There is a song sung by Francisco Ortega called “Now that you’re Gone.” It’s a song about a brother lost, and of a mourning sibling; the world spins without meaning, now that he is gone. Spins without meaning, has this happened to you? It is amazing, how one’s worldview, one’s value system, forsake their meaning–providing function and betray our trust. It’s as if a mean trick has manipulated us, or has been fooling us all along. It wounds us, it strikes down our high place of safety and repose. It sabotages in a moment what has been built over many years perhaps. We spin, and spin. An essential element, a vital piece of the puzzle, an every day visitor suddenly is missing, and we have no answers. We turn to God. But shockingly we find this event has no prior reference in our conceptualized view of God. Our phony world…
Tag: <span>suffering</span>
God’s healing of his people contains serious aspects. I am not certain what they all mean; perhaps we must all reconcile mentally with God’s planet-wide cursing after Adam and Eve’s sin. Life at times dishes out toil and little fun; I really don’t get it. Nobody will argue against the reward found in making an honest living and raising a family; building a house etc. Ecclesiastes 9:9 says “live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which He hath given thee under the sun all the days, of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life and in thy labor which thou takest under the sun”. Necessary degrees of resistance sharpens the face; what else can we deduce? At last, life’s puzzle bullies us into figuring it out, and as we yield to it, more…
We find with Jacob’s story his challenge of handling his own value fluctuations —secondly, his forming of deep personal convictions. We find this even more than with the stories of Abraham and Isaac. Another way of saying it is; he was made to stand, in the midst of circumstances and relationships, while these pressed against his inward citadel, gradually forcing a determined-fight mentality in Jacob. He fought the war between belief and unbelief. For healing, Jacob gives us, uncensored, stark reality in living color. We have looked at the fallen nature of man worked in, now we look at the “reversing” plan of God; and it too, chiseled into a soul. Jacob’s adverse challenges arose from a flight of fear. Brother Esau had threatened to kill him, leading to a miserable tenure under uncle Laban. So, he is made to deal with his own insecurity and the deceit of Laban…
“…and that they were afraid was the essential consequence of the fact that they retrograded from Gods love and had therefore incurred Gods wrath.” Franz Delitzsch Conscience “a knowing together with God” awakens the terriblest. Every gritty body nerve, and every psychic sinew, in denial, dreads the dawning of conscience. It arrives as a wake up call on the level of a freight-train. It whisks us away into a clawing-out mode of life. Flat-out life-loathing attends it. We’re hijacked into bustle’s whims, all of which we vowed, would get consideration when hell freezes over. But no; we’re head-over-heels right now, hot-footed feet blazing. “My life slipped way out of sync, my true-blue supporters turned out miserable liars.” “Woe is me, I am undone, a man of unclean lips.” “Thou Art the Man.” cried Nathan” Conscience: confronts the willful infant coddle and screams “get the ‘h’ off your…
Arizona Scenery Let’s begin with dissociation. “a term in psychology describing a wide array of experiences from mild detachment from one’s immediate surroundings to more severe detachment from one’s physical and emotional reality.” “The major characteristic of all dissociative phenomena involves a detachment from reality.” Daydreaming and non-pathological altered states of consciousness are mild forms. “On the other end of the spectrum are the dissociative disorders: fugue, depersonalization etc. These are typically experienced as startling, autonomous intrusions into the person’s usual ways of responding or functioning. They are quite unsettling. In mild cases dissociation can be regarded as a coping mechanism or defense mechanism in seeking to master, minimize or tolerate stress—including boredom and conflict.” Wikipedia It interests me, and maybe all of us, to see a psychological picture of the wound which effects the dissociation. Before we do that, let us consider what causes the wound: generally associated with…
“Beverly 79” Part 3 must now follow. We can’t dismiss the need for discipline, focus, enduring in times when things seem to be quite impossible. We will have many moments overwhelmed, many occasions of pain and disgust. We will not be spared the heartache. We will not find easy fixes for these times. I must qualify my convictions—they were built in times of war, in times of battle, in times of defeat, in times of despair. “Disillusionment, O my faithful companion; disheartening, my enduring guide.”. Failure has been a friend, and mine has been tears. I lost my face, I lost my son, I lost my dignity and even my hope. My gain? Christ. O undeservingly yes— but nevertheless Him. An easier message for you I have not in my bag. I weep to think I would trade anything of my trouble; I would not. In helplessness we discover Helps…
Healing is all of this and more. Well, you might say, I was wounded when my husband left me 4 years into the marriage and I have never recovered. I had received Christ as a child and my spouse and I served Him for most of our youth years. I will never be the same. Can I say this in a kind way; this problem, and also the problem of multitudes, is not that you were hurt at age 25. The deeper issue is that all of mankind since Adam are built out of wound-able stock. Even if reunited to the correct power source as a child, and graced with the re-gene of Jane Smith at that time, you still had a critical piercing that found and did damage to a vulnerable area of your soul. I must by honest, and sensitive, but the part of you that was wounded…
God spoke to me this way: “I heal men in the same way I healed the whole human race.” Forces oppose our cure: The first tries to blockade the unfolding truth revelation, including both; God’s true nature and God’s true redemption. Second, targets the human faculty for digesting, understanding and adopting the unfolding disclosure. Third, inhibits focus continuity so the healing can’t continue a constant. God heals mankind this way: one, purchases them out of the slave market of sin and self. Two, He sets their feet on a rock. Three, He establishes their going. All can be viewed from the unfolding revelation of what a man exists as, stays as, and proceeds as. Man is made for stability. Before the fall we see man always in the light of God’s overshadowing countenance. We see relationship, we see fellowship, love. In the departure from these, we see man alone and…
coal stokers in tandem Hab 3:17-19 17 Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: 18 Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. 19 The Lord God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places. To the chief singer on my stringed instruments. Ever happen to you? —The siege of starving, abyss of emptyness, cauldron of flames, blackness, cut off from simple life? —Pain of waking, wrestling match of emotions, dread of enemies approach. A lot of the Bible found expression out of these depths—Paul in jail, Job…
“ no one knows his name—a man who lives in the streets and walks around in rags, once I saw that man in a dream, He and God were constructing an extraordinary temple.” Francis of Assisi Intercepting the helpless soul as it plummets into black and messy conundrum, this storybook attempts not by scholarly work, but life immersion, nor just words on a page; a sense of God-quickening. Oft times, the dilemmas manifest themselves as dastardly and cruel bargings-in. Other times they subtly approach from the shadows. Either way, these enigmatic occurrences create stupefaction; they boggle the most studious, baffle the intellectual. They awaken the inferno of ire from within, roust the deadly smear campaign, or shock the nerves with fright. They are understood only by the likes of the stone cold broke, who subsist in perpetual desperation, and so accumulate a curious wisdom, maybe saving the day…