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Happily Ever After

Our 9-year old daughter usually starts her birthday countdown a month in advance and we hear her escalating excitement for 30 days until she reaches the climax on her special day.

But no matter how much she has enjoyed her special day, she’s a little down at the end of it. She doesn’t want the day that she’s been waiting for for a year, and anxiously counting down towards for a month, to just end! She wishes it could go on forever.

Don’t we too wish that certain days of the year could go on forever? What’s the ending line of any classic fairytale?

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Why is shaping so hard?

Ever prayed that God would shape you? Ever wondered why it has to be so hard?

Let’s think about it. Imagine two pieces of clay; one will be made into a standard shaped vessel, we’ll name it Vessel A, and another into a very intricate vessel, and we’ll name it Vessel B. Which would take more shaping?

Certainly Vessel B.

If for a moment, we hypothetically imagined that those vessels could feel pain. Which would feel more pain during the shaping process? Vessel A or B?

Yes, Vessel B.

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In the Beginning…

I AM THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA. These words echo in my mind as I think of the glory of creation by an omnipotent God eternally unconstrained by time, space, matter, or anything that we can possibly comprehend using our limited minds.

Existing eternally in perfect unity and fellowship, God out of an overflow of love, decided to create. The eternal Logos spoke the cosmos into being. For the Word was with God and the Word was God.

Among His creation was a host of angels, spiritual beings with a free will. Utterly enamored in awe of the majestic scene that no ear has heard and no eye seen, they could not but sing “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord Almighty!”

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Unexplainable Evil!

Evil is unexplainable because sin is unexplainable.

No words can comfort a mother who lost her son or daughter. No words can comfort a husband who lost his wife or a wife who lost her husband. No words can heal the eyes and hearts of children who survived. No words can undo the horrific memories that minds have recorded live.

Evil is beyond human capacity to grasp because it goes against our original design.

But the only One who has the answers did not remain silent, as many seem to think.

The Creator, who created humans in His image out of an overflow of love for eternal fellowship, and who was soon thereafter asked to leave because we wanted to rule our own kingdom… this Creator did not remain silent. He heard the cries of the very humankind who had rejected Him, foolishly thinking that they can determine what is good and evil for themselves. He heard their cries. He sent them messenger after messenger. He wept over them. Yet they would not listen. And He did not quit. He could have easily just clicked “undo” and destroyed it all. But He didn’t.

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“Do you have fake blood?”

That was the question I heard last night as my son and I were at a local store.

“Mom, did you hear that? That’s disgusting,” expressed my son.

“Yes, it is, dear,” I said in response, “welcome to Halloween week!”

It was a mom shopping for Halloween costumes and “fake blood” for her children. 

As I was reading my Bible this morning, I paused at the Apostle Paul’s repeated admonition to believers, inspired by the Holy Spirit, to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 13:14), “for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27), “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24), “put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Colossians 3:10).

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A Contemporary Screwtape Letter

Inspired by The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis

A Contemporary Screwtape Letter 

My dear Wormwood,

I don’t know how you haven’t yet thought of a plan that is so obvious. Just have your patient spend hours aimlessly browsing social media outlets. While a few from the Enemy’s camp use it to share some of what He calls the good news, don’t worry, just get your patient hooked. Once hooked, he’ll waste time that he doesn’t realize is precious, and will waste even more time thinking of all the “perfect” pictures and stories that everyone is posting, which will make him feel like he’s the only one who struggles. This will then rouse all kinds of great feelings like jealousy and envy from those he thought he “loved”… whatever that means. Or he’ll get depressed from all our victory stories of evil in the world. Both are great gains. 

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New and Improved!

Advertisers got it right. Our hearts seem to always seek what is new. 

Yet as soon as we get the “new” it very quickly becomes old. It’s an endless cycle that gives the object/experience/person control over our thoughts and emotions, and in a way, our lives. Are we, as C.S. Lewis put it, “far too easily pleased?” Far too easily pleased and then far too easily displeased?

Could this perhaps mean that we were created with an insatiable desire for newness that can only be satisfied in relationship with a never-ending, infinite God?

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Why Don’t We Talk Enough About God?

My fellow Christians, if we claim to know God, why don’t we talk enough about Him? And when we do, why do we go about it as a task that must be done just because “we have to”?

A recent study mentioned in a New York Times article refers to a Barna Research that found that among Americans, “a mere 13 percent (of practicing Christians who attend church) had a spiritual conversation around once a week.” Unfortunately, I don’t think the case is much different for us Middle Eastern Christians.

I think the answer to my question can be summed up in a single word: self. We’re too preoccupied with how people will perceive us if we say or do certain things, that we miss golden opportunities to witness. I’ve been busy with this thought for the past couple of days; if we as ministers of the Gospel are so self-centered, we will not only fail miserably at reaching people, but when we do, we will be preaching a false Gospel whose main storyline is a God who is anything but self-centered! Only when we truly die to ourselves, will we see those whom God has entrusted to our vicinities as more than “mere mortals,” to use the words of C.S. Lewis. Only then will God grant us the privilege of seeing people as He sees them, and only then will we realize that we have the cure for their agony and that “hiding it under a basket” (Matthew 5:15) is a crime!

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You are not God!

    Well of course I’m not! But do I sometimes act like I am? When things don’t go my way, when my loved ones hurt… why do I get frustrated, and sometimes even angry? Because I‘m faced with the reality that I’m not God! I’m not fully in control as I thought I was… or as I would like to be. And I face the very same ugly pride monster that brought about the fall of Satan himself! The very same ugly pride monster than Satan then used with Adam and Eve… “you will be like God!”

    We have trouble accepting the fact that we are dependent creatures. We are not the Creator. And we have accepted the lie that this is very negative. We make God out to be some narcissistic figure who created humans to enslave them and so we are always seeking ways to do away with “the chains” as Rousseau would say. 

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    Indecisiveness and Failure

    Why do we sometimes think and rethink and then rethink again daily trivial decisions? We don’t want to fail. 

    Why don’t we want to fail? You’d think that’s common sense. Why would anyone want to fail?

    But let’s dig a bit deeper. What’s the first thing we think of when we fail? It usually isn’t the mistake itself as much as it is people’s perception of us after the failure, especially if it’s people whose opinion of us matters… people we’re trying to impress. 

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