titles “only” has 20 of her songs.  We need to accept the fact that it is a rare jewel that has one song worth remembering over the generations.  Most people writing songs never produce anything that should make it out of the garage.  If their goal is to have a good time in the garage, well and good.  If they expect to take the world by storm, maybe another day.  We need to keep looking for the diamonds and put the glass aside to be recycled.

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-190: Answers

Recently, I was reading and thinking about some of the Bible verses that talk about prayer and answers to prayer.  We tend to be very subjective on so many topics and when we think of answers to prayer, we focus on answers to our prayers.  People wonder why they don’t get what they asked for.  Often times the answer to that is relatively simple.

What brought me to this was thinking about the old wristbands that asked, “What would Jesus do?”  That is a happy thought, and a positive thought, but that’s not the question we should be asking.  What we should be asking is, “What would Jesus have us do?”  I thought of Jesus walking on the water as he wanted to get out to the boat in the middle of the lake.  I thought of Jesus telling the storm to quiet down.  It would be really great to be able to tell storms to quiet down.  It would be great to be able to control the weather.  But can you imagine the chaos if everyone was able to control the weather.  You might have one person asking for snow and another asking for a sunny beach day.  What kind of conflict with that cause?  Would it be hurricanes, tornadoes?

In reality, we are to often be glad that God does not answer our prayers.  He has a better view of what’s going on.  That’s why one verse specifically says that if we pray, according to his will, we will be answered.

Keep praying.  Our country needs it.  Your neighbors need it.  I imagine you and I need it.

homo unius libri