One - Not the date but the world and more

 

Time and the passing of it.  Hours turning into days and years. We think it's an inevitable part of life, but it's only an idea. Time is a construct, a framework we use to order the eternity into which we were born. In fact, when we start thinking about existence more as one whole thing rather than a collection of separate pieces, a lot of interesting things happen.

One Power

Evil is not a power and therefore does not need to be overcome because it is not eternal. Nothing that is not eternal has power over that which is eternal. The only power is God and His grace. Neither good nor evil, which only exist as worldly judgements, can alter God's perfection. 

Nothing we pray for (ask for) other than God's grace is grantable. God need not give what He has already given. Our job is merely to follow in the way He has shown us, to change ourselves and thus the world around us as we yield to Him

One Consciousness

In order to achieve God's highest, we have to let go of all people and places we love more than God. In the process, harm may come to them and to us, the this harm's purpose is to make us lean into God more and more, to know the Son of God already in us and to yield to it, to let what we love in the flesh fall apart around us, even to let our own flesh fall apart while we watch, knowing that both are opportunities to sink into the Son of God in us.

One Existence

There is no hope for this world in the sensory way we've come to think about it - that of good and bad, pleasure and pain. The temporal can never be perfected. Only God is perfect and we will find no peace or health except to the extent we yield to the eternal. 

Do not pray for more of God. Do not pray for anything. Just yield to what is already there. Do what is given to us to do and keep our mind on Him. 

Time doesn't matter. We are already safe in all the things that last. He is omnipotent. 

Image from istock

Looking for Bethlehem - Why to take your shoes off

 

Bethlehem. The star, the shepherds, the cows and the manger, that whole Christmas scene. It feels good. The nativity display in front of the church with Mary and Joseph and the sweet baby laying in the hay reminds us what Christmas is all about. 

Or does it?

In reality, that's not what Bethlehem looked like - not then, not now. When Jesus was born, the barn was more likely a cave and it took months, maybe years, for the three Kings (if they were kings, and if there where three of them) to show up. Today Bethlehem is a tourist destination that is home to about 25,000 people and pilgrims come to the Church of the Nativity where Christ was not born to remember that He was. 

It all sounds a little silly, more like Disney than a holy place, but its existence reminds us that many of us are looking for a place where we can connect our lives, our human lives, with God. Someplace where we are confident that He extends his finger to meet ours like He does in Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling.  And we think Bethlehem might be one of those this places where the veil between the physical and metaphysical is thin, one of those places where we can touch the finger of God.

This all reminds me of the trips I made to Italy in 2018 and 2025 and why I made them. I went to Italy thinking that Florence, seat of the Renaissance and home a prodigious collection of the Western world's most brilliant talents, might be one of those places. How could Dante, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, da Vinci, Galileo, and all their compatriots looking to express the glory of God have been able to do what they did if they didn't have a bead on some kind of divinity? They had to have a connection and I wanted to find our what it was. 

I was wrong, of course. 

Florence has no more connection to God than does Bethlehem. No place on Earth, no place, can help me find God. When we look to earthly places and things to find God, we don't find Him there. We just find more earthly places and things. In our rush to find easy access to Jesus, we forget what He told us. 

The kingdom of God is within you. - Luke 17:21.

Within you. We carry access to God around in us. We don't need to go looking for Him anywhere else. That's the reason He came in the first place - to show us what life in communion with God looks like. Not perfect. Not trouble-free, but always accessible if we're looking in the right place and following it.

That's why we take our shoes off when we meet God. Not because He is in the dirt or floor under our feet but because He is in the union of what He put in us and the rest of His creation. 

The Lord our God, the Lord is One - Deuteronomy 6:4

We are part of the One that is God - temple of the Holy Spirit (1Cor 3:16, 6:19), the hope of glory (Col 1:27). Bethlehem is sweet, but we don't need it anymore. We have Him. 

Photo credit: James Larkin

The Bark Before the Bite

 

Dogs are loud sometimes, and I suppose they were made that way for a reason - warning and protection - but when I'm walking in my neighborhood and a dog who I didn't see suddenly runs from the shelter of its yard right at me and starts barking, I am taken aback, startled. And the barking appears to be sinister. I am automatically afraid. I am the target and I don't like it.

Most of the time, though, the dog doesn't mean to threaten. I've run into this particular dog before and it does not appear to be mean. After all, it's often wagging its tail at the same time as it's making noise. That's what happened this morning. 

I was just walking along, minding my own business and my neighbor's dog, (unleashed) came running towards me, barking up a storm. The first thing I noticed was the noise - loud, harsh, and unrelenting. The second thing I noticed was that he was not connected to any restraint. Together, these things made me very cautious and I intentionally avoided eye contact with it because I'd heard somewhere that dogs are threatened by a human stare and I for sure did not want to do that.

The next things I noticed, surreptitiously, from the corner of my eye, was that the dog was little more than a puppy, a cute little guy, and that his tail was wagging. Hardly sinister.

That got me to thinking.

Thinking about the difference between how we say things and how others hear them. Instruction, Warning, Advice, Opinion. All of them can be shared in love and with an intent to constructive improvement, but I know without doubt that they are not always received that way. They are too often received as Judgement, Criticism, and Dismissal. The bark without any awareness of the desire to play. 

The thing with a dog is that their bark is pretty much one-dimensional. It's one bark, the only one they have. We should be able to do better. In our encounters, we have available many voices, many kinds of words. We have smiles to temper them, help to soften them, and gentle touches to emphasize them. And we don't always take the time to use them or even to take the time to think of them. We also have silence and patience, more powerful and helpful tools than we usually give them credit for.

It doesn't matter what we say if it's not heard they way it was meant. 

Like the dog this morning. I still don't know whether he wanted to play or would have bit me had I reached down to pet him. I suspect it was more the former than the latter, but I'll never know because I wasn't willing to risk the bite. The same is true, I think, of anyone I talk to. If they think I'm going to bite them, they'll turn around and keep walking. Not the result I'm looking for in any conversation I have. 

Now all I have to do when I get ready to open my mouth is remember the dog.