Soothing soul

THE DEPTHS OF OUR BEING - Our soul is like an inner stream of water, which gives strength, direction, and harmony to every other element of our lives. When that stream is as it should be, we are constantly refreshed and exuberant in all we do, because our soul itself is then profusely rooted in the vastness of God and his kingdom, including nature. 

All else within us is enlivened and directed by that stream. Therefore, we are in harmony with God, reality, and the rest of human nature and nature at large. To refer to someone’s soul is to say something about the ultimate depths of his being. Consider Jesus’ teaching that it does not profit one to gain the whole world and lose his own soul (see Matthew 16:26). 

What does it mean to lose your soul? Can you actually do that? Does it describe anyone you know? What it means is that your whole life is no longer under the direction of your inner stream of life, which has been taken over by exteriors. 

For example, the rich farmer abandoned his soul in favor of externalities. He had laid up treasure for himself and was not “rich toward God” (Luke 12:21). On the positive side, we see Mary calling upon her soul, that is, the deepest part of her being, to “magnify the Lord” (Luke 1:46, KJV). 

The psalmist said, My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, In a dry and weary land where there is no water. (Psalm 63:1) Of course the “water” spoken of here is not H2O but the water of life, which Jesus promised. These and many other passages make clear that the soul is the most basic level of life in the individual and is by nature rooted in God. We must take care to do whatever we can to keep it in his hands, recognizing all the while that we can do this only with his help.

 

Our coddled, corrupted, self-centered will

THE SPLINTERED WILL - Our will is what comes from nothing else but us. Will is the ability to originate (or refrain from originating) an act or a thing. It is the core of who and what we are as individuals, for what arises from our will is from us alone. It is that aspect of personality that gives us a likeness to God, what we are in his image. 

The will’s primary exercise in humans is the power to select what we think about and how intently we focus on it. From this, our other decisions and actions flow, more or less. Character develops from will. God doesn’t run over our will because it is highly precious and gives the person dignity. Choice—the exercise of will and spirit—is valued and carefully guarded throughout life. We are created to be creators of good. 

The drive toward good is naturally implanted in the human will by our Creator, but the will can become splintered, corrupted, and eventually turned against itself as a result of practical self-deification. The question, What good can I bring about? is replaced by How can I get my way? As exaltation of self replaces submission and service to God, manipulation, deception, seduction, and malice replace transparency, sincerity, and goodwill. 

Though God reveals his will to us, he chooses not to override our self-conflicted will, allowing us the consequences of our choices. Good and wise inclinations are frequently defeated by the flawed inclinations of our lives: social influences, mistaken ideas, overwhelming feelings, or disconnections and ruptures in the depths of the soul. The constant character of the will apart from God is duplicity—or, more accurately, fragmentation and multiplicity. It wills many things, and these cannot be reconciled with each other. 

Turned away from God, thoughts and feelings fall into chaos. Then the human will moves irresistibly toward deception. This is the result of pretending to feel and think one way while acting in another. Often the deception involved is self-deception, so that we cannot even understand ourselves and why we do what we do.

 

Go deep to keep from strangling someone!

I gave up memorizing Scripture years ago because I’d made it into a legalism. I worked hard at getting every word right, but I never turned it over in my mind. But then certain passages became near and dear to me, and I couldn’t resist. I’d studied their structure and how they fit together. I’d meditated on them and entered into them. Certain phrases rolled off my tongue with fondness. 

Without realizing it, I’d engaged in the three keys to memorizing that Dallas mentions elsewhere: repetition, concentration (focus), and understanding. Finally, I decided to embrace Colossians 3:1-17 because it pictured who I wanted to be. So on a lark, as I sat in an almost empty shuttle bus for a thirty-minute ride, I faced the window and began memorizing it. It began making even more sense to me! I noted phrases that still puzzled me so I could study them further. It was as if my mind finally gave in to my heart, which loved the ideas expressed in this passage and wanted them to be a description of who I was becoming. 

TODAY’S EXPERIMENT - Please resist skipping this experiment. A passage of Scripture that is relatively easy to memorize is 1 Corinthians 13. If you’ve been to a few weddings, you’ve almost got it. Once you know it, you can enjoy it as a description of God (patient, kind) and of life in the kingdom (seeing dimly now, face-to-face soon!) while you’re doing yard work or waiting in line at a store. 

Before trying to memorize it, however, read it slowly—maybe every day for a week or several times a day. Print it out and carry it around with you. Relish the words and ideas. See how they fit together. Notice progressions. Picture the people you know who embody these verses. Picture God’s love for you. Get so familiar with the passage that it would be difficult not to memorize it. 

Perhaps you could give just verses 4-7 a try. They begin with two “is” statements: patient and kind. These are followed by six “does not/is not” statements: envy, boast, proud, rude, self-seeking, easily angered. These six flow back and forth from inward (envy, proud, self-seeking) to outward (boast, rude, easily angered). They’re all about self-preoccupation. 

Then come the two more complicated phrases: no record of wrongs, not delighting in evil but rejoicing in truth. Then the passage ends with the four “always” phrases (first and last begin with p): protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres. This last set has become a quick prayer for me when I’m in a business meeting and want to strangle someone. I pray that I may always protect, always trust, always hope, always persevere. [Previous posts: https://restfuljourney.blogspot.com/2020/12/renovation-of-heart-is-absolutely-mind.html ]

Getting God's thoughts as part of you & me

GOD’S THOUGHTS IN YOU - Nourishing our mind with good and godly ideas, images, information, and the ability to think creates our vision (recall the VIM - Vision-Intention-Means structure). From these, we intend to be formed so that God is a constant presence in our mind, crowding out false ideas, destructive images, misinformation about God, and crooked beliefs. 

As for means, certain tried and true disciplines aid us in the transformation of our thought life toward the mind of Christ. We cannot transform our ideas, images, information, or thought processes into Christlikeness by direct effort, but we can adopt certain practices that indirectly will have that effect. 

The most obvious thing we can do is draw certain key portions of Scripture into our mind and make them a part of the permanent fixtures of thought. This is the primary discipline for the thought life. We need to know these passages like the back of our hand, and a good way to do that is to memorize them and then constantly turn them over in our mind as we go through the events and circumstances of our lives (see Joshua 1:8; Psalm 1). 

The desired effect will not be realized by focusing on isolated verses but will come as we ingest passages such as Romans 5:1-8 or 8:1-15, 1 Corinthians 13, or Colossians 3:1-17. When we take these into our mind, our mind will become filled with the light of God himself. You might say, “I can’t memorize like that.” I assure you, you certainly can. God made your mind for it, and he will help you. He really wants you to do this. As you choose to give your time and energy to the renovation of your mind (intend it), it will happen! (Earlier posts are here: https://restfuljourney.blogspot.com/

 

Beauty from human perspective and God's panorama

FROM DIVINE CONSPIRACY, by Dallas Willard - While I was teaching in South Africa…Matthew Dickason took me out to see the beaches near his home in Port Elizabeth I stood in stunned silence and then slowly walked toward the waves. Words cannot capture the view that confronted me. I saw space and light and texture and color and power.that seemed hardly of this earth God sees this all the time Great tidal waves of joy must constantly wash through his being. 

We pay a lot of money to get a tank with a few tropical fish in it and never tire of looking at their brilliant iridescence and marvelous forms and movements. But God has seas full of them, which he constantly enjoys. Human beings can lose themselves in card games or electric trains and think they are fortunate. 

But to God there is available, “towering clouds of gases trillions of miles high, backlit by nuclear fires in newly forming stars, galaxies cartwheeling into collision and sending explosive shock waves boiling through millions of light-years of time and space.” These things are all before him, along with numberless unfolding rosebuds, souls, and songs—and immeasurably more of which we know nothing.

Cited in Dave Harris' Treasure Trove in Passing Vessels: Ordinary people leading intriguing lives. iUniverse. Kindle Edition. 

Holidays erased and replaced

 Just read an article by Jason Rantz in mynorthwest.com

The King County Office of Equity and Social Justice (OESJ) spent taxpayer dollars on a calendar that erases the names of America’s traditional holidays, which included religious holidays. Actually, it erases most holidays, replacing them with heritage celebration months to better reflect the office’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, so long as it doesn’t represent the traditional American celebrations, or those of Christians or Jews.

Seattle, Wa is part of King County, which has numerous other cities in it as well.  If you’ve followed the news in the past 8 months you know that Seattle has its share of Anarchists protesting and setting things on fire.  In fact, we had a 6 block part of downtown Seattle taken over by Antifa and BLM and the mayor and city council did zero to discourage this.  Businesses lost, rapes, murder….nothing done.  The mayor described all of this as a “summer of love”.  Still continuing by the way.

But King County did come out with a 2021 calendar, somewhat similar to one published in 2019…..at taxpayer expense….that eliminated Mother’s Day (Because it showed gender intolerance), Father’s Day (Because it showed gender intolerance), Independence Day (Because it supports a country that is embedded in racism), Memorial Day (Because it supports those who participated in nation building), Labor Day (Token day of worker oppression), Easter (Because it shows a religion of intolerance, hate, racism, discrimination), Thanksgiving (Because it celebrates how white's destroyed Native Americans), Christmas (Same as Easter).

The good news is that these holidays are represented by a ‘circle’ on the date, so that the day stands out, but no annotation of why the ‘circle’ is there.

However, there were ‘holidays’ inserted with notable descriptions. Black History Holiday, Asian Love Holiday, Indian/Native Holiday, BIPOC Support Holiday, Gay/Lesbian Month, Transgender Awareness Month.  There is not one month that doesn’t have some social justice DAY or MONTH celebrated for these “causes.”  

When asked how “inclusion” means removing all of the holiday labels they don’t agree with or oppose, (which by the way is exclusion), the people asking were accused of being hostile, racist and white supremacists, yes even black callers. Thanksgiving is omitted from the calendar, replaced with Native American Heritage Month. Christmas isn’t mentioned on the calendar, either. Instead, the calendar celebrates International Human Rights Day on Dec. 10.

Hanukkah most definitely doesn’t get a mention. As far as Jews go, they stopped being progressive around the start of the anti-Semitic Boycott-Divest-Sanction movement. Of course, no mention of Jewish American Heritage Month in May.  No worries, in April, the calendar celebrates Arab American Heritage Month.

If I receive a 2021 calendar from OESJ, I better have another calendar close at hand.

Why utopia fails

WOW! $2000 a month from Uncle Sugar sounds great! Free medical care sounds fabulous! Free college and canceled student loans sounds fantastic! Free food & housing? Who wouldn't want that?!!! Oops!

Here's why it can't happen for long: Who pays? AHA!!!!!! Of course!!!! Tax the rich!!!! Oops! Problem: The rich, who already pay the lion's share of taxes, MOVE! They've left California and New York for Florida and Texas (no state income tax). So? Up their federal tax!!! Problem: They'll move offshore. Years ago Congress placed luxury taxes on yachts. Problem: Workers who worked building yachts in the U.S. lost their jobs because the rich bought yachts in other countries.

The Laffer Curve (Google it) shows that with both a zero and 100% tax rate, NO tax revenue results. Find the sweet spot in between?

UPSHOT: The rich move overseas to avoid sky-high taxes. No one left who can afford to pay for utopia. U.S. Treasury prints unlimited money. Interest on U.S. debt skyrockets. U.S. dollar collapses. China declares U.S. dollar is no longer recognized in the world economy and declares the Chinese yuan as the world's standard currency. Utopia crashes and burns and Venezuela adopts us as one of their colonies. NOTE: Venezuelans are now eating their pets for food. Take action now to buy a St. Bernard!