Even the smallest puddle reflects the Sky
Independence Day… reminder of freedom in America from Tyranny, Oppression, Dictatorship…
“E Pluribus Unum” or, “Out of Many, One” (traditional motto of the US).
Yes, America has come a long way, but yesterday I saw tanks lined up for the Celebration??! I’ve been American my whole life and never recall this happening before.
Continue reading “Freedom from Power-Seeking & Glory on the Fourth of July”
Imagine a city so loaded with gold and gems they become standard building materials. Add other precious metals and stones to the mix and just marvel. It’d be palatial, decadent, … God-like?
Hmmm.
“Streets of gold” is a phrase probably rooted in a bible passage on heaven: “… The great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass…” (Revelation 21:21)
But I don’t care if it’s true or not. The real question for me is: What good is all that Gold??
Continue reading “God Wouldn’t Fly First-Class: 3 Surprising Reasons the Streets are Gold in Heaven”
What do you think? Is it possible for a religion claiming inspiration from a humble, foot-washing, dying-on-behalf-of-“haters”- God, to have followers preaching hate, exclusion, and oppression?
Sadly, it’s possible. Continue reading “Love, Law & Christianized Hate: One Bible Verse to Flip the Script”
Why doesn’t Lightning come down straight? It’s ferocious and 5x hotter than the surface of the sun, so shouldn’t it just, literally, charge down?
I never gave lightning much thought until I heard a Capital Kings track, Forever. One lyric line, “I feel Your Lightning in my veins,” touched something in my heart and I was inspired to find lightning wallpaper for my phone. As I admired it, I realized how much lightening looks like our veins…
Continue reading “God like Lightning: Are You Doing the Zig Zag Too?”
If God really existed, why is the world so wrecked? And if *He is so “good,” how could He let those things happen to me…?
(note: I use He/His as pronouns for God but fully recognize God with male and female ‘identity,’ for lack of a better word, as evidenced throughout the Bible and the human race. 2-pt post here if you like).
Just one look at the suffering and oppression in this world –not just against people, but all creation– and it’s hard not to stumble on belief in a good God. But blaming (or denying) Heaven for all the woe ignores our God-Given freedom to destroy everything just fine on our own.
Hands can hurt flesh, and mouths can speak death, yet we rarely see God grab someone mid sentence, or mid swing. And if He did intervene every time we exercised our freedom, would we really be free?
Continue reading “Submissive God? 3 Bible Verses Exposing Mankind’s Freedom that May Blow Your Mind”
This post is part of the #GodsOneLines series–breaking hate and/or shame caused by people wielding bible verses. Instead I want to use single bible verses or events to encourage and reveal God’s Heart if possible.
This story starts with Tears– mine as I write, and Heaven’s one fateful day.
It starts with the return of Jews from Babylonian exile. Their repeated offenses, including refusing to set servants free, caught up with them despite divine warnings. Sure, they listened for a time, but soon after changed their minds, re-taking men, women and children into captivity (sounds like the Moses story with Pharaoh, right?)
Continue reading “Choosing Law over Love: A Sad Example of Broken Families from Ezra”
Imagine with me. You have all the power in the world and want to showcase it. What would you do first? I asked this to a group of kids and their answers ranged from world peace and feeding everyone, to jumping out of a plane with no parachute, or bringing a loved one back from the dead.
How about you? Would you rescue someone? Is there a moment in time you would change?
Jesus, the reported “son of God” faced the same question. He also faced the hatred of God-fearing/revering religious leaders (Pharisees) who considered the “son of God” stuff blasphemy. After all, if you’re the son of God, you yourself must be “God” and thus all powerful (amongst other things). (And now we can all call ourselves sons and daughters of God..).
Why did Jesus heal blindness two different ways? One man was healed with a word, the other with spit and dirt. It was a mess, it didn’t make sense, but after a rinse a man born blind could see. The religious elite didn’t like it. They held an inquiry, interrogating and frightening the parents. They asked the man: “what did he do to you?” but weren’t satisfied with the answer. They insulted him to the core and then excommunicated him.
But like all freaks, weirdos, outcasts and misfits, Jesus seeks us out…
Continue reading “Sometimes We Need Mud in Our Eyes to See Straight [#LoveHateCountdown]”
Some people associate God with Might and limitless Power. I heard one Pastor say, ‘we don’t need a God of Love, we need a God to be feared.’ #Wt?
But God’s gentleness is easy to miss if you only experience angry voices hating with a bible in the hand. You can catch this in some politics, at some funerals, and even in some churches.
The world can easily question God’s Heart, and rightly so.
But glimpse these 3 examples of *His #Gentleness and repair the breach: Continue reading “3 Examples of God’s Gentleness to Help Break Our God Hate”
You may be a fellow parent at school, or faithful church goer. Maybe a pastor, doctor, teacher, neighbor, police officer, business mogul, bus driver, politician, janitor… You may be friend or family, male or female, greying or young, any race, (anti)religion, sexual orientation, political party affiliation,..
I’m not here to curse or condemn you. This is an honest letter from the heart.
When did Clark Kent realize he was different? In Man of Steel (2013) little Clark is overwhelmed by his super hearing and X-Ray vision in class. He hides in a closet and later asks his mom, “What’s wrong with me?”
How many times have you asked yourself the same thing?
We don’t always ‘fit’ in this world. We can feel like rejects, outcasts, misfits, and some of us have been so badly hurt— sorrows and pressure can drain us like a black hole. Is the world supposed to be like this..?
Am I made for something more..?
Continue reading “Superman: The Day We Realize Our Identity”
If you’ve got kids, you’re raising them to leave you. That cut umbilical cord was the clue they don’t really belong to us–they were born to fly.
Eventually they leave the nest–Mine are too young for me to even fathom this, but I lived it and probably you too. When we return, parents cancel appointments and make favorite meals. Quality time and fun are maximized and we taste a bit of heaven.
Were you one of the kids who packed up dirty laundry to bring home? I was!!
Continue reading “God Does Dishes & the Laundry–Glimpsing a Servant King”
It’s a questions all Christians could ask themselves: Who would you rather rule over you–or even the world? Jesus or a Pharisee? For those who don’t know what a Pharisee is, they were the religious learned of Jesus’ day. Those who studied, meditated on, and taught from God’s Words, and one would expect them to know God best.
But Jesus bumped heads with them regularly…
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. (Matthew 23:27)
God was always more concerned with our inner condition than our words or actions. Yikes.
Religion, on the other hand, is easy. It skips the inner transformation and focuses instead on appearances, rules to keep, e.g. don’t touch, don’t taste… and God forbid you question or break a rule-Woe to you!
Continue reading “Who would you rather Rule? Jesus or a Pharisee?”
This is Day 20 of the “Wild Kids, Wild God – Looking into God’s Heart Series“
A “manger” is sad place to put a baby in any era. The word comes from French, manger (mahn-shay), which means, “to eat.” Indeed, Jesus’ crib was a feeding trough, filled with food scraps and leftovers–things we probably would call trash.
If you’ve ever been treated like crap, rejected, looked down upon, spoken ill of, if you ever felt like you deserved better but instead got worse, please know, what happened to you matters
…
But didn’t Jesus deserve a palace? After all, he got his very own Star! Alas, God was determined to identify 100% with Mankind: not just live among us, but get knee deep in our M.e.s.s. .(btw, Im betting we all got a star…)
God loves using symbolism and I wondered, Why the barn? Why a feeding trough?
Continue reading “The baby in a feeding trough: A Secret of the Manger”
Day 12 in the “Wild Kids, Wild God- 31 Days Looking into God’s Heart” Series.
Whether you’re religious, Christian, Jewish, atheist… you’ve probably heard of Moses, renegade prince turned humble shepherd. His story is written in the book of Exodus (Bible and Torah), and portrayed in many movies. In addition to receiving the 10 commandments (don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t lie…)* he was chosen to lead the Jewish nation out of slavery and oppression in Egypt into freedom.
The Jews still celebrate the amazing events that took place those thousands of years ago today (Passover) .
The story is pretty straightforward, but one passage often troubled me:
God tells Moses that He will harden Pharaoh’s heart. This results in Pharaoh’s refusal to let the people go free, and brings unrighteousness and greater trouble, which I normally don’t associate with God.
Also the simple statement that God will intervene on a man’s heart–call me naive but I only know God as One Who knocks on the “door” (our hearts) though He made it and holds the key. (Revelation 3:20). Continue reading “Pharaoh’s Hardened Heart–Do I Love Because I Must, or I Want to?”
