Prayer 4: Cross the line

The French connection

In the movie, “Now you see me”, the actors are at pains to remind us that illusionism is about keeping your mind focused there while they do their thing here. It is about distraction.

I might add that the modern illusionist has taken such deception to unprecedented levels, to make planes or bridges disappear, while others walk on water or drive coins through glass.

During the French revolution, the illusionists were never seen. They used a stage hand, Robespierre, to do out there what detracted from what the puppet masters did over here. 

When they had had enough of Mr R, his head rolled as well.

Keep going until it makes sense

So much of life proves that waiting is useful. 

A top restaurant will insist that good food takes times. 

A mother with child knows that once her course is run her joy will be full. 

A student pushes through the years of learning, motivated by the prize beyond and the value of waiting for it. 

A farmer reconciles himself to the idea that what seems like nothing is happening will yet bear fruit. 

That my will may be done ...

Psalm 139: 5 says, "You hem me in behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me." Its a familiar feeling for many who have times of contradiction and frustration in their lives.

The world is changing radicly and quickly - the church must respond

Over the last few days I passed a monster, four times. It was the biggest machine I have ever seen. It stood at least five stories high, but the boom rose a further ten stories, to give the machine a reach of over 300 feet. It is a factory in its own right, except that it walks.

I was traveling through extensive coal fields watching these fantastic monsters rip up earth to expose the coal face. Around them I saw mountains of black coal awaiting export or transfer to nearby power stations. As I drove along the way I also saw a dragline dumping overburden on a mound, which raised billows of dust that, from a distance, looked more like the plume of a volcano.

I felt I was watching the death-throws of a great industrial marvel.

Time only time, if we only had time, only time

Have you ever mixed up your dates so badly that you arrived a day late for a meeting? I did today and yes I know it could only happen to me.

It is supposed to be the 19th today and maybe it still is, somewhere on the planet, or maybe it still was when I headed off, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, for an important meeting - only to arrive at the security window and find that today ... is the 20th. Look I did what I could to correct them, but it was tough to persuade several hundred workers to reset their calendars, so I had to capitulate and realign my own system.

You would think, in this day and age, that we could all standardise, but alas it is just not to be. Yet, when it suits them, people still want us to adopt their standards. I had the same problem when I was in the army - my mom always noticed that I could keep the pace, whilst the rest of my battalion remained out of step. It reminds me of a time when she phoned my dad to tell him that some idiot was driving the wrong way down a highway, to which he aptly replied, "All the idiots on this highway are doing it".

He stands upon the circle of the heavens

When Job said, "He stands on the circle of the heavens", did He give us a vital and scientifically acceptable, but otherwise very elusive clue to where heaven is and how it fits into the grand design and order of the created universe? Can we determine where the throne of God is relative to us on earth and the greater expanse of our universe? I suggest we may indeed be able to do that.

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Does God live in a present-continuous tense?

Is God forever living in the reality of that which He paid so high a price to resolve? Will it always be with Him? He may know the future, but does He live in the future, present and past, in a present-continuous state of existence? Is His timeless history just a dimension of His eternal state of being? If so, does He forgive and forget, or just choose to not recall?

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Time and eternity

Time is limited to created things that all have defined beginnings. The creator is the only truly independent variable and everythings stands or falls by Him, so all things that we made must be relative to Him and subject to Him. Thus the entire universe is a subset of His absolute constancy. Time and Space are also relative to Him and exist by and for Him. So far so good, but by that logic is there time in heaven? Whilst we about it, can did Jesus have a beginning?

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