Vigilant, infinite, omnipotent, and intimate

In A Holy Experience, Ann Voskamp writes,

Your God’s not absent, distant, impotent. Your God’s vigilant, infinite, omnipotent, and intimate.

He pitches His tent and camps right in the middle of us.

...Because all is not as it seems. It is more. There is always infinitely more happening than what we see.

...No one in any dung pile is too far gone from God.

His arms will go anywhere, to redeem anyone, from anything.

...Behold His glory — and your raging heart will be held through anything.

...There is a way to live that sees how He is drawn all around you — even now, especially now.

Glory.

And we are all held.

Read more here.

How does God decide which prayers to answer?

Here are two thoughtful posts on prayer.

God, Family, Country

Guest post by Suzann Darnall

My husband and I just got home earlier this week from a visit with my parents. We are now in the process of preparing for a visit from one of his older sisters. So, family is very much on my mind. And, with thoughts of family always comes thoughts of how much my family has been blessed, so God comes right along for the ride on my brain-train!

As we are heading into the start of July, I naturally think of Independence Day, too. A visit to my folks was a definite preparatory event for celebrating the Fourth of July! Mom and Dad have a home bedecked with antiques, art, family history, military memorabilia, Christian keepsakes, various collectibles, and Americana. It is like going to a miniature museum. There is something fascinating in pert near every corner of just about any room. Even the front porch and backyard are bedecked with mementos and crafts. There are so many memories and new experiences each time I walk through their door. But, above all else one is reminded of God, family, and country.

We are a very patriotic bunch. My family very much values freedom. It is freedom that allows us to worship our God as we will. It is this great country and its founding which allows us the freedom to live where we chose and raise our families as we wish. Our family literally spreads from coast-to-coast of this beautiful and bountiful land. We have a niece who lives in Maryland and I have a brother who lives in Oregon. My husband has siblings who reside in West Virginia and I have family living in Colorado. We then have more siblings, nieces, and nephews scattered about, as well as our children and grandchildren living right here in Texas.

My parents are preparing to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary. I made them a quilt as our gift. Its theme is “Somebody in Texas loves you.”. I included pictures of my husband, our daughters, our sons-in-law, our grandchildren, and myself. I also had each member of the “Texas contingent” share a message for my folks. The quilt has pictures on one side and messages on the other. It is done in all red, white, and blue Texas or western-themed fabrics. It reminds me of family and freedom.

Why? ‘Cause not only do my husband and I now live in Texas, as well as both our daughters, but two of my brothers were born in Texas, as well as all of my grandchildren. Also, as I grew up, we lived in Texas three times when the Air Force stationed my father here. And, I can never think of Texas without being reminded of the Alamo, another fight for freedom from oppression. It strides side-by-side in my mind with the American revolution. People willing to give their all to achieve liberty. Not just the men, but the women and children sacrificed as well. We must never forget that families lived where battles were fought on American soil and families were inside the Alamo walls. The cost of freedom is a family expense. Always!

So, as I savor the memories of my recent visit with my parents in their home which is such a charming and interesting tribute to God, family, and country, I will also be sharing Texas and our family with my sister-in-law and her oldest grandson. We will do lots of familial visiting, go see the Alamo, and celebrate Independence Day a bit early by attending the Annual Wimberley VFW July 4th Pro Rodeo. We will attend church together on Sunday. We will, in short, celebrate God, family, and country! We will just do it a tad more Texas-style!

"The best and most godly method."

David Warren writes about efficiency and waste at his Canadian blog Essays in Idleness yesterday.

God designed our world to be extremely inefficient. I daresay this was intentional. In all the seeding and spawning functions, we see that one in a hundred, one in a thousand, one in a million, take root or otherwise grow to maturity. The rest goes to feed the birds and the fishes and the pigs. Almost everything they consume is in turn wasted, spewed away. And this is true down the line from biology to geology. Fossil fuels and the better building materials take countless centuries to form. Now, look up to see that a trillion trillion stars went to the making of one habitable planet. He (God) takes His time, and makes the necessary sea room.

“And yet it moves,” as Galileo didn’t say. It works, and in glorious moments we glimpse some aspect of how it fits together; how every particle is cycled and recycled — from the bloated cow to the wee dung beetle rolling his gleaming pellet away. There is extreme inefficiency and no waste at all. Often I am staggered by the scale of the thing; by the universal attention to microscopic detail; by the adaptability of every constituent part; by the constant interweaving relaxation and restoration of a purposeful order.

Humans, on the other hand, are efficiency freaks. We are always looking for a way to slash the costs, to eliminate redundancy, control the outcome, guarantee success. And in the course of this, we bind ourselves in tangles.

Let us take milk for today’s example. We have a little crisis at the moment, up this way, because we are producing it too efficiently. In an effort to secure their votes, our politicians created marketing boards to assure a price to dairy farmers. Perhaps it did not occur to them that other jurisdictions might do the same; that each would create immense competing milk lakes of surplus. That they would have to enforce quotas to limit over-production. That they would then have to subsidize the milk for which they were overpaying, to sell any of it abroad. That such nonsense would result in e.g. the current feud between Trudeau and Trump, over who’s cheating whom. Verily, as in all government schemes, everyone is now cheating everybody, and consumers are paying not a small extra amount, but double or triple what they would otherwise be paying for a pint of tasteless homogenized cream or a hunk of tasteless pasteurized cheese. And that’s before taxes.

An immensely cumbersome and self-defeating apparatus has been created to advance the cause of efficiency. It soon includes sprawling commercial networks, in which even if there is no technical monopoly, the large buyers squeeze out the small ones. And the system cannot be peacefully dismantled because by now it is inhabited by vested interests throughout, each with the expense of maintaining a lobby. And after every negotiation, the arrangements become more complicated, and the authority expands until the last independent operator becomes a piece of the machinery.

One could spend one’s working life trying to master these complexities, in the invariably disappointed hope of making the system more responsive and “humane.” Or one could do what Mr. Trump appears to be doing, which is to march in with a sledgehammer and make a mess of it. I think that the best and most godly method.

Unless, perhaps, there is a God

David Goldman writes,

For friends who are confronted by Black Lives Matter activists with the question: "Do Black lives matter?," I suggest this answer:
"Why does anyone's life matter? We're alone in an unfeeling universe, an insignificant speck of carbon in an enormous galaxy among 200 billion galaxies, while our synapses flash and flicker out in a minuscule cut of time, chasing our petty illusions and trying to distract our gaze from the fact that our lives don't matter....Unless, perhaps, there is a God who cares about us. Assume that there is such a God: if you addressed your question to Him, what would He say?"

Liberating things about having faith in God

At One Cosmos, Gagdad Bob writes,

Ultimately we might say that faith is the answer to the problem of God, just as scientific faith is the answer to the problem of dealing with physical reality. This is one reason why science developed only in the Christian west and nowhere else: our faith in a rational creator.

Faith is "knowledge of an approaching discovery." To bring it down to bobworld, I approach each post with an attitude of faith that one will appear. They are very much structured by an attitude of open not-knowing, such that I am guided by what it is I am looking for. It very much feels as if there is an invisible attractor out there, and as soon as it starts tugging at me, it attracts the right ideas and books and other resources to fill it out.

...Notice that this is one of the functions of the liberal media, albeit in reverse. That is, they work furiously to "inform" (unform?) us what not to pay attention to, such as Benghazi, or the Clinton Foundation, or what actually happens during an abortion, or what happens when you raise the minimum wage, or the risk factors of homosexuality, or the science of human intelligence. Liberals literally have no faith, in that they cannot permit themselves to ask questions about these and countless other subjects.

Commenter Julie adds,

One of the liberating things about having faith in God is knowing that there is no reason to fear truth, scientific or otherwise, because nothing that is true can negate God. Science grounded in truth (as opposed to propaganda) is simply further evidence of God.

Conversely, anyone rooted in leftist faith must guard vigilantly against the hatefacts of life, because to acknowledge them is to acknowledge that they are living the lie.

...With my kids, I often talk about the presence of God as being like the air: nobody has ever seen air, but we know it exists because of how it moves other things. Another good analogy we used this weekend is radio waves, wifi or Bluetooth. These things are not visible, and without the equipment to detect the signal they may as well be nonexistent. They can't be seen, heard, touched, tasted or smelled. Nevertheless, here we are, sending invisible messages to each other using those very unseen wavelengths, and they have a profound effect upon the everyday lives of modern humans.

Read more here.

"Let God have your life. He can do more with it than you can."

Isn't that so true? I found the quote over at Maggie's Farm, posted by Bird Dog.

No such thing as Santa Claus

Ed Driscoll is posting at Instapundit today. He reminds us of the immortal words of P.J. O'Rourke in Parliament of Whores:

“I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat:”

God is an elderly or, at any rate, middle aged male, a stern fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great believer in rules and regulations. He holds men accountable for their actions. He has little apparent concern for the material well being of the disadvantaged. He is politically connected, socially powerful and holds the mortgage on literally everything in the world. God is difficult. God is unsentimental. It is very hard to get into God’s heavenly country club.

Santa Claus is another matter. He’s cute. He’s nonthreatening. He’s always cheerful. And he loves animals. He may know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but he never does anything about it. He gives everyone everything they want without the thought of quid pro quo. He works hard for charities, and he’s famously generous to the poor. Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no such thing as Santa Claus.

Read more here.

What does not kill me makes me sadder

Did you know that

The swashbuckling George S. Patton, who braved death in his drive to Germany and was worried about his role in a peacetime world, was paralyzed in a minor traffic accident shortly after the Allied victory — and on the day before he was to go home and leave postwar Europe for good. He died not on the battlefield, but painfully in bed in a military hospital in Germany.

Victor Davis Hanson ponders today about sadness, irony, narcissism, and learning from pain:

At best, all we can do, I think in our ignorance of causation, is to cover our bets and tread lightly and remain observant — keeping humble and modest in occasional good fortune (given so often that our blessings turn out to be dependent on the work of other friends and benefactors), while staying resolute in more frequent times of chaos and disaster, to be able to help and offer sanctuary to others.

It is wise to remember the good dead and emulate their example rather than to be caught up with the mediocre of the present. I certainly spend more time recalling the voice of my mother than listening to the televised psychodramas of our elite. Faith and transcendence in the end matter most, whether for us who believe in God and an eternal soul, or for the more agnostic humanists who trust that one’s good works now can affect others following them, from raising good children to planting an olive tree.

...As parents age, they gain perspective and calm, but also at the cost of growing pessimism or even a dangerous sense of preordination. These can be deadly pathologies as they take away the necessary spirit and audacity, so important in getting up one more morning and heading on to the next mission. (My 86-year-old grandfather was putting in new end posts in the vineyard on the day before he had a heart attack and died; my 80-year-old Swedish grandfather was breaking a young horse in his last few months.)

All the clichés that you all have heard about losing a child, and which we all of the uninitiated may have found strange or foreign — “I wished it was me,” “How unfair that parents outlive children,” “How did I cause this,” “Why didn’t I do that or this,” “I should have been a better parent, listener, friend, helper, benefactor, etc.” — I assure you turn out hardly to be clichés, but simply reflect over the centuries what is innate in every parent’s brain in extremis.

As we age and try to make sense of nonsense, we have only the solace that what is inexplicable now will be most explicable soon, and that we are not natives, as we assume, here, but refugees from home somewhere else, and that what seems all too real and hopeless we hope is a just a dream of what will be soon very real and hopeful.

I would amend Nietzsche’s often quoted line, “from life’s school of war: what does not kill me makes me stronger,” to something like “what does not kill me, makes me sadder,” and leave it to fate whether sadder in the end proves stronger or wiser.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that I try to read and excerpt everything VDH writes. This is the first time, though, that I was reduced to tears, as he tells us about his grandaughter and the death of his wonderful daughter Savannah. Read it here.

Gun control is ultimately about people control. It sprouts from racist soil.

Thanks to Randy B. Corporan

"In the US, hell isn’t going up in flames anytime soon."

Kathryn Gin Lum writes:

Younger Christians may be ditching doctrines of fire and brimstone – but will Christianity ever get rid of hell entirely?

How long does hell last? Is it temporary or eternal? What is the purpose of hell's punishments?

corrective and purifying, or vengeful and vindictive?

What is hell's nature:

metaphorical mental state or a physical and literal place?

Do you believe in A God who could consign his own creatures to eternal torture for seemingly minor misdeeds?

Kathryn Gin Lum continues:

By the time of the American Revolution in the late 18th century, colonists were arguing not just over the wisdom of waging war against England, but also over the justness of eternal punishment. Attracted by Enlightenment ideas, some members of the founding generation critiqued the British monarchy and the Calvinist God as tyrannical dictators both. As Jefferson put it: ‘It would be more pardonable to believe in no god at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin.’ Some freethinkers departed from the concept of hell as literal and eternal fire and brimstone in favour of a temporary hell where individuals would be punished in proportion to their crimes before being admitted to heaven. Others abandoned hell entirely, arguing that a loving and merciful God would save all of creation for heavenly bliss.

Rob Bell wrote in his book Love Wins:

A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better . . . This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’s message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.

Kathryn Gin Lum writes that

To judge by the reactions to Bell’s book, it was as if no one had ever questioned hell before or emphasised God’s love over his wrath. Many evangelicals were appalled. The viral effects of social media magnified the outcry, with supporters and opponents jumping in to offer tweets of praise or condemnation. In the wake of the controversy, Bell left the church he’d founded and in 2013 told The Grand Rapids Press he would start a ‘spiritual talk show’ in southern California. The book’s publication also led some 1,000 members to leave the church, according to a report in The Christian Post in 2013.

The outcry over Bell’s book was perhaps all the more surprising given recent poll numbers in the US. A 2013 Harris Poll found that while 74 per cent of US adults believe in God and 68 per cent believe in heaven, only 58 per cent believe in the devil and in hell, down four percentage points from 2005.

These kinds of arguments have sustained the idea of eternal punishment for generations. Supporters of Hell have always claimed to have morality and justice on their side, even as its opponents have said the same. As much as some people might thirst for a hell-less faith and a hell-denying Pope, others eagerly participate in hell and judgment houses designed to frighten and convert attendees into belief. Poll numbers might fluctuate, but one thing’s for certain: in the US, hell isn’t going up in flames anytime soon.

Read more here.

Never stop hoping

Ann Voskamp writes today about joy and hope:

Time can’t dictate dreams or hijack hope or determine destination.

Time may have hands on the clock but it’s arms are too weak to rob anybody of hope, steal anybody’s prayers, destroy anybody’s joy.

And So what if time’s got hands on a clock — it’s God who has His Hands on the universe. Every little thing is going to be okay because God is working good through every little thing.

All that’s happening is just happening to make miracles. There are miracles always unfolding under the impossibles.

“Joys are always on their way to us,” writes Amy Carmichael. “They are always traveling to us through the darkness of the night. There is never a night when they are not coming.”

Because there is never a night where joys are not coming to us, there is never a road that can’t arrive at Hope. Circumstances can go ahead and run out of time — but the courageous refuse to run out of hope.

We can always hope because there is always joy traveling to us down the unexpected roads.

Please read more here.

What is worship?

Ann Voskamp writes today that

Worship isn’t the add on to the Christian life; worship, praise, thankfulness, is the only language of the Christian life.

The real reason that you’re having a problem with an enslaving habit is because you are not tasting God. I’m not talking about believing God or even obeying God, I’m saying tasting — tasting God.

The secret to freedom from enslaving patterns of sin is worship. You need worship. You need great worship. You need weeping worship. You need glorious worship.

You need to sense God’s greatness and to be moved by it — moved to tears and moved to laughter — moved by who God is and what he has done for you. And this needs to be happening all the time.

This type of worship is the only thing that can replace the little if only fire burning in your heart.

Worship is the thank-you that your whole body speaks.

Is God at the center of Christmas?

This writer says so.

We are told that there are approximately 2 billion Christians all over the world. Many hundreds of millions of them are celebrating Christmas with great joy, hope, and devotion—most of them openly, but some in secret and in fear for their lives.

They are joined by hundreds of millions more people – nominal Christians and non-Christians—who enjoy the parties, candies, family traditions, special foods, gifts, music, decorations, days-off—all the emoluments, meeds, and premiums, all the glow, if you will, of the Christmas season. They bask in the pleasures of the holiday but remain indifferent to or uninterested in the fact that God is at the center of the thing.

Nowhere—nowhere—in the Bible are Christians commanded to observe Christ’s birthday.

They are simply given the facts concerning his birth: the manner of it, its place in man’s history, and its implications for man’s destiny. The event is recorded in only two places, the gospels of Matthew and Luke. It is described in a spare and straightforward narrative using remarkably chaste language: Angels without exaggeration; a heavenly host without hyperbole. And although we are given its historical context—the Augustan census taken between 6 and 4 B.C. for purposes of military service and taxation—we are not given the exact date or even time of year of the birth.

It is almost as if God said to man, “Make of this event what you will.”

And the result has been a spontaneous celebration, heartfelt and lasting; an expression of joy—a peculiarly infectious joy—that has echoed down through the centuries. History has judged the event astounding and the implications profound—God’s entry into human history for the purpose of delivering his most loved creation from the consequences of their own behavior. This birthday, fixed by tradition at the close of the year, has literally brought joy to the world, changed the way man keeps track of time, and inspired some of the greatest and most beautiful music, art, and literature of all time.

American Digest linked to this post at The American Magazine.

Be thankful unto Him

Gerard Vanderleun posts today's Bible verse:

Psalm 100:4-5

4 Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

5 For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.

Ten ways to advance the Kingdom of Christ in this world

David Warren, devout Catholic and Canadian, has

ten specific practical suggestions, on how to advance the Kingdom of Christ in this world.

The first is, absolutely refuse to give obeisance to the various idols which the “politically correct” specially define, and then demand that we worship, such as “equality,” “fairness,” “human rights,” and the other specious abstractions to which they attribute a gnostic and mystical power. And symmetrically, refuse to worship in the temples of the gods of money and power and coolness.

Second, make conscious, reverent references to God — even to God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — an audible part of our lives in the world, and love God in our hearts. Conversely, carefully avoid speaking of any divine thing in a cute or irreverent way.

Third, unfailingly attend the Mass, each Sunday, and daily where we can; and let the Mass do its work upon our souls. (Non-Catholics should likewise be punctilious in their own religious observances.) Let the enemy see our churches filled. Observe and participate in all other sacraments, which includes, for Catholic Christians, the crucial one of making a good Confession, frequently. In any event, prayerfully ask God’s forgiveness when we fail.

Fourth, defend our families, by keeping as aloof as possible from the bureaucracies of Nanny State. Do not neglect the needs of our parents in their time of sickness and old age; do not fail to instil in our children, by our own upright and sincere behaviour, the respect they owe to us as their parents.

Fifth, do not participate in any way in what a recent pope so eloquently described as “the culture of death.” Do everything in our power to streetproof ourselves and our children against its demands, and do not hesitate to spell out the basic facts of life, behind all life issues. Be sure our children understand them, and that they grasp the sanctity of all human life.

Sixth, reject sexual liberation in all its insidious forms. Do not even think about fornication and adultery. Truly respect and accommodate the opposite sex.

Seventh, be consistently honest and honourable in all business and social transactions, with everyone, regardless of race colour or creed, even when it must be at some cost to ourselves. Do not play with temptations to corruption. Yet, assiduously avoid being “holier than thou.”

Eighth, be truthful in speech, fair and even charitable in speaking of other people, and look constantly for whatever good we can find in them. Be encouraging rather than discouraging by habit, and most important, do not spread personal gossip and lies, even against our worst enemies, and even when we think they deserve it.

Ninth, be content with what we have in our family and religious life, make ourselves happy with the homes we have to return to, and do not look covetously upon the Joneses. Accept with humility our station in life; have ambitions, but make them unselfish.

Tenth, be content with our fate more generally, and trust in God to deliver His justice in the fullness of Eternity: “Thy will be done.” Take only what comes our way, including all knocks, and use what we have been given, including all talents and skills, generously to God’s glory. Indeed, give, according to our means, a little wildly. See and sympathize with need. And rejoice, always, in the life we are given, and in the knowledge that what we leave upon the face of time can only be our example.

Thanksliving

Ann Voskamp knows the secret to happiness. It is to thank God always, every day, for everything that happens to you. She and her farmer husband practice that philosophy every day of the year. That is why I check her blog every day for wisdom and inspiration.

Does it mean that we cannot be angry about what is happening to our country? No! It means that we can be thankful to God that our eyes have been opened, that we have been given the tools and wisdom to fight the good fight and be healthy physically, mentally, and spiritually. We know which direction to go. We know Whom to ask for guidance, and Whom to praise.

You can listen to Ann today at 1 EST here and at 3 EST here.

Cannibalizing Thanksgiving

Are you getting ready for Black Friday, which is now on Thursday? Matt Walsh has some things to say about this new trend:

A holiday created by our ancestors as an occasion to give thanks for what they had, now morphs into a frenzied consumerist ritual where we descend upon shopping malls to accumulate more things we don’t need. Our great grandparents enjoyed a meal and praised the Lord for the food on the table and the friends and family gathered around it. We, having slightly altered the tradition, instead elect to bum-rush elderly women and trample over children to get our hands on cheap TVs.

For a while, Black Friday and Thanksgiving coexisted. We thanked God for His blessings on Thursday, and then jumped into the consumer mosh pit at Best Buy on Friday. But this Black Friday-Thanksgiving marriage was tenuous and rocky from the start. It was doomed to fail. Thanksgiving offers tradition, family and contentment; Black Friday offers smart phones at drastically reduced prices. In America, we all know who wins that battle. So Black Friday, like a black hole, violently expanded; it absorbed the light that surrounded it and sucked everything into its terrifying abyss, where all substance is torn to shreds and obliterated. Black Friday could not be contained to a mere 24 hours. It is Consumerism. It wants more. It always wants more. Nothing is sacred to it; nothing is valuable. So, now, Black Friday has eaten Thanksgiving alive. Thanksgiving let out a desperate cry as Black Friday devoured its soul, but we barely noticed. It’s hard to hear anything when you’re wrestling 4,000 other people for buy one get one free cargo shorts at Old Navy.

Why give thanks for what you have when there’s so much you don’t have? That’s the new meaning of Thanksgiving: count your blessings, and then buy some more blessings and count them again.