South Africa has the deepest hard rock gold mine up to 12800 feet underground. At such depths the heat is unbearable for humans, and air conditioning is required for the safety of the workers. Wikipedia On average it takes 10-20 years before a gold mine is even ready to produce material that can be refined. Long before any gold can be extracted, significant exploration and development needs to take place, both to determine as accurately as possible, the size of the deposit as well as how to extract and process the ore efficiently, safely and responsibly. www.gold.org.n.d. What can we learn? “It may be hard, dark or hot, but we clever humans have ciphered grabbing and stacking gold and gems. Grabbing wisdom tells a different story and we faint while getting it, because wisdom shows itself a “different animal.” We fail wisdom mining even though time money and great sacrifice…
Healing at the Cross Posts
Bells toll, signalling for us to rise up, look up first, lift our heads before that, awake from shame into approval, honor, and esteem. Singing flows from us, “glory, glory, glory to the Lamb that was slain.” “All praises and honor to our God, forever and ever, amen.” Daily our souls must hear the bells ringing as Martin Luther did: “The just shall live by faith.” “It was a creative sentence for the reformer and the Reformation. It was in these words that God then said, ‘let there be light! and there was light.” “It was the unveiling of the face of God.” “All through his convent days he proceeds upon the assumption that God gloats over his misery. His life is a long drawn out agony. He creeps like a shadow along the galleries of the cloister, the walls echoing with his dismal mornings. His body wastes to a…
“Survival of the fittest” is a mantra of the extremely observant. But, is empirical evidence the same as truth? On two levels, no. First, it contradicts the Bible, “The kingdom of God comes without observation. (ocular evidence) Luke 17:20 But secondly, even the best observationist can only find seeming truth. Why? Because our observations are only as true as we abide in The Truth. In this inner abiding is where I can be aware of the world at a level outside of myself, or, unfortunately, I actually create my own world, unknowingly. Charles Darwin (biologist and evolution’s greatest contributor), saw a problem: ” if…men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that their unmarried females would, like the worker bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill your fertile daughters, and no one would…
2 Corinthians 5:19 speaks a great truth to us, “That is, in Messiah, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them; and He has entrusted the message of reconciliation to us.” The Savior brought us a new consciousness, and in that conscience there is no ledgering of a person’s willful trespasses. 2 Corinthians 4:6 tells us why, “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” When this light enters a heart, then comes an immediate “knowing,” because Jesus is the Light of the World. Many use their eye-gate to evaluate the world, they answer for themselves the question of “how.” This means they can give a whole chart describing the function and content of the eye from scientific…
My secret has always been God, His presence, His word, His life, His work. Have I done great things for God or man? No. Small stuff. I need God for the small stuff — all my stuff is small. Truth is, I cannot measure or evaluate any degree or effect of impact coming from my life. “From the desire of being great, good Lord deliver us.” A Moravian prayer How does “small” happen? God does it. He makes us small and contents us with little. A friend lived in a nursing home for 3 or 4 years. He had been afflicted with a stroke. On a recent visit we talked of many who were imprisoned or killed in the war, standing for their faith. We mused about what it must have been like, and wondered how we would have responded if it was us. My friend volunteered quickly; ‘I would…
The times were post-modern, the setting? — anywhere U.S.A. The question then, “hath God said?” Answer, “you shall not surely die.” Heard this before? Yes, we have read it in our Bibles, pages 1-3. Quohelet later speaks in Ecclesiastes, “All is breath, and herding of the wind.” There is nothing new under the sun. Same old — same old! The dialectics tell us of new forms for reasoning, that the truth-based deductive reasoning is obsolete. They tell us we must accept both sides of the question and reject the law of non-contradiction. They want us to tolerate the lie, accept it’s right to express itself, and even exalt it to a place of equality with truth. Red dogs bark louder, my dog is red my dog barks louder. They dismiss the simple reasoning. Ho hum; the Bible calls these folks, “fools” because they have no delight in understanding —…
Behind vision, we find redemptive revelation; nothing else quite produces a vision by which people do not perish. 2 Corinthians 4:16 reminds us, “though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. “ Inward renewal keys the visionary’s gaze which is the image of Christ and Him crucified. This must be a constant for every believer or the restraints for forward movement are nullified. Folks, it remains that the image of Christ and Him crucified includes”Love” which covers the multitude of sins — those acknowledged and those denied. Yes, Love with sins’ final judgment is the vision-maker of every blood-bought believer. Standing opposed to vision are man’s many differences. These differences should find solution in the uniting of all men under the banner of Christ’s “breaking down the middle wall of partition” between individuals and groups, a by-product of His dying, and so making peace. With Christ’s…
Job 23:14 teaches, “For He performs the thing that is appointed for me: and many such things are with him.” Job 23:10 says “But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” Job 23:6 said, “Will he plead against me with his great power? No; but he would put strength in me.” Struggle, strive, strain and worry comprise something not Christian, for He is faithful who has called us, who will also do it. God is performing the thing concerning me. But, Job declares these profound truths in a time of severity. Matthew Henry explains: “I am loath to think holy Job would charge the holy God with iniquity; but his complaint is indeed bitter and peevish, and he reasons himself into a sort of patience per force, which he cannot do without reflecting upon God as dealing hardly…
Isolated? yes, so are many, but loneliness hurts people at holiday times. Is there help? Let’s look at some clinical observations first. “At the root, isolation compromises immunity, increases the production of stress hormones, and is harmful to sleep. All of this feeds chronic inflammation, which lowers immunity to the degree that lonely people even suffer more from the common cold.” “If we cling to the belief that we should be perfect, we may not risk doing things that might expose our imperfections. …we don’t want the risk of being disappointed. Our fear of failing keeps us isolated.” “…fear of facing shame or embarrassment. We don’t want to be seen as defective—or see ourselves as flawed.” psychologytoday John Amodeo Ph.D., MFT A solution is offered: “The curious paradox is that when I can accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” Carl Rogers “…This takes a courageous willingness to feel sad or disappointed sometimes, or even a mild sense of shame, which…
Good people all this Christmas time, consider well and bear in mind, …