The road Ahead...Thomas Merton

http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/p-10-roadahead.html

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think that I am following
your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. 

Amen. 
 

Thomas Merton

Pursuit of God preface Tozer

Though right tempers cannot subsist without right opinions, yet right opinions may subsist without right tempers. There may be a right opinion of God without either love or one right temper toward Him. Satan is a proof of this." Thanks to our splendid Bible societies and to other effective agencies for the dissemination of the Word, there are today many millions of people who hold "right opinions," probably more than ever before in the history of the Church. Yet I wonder if there was ever a time when true spiritual worship was at a lower ebb. To great sections of the Church the art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come that strange and foreign thing called the "program." This word has been borrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the type of public service which now passes for worship among us. Sound Bible exposition is an imperative must in the Church of the Living God. Without it, no church can be a New Testament church in any strict meaning of that term. But exposition may be carried on in such way, as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment whatever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth.
The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, and taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts. This book is a modest attempt to aid God's hungry children so to find Him. Nothing here is new except in the sense that it is a discovery which my own heart has made of spiritual realities most delightful and wonderful to me. Others before me have gone much farther into these holy mysteries than I have done, but if my fire is not large it is yet real, and there may be those who can light their candle at its Harne. 

A. W. Tozer Chicago, Ill. June 16, 1948

On Fear, Shame and honor - Amos Oz

They could never be certain that they would not utter something ridiculous, and ridicule was something they lived in fear of. They were scared to death of it. 
Amos Oz a Tale of Love and Darkness

-Shame, Honour, Amos Oz, Culture, Ridicule, Israeli Literature

On Books - A take of Love and Darkness, Amos Oz

The one thing we had plenty of was books. They were everywhere: From wall to laden wall, in the passage and the kitchen and entrance and on every windowsill. Thousands of books, in every corner of the apartment. I had the feeling that people might come and go, be born and die, but books went on forever. When I was little, my ambition was to grow up to be a book. Not a writer. People can be killed like ants. Writers are not hard to kill either. But not books: however systematically you try to destroy them, there is always a chance that copy will survive and continue to enjoy a shelf life in some corner of an out-of-the-way library somewhere, in Reykjavik, Valladolid, or Vancouver.
If once or twice it happened that there was not enough money to buy food for Shabbat, my mother would look at Father, and Father would understand that the moment had come to make a sacrifice, and turn to the bookcase. He was an ethical man, and he knew that bread takes precedence over books and that the good of the child takes precedence over everything. I remember his hunched back as he walked through the doorway, on his way to Mr. Meyer's secondhand bookshop with two or three beloved tomes under his arm, looking as though it cut him to the quick. So must Abraham's back have been bowed as he set off early in the morning from his tent with Isaac on his shoulder, on their way to Mount Moriah.
I could imagine his sorrow. My father had a sensual relationship with his books. He loved feeling them, stroking them, sniffing them. He took physical pleasure in books: he could not stop himself, he had to reach out and them, even other peoples books. And books then really were sexier than books today: they were good to sniff and stroke and fondle. There were books with gold writing on fragrant, slightly rough leather binding, that gave you gooseflesh when you touched them, as though you were groping something private and inaccessible, something that seemed to tremble at your touch. and there were other books that were bound in cloth-covered cardboard, stuck with a glue that had a wonderful smell. Every book had its own private, provocative scent. Sometimes the cloth came away with cardboard, like a saucy skirt, and it was hard to resist the temptation to peep into the dark space between body and clothing and sniff those dizzying smells.
Father would generally return an hour or two later, without the book, laden with brown paper bags containing bread, egg, cheese, occasionally even a can of corned beef. But sometimes he would come back from the sacrifice with a broad smile on his face, without his beloved books but also without anything to eat: he had indeed sold his books, but had immediately bought other books to take their place, because he had found such wonderful treasures in the secondhand bookshop, the kind of opportunity you encounter only once in a lifetime, and he had been unable to control himself. My mother forgave him, and so did I. . .

- Israel literature, Books, Amos Oz,

Fast Company head knowledge vs heart knowledge

“We have discovered that what looks like a small stagger actually makes a huge difference. The trick is to actually sit in the seat. In fact our main sales tool is to ship seats to airlines so they can sit in them,” says Molon Labe founder Hank Scott. “I have watched this several times—airline executives see the seat, nod their head and then say they get it. Then we ask them to actually sit down, next to a big fella like our head sales guy Thomas [6-foot-6, 250 pounds]. Within a few seconds they [really] get it—they stop being an airline executive and switch into passenger modes
Fast Company fixing the middle seat

https://www.fastcompany.com/90377949/airlines-are-finally-fixing-the-middle-seat?utm_campaign=Compass&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter%E2%80%AC

Issogesis - Walter C. Kaiser

Biblical Integrity in an Age of Theological Pluralism
In my judgment, the most dramatic moment in the entire twentieth century came in 1946 when W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley published their article “The Intentional Fallacy” in the Swanee Review. This shot would eventually be heard throughout the century and around the literary world. Most of the careful distinctions this duo made have now been lost in the popular versions of their work, which are now understood to advocate something like this: Whatever an author may have meant or intended to say by his or her written words is now irrelevant to the meanings we have come to assign as the meaning we see in that author’s text! On this basis, the reader is the one who sets the meaning for a text.
This astounding thesis changed all the rules of communication and interpretation. It gave the course for postmodernism, with its attendant methodologies, an enormous boost by setting a literary work free from its author’s affirmations and thought and substituting instead a multiplicity of meanings that were imputed to the work by each and every individual reader! This has become the heart of the integrity issue as the twenty-first century now struggles to see if the word integrity has any meaning left for our day!

Preaching and Teaching from the Old Testament
A Guide for the Church
Walter C. Kaiser

It could be summed up in the famous words of Richard of Chichester's prayer - to enable men and women 'to know Jesus Christ more clearly, to love him more dearly, and to follow him more nearly'.
William Barclay
General Introduction to the 1975 Edition

A List of NT Doxologies and Benedictions - From Christianity.com

https://www.christianity.com/blogs/eric-mckiddie-pastoralized/28-ways-to-conclude-your-sermon-a-list-of-nt-doxologies-and-benedictions.html

1. Rom. 8:38-39 - For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

2. Rom. 11:33, 36 - Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

3. Rom. 15:5-6 - May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

4. Rom. 15:13 - May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

5. 1 Cor. 15:58 - Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

6. 2 Cor. 13:11 - Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.

7. 2 Cor. 13:14 - The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

8. Gal. 6:18 - The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen.

9. Eph. 3:17-19 - (May) Christ dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

10. Eph. 3:20-21 - Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

11. Eph. 6:23-24 – Peace be to the brothers, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible.

12. Phil. 4:7 - (May) the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

13. Col. 3:15 - And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.

14. Col. 3:16-17 - Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

15. 1 Th. 3:12-13 - May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

16. 1 Th. 5:23-24 - Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

17. 2 Th. 2:16-17 - Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.

18. 1 Tim. 1:17 - To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

19. 1 Tim. 6:15b-16 - He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

20. Philem. 25 - The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

21. Heb. 13:20-21 - Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

22. 2 Pet. 3:18 - (May you) grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

23. 2 John 3 - Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father’s Son, in truth and love.

24. Jude 24-25 - Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

25. Rev. 1:5b-6 - To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

26. Rev. 5:12, 13 - Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing! …To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!

27. Rev. 7:12 - Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.

28. Rev. 22:20-21 - He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen

Last Women On Earth - To Civilized

The last woman on Earth - 1960

Evelyn- will he follow us?

Martin -  As soon as he can start the truck.

E - What if he catches us? I mean Harold can be awfully brutal if he thinks he's been wronged.

M - people who believe in wrong and right can be.

E- what do you believe in, Martin?

M- Nothing Ev, I'm too civilized.

Written by Robert Towne

- Modernity, dictatorship, Liberalism,

We shall Fight - Winston Churchill 1940

We are assured that novel methods will be adopted, and when we see the originality of malice, the ingenuity of aggression, which our enemy displays, we may certainly prepare ourselves for every kind of novel stratagem and every kind of brutal and treacherous maneuver. I think that no idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered and viewed with a searching, but at the same time, I hope, with a steady eye. We must never forget the solid assurances of sea power and those which belong to air power if it can be locally exercised. . . . . 

 Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

Winston Churchill to Parliament in 1940

Your God is too Small - JB Phillips

Your God is to Small JB Philips Pg 36 - 38

There is a conception of God which seems at first sight, to be very lofty in splendid, but which proves paradoxically enough on examination to be yet another of the 'too small' ideas. It is to think that the guy who is responsible for the ferret terrifying vastness of the universe cannot be possibly interested in the lives of than minute specs of the consciousness which exists on an insignificant planet.
To have even the beginning of the in appreciation of the greatness of the Power controlling the incredible system that science is beginning to reveal to us is a staggering but salutatory experience. We may feel the sense God is so huge in our whole sphere (let alone an individual man) is so minut by comparison, that we cannot conceive his taking the detailed interest in a single human life at the protagonist of the Christian religion affirm. To those oh, and they are not a few, who are secretly wishing for a release from moral responsibility ( and is every argument about religion is colored by the desire),be a great relief --  sort of relief of a Schoolboy might find in realizing that in a school of a thousand Corey's his peccadilloes are very unlikely to be noticed by the Headmaster. To others the thought of their insignificance may be desolating -- they feel not so much set free as cast adrift.
But whatever a man's reaction may be to the idea of the terrific 'size' of God, the point to note is that his comment is this: 'I cannot imagine such a tremendous God being interested in me' and so on.  He 'cannot imagine': which means simply that his mind is incapable of retaining the ideas of terrifying vastness and of minute attention to microscopic detail at the same time. But it is in no way proves that God is incapable of fulfilling both ideas (and a great many more).
Behind this inability to conceive such a god there probably lies the unconscious, but very common, cause of "inadequate gods' -- the tendency to build up a mental picture of God from our knowledge and experience of man. We know, for instance, that if a man is in charge of fifty other men he can fairly easily make himself familiar with the history, character, abilities, and peculiarities, of each man. If he is in charge of five hundred he may still take a personal interest in each one, but it is almost impossible for him to know and retain in his memory personal details of the individual If he is in charge of five thousand men he may in general be wise and benevolent; but he cannot, indeed he does not attempt to know his men as individuals. the higher he is, the fewer his individual contacts. Because in our modern world we are tending more and more  to see men amassed in large numbers, for various purposes, we are forced to realize that the individual care of the ' one in charge' Maestro left a mess this realization has permeated our unconscious minds, and we find it inevitably suggested to us that the Highest of All must have the  que es contacts with the individual. Indeed if He is Infinitely High the idea of contact with the infinitesimal small individual becomes laughable.
But only if we are  modeling God upon what we know of men. That is why it is contended here that what we at first sight appears to be almost super adequate idea of God is, in reality, inadequate -- it is based on two tiny a foundation. Man may be made in the image of God;  but it is not sufficient to conceive God as nothing more than an infinitely magnified man.
You do know I'm still there who do the lines to you can just fill in that I thought you drew it in if I thought you drew the tracks


Second hand Gun
A skillful writer can make us feel that we have entered the very hearts and lives of these,  and many other, people. Almost without question, we had what we have read or seeing to the sum total of what we call 'experience'. The process is almost entirely automatic, and probably most of us would be greatly shocked if it could suddenly be revealed to us how small a proportion of our accumulated 'knowledge of the world' is due to our first-hand observation and experience.
The significance of the second-hand knowledge of life to the subject we are considering is this: the conception of the Character of God which slowly forms in our minds is largely made by the conclusions we draw from the 'providences' and 'judgements' of life. We envisage 'God' very largely from the way in which he appears to deal with (or not to deal with) His creatures. If, therefore, our knowledge of life is (unknown to us in all probability) faulty or biased or sentimental, we are quite likely to find ourselves a second-hand god who is quite different from the real one.  pg 39-40



False Galilean
If they were completely honest, many people would have to admit that God is to them an almost entirely negative force in their lives. It is not merely that He provides that 'gentle voice we hear . . .  which checks each fault', but that His whole Nature seems to deny, to cramp, and inhibit their own. Though such people whole never admit it, they are living endorsement of Swinburne's bitter lines:

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean,
The world has grown grey from their breath.

Compared with their non=Christian contemporaries their lives seem to have less life and colour, less spontaneity and less confidence. Their god surrounds them with prohibitions but he does not supply them with vitality and courage. They may live under the shadow of his hand but it makes them stunted, pale and weak. Although the thought would appear blasphemous to his devotees, such a god is quite literally a blight upon human life, and no one can be surprised that he fails to attract the loyalty of those with spirit, independence, and a keen enjoyment of the colour and richness of life.
The words written above are a plain exposure of a false god, but of course, the unhappy worshippers never see their bondage as clearly as that or they would break away. They are bound to their negative god by the manipulation of isolated text of scripture or by a morbid conscience. At last, they actually feel that it is wrong to be themselves, wrong to be free, wrong to enjoy Beauty, Ron to expand and develop. Unless they have their gods permission they can do nothing. Disaster will infallibly bring them to heel, sooner or later, should they Venture beyond the confines of 'his planned for them'.
Such people, naturally enough, can only by strenuous efforts maintain their narrow loyalty. They do not get the chance to admire and love and worship and wordless longing one who is overwhelmingly Splendid and beautiful and lovable. At best they can only love and worship because their God is a jealous God, and it is his will and Commandment that they should. Their lives are cramped and narrow and joyless, because their God is the same. There must be compensations in the worship of such a God, and they usually are these.

1. The belief that the joy and freedom of those who do not subscribe to the worship. Of the negative God is just an illusion. Negative God worshippers often sustain themselves by imagining and elaborating upon the inner strange and conflicts of those who do not know their God. In fact, the strange and conflicts of ordinary  life are quite rightly felt by sensible people to be preferable to the Intolerable and never-ending strain of worshiping a God who drains the life of all its vitality in colour

2. There is a certain spiritual masochistic joy and being crushed by the Juggernaut of a negative God this is perfectly brought out in him which is still song in certain circles:

Oh to be nothing, nothing,
Only to lie at His feet,
A broken and empty vessel
For the Masters use made meet.

The sense of humor is, of course, suspended by the negative God, or his devotees would be bound to see the absurdity of anyone's ambition being to be ' nothing', a 'broken' and, not unnaturally, ' emptied' vessel line at gods feet! Better still, the New Testament ( a book full of freedom and joy, courage and vitality) might be a searched in vain to supply any endorsement whatsoever of the above truly Dreadful verse and the conception of God it typifies. if ever a book taught man to be 'something, something', to stand and do battle, to be far more full of joy and daring and life than they ever were without God --  that book is the New Testament!

3. The comforting idea of being ' something' special. Worshipers of the negative god often Comfort themselves by feeling that what is good enough for 'the world' is not good enough for them:  the chosen, the unique. Even though this means a life denuded of the beauties of art, abnormal pleasures, and Recreation, alive cramped in normal means of expression--that is a small price to paying the separate,. unique
This pathetic idea of being '' something special, is clung to with desperation so that we find worshippers of the negative God who knows in their secret hearts that their lives cannot really exhibit any Superior qualities to those of their ' worldly' or 'worldly Christian' friends, clean tightly to the rules of '  separateness-- so that they may at least feel  that they are marked out as a special favorites of their God!
All this is very unattractive men in Pleasant oh, but it is quite common among religious people the question for them is: dare they defy and break away from this imaginary god with a Perpetual frown and find the one who is the great Positive, who gives life, courage enjoy, and  wants His  Suns and daughters to stand on their own feet? 

- Jesus, Humanity, Satan, God,

Weakness

For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Paul from Tarsus

Christian Drift -------The Hole in our Gospel ------ Richard Stearns

This has always been a problem with God's people; we tend to drift away from God's bold vision, replacing it with a safer, tamer vision of our own.
The Hole in our Gospel  ------ Richard Stearns