Blame Game

From Abraham Heschel, "I Asked For Wonder"

It is customary to blame secular science and antireligious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined, not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid.

When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.

Bow

"At the name of Jesus every knee will bow, in heavan and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glowry of God the Father."

-Phil 2:10-11

Sunday is here. Come bow with us and honor His Holy Name. It's just practice for the real thing but He's coming soon. So come on out to Bethany Barn and bow with us.

5:00 Ping Pong

7:00 Loud Music and Bowing

Leonardo's Light

Leonardo was an interesting fellow. Perhaps the most unusual of all of God's creation. He was a genius, thinking in abstractions five-hundred years before their times. He wasn't just an artist. He was an inventor, a military strategist, engineer, municipal planner, and his interest in the working of the human body lead him to covert mortician work.

Personally, he was an enigma. He was said to be a sorcerer, a homosexual, a necrophiliac, and the keeper of Jesus' secret love life. The truth is we know little but what was left in his notebooks, his few surviving paintings (many of which he never finished) and his trail of court cases. But we can clearly see his genius, his forward thinking, and his fascination with creation.

"The color of the object illuminated partakes of the color of that which illuminates it."

-Leonardo da Vinci

In this quote Leo is speaking about a basic principle of light and color. An item's color is effected by everything around it. A white vase next to a red apple will have a pinkish hue from the refracted light. But there is also a much deeper meaning that one can see. Let's look to the book of First John for a similar message.

Walking in the light

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.


Us human beings like to think of ourselves as being rough and tough. Paul Simon sang in that old folk song, "I am a rock... I am an island." But I think that song is mostly Paul's wishful thinking. The reality is we aren't rocks. We aren't hard and unaffected by the world in which we live. In a strange way I think we are like sponges. We are porous and absorb everything around us. If we surround ourselves with the illusions of this world, if we suck up the glitz and glamour, the neon lights and the fast food filth, we become that which we see, that we hear. We are what we eat. But if we focus on the Light of the World, if we soak up the Son... if we bask in the Ever Glow of God's Son Jesus Christ, we take on that which shines down on us.

Lord, shine on me.

God Made Woman

The man said,
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman,'
for she was taken out of man."

Genesis 2:23

There is just something special about a woman. The curve of her cheek, the smell of her hair, her shapely silouette. In my humble opinion, the female form is some of God's best work. Sure there are mountains that astonish and waterfalls that take your breath away. And shots from the Hubble telescope are quite amazing. But WOMAN... WOMAN... There is something to behold.

Sometime in life you find yourself in the company of a certain woman, one that seems to see right through the walls that we build around our hearts. Like armor for sheep, she easily steps right through the barriers and touches your soul. You sit there at the moment and stare at her... and you know what Adam must have felt...

"WOW! God... This living, breathing being is perfect for me... I am no longer alone."

God Made Woman

Keith Urban

It must've been the most beautiful day
Looking down on all creation
He took a river that winds and turns
He took a fire that breathes and burns
And put it all in place
In the most precious way

When God made woman
He must've been proud
He must've been crying aloud
Or laughing out loud
Must've felt like the first time
Getting kissed by the sun
When God made woman

Modigliani was a painter that got God's greatest creation. In his paintings he abstracted men to be angular and course. Woman he made curved, elegant, subtle, quiet, passionate and always long necked and graceful. I look at Modi's work and I see that woman, that Eve... that perfect woman that comes along and makes you whole.

God never wanted us to be alone. He made people for us to find, to stare at.... to fall in love with and to take our breath away. Thank Him for the wonderful gift of love... His wonderful gift of woman.

The Modern Machine

"Circles"
Switchfoot

Another day
Another sunrise
Another factory call
Another night
Another sunset
Another freefall

Am I alive?
Am I on purpose?
Within the weakness
Within the weakness...

Spinning out in circles

You are on the right track when you are down. You are on the right track when you are in pain. You are about to figure it out when you are at the end of your hope. If you are lucky you will lose it all.

This doesn't even seem right. We live in a world where you are ahead when you have the largest pile of stuff amassed around you. You have real power when you have your thumb on the largest amount of people. Important people, the way the world sees it, have the most money, they have the biggest house, the fastest car and live life rubbing elbows with the same sort of people.

How much do we lose in this life by chasing success? How much to we throw away in pursuit of a happiness that is only skin deep. We lose our depth. We become like cardboard cut-outs of the real thing. We lose our souls.

The Modern Age, the time of reason and philosophy brainwashed us into believing that humanity and logic held locked within the potential of the human mind the answer to all of lifes problems. But the more we chase the humanistic utopia the more we find that its a myth. It's a mirage. There is no solution of human invention or logical solutions. Reason is only man's delusion that he has it all figured out.

Another day
Another lifetime
Another engine stalls
Another line
Another freeway
Another freefall

I've lost all that I wanted to leave
I've lost all that I wanted to be
Don't believe that there's nothing that's true
Don't believe in this modern machine!
The modern machine

In circles

The Modern machine. It is now a lumbering behemoth. We can see she is patched and smoking. The truth which reason cannot avoid, the truth which logic cannot silence threatens to haul her down. Man on his own only labors to build his own prison cell. Like the workers at Babel they plan a tower to the heavens but in the end construct only their undoing. It's time to tear down the machine and look to the mystic, the spiritual, the divine. Jesus Christ is alive and holds out to us keys to a utopia not built on human perfect, but grounded in the truth that God became flesh and dwelt among us. He suffered and died for us. He rose again. He is the answer to the riddles that haunt your sleepless nights and the potion to cure your heartache. Reach for the answer today.

The Big D

So I haven't been blogging. I haven't been doing much of anything but thinking. I have gone through some radical changes. Lately I have been lamenting how much my life is lost from two years ago. Change isn't ever easy. But it's what life is all about.

Sometimes in life we change like a butterfly. We are all ugly and gross... then we go through this amazing seeker-stage where we are transformed into something much more wonderful. Then... BOOM! We come out and we are beautifully transformed. We spread our wings and soar.

Other times our change is less graceful. Sometimes we transform like a snake molting. We shed our old, dry skin and wriggle out into the world. The change is slow, painful and cumbersome. Like growing too large for a favorite suitcoat. The buttons stretch and we labor to squeeze back into it time and time again. Finally we give it up and are forced to change.

We can debate the road that got us here. We can live in the past of shouldas and wouldas and couldas. But living in the past is really a waste of the greatest gift God has given us... Hey! I just quoted Lindy on this blog. COOL!

All of the struggles and fights and issues that brought me to this place in life are all in the past. And now I sit here and look at a road before and I must move on.

I went to the mandatory Children in the Middle class for couples going through divorce the other day. It really made me stop and think. But what I learned most from the class came from the people around me. They were just so darn angry at their former spouses. "How dare they move on! How dare they do these things..." they ranted and raved with hatred in their eyes. WOW! How sobering.

I don't know exactly what Jesus thinks of my divorce. I don't know if He shed a tear in heaven as the events unfolded. I don't know if He shook His head in anger at the choices we made or hollered down to us to change this or that. But I do know one thing... one thing for sure. Jesus doesn't want me to hate my ex-wife. He doesn't want me to go through life bitter and harbouring pain and anguish for things she did or is doing now. No, Jesus wants me to make peace with her and to be her friend. He wants me to come to terms with my mistakes, apologize to her for them and to work to become a better person. But He doesn't want me to live in a past of shouldas, wouldas and couldas.

There are things that I must do now in the new life that is emerging for me. I must be the best parent that I can be. And those of you on the inside... those of you that know me, you all realize how much that means to me. You know how much time and energy I devote to those two little creative beings. I must rebuild my world with the friends around me and truly be the best friend that I can possibly be. I must also be the best Christ-follower that i can be. And I'm starting to figure it out. Ego blinds us from a vital true. Being a Christ-follower isn't about how right and perfect WE are... its about how devote we are to HIM. He was right and perfect for us. I will speak more on that at the Feb 11th G-squared.

Grace and Peace

Bollman