Its a new Day

Prayer 4: Cross the line

The Minority, Report

In the SciFi movie, “The minority Report”, precrime tools preempt and prosecute crimes based on what would have happened. It meant that a man could think of his brother, "I am going to kill you", which doesn't mean that at all, and end up being imprisoned for thinking that without having done any wrong at all. Well, at least the system weeded out serious threats.

 In distinguishing between Cain and Abel, or Jacob and Esau, God was potentially as preemptive. There was no yardstick to determine who was in or out, yet Cain and Esau failed.

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".

There will be no more, tears in heaven

In 1991 Connor, Eric's Clapton's 5 year old son, accidently crawled through a 53rd floor apartment window and fell to his death on the streets below. Clapton arrived shortly after his son fell and for a long time his performances were deeply haunted and distracted by the tragedy.

Out of the crisis came the haunting ballad, "Tears in Heaven", which I am trying to master. It presents challenges for voice and for guitar, but it is such a rewardingly beautiful song. Sadly Clapton rarely sings the song anymore, because he has moved on and feels too detached to do the song justice.

He rightfully argues that there will be no more tears in heaven. Sadness sure can tear us apart down on the streets below and it can lead to untold sorrow. But there are still no tears in heaven.

What we stop feeding, be it the lowest sin or highest faith .... will die

A facebook correspondent, Penny Pina, hit the motherlode today when she made the above statement. Interestingly, her surname, Pina, equates to a Hebrew word for substance as used in the Galileean town of Rosh Pina, which means, rock of substance or cornerstone. It was so named by Romanian refugees who started farming there in the mid-19th century. They established a Moshava and called their village Rosh Pina. Later Baron de Rothschild planted a garden in the village, which sits in the foothills of the Golan heights overlooking the sea of Galilee. 

A great African preacher said, "we need to move our faith a little bit down (from the head) and a little to the left (the heart)". It is the heart that feeds our faith, for it the essential common ground where we commune with God. Ours is not an intellectual faith. Although it is intellectually robust, it is a faith of the heart. It has to be felt not seen. But if it does not move the heart or fill our being with a revelation of God, whatever is conceived within us will be still-born and die. We feed our faith through the heart, just as we feed our bodies through the stomach or our intellect through the mind. Thus the same preacher said, "In our hearts are two dogs - a black and white dog. It is the one we feed most that thrives."

Living a seamless Christian life is the key to wellbeing and fulfillment

We all tend to compartmentalise our lives. There is a private compartment, a public one, a work one and a church one, and, for the guys especially, there is often a traffic or commuting compartment. Each little box imposes a specific set of characteristics on us, relating to our posuture, our face, our smile, our demeanor, our relationships, our space and so on. 

In the context of church life, it has always been our way to go to church and come away again. Jesus even suggested it would be so when He said my sheep go out and come in and find pasture. That said, the idea of a time and place religion was discredited by Jesus, when He said to the woman at the well, "We will no longer worship in Jerusalem or Samaria, for God seeks those who will worship Him in Spirit and Truth."

Experience, hope and a reason to overcome, equips our souls for life

Lewis Pugh is a soft spoken, unassuming individual, but he has swum a few hundred meters through arctic waters and across a Norwegian Fjord. His latest swim was across a glacial lake at 5,000m (15,000 ft) below the mighty mount Everest.

It took substantial mental and physical training to prepare him for his swims. His sponsors have enabled him to enjoy the support and company of a small army of medics, supporters and an arctic sports phsychologist. But his mission is not an act of vanity. He is a serious champion of global environmental issues. His swimming stunts give him access to world leaders who make a ready audience for his impassioned pleas. He is also empathetic, giving moral support to leaders in their fight against public resistance.

The candle burnt out long ago, but the legend never did

On this day in 1962, Marilyn Monroe took a fatal dose of sleeping tablets to escape her complex life. Although she raised the ire of the secret service for her indiscrete sharing of JFK's inner thoughts and worked her way through a few husbands, she could find no satisfaction. How sad for a girl who had so much going for her ... beautiful, talented and desirable. Well it was not to be. After 36 hectic and often exciting years, she burnt out and left the world stage: but as Elton John noted, her legend lives on.

She reminds me of the woman at the well, one of the most insightful human exchanges ever recorded about Jesus. It was not a parable, but a real-life exchange that could take another two thousand years to fully interpret. What a remarkeable person He was, so wise and yet so profoundly economical in His style. He could convey a wealth of meaning in a sentence.

What advantage then has the Jew, Part 2

Conversion is not a biblical term. Repentance and reconciliation are G-d's terms and to that end G-d broke down the walls that divided Jew and Gentile, Male and Female, Bond and Free ... so to make of the two, one. G-d has no agenda to convert Jews to Christians, for why then would Paul say that we are grafted in to their roots.

However, G-d was always progressive in the revelation of His heart to humankind and in that He has not left what He started, unfinished ... indeed He has brought it all to a profound conclusion that offers hope to all people, but firstly the Jews. That led to a New Covenant or New Testament as it is popularly known - the idea of something New is well documented in the teachings of Christ and the apostles, it is not a man-made concept.

I felt it kick

In my own trials I have come across countless others who are also struggling. Today I met an old friend who is in a dark place, but as I prayed for him I felt something like what Elizabeth must have felt. It was a kind of kick within my "spiritual womb", telling me that I was a witness to the birth of something new and special.

Do we get a thrill when we see God doing wonderful things in others? I fear that in most cases we resent it. We are far too individualistic, one of the most offensive attributes of kingdom life. Man, God also has great things in store for you and me, but even then its never about the individual. Its all about God's advancing kingdom. When one of us advances, the kingdom advances and when one stumbles we all suffer, for if one part of a body is in pain does not the whole body bear the consequence - as Paul said in Ephesians?

life is a True Man show

In the fascinating social study, The Truman Show, Jim Carrey is raised inside a virtual world. It is a televised synthesis of real life, where the main character lives alongside a knowing TV cast, who act out various scenes to sustain all illusions of reality. The entire set is located inside a huge dome that recreates its own climate, sunrises and sunsets, day and night, summer and winter. Everything is as real as can be, but the actors are wired to the producer, so that they can act on cue. That enables the producer to create mini-dramas through scene and character manipulation.

The only person in the entire show that is ignorant of what is really happening, is Truman, who was born into that surreal world and knows no other existence. Everyone else, including the audience, is in on the ruse.

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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