The Miracle of Eating Toast

The Miracle of Eating Toast

By Jane Tawel

January 15, 2019

So when you pray, pray like this:

‘Our Father in heaven,
may your name always be kept holy.
May your kingdom come
and what you want be done,
here on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us the food we need for each day.
 Forgive us for our sins,
just as we have forgiven those who sinned against us.
 And do not cause us to be tempted,
but save us from the Evil One.’ [The kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours forever. Amen.] (Jesus Messiah– as written down by His disciples in Matthew 6:9-13, NCV)

The older I get the more I realize that I don’t need prayer to get through any normal given day. But I do need miracles. I also realize that the only reason I am still here, walking and talking my way through this place and time is because of a lifetime of miracles, wrought each day by the miraculous creation Jehovah set in motion at the planet’s beginning; at humans’ beginning in Eden; and by His grace and sovereignty for each of our lives, and every day ever since The Beginning, all the way up to my own small life and the small lives of my beloved children.

Believing in miracles is simply the radical point of view, that my needs are being met. If death is the curse, then each small factor of existence is being met by the miracle of continued life. We easily talk about the miracle of a baby’s birth and then quickly forget all about a human’s miraculous-ness every day thereafter. But if I take a moment to meditate on the very air I breathe, the working legs that support me, the brain that still analyzes what it sees (even if sometimes  hazily or often incorrectly); if I take time to contemplate the miracle of those people who stop to say “hello” or who call to say “I love you, Mom”; or if I actually taste the food I eat or enjoy the water I lap greedily, or become astounded at the multitude of colors and shapes of cacti or lizards – if I for one little minute choose to regard all of these things as the miraculous provision they are—well then, “normal” daily life becomes something profoundly amazing and my mere human existence, an heroic adventure. If I see God’s daily set -in -motion planet as a place of miracles, then I become a miracle-worker.

Jesus, who healed paraplegics, raised dead people, and created matter, tells those who see the world as He does and who choose to follow, faulted and fearful, in His Way, that they will “do greater things than I have done” (John 14:12). Imagine if even one or two humans began to believe that and then live that.

We like to tell the stories about Jesus manipulating common matter by turning the water into abundant flowing -over wine; by his feeding thousands with small supplies of fish and bread; or his instructions on fishing that netted his disciples so many fish their nets burst; and so forth and so on. These miracles of Mind over Matter remain part of a story about the Man-God, trapped between pages of a good book of stories about Him. But if we see Jesus as the new Prototype of Humanity, the Second “Adam”, then we see that The Christ, after years of seeking first The Creator’s Kingdom on earth, Jesus found that these miracles were in fact simple tasks. He laughingly says to the amazed eyes of those who watch Him do His magic tricks, “which is easier to say:  to the lame, get up and walk, or to say your sins are forgiven?”. (Lk. 5:23) And though He hadn’t a penny to his name nor a “place to lay his head at night”, Jesus had no worries, no stress, no selfishness, and no greed. He walked and talked through His life as if God were available, relatable and in charge of it all. In terms of daily sustenance, He said with a wink and chuckle, “Don’t you know, I have food the Father feeds me that you know nothing about?”(Jn. 4:32)  The Jewish Messiah told His disciples – and us – that “If The Father cares for the little birds enough to feed them, don’t you think He cares enough to feed you?”(Mt. 6:26,27) In effect He was asking, “Don’t you remember? Have you stopped believing? Have you so little faith? Do you remember God’s provision of the trees in The Garden? Do you worship Him for saving your ancestors by the simple creation of manna in the wilderness? Did your priests and kings not have in their need the miracle of the Showbread in the Temple? Was not Abraham given the lamb for the sacrifice? And did Yahweh not see that the table was set for you at your own home yesterday? Don’t you know that though you find the water, scarce and precious, that God provides it? And that God can make it spring from a rock if He so chooses?  Jesus’ mantra, so to speak was, “Why do you worry about tomorrow, what you will eat or drink? Doesn’t today have enough worries for you that you want to borrow more against tomorrow?”(Matt. 6:34)  Of course what He was needling and ribbing us about is that if we say we believe in a Benevolent God who gave us the whole good earth to tend and care for and “rule over” and “supervise”, then our worries are of a world not of God and are self-manufactured. They are Sin-manufactured.

And this is because we don’t see our needs being met as miracles but rather as things that we are owed. We have come, tragically, to see our wonderful lives as a bottom line, to be added to by more work, more money, more people, more stuff, more, more, more. We don’t see all of life as not a bottom line, but a complete circle. And in breaking that complete circle with God, we have also stopped thinking about what death means, or could mean. We stop following the commandments of how to live on the earth as we were intended. And we allow our neighbors, those we are meant to treat as God treats us,  to in fact have to wait and beg for true miracles as they starve or become diseased for lack clean water or live on the streets like modern day Lazaruses in view of rich folks’ homes. Because we are unwilling to work The Christ’s common miracles for our neighbors.

The perfect circle as a concept is a miracle in itself. So too, the circle that is this planet; the circles contained in our solar system; the circles that are our cells; the circles that are our families and communities.  Each day of my life can be seen as one more chance to start a new perfect circle in God’s Kingdom on Earth. The Christ encourages me each morning, “Be perfect just as Your Heavenly Father is perfect”. (Mat. 5:48). The circle of life represents wholeness or the Hebrew idea of Shalom. But most days I choose to live life as another long string of dots marching forward toward the next day’s line – disjoint, disconnected, un-whole and unwholesome. We can see each day as a line, moving us toward death as on a treadmill, an assembly line of disconnected lives muddling throughout the planet together, ever pressing forward toward just another day of “getting ahead”, passing the other guy in the race, looking forward toward the end of the unseen line’s end and never stopping to look inward. For at the middle of the circle of all of our days’ small dots, therein lies the truly miraculous — our souls.

I wake up – hallelujah! And I begin again! Hurrah! with just one little dot of existence – my Life! That dot becomes two dots as I open my eyes, and three dots as I rise or perhaps, someone must help me rise into my wheelchair or out of my crib.  And then the truly, truly miraculous happens! Oh Miracle! The most amazing dot of all is added to my breathing, sensate self – I drink and eat and the earth provides sustenance for my next moment. Perhaps I eat a piece of toast or a bit of cereal. Perhaps I can only be fed from a tube a nourishment provided by a nurse or loyal mate or a mother. But I eat my “daily bread”, that which A Creator has provided for my life.  And the circle of my day, my whole life really, re-begins — because this moment will be all I can know for certain. This moment begins to take shape, as the next dot needed for my life is provided. That next moment’s dot may be the great gift of running water from a tap or it may be a bottle of water a person gave me while I beg on the street because I am homeless. That dot may be a well in my village that I recognize as miraculous while I wait in line in order to fill my container. That dot may be a drive to work or a walk to the bus stop or the great gift of dishes left over in the sink to clean this morning or it may be another application to fill out with hands that know how to write and a pen filled with ink.  The next dot might be a co-worker’s complaining needs that I can meet, a spouse’s depression that I can hold in my heart, a child’s tummy ache that I can soothe, or a stranger’s rude outburst at the grocery that I can hear.  And I can see each opportunity as yet another indication that all I have – my eyes, ears, hands, mouth, breaths, family – all are miracles. Because life itself is miracle. When Jesus tells Nicodemus, “you must be born again”; is He not saying, look at the miracle of your life which The Creator has provided? Jesus says in truth, let your inner most being,  your soul be re-born today into a new relationship with the Creator of All.

The dots of another day are my existence in the world, guaranteed only for that moment, and they provide two different choices for me. I can let God recreate in me and use each of my life’s dots to create a circle – a renewed wholeness in the image of Him; or I can see those dots as my right , my due, as a little god, and as we all do since The Fall, I can let life’s dots go all pear-shaped. Again. Because frankly, most days are lived without my intentional point of view that each moment is a miracle awaiting my embrace of it. And so I do not take control and then trust that control to The Control of a loving Providence, but rather I speed through my life feeling out of control.

To see life as miracle takes time and love. Miracles must be nurtured. Miracles take an attitude of constant prayer, and as Jesus taught us, prayer must start not with finding my “brand”, but  with hallowing the name of God. And then prayer must move to a view of the world as Us, not me.  Give Us today…. But my repentance must accept that I rarely stop and breathe out and in and look around me and look in someone’s eyes and listen to the miracle of their speech or listen for the movement of God’s spirit in the world around me.  I worry and analyze and talk and talk and work harder and get more and think about tomorrow’s agenda and take notes on things and make lists for stuff and shop for stuff and get irritated at that person and worry about that person and feel anger for those people and my hip hurts when it’s hot and my knee hurts when it’s cold and nights are long and days so very much shorter than when I was young and it’s all so much that I wonder how I will ever get it all done and then it’s time to crash into my lumpy bed and fall asleep if I can until tomorrow starts but I worry about what I have forgotten I have to do tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow….  And life becomes a drudgery. And Heaven is merely a perhaps someday reality if I prayed the right magical prayer which I am saving up for the future. Heaven is rarely among us now, and not, as The Christ proclaimed, among us every day if we choose to live as He did. And I live as if I have absolutely no idea about the “powers and principalities” of Good  — the miraculous –that are all around me and can take residence inside me. Of course, the powers of Evil are quite happy to sneak in to the gaps I leave open in the circle of my life. And I shall simply accept those evil powers as another normal day and pray that God does His usual normal, non-miraculous stuff until I need a “real” miracle

In the recorded words of the prophet Isaiah, God tells us that “if you are willing and obedient, you will eat of the good things of the land” (Is. 1:19) The very beginning of humanity began with God giving humans good food to eat (Genesis 1:29). God provides all the good we need to live, but it is our choice of whether we see this as miracle or our right. And if we see it as our right, then God will allow us to shove Him aside and let us eat of the food which does not nourish the soul. Which brings us full circle back to the miracles Jesus, the Son of God, performed. Ultimately Jesus had to come right out and tell us that the miracles of God-given food were nothing compared to the miracle of our souls, nourished by living water, and Christ’s  own body and blood as food. And if we want to live as The Christ did and live forever as The Christ is living forever with The Father, we must see each morsel of our lives as we do that first miracle of birth. We must daily be reborn, forming a life meant for eternity. A life that as it was with The Christ, will be resurrected from Death. A Miracle.

Wendell Berry writes in an essay in Sex, Economy, Community, Freedom, and Community: “The miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air, and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances, will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine – which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes.”

In the past year, I have come to often meditate on this re-trending idea that is contained in the word, “mindfulness”. Many people claim to have coined this idea and it is often connected to Buddhist scholars of the 20th Century in connection to meditation techniques.  But it is in fact, the original mindset of The Chosen People of God dating back as far as we can read about them, to Abraham, David, Ezekiel, – even to Adam and Eve.  In fact, one could argue that it was Adam and Eve’s mindfulness that made them so happy and perfect at The Beginning and their chosen and sudden lack of “mindfulness” that led to their downfall. Eating from the Tree of Good and Evil, could be seen as Adam and Eve not trusting God for just that moment, being mindful of what they were enjoying eating, being thankful for the air, the puppies, the unicorns, and the cold fresh spring water. It can be seen as the pride of thinking ahead for themselves and only themselves, and not trusting  God for providing the best food – the best of everything — for them tomorrow.  It is because Adam and Eve stopped believing that Life was miracle, not personal accomplishment, that they and we ended up in this rat race. Because people were created to be at their very best by trusting in the moment and enjoying what that moment provides; giving thanks to their Creator for that moment’s joyful provision. But when we stopped doing that and wanted more, more, more, more and ate from the Tree of Not Just Goodness but Possible Evil in Case Evil would Get Me More than Good Would – when we stopped trusting that our needs would be met; then we were cursed with a need to achieve-no-matter-what; we were cursed to work through the sweat and stress of our hard labor; the pain of our labor in birthing our kind; the weeds in our wheat; the bugs in our soup; the fear of the other people who might have or get more than me; and the hatred of those we love most because we need more from them than that moment’s companionship in the journey. And so those moments of inspiration and creativity rather than being common place miracles, become rare and mere glimpses of what our lives can be like, and we hope and pray, will be like when The Kingdom is come forever. Meanwhile, because we don’t worship God for the miracle of our existence, we ironically lose the very powers we were meant to use wisely for good on this earth. We  continue to abuse and destroy the miracles of our planet and the miracle of the human soul. And in gaining the world by our own efforts, and being mindful only of self and our desires, not the miracle of this moment, we lose the miracle of the world God freely gave us.

And so we no longer know how to pray. Because prayer is being mindful of my need for A Provider. Prayer is believing that earth is meant to be like Heaven. Because for Jesus, it was. That is why He could teach us to pray, “Thy will be done on planet earth, as it is every where in all the other universes and wherever You are truly present – The Heavens.”

We no longer truly thank God for the miracles of the mundane.  Bless this food to our bodies, we beg, but we do not truly find flight in the gratitude of a body that can miraculously work or profoundly surprisingly walk. We do not thank God on bended knee that in His righteousness and holiness, He has seen fit to protect us from evil yet again, even the evil of disease or disaster.  We do not thank Him for the minutiae of the miraculous– the salt in our shakers or oil in our pan or light at the end of a wick or switch. We paste on the words of “For Thine is the power and glory forever” as we would paste on a return label on a bill we are paying.

This morning I heard on my little I-pod the song “I Can Only Imagine” by the amazing creators known as “Mercy Me” and it just struck me, “we have this song all wrong”.  Well, at least I have this song all wrong. With apologies to the song writers, who probably have the song all right in their own hearts and minds –when we sing about being only able to imagine what it will be like when we see Jesus and are ushered into the presence of The Father and “walk by His side”, then we are missing the whole point of Jesus and of our very existence as believers and eikons.  We are not to imagine what Kingdom Life will be like, but are meant to imagine – and the word “imagine” here could also be translated as “have faith” – that Life Here and Now is like that. God’s Chosen People are meant to choose to experience our lives and our neighbors’ lives and the whole planet as the miraculous creation of a Kingdom on earth as it is in The Heavens. We are meant to live as if God’s perfect Creation of our world is available and that it truly has always been, is now and will be again. We are meant to see that Jesus did not have to imagine what it would be like when He was with The Father in Heaven, because He lived as a human in complete relationship, complete wholeness with The Father while on earth. Jesus said, “I come to bring you abundant life, filled and flowing over.” Jesus proclaims, “In me, you see the Kingdom of God among you.”.  We do not as the song says, have to imagine if we will stand in the presence of God, or  if we will instead sing, or dance, or fall to our knees – we should be doing all that now, here, in worship of the miracles all around us; in worship of the miracle of God loving us enough to provide another moment; the miracle of our ability to be mindful, in constant prayer with a Parent/ Creator/ Mother who longs to re-birth us into new shalom, wholeness, and abundant life.

The miracle is not in what Jesus was able to do but in what we are able to do in Him, if we only “imagine”.  I think maybe if we interpreted Jesus’ words “if you have faith the size of a mustard seed” as His saying, “Do you not see what a Miracle even this small tiny little seed is? Imagine what you could do if your itty bitty faith meant that you believed that miracles surround the very air you breathe, the very water you drink, the very hand you hold, the very bread you eat, the very blood that courses through your veins.  Look and see what the Lord has made.  It is good, so very Good, that it is sheer miracle. Don’t wait to imagine what Heaven is like.  Have faith that Heaven on Earth is within your very being, your very soul. That is how you will have me, The Messiah, abiding in you and with you, forever.”

Miracles are so easy to miss because we keep waiting on something big and grand and something to happen tomorrow or beyond our ability or reason. But this whole life, is truly beyond our reason, isn’t it? The miracle is that we have been given the ability of gods. The tragedy is that we squander those abilities for the mundane.

And so we keep missing the miraculous moment when we wake up, and the miracle of eating toast.

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In My Cocoon a poem by Jane Tawel

In My Cocoon

By Jane Tawel

January 2, 2019

 

In my cocoon

I lie

As yet, unraveled

by the winds and swatters

of the awaiting day.

 

In my cocoon,

I do not need to fly

Into, out of, despite.

My day’s wings are not yet formed

And I can ignore

Pretend

care for

 that

Which is not yet born

In flight.

 

In my cocoon

The creepy caterpillars

Of my nightmares die

And a new body

Full of promise

Chrysalizes

If only while I can still lie

And to self lie

In my imagination and deny-

all.

 

There is nothing scary or sad,

Without a heart or brain,

In my cocoon:

No Pain, No Gain, No Blame;

No feigned vain reigns

Of kings or queens

or me.

And the rain in Spain falls always on the train

Because all the moments

Are all the same

When I am tourist-ing life

Sweetly paralyzed

In a cocoon.

 

In my cocoon

Nothing hurts and

Nothing hurts me

And my pupils

Remain closed

While the pupa of my

Solitary, sedentary self

Undisturb-ed

Dreams.

 

And yet. . .

The waking antennae

Of my soul

Begin to sense that

In my cocoon. . .

 

There is no room for

Laughter

Friendship

Shared meals

Warm Sunshine

Rain

Dry toes

Wet leaves

Cinnamon rolls

Spontaneous Grins

Splashy Puddles

Or

Hope.

 

In my cocoon

I can not hear

The notes and chords

A baby’s bleating cry

The breezes

The pitter-patters

The gurgling waters

Giggling waders

Gorgeous sunset weepers

Or

Love.

 

In my cocoon

I will never, ever, ever

Know

Risk

Understand

Hurt with

Imagine

Create

Touch

Be touched by

Or

Trust.

 

And so

I begin to shed all

That would keep me here

Incomplete again.

I digest the self of yesterday

Willing wings to grow

Though still small and damp

With tomorrow’s fears.

I emerge.

 

Today it is enough for me

To materialize again

Alive

The same,

Yet some one brand new.

 

Today

I’ve never been a butterfly,

But I will learn in this new moment

How to use my wings.

 

And being a slight grey moth

Is enough.

Moths can also fly.

 

And with a small amount of creature luck

tonight there will be

A new cocoon to rest in

To grow in hidden promise

unaware to all

Even to my moth-holed self.

 

And someday

I hope to wake

And find the whole World

Has been cocooning

Until Eden is restored

And Butterflies

rise from their

imagined cocooning graves,

Never to die.

Trying to Make Rhyme and Reason Out of The Christmas Season

Trying to Make Rhyme and Reason Out of the Christmas Season

by Jane Tawel

December 23, 2018

 

We worship the Genie we call Santa Claus

Or  honor a building or practice some laws.

We call this religion and true Christmas season;

Or come up with competing fiestas or reasons.

We give gifts to loved ones and eat ’til we pop

And think we are doing our best if we shop.

We claim it is all about Jesus and yet

The fact He was Jewish we’d rather forget.

And all of the immigrants who’d like to be saved,

We keep locked in prisons while walls are being raised.

Our children are dying by their own hands or ours,

And we have the nerve to preach “wisemen” and stars?

Well, maybe that’s why kids prefer “holiday”

Instead of the old news of babes born in hay.

If this is the time we celebrate birth,

We’d best know that God came to save the whole earth.

And that means if we want to lay down a claim

That “Christ-Mass” is about the Name of all Names,

We must take down our idols and elves off the shelf.

We need to become like the Christ-child Himself.

If you are still worshiping power or greed,

Then humble yourself,

Be bruised like God’s Reed.

And if you have never experienced real love

Forget about Christmas and seek the true God.

For God will become anything your soul craves,

After all, He once chose to become a small babe.

Because our God loves us He came down to save,

And took for Himself our own death and the grave.

And that is what Christmas should be all about,

And why those who love Jesus should sing with a shout:

“Fear not, for a God does exist who is Love

And wants all of His children in His Kingdom Above.”

 

The phrase “Merry Christmas” seems often abused,

So I would prefer to give truly Good News:

God loves our small planet and each molecule

That He has created and that over He rules.

The God of all ages has appeared large and small

And this season we worship the smallest of all.

So let’s in the New Year all try to find

A heart like a baby’s both needy and kind.

Let’s need love from others in the same way we share

The love of All Love, the God-child who dared;

Who came down to our level and brought us Truth’s Light;

Messiah, The Chosen, King of David’s Birthright.

May the new day before us remind us, we too

Can live every day reborn and renewed.

Just as God longs to heal each worldly cell,

He desires that all souls may know true Noel.

We pray that in our hearts, each of us will strive

To let God-love transform us and eternally live.

May we seek every season, love that grows in each heart,

No matter our culture, religion, or part.

For every day’s holy if we humbly will listen,

For the soft voice of Jehovah and the True Word of Christ-mass.

May Each Day of the New Year Bring You and Yours Those Things that will Remain–

Faith, Hope, and Love,

Jane

*********This can be a tough time of the year for some people. Did you know that if you text 741741 when you are feeling depressed or suicidal, a crisis worker will text you back immediately and continue to text with you? Many people don’t like talking on the phone and would be more comfortable texting. It’s a FREE service to ANYONE – teens, adults, etc. – who lives in the U.S. It’s run by The Crisis Text Line.
….
If you prefer to talk to someone, National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 800-273-8255

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A Recipe for A True Taste of Christmas

A Recipe for  A True Taste of Christmas

By Jane Tawel

December 11, 2018

 

First, get poor. Literally. Wonder not only where your next meal will come, but be shunned by any group of so -called safety net groups. Be outcast by your religious institution for being sinful and “unclean”; and be considered an illegal alien by the country you have grown up in.

 

Next make sure if you are not yourself currently in labor with an expected child, that you are the spouse of a very pregnant woman. Decide to relocate with no job, no insurance and with no health care,  no doctor, and no Douala around. If you can’t manage being pregnant or the spouse of someone pregnant by Christmas time, then, make sure you are really, really, really sick with something that could easily kill you and that makes it hard to walk or talk or even focus on anything other than how you feel physically which is in pain, afraid, and, well, in pain and afraid.  Oh, and make sure you are of an ethnic religion that the entire world is prejudiced against.  Like Jewish, maybe? Then…

 

Take a 90 mile  (157 kilometer) trip by foot. In worn sandals or barefoot. On dusty dangerous dirt roads. Make sure as you travel (remember, very pregnant or very ill) that you are dependent on the kindness of strangers for the food and water you need on the 90 mile trip. Make sure that even if you arrive after about a week’s walk, that you have no where to stay and that you know no one when you arrive at your final destination.  If you do arrive that is, considering the violence in the country in which you are currently living, where not only criminals and terrorists abound but even those who are meant to uphold the law have become lawless.  I mean the police / soldiers, governors / senators, and priests / rabbis. Those lawless ones who can demand any thing of you or from you since you have no rights.

 

Since you are treated like an animal, decide to have your baby in a sheep shed. At least it is out of the elements and will be safe from the wild dogs. If you can not manage a pregnancy in a sheep shed, this Christmas, and have opted to merely be super, super sick to recreate the true experience, then simply leave your medications behind and after your 90 mile walk, find a little cage at the southern border of your country and snuggle in with all the other outcast, unwanted folks. This will help you feel like the parents of the Christ child felt on the day we celebrate his birth.

 

And as you contemplate this recipe for preparation of a true Christmas, remember that the angels, and kings , the God as Father and miracles  –they are all part of a story that people told long after the Jewish parents, Mary and Joseph had to tell Jesus about the night He was born.  That night, Mary and Joseph were just happy to be alive and that their kid was alive.

 

And as you prepare your recipes for a true Christmas, remember that Jesus loved being alive, just like we do. And that He didn’t want to die, just like we don’t.  But that He believed that only in His death, could He have eternal life with God, just like we can.

 

So celebrate Christmas and celebrate the fact that today, you are alive.  And being alive can  feel like nothing or it can be every thing. And being alive means you can make choices today.

The recipe for my Christmas celebration should be the same as every day.  Will I choose the ingredients for my life that the Jewish Messiah did? That the Jewish parents of Jesus did?  Will I choose to walk the long, lonely, painful road not just to Bethlehem but to Calvary? Will I find joy in a sheep manger as easily as I find joy around a hearth with my well-fed and well-cared for loved ones? Will I be willing to care little for my own comforts in comparison to my great thirst to know and love Jehovah, the Lord? Will I look at others as my brothers and sisters on a planet we have mutually wrecked while mutually mutilating each other, body and soul, and try to heal rather than grab more before it all runs out? Will I believe that there is a future day of celebration when Jesus is the ruler of all humans – a ruler who serves as we serve Him? An eternal dawn where the planet is no longer just one big sheep shed and that the recipe for eternal peace, love and joy will be finally re-made by The Chef who created it in the first place?

Will I who claim the road to Calvary, take The Christ’s first baby steps on the road to Bethlehem?

What meals and snack ideas do I have for eating and making for others while traveling Life’s road? Jesus’ idea for a good meal on the road, was His body and blood. Messiah knew in His heart the truth of this Hebrew recipe: “Oh, taste and see that The Lord is good! Blessed is the one who takes refuge in Him.” (Psalm 34:8)

 

 

A Recipe/ Psalm for a Judeo-Christian Holiday

By Jane Tawel

Dear Creator,

First fill my cup with thirst.

May my hands kneed love in need of You.

Spice up my heart with passion for Your Word.

And let the Oil of my faith in Your Covenant

Never run out.

May a small teaspoon be the only portion

Of my earthly gain

So that my eternal fill will

Be only eaten in Your Forever

Feast of Body and Blood.

May I never turn away from my table

 strangers and sojourners; and

Just as You have always fed

Both the good and bad

With sunshine and rain;

May I not stand in judgement

Over the meals that others make;

But instead look to the small

Morsel of my own small self.

May no matter how many times

I eat of You;

Or how much I am served of

Your words and Your Word,

May I hunger only more;

May I thirst only more deeply

For Your Approval,

For Your Love.

May I receive at Your mighty hands–Hands

That created all the ingredients and recipes for all  living things—

A wee little Christmas star—

One star out of the billions of stars that rate the universal Creations—

May I get a little half star,

rating my life today

As worthy of You.

Please, Oh Lord of All,

Messiah, Christ-child,

God of the Ages,

I humbly offer today,

A morsel – an offering of my life,

Of my small snack of a soul.

May you multiply the ingredients of my life today,

As You always do increase

Our silly little

fish and loaves.

 

meal+and+snack+ideas+for+OTR+traveling

 

 

 

 

 

 

Advent

Note: I love Advent. I thought I’d start this Advent by republishing two posts from 2017; a poem and an essay below.

I Love You, Mary, Because You Were Human

By Jane Tawel

First Published on December 17, 2017

I love you, Mary, because you were human

Not a queen, not a god, not a saint

You lived as a woman for all of your life

With all that we know as Sin’s taint

You worked for your family

You watched your sons grow

You worried and grumbled and cried

You doubted the God whom you had once nursed

And you fell away from Christ’s side

You thought He was crazy

Your other sons did too

You hoped Jesus would come back home

You cried for His dangers

You begged God for mercy

Your mother’s heart weathered Christ’s storm

And yet, you were one

Of The Lord’s greatest servants

You put parent’s power aside

You stopped being mother

And your Son was your brother

As you watched your womb’s Son of God die

If Mary were perfect

At a time that held women

As little more than life’s scraps

Then how could I, a woman today

Ever hope to climb out of sin’s trap?

Because you were human

Oh, Mary, my sister

Then what you did was more rare

When you met the Angel

And agreed God could use you

Giving up all your dreams for a prayer

Oh, Mary, my sister, I love you because

You are like all the women I know

Who give God their own dreams

At risk of life’s thrown stones

And grant Christ our own frail womb-homes

I love you, Mary, because you were human

Not a queen, not a god, but a girl

Who longed for a Savior

As do all we, Women

Who bare children we pray change the world

I love you, Mary because you were human

I look forward to talking someday

You can tell me your story, I’ve read in the Bible

And I’ll share my own walk on The Way

We’ll introduce our own children

And be praised not for titles

But for being good mothers, and being disciples

And then we’ll both kneel

To the King that you birthed

And the God-man who came

To save all the earth

And yes, all the world will love you, dear Mary

You, who were like every girl who exists

Who says to God, “yes”

And therefore, is blessed

To grant God a womb-home for Christ

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My Own Gifts from God

Fear Not! We Need the Bad News First.

By Jane Tawel

First Published on December 9, 2017

There is much bandying about today of words like “Christian” and “evangelical”. I refuse to join the current dumbing down of the meaning of words – especially these two. The meanings of words are an integral part of the meaning of reality. This is a time of year when some of us believe God came to this planet as The Word. Sometime after the birth of The Messiah, a man who wholeheartedly and sacrificially followed the Babe become Man, ended up being known as John the Evangel. He might have been nicknamed John the Image of God. Because Evangelism should be a word associated only with those who want to be born again into what they were created to be before The Fall – creatures who act and speak and think like God. Not like gods. If you look to the Judeo-Christian worldview for what this life should look like you would see: A God who is completely good, completely love, completely truthful, completely just, completely consistent with righteous holy creativity. Just as random examples of what this does not look like: The God of the Man, whom we celebrate at this time of year, never, ever, ever, ever, ever – had to choose the lesser of two evils. He never, ever, ever, ever needed any one to support His causes by supporting people who abused women or children. He never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever died for a person who didn’t think they in turn had to die to their self-centered sins. And He never, ever, ever, ever, ever stopped loving the world.

It breaks my heart today to hear this important word – evangelism – being used for evil and gain. Evangel = Gospel = Good News = Revelation of True Triune God from the Genesis of the Planet Begotten in True Saving God-send in The Christ. I am privileged and humbled and frightened, to get to teach the Bible at this time of Advent. This week I began my teaching right at the beginning of the book of Luke. I have noticed this is most unusual. The book that tells our Christmas story begins with the author stating that his testimony to Jesus as God’s Way is written at the request of a man named Theophilus. Theophilus was, in all probability, a Roman Government employee, who quite possibly was one of the types that helped put Jesus on the cross. The Good News of Luke, however, was not just for a rich ruler, but for all who wanted an historical account of God’s latest attempt in a long, long His-story of His trying to help us live as we were created to live in relationship to Himself.

I fear that as with so many Biblical stories we like to pick and choose the parts we want to read. As Americans, we seem to somehow have re-cast the Nativity so that Mary and Joseph are white folks on holiday rather than enslaved minorities being used for political gain by Roman rulers. We have incorrectly added the fun fancy bit about the rich EU and Asian Kings being present at the birth, so that they could be giving Jesus financial incentives right there at the start.

But when we opt to use this word “evangelistic” today we seem to use it more like a good luck charm or a trump card (oh, the ironic words we live with today would not be lost on The Word, I think). We like to give the gods credit for our choices and lifestyle and our gambling with other people’s lives. We stick God’s name on ungodly decisions, like putting a sticker on a rotten apple. Much as Adam’s first rotten apple was easily pulled off the Tree, we quite easily justify our own rotten apples but still want the God-sticker on them. It is quite easy to pull off a sticker called God. It is not at all easy to live a life called God. And that is what Christian means – little God, little Christ, little life lived in the character of God Three in One. Oh, I love my stickers called God. It is much harder for me to daily “go back into the womb” and be re-created as we were meant to be before the one rotten apple spoiled the whole bunch.

The story of Christmas begins with Advent. In its entirety, the story that we should be reading at this time of year, should at a minimum start with God saying (as He usually does if you read the whole book): “I Am going to give you peoples and tribes the Bad News first; then the Good News.”

We seem to have sunk into a moral morass of thinking that Christianity starts with grace and forgiveness and someone out there saving my own personal self by something He did a long time ago. It does not. This cannot stand alone as Good News. It cannot support itself alone. It is an incomplete worldview.

The Worldview of True God from True God begins with the Bad News of John the Baptizer. It starts with humankind’s need for an admission of shame and repentance. The story of God helping us and allowing us to use His Holy Name, begins with our need to be able to, with eyes downcast, come before a God at all, let alone use His name for His glory or in vain for my personal ends. Before we got the “Good News” of Jesus, God had to re-send the diagnosis. It is a diagnosis The God of Noah and Abraham and Moses and Ruth and Isaiah and others, had been sending this bad news diagnosis for centuries. In various ways and through various people who were truly evangelicals, God has been telling us: Bad News –You’re dying.

Before He could send His only begotten Son, God had to show us the shadow on our moral

x-rays. So right before the time was right to come Himself as King (which is what Advent means by the way), Jehovah the Father, miraculously created in two old folks a man named John the Baptizer whose sole job in life was to proclaim that we needed to “Repent”. Definition:

Repent =Regret =Penitence of one’s sin. Because without our sin, the world’s sin, we have no need for a Savior. Without my personal daily need to recognize my sin, I have no need for Bethlehem’s story. Without repentance, there would be no Christmas.

God could send Himself as His Son bringing Good News to our planet because of the Bad News of Repentance. And that makes our need to feel shame, remorse and repentance, Good News! My coming to a reckoning of who I really am, is the way to knowing who God really is. And it is the only way to truly know who I can be and what lies ahead in an eternity that begins with my repentance and never ends in my worship of my God.

Repentance is what makes the Judeo-Christian worldview the most coherently sane and healthy one by which a person can live. Grace and morality will not result without it. But there are so many who teach this better than I ever could. So for a definition of evangelism at this time of year, when many of us believe that The Center of humankind’s history was born as a human, I would like to extract some of the words of an evangel named Francis Schaeffer.

Written in 1972, Francis Schaeffer could not have foreseen the extent of the need we would have for these words from his excellent book, He Is There and He Is Not Silent.

To me, what Jesus did at the tomb of Lazarus sets the world on fire—it becomes a great shout into the morass of the twentieth century. Jesus came to the tomb of Lazarus. The One who claims to be God stood before the tomb, and the Greek language makes it very plain that he had two emotions. The first was tears for Lazarus, but the second emotion was anger. He was furious; and he could be furious at the abnormality of death without being furious with Himself as God. This is tremendous in the context of the twentieth century. When I look at evil—the cruelty which is abnormal to that which God made—my reaction should be the same. I am able not only to cry over the evil, but I can be angry at the evil—as long as I am careful that egoism does not enter into my reaction. I have a basis to fight the thing which is abnormal to what God originally made.

The Christian should be in the front line, fighting the results of man’s cruelty, for we know that it is not what God has made. We are able to be angry at the results of man’s cruelty without being angry at God or being angry at what is normal.

We can have real morals and moral absolutes, for now God is absolutely good. There is the total exclusion of evil from God. God’s character is the moral absolute of the universe. Plato was entirely right when he held that unless you have absolutes, morals do not exist. Here is the complete answer to Plat’s dilemma; he spent his time trying to find a place to root his absolutes, but he was never able to do so because his gods were not enough. But here is the infinite-personal God who has a character from which all evil is excluded, and His character is the moral absolute of the universe.

It is not that there is a moral absolute behind God that binds man and God, because that which is farthest back is always finally God. Rather, it is God Himself and His character who is the moral absolute of the universe.

Evangelicals often make a mistake today. Without knowing it, they slip over into a weak position. They often thank God in their prayers for the revelation we have of God in Christ. This is good as far as it goes, and it is wonderful that we do have a factual revelation of God in Christ. But I hear very little thanks from the lips of evangelicals today for the propositional revelation in verbalized form which we have in the Scriptures. He must indeed not only be there, but He must have spoken. And He must have spoken in a way which is more than simply a quarry for emotional, upper-story experiences. We need propositional facts. We need to know who He is, and what His character is, because His character is the law of the universe. He has told us what His character is, and this becomes our moral standard. It is not arbitrary, for it is fixed in God Himself, in what has always been. It is the very opposite of what is relativistic. It is either this, or morals are not morals. They become simply sociological averages or arbitrary standards imposed by society, the state or an elite. It is one or the other… It is this or nothing. (Francis Schaeffer Trilogy, 222-301 excerpts)

* * * * *

Francis Schaeffer asks me: Is the God I believe to be revealed in His Son – enough?

Do I believe that my choices cannot be relativistic just as my Savior’s choices were never relativistic?

Do I believe that the character of God in Christ is “the law of the universe” to which I must live if I claim to live in Christ?

And as St. Paul believed, Do I believe that being an evangelical is to consider that “to live is Christ, and to die, is gain”?

God calls and calls, the Scriptures say, like a Lover, like a Father, like a Spouse, like a Shepherd. He also calls us to do likewise, and lead lives in His image, making choices as He would. He calls us to delight in others as we do when we first fall in love – loving a person whether in reality, we love or hate him. He calls us to love as a parent to those who are not our children using truth and love in equal measures. He calls us to give generously, selflessly as a spouse, to those who have no loving mate or friend to call their own. He calls us to provide and care for those who like sheep have gone off the path of a life worth living, and who cannot save themselves. He calls us to give and give and give to those least worthy, because His Son’s character is ultimately our judge and the judgement on our lives. Jesus is the judge who gave and gave and gave to all of us who are so unworthy.

The Greatest God of all gods, calls us to share His Good News:

God has Come to Us = Emmanuel.

But here is the truly mind boggling thing about the evangelism of our God –even God Himself, when He modeled life for us in Jesus, had to repent to John the Baptizer. Baptism symbolizes man’s need to be saved from something and changed into something else. It means I repent of my old life and enter a new life. The One who had nothing to repent of, did it anyway, because He knew how critical it was for us to see Him repent as we need to. The One who had no need to die, did it anyway because He knew how important it was for us to see Him die as we would. And the God who had no need to be born, did it anyway, because He knew how important it would be for us to see, that we can be born again, into a new life as Jesus is. And that is the Good News that evangelistic people should be living. And we shouldn’t be putting words on things they don’t belong to, including putting The Word on things He does not belong to.

The terrifying Angel of God, who actually was quite an important player in the story of “God Becomes a Human”, was personally acquainted with the True God. The Angels of God always say “Fear Not”, and the angels at the various scenes before and during the Bethlehem manger scene, are no exception. The Christmas Angel tells us that though the Bad News of The Operation of the Christ Child is that it will be incredibly and sometimes excruciatingly painful, the Good News is:

Repent!

For your Unearned Salvation from your deadly sin has Come!

God Advents to Live With All People!

Joy to the whole World!

This is evangelism. Joy. This is being a “little Christ” or Christ—ian. Repentance. This is what in an upside -down worldview, makes our lives– plunged in repentance and daily self-administrations of the dosage needed of radioactive Bad News of our sinfulness– truly a wonderful, live-saving, joyful good news to the world, message. This is how we can defeat the cancerous invasion of evil that seeks to kill the Christ child and instead, open our hearts, minds, wills and souls to the eternal love of God. This is Good News.

Navtivity vivas

Read Their Names. by Jane Tawel

Note:  It takes all the chutzpah I have to post the following, not because I don’t believe it but because I have lost jobs, friends and family from trying to speak out about important things and I have lost hope that any one really wants to change. I see people just going on with their lives as if we are not living in a frightening age right now and most frightening of all, I see people who claim to know God or Jesus act as if somehow God’s grace will cover their sins against others.  Just a head’s up:  If you actually read the Bible, it is pretty clear that it won’t.  America is like the rich nameless man in The Christ’s parable. The rich man  lives with homeless Lazarus at his door and spends his life eating, drinking and being merry behind his safe mansion doors, and then when he dies and realizes he is not actually going to heaven after all, has the gall to say to God, “oh if only You had told me!  At least go tell my brothers so they will be saved.”  God’s reply would be well for us to take to heart today: “He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.” (Luke 19:31).

 

Some of us believe that Someone did rise from the dead.  And we still are not convinced.

Read Their Names

by Jane Tawel

November 17, 2018

 

“It’s starting to rain again; it’s… the rain had (uh) slacked up a little bit. The back motors of the ship are just holding it (uh) just enough to keep it from…It’s burst into flames! Get this, Charlie; get this, Charlie! It’s fire… and it’s crashing! It’s crashing terrible! Oh, my! Get out of the way, please! It’s burning and bursting into flames and the… and it’s falling on the mooring mast. And all the folks agree that this is terrible; this is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world. Oh it’s… [unintelligible] its flames… Crashing, oh! Four- or five-hundred feet into the sky and it… it’s a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. It’s smoke, and it’s in flames now; and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast. Oh, the humanity! And all the passengers screaming around here. I told you; it – I can’t even talk to people, their friends are on there! Ah! It’s… it… it’s a… ah! I… I can’t talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest: it’s just laying there, mass of smoking wreckage. Ah! And everybody can hardly breathe and talk and the screaming. I… I… I’m sorry. Honest: I… I can hardly breathe. I… I’m going to step inside, where I cannot see it. Charlie, that’s terrible. Ah, ah… I can’t. Listen, folks; I… I’m gonna have to stop for a minute because I’ve lost my voice. This is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.”
— Herbert Morrison, Transcription of WLS radio broadcast describing the Hindenburg disaster.

 

“Said his grieving and furious mother: “My son was in Las Vegas with a lot of his friends, and he came home. He didn’t come home last night, and I don’t want prayers. I don’t want thoughts. I want gun control, and I hope to God nobody sends me any more prayers. I want gun control. No more guns.” — Mother of Telemachus Orfanus, killed November 7, 2018 by The United States of America’s inability to deal with guns.

 

Read their names below. Read each one. Then realize the next time your child or grand child or your spouse steps out the door to get a coffee, or your grandpa goes to his place of worship, or your kinder gardener goes to class!! — it could be their names. OH THE HUMANITY! It is way past time to change course. Way past. Read each name and then tell me: Does this feel like freedom to you, America? No, what you are witnessing time after time is the “worst catastrophe in the world”. Moses did not use prayer to change the world, he acted. Jesus did not stop at prayer for the Caesars and Pharisees and Sadducees and unclean poor of the world; he wrested the weapon from Peter’s hand and said go change the world. Gandhi did not change the world through his “thoughts”. Mother Teresa did not change the world by “thinking” about the lepers of India. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior had to walk across bridges and go to prison not just preach and pray. Read the names. Then do something if as you claim, you really love your country, your freedoms, your children, and your God. Read their names. They do not appear on your favorite show, they were not your combatant enemies, they won’t be getting another life in a video game, and none of them will be home tonight. And we have decided we love our guns, sitting in our little home safes, protecting us from what? Unless you are hunting for your food, no one should need a gun in America. And maybe if no one else had guns, we wouldn’t have overstressed cops killing innocent security guards mistaking them for just “regular” black people; instead of the hero that Jemel Roberson was before he was killed by a gun. Read his name. Read their names. When did we become zombies who love our guns more than we love people? Oh, the humanity.

 

Read their names:
https://wapo.st/2qPYTGY?tid=ss_mail&utm_term=.d5abd342d94b
Now make two lists. On one side put all the names of people you love and / or people who love you.  On the other side put all the names of your favorite weapons that you love.  Now choose.
“For what does it profit you if you gain the whole world but in the process, lose your souls?” — Jesus Messiah, who never carried a weapon except the weapon of his death on the Empire’s cross.
Now look at these faces. They all died because of guns. Not people. Not someone else. Guns. We fight the war on cancer and we don’t say, oh cancer doesn’t kill people, people do. We fight the war on terrorists and so we “invade our freedoms” and check whether or not you are carrying a bomb on a plane.  Are we really that stupid about guns?  Really? Are we really that selfish and ignorant and greedy and rich and do not care about our children any more than that?
Look at these faces.  And then let it begin with you.  If you own a gun — turn it in, bend it like Beckham, and make art out of it. If you care about unborn babies, start caring about the born ones and protest until we get serious gun laws in this nation. And for God’s sake, if you care about your own kids, or grandkids, or parents, or cousins, or friends, fight the ruling powers of the billionaire clubs of the NRA and the government oligarchy and insist on change on huge scale, no holds barred, lets save our lives for Pete’s sake scale. And oh, yes — For God’s sake, stop using His name in the vanity of your “thoughts and prayers”.
Just a final “fun fact” from Jesus:  “We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him”.  “Then Jesus said to them, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”
They have names. Look at their faces.

 

Enjoy the Inns but Keep Walking Toward Home by Jane Tawel

Bullet Point Thoughts from The Front-lines of America– The Babble-On of Our Times

 

Enjoy the Inns, but Keep Walking Toward Home

By Jane Tawel

October 28, 2018

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Notes to Self:

 

  • For at least one year, read only the Hebrew Bible which is the only Scripture Jesus or His followers recognized as Holy Scripture. Read the stories of the people who sought a different kind of god. Read the stories and psalms and prophecies of people who were peculiar because they walked with Jehovah-God.
  • Immerse myself in the basic tenets of the religion of Abraham and Moses, Isaiah and David.
  • Realize that only 7 of the letters attributed to Paul, that great interpreter of Judaism to the Gentiles, are truly and completely written by Paul. Realize that Paul would never have considered his letters Holy Scripture. Keep Paul in context.
  • Realize that the Gospels are guides to accepting Jesus as the Jewish Messiah and to what earlier followers of Jesus’ “brand” of Judaism believed was the way to live in God’s Kingdom now and perhaps forever.
  • Read every thing in context, know your genres of anything written, realize every thing ever written, including Scripture has an agenda. Figure that out before you use it.
  • Read C.S. Lewis’ works rather than just his quips and quotes.
  • Remember that from dust I was created and to dust most of us will return. Realize I am a person who doesn’t want to return to dust, nor to be punished in an eternal hell, but rather I am a person who wants to live forever worshiping and creating with God and The Christ in a New Earth and New Heaven.
  • Remember that mostly I am, as Lewis warns below, a Judas and not the characters I would like Central Casting to pitch me as. Look fiercely at the 30 pieces of silver in my hands today. Remember I have to choose daily what I will seek. Remember that each day I can repent, ask forgiveness, and seek God’s Kingdom first. Remember I must become less, so that others may become more. Remember it is not a wide road, but a narrow balancing beam shaped like a cross.
  • Don’t exploit people. It is a lie of Satan to think that I can exploit the evil people who have power or the authorities who rule this world or my circumstances and that “God will be in control”. It is a lie of Satan to think that I can ignore the Lazarus on my own doorstep or to foist onto others the plight of the poor and powerless. If I do, then I am a Judas; not a Moses, not an Abraham, not a Paul –not a Jesus follower serving His kingdom to the end. A Judas.

 

  • Remember that suffering is a result of sin and the earth’s fallenness. Combat The Fall! Pick up the trash even if I didn’t drop it there. Hold things lightly in my hands. Mourn with those who mourn. Delight in the joys of others. Speak truth into lies and light into darkness even when afraid and worn out (and warned out). Treat people as if they matter to a God. Make myself smaller. Joy is a command.

 

  • Seek “The Simple Good”.

 

  • Enjoy “the pleasant inns” without guilt — just as Frodo and Sam and Gandolf did. BUT — do not mistake this life’s pleasant inns for Home.  Keep walking toward Home.

 

NOTE To READERS:

 

If possible –I highly recommend digging into the books of C.S. Lewis. The following is from my recent re-reading of The Problem of Pain.  With Lewis is it always difficult to choose just one brilliant idea but I think the following is perhaps most critical for people in the land and time in which I currently live. Although it is from the end of TPoP, and an understanding of Lewis’ ideas of sin and The Fall and human nature are necessary for a complete understanding of what he means here, this excerpt below should sound a warning to those of us who think we can choose evil or self-serving justification of our deeds and thoughts and that God will somehow make it good. He will indeed turn it to the good of His world, of His partially seen but yet unrealized -on -earth as it is in His Kingdom; but it makes a difference to our lives and the lives of those around us whether we choose the 30 pieces of silver; whether we deny him hoping the rooster won’t crow and we can get back to our jobs fishing for manna and not for men; or whether we  instead submit our will daily to the will of God, seeking Good for others even at cost to self. The small things I choose today do make a difference to my own soul  — for good or for bad –and in that lies the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

 

 

 

From C.S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain (ch. 7):

 

There is a paradox about tribulation in Christianity. Blessed are the poor, but by “judgement” (i.e. social justice) and alms we are to remove poverty wherever possible.  Blessed are we when persecuted, but we may avoid persecution by flying from city to city, and may pray to be spared it, as Our Lord prayed in Gethsemane.  But if suffering is good ought it not to be pursued rather than avoided?  I answer that suffering is not good in itself. What is good in any painful experience is, for the sufferer, his submission to the will of God, and, for the spectators, the compassion aroused and the acts of mercy to which it leads.  In the fallen and partially redeemed universe we may distinguish (1) the simple good descending from God, (2) the simple evil produced by rebellious creatures, and (3) the exploitation of that evil by God for His redemptive purpose, which produces (4) the complex good to which accepted suffering and repented sin contribute.  Now the fact that God can make complex good out of simple evil does not excuse – though by mercy it may save—those who do the simple evil.  And this distinction is central. Offences must come, but woe to those by whom they come; sins do cause grace to abound, but we must not make that an excuse for continuing to sin.  The crucifixion itself is the best, as well as the worst, of all historical events, but the role of Judas remains simply evil. We may apply this first to the problem of other people’s suffering.  A merciful man aims at his neighbour’s good and so does “God’s will,” consciously co-operating with “the simple good.”  A cruel man oppresses his neighbor, and so does simple evil.  But in doing such evil, he is used by God, without his own knowledge or consent to produce the complex good—so that the first man serves God as a son, and the second as a tool.  For you will certainly carry out God’s purpose, however, you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John. (98,99)

 

It would be quite false, therefore, to suppose that the Christian view of suffering is incompatible with the strongest emphasis on our duty to leave the world, even in a temporal sense, “better” than we found it.  In the fullest parabolic picture which he gave of the Judgement, Our Lord seems to reduce all virtue to active beneficence: and though it would be misleading to take that one picture in isolation from the Gospel as a whole, it is sufficient to place beyond doubt the basic principles of the social ethics of Christianity. (101)

Since political issues have here crossed our path, I must make it clear that the Christian doctrine of self-surrender and obedience is purely theological, and not in the least a political, doctrine. Of forms of government, of civil authority and civil obedience, I have nothing to say.  The kind and degree of obedience which a creature owes to its Creator is unique because the relation between creature and Creator is unique: no inference can be drawn from it to any political proposition whatsoever. (102)

The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in.  The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment He has scattered broadcast.  We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy.  It is not hard to see why.  The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe, or a football match, have no such tendency.  Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home. (103) (emphasis mine)

Shalom Aleichem, Jane