The Mark – No.24 The Treasury

The commands of Jesus are the Mark, the target for the perfect life. To aim for and to hit the Mark is to conform to the image and likeness of God. To ignore, neglect, or miss the Mark is to sin. The commands provide stepping stones through earthly life, upon which the child of God survives tempests and deflects the boomeranging darts of pride. Adhering to the Mark aspiring immortals gain victory.

                                                                                                                                                                    Don't store for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:19

Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life which the Son of Man will give you for it is on Him that God the Father has set His seal.

John 6:27

Wake up, look around. What you see with your eyes is a world highly salted with death and shadows of death. Nothing lasts here. It is even hard to hold on to goodness here because everything changes. This is the dark and dangerous world of thieves and murderers. This is the world of starving desire. 

Oh lying eyes, if only you could let us see the safe place of life and light.

"But we can!" exclaims the shepherd boy. “Where you put your treasure becomes more and more real to you. It becomes your room where lay your most precious possessions! In the place of many mansions someday you will find your room all furnished and packed with your souvenirs from this old world, with riches transformed and unimaginable!”

“But what shall I put there? What lasts?”

“That’s easy!” added shepherd boy “Fill your room with acts of love, with friends and family you have helped and prayed for. Fill your room with miraculous moments of hearing God speak. Let your food be the Word of God, and counsel from holy ones, and Holy Communion. My Son and Lord wants you to be aware that your mortal body is only the vehicle for your heart. Your work and your treasures, even your food can be as enduring as He is. Become conscious with every decision you make of what to do and how to spend your money of whether it will land in your “living” room or whether it will dissolve.”

“I think I get it!” I cheered. “What is visible here dissolves like vapor and what is invisible here, is as real as a rock in God’s country. It’s ironic!”

Shepherd boy smiled, nodded, then dissolved!

Becoming Human- A New Christmas Story – Part Three of Five

Visiting God before He sends His Son to earth is more thrilling and more illuminating than visiting Santa in the North Pole. As it turned out, it wasn’t for my benefit or even yours, the reader, that my pal and I made this mystical journey. God sent for us.  

“Lord! I am amazed that there is actually something we can do for You that you can’t do for Yourself? You want us to help prepare You to become human! I can’t imagine a more magnificent honor. Where shall we begin?”

The Lord replied, “I am not ignorant about humanity; after all, I made you in My image and likeness. I have loved and guided men and women since the beginning of time. I know about your tendency to self exaltation because you love yourselves as much as I love you; to lying because you want to create a world of your own design, just as I have done, and to unrelenting criticism of others because I am the Judge you want to be also. However, my child-in-training, human self-centeredness perverts My image.

“I have spent these millennia since creating Adam studying humanity. There is enough goodness in people to believe that the perfect model will reunite us. But I wonder how having a body will affect Us? I want to be prepared. I don’t want My Son to depend on His divinity or to be a unique species.”

The Lord continued. “Please tell Me; is there something in particular we must know about being human?”

Dumbstruck and in awe, I asked for a moment to think.

Before saying, “It will be good for you to become an infant first. For all of us to start as infants who strive for knowledge and power was natural. We grew. However, prepare Yourself to shrink. Being entirely dependent and ignorant will be most unnatural, and most difficult. To a lesser degree the elderly experience the kind of loss in aging that you will experience at birth. Consider observing them carefully before you go. Perhaps you will find someone who can show you how to handle the condescension gracefully. When you are an infant rest in the sleep of ignorance.”

I dared to go on. “Lord God, Your humility which is apparent in pursuing this grand Mission will serve you well. As You know, humanity is frail when compared to your omnipotence. I read in the Torah about Your frustration and anger. I hope Your human experience will show you our limitations to help You to deal with humanity with less frustration. Hopefully, there will be no more earth opening up to swallow people, okay?”

I sensed in my spirit, since we had no form to see or be seen during this most unique conversation, that the Lord God was sincerely attentive to my words. An inner strength, new to my spirit, rose up within me. I was sure God had given me some potion to have the capacity for this conversation. This awareness reminded me to tell Him, “Beware of the body. The body can humble, but it can also pervert Your soul in ways you cannot imagine My Lord and God. Master your body. Care for it, but beware when it tries to control your soul. It is very difficult for us humans to master the body. As your vehicle on earth, Your body will have the power to influence you for better or for worse.

“Being human with the divine energy that You have bestowed upon us is a continual struggle towards ascension away from the animal flesh. I have learned how the body can be a parasite eating away at the soul. The mission you are about to undertake is dangerous.”

I sensed a deep contemplation in the silence that followed my transmission of those thoughts to God and so I waited for His reply and so will you, until next week.   

A Contrite Heart

The day that Judas Iscariot betrayed his leader for thirty pieces of silver has lived in infamy. Chrysostom said that Judas had no idea of what they would do to Jesus. When he found out, it was more than Judas could bear. Suicide is not the right form of contrition. It shows the same short sightedness of the first bad decision.

David, a man after God’s own heart, murdered a man so he could take his wife. When he realized the severity of his deed, David fell on his face and wept. Then he wrote, “Have mercy on me o God according to thy great Mercy, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my iniquity.” David knew that “a broken and contrite heart, God will not despise.”

Two men in ignorance flung themselves from the face of God, one returned, the other died.

On my way to the cross, these thoughts whirl around in my mind. How often I must have disappointed, even hurt God. Ignorance is not bliss, it can be fatal. It is so easy to think all is well and right when beneath this crusty layer of ignorance could be rot and infestation.

David was grateful, to be told of his failure, Judas couldn’t bear it to see it. Lord, send your angels to awaken me to any thought, word, or deed that would separate me from your life giving image and likeness. Show me the way through the valley of tears and repentance to the tiny Mark, so hard to find, so hard to stay on.

I think that God must have an army of angels in heaven who are assigned to cry day and night over the evils that ignorance pours upon mother earth.

With every word that I read and every word that I write, the same simple message shines through. Learn the commandments, love them, eat them and drink them until they become woven into the fabric of our being. To think like God is to stay alive. When I fall, get up again, when I wander, return with contrition, ask for mercy and try once more. Even if I fall and rise a trillion times, hopefully the moment of my last breath and heartbeat will find me nearer to Life than ever. 

3- The Day After Noah

Part 3 of the series, God –The Love Story Autumn

With that Noah stood up and held out his hand to me. Reflexively I kissed it. He nodded slightly and said, “May we meet again in kingdom-come, my child.”

I whispered, “I hope so.” But before I could finish Noah had turned away and began to descend the boulders. I sat as still as the rock under me watching him go. His gait was as spry as if he was wearing shoes, which he wasn’t. I don’t know if I saw him actually disappear or if he merely went so far that I couldn’t see him anymore, or if my thoughts distracted me from seeing him disappear so mesmerized was I by the whirlwind in my mind.  

I knew that I was not ready to walk. Noah had given me a lot to think about so I sat there for one, maybe two hours trying to listen for my conscience. Suddenly I heard the buzzing sound of fairies. Had they been there all along? The largest fairy fluttered in front of my face. She looked so much like Tinkerbelle I had to chuckle with delight.

“You know he was right,” she said. “He’s a classic; that man did not make it this far being wrong!”

“Mine-Fairy,” I replied, “Are you my conscience?”

 She shrugged her little shoulders and said, “Let’s just say we’re related.”

 “May I ask you a question? If Christmas is in my heart, do I have to walk on those pebbles?”

“Dearie”, she said sounding slightly peeved with me, “You can’t sit here till Christmas or till kingdom comes. Because you still live in time, you must keep moving. The person who won’t move is like the man who hid all his talent because he was afraid to risk losing it.”

“Okay, if I’ll walk if I must, but what did he say about the pain?” I asked.

She fluttered over to my shoulder and landed, then whispered in my ear. “Try to remember. Look to see if Noah planted his words in your mind.”

I closed my eyes and thought as hard as I could. Sure enough, Noah’s words percolated to the surface, clear as crystal. ‘The pain of walking to Christmas is the pain of corruption and mortality.’ So, walking doesn’t have to be painful! If I can overcome corruption and mortality I can walk to Christmas or anywhere just as Noah did.”

“Right!” my fairy was so happy that I remembered what he said.

With the lines of communication fairly open to my conscience, or at least to Tinkerbelle, I was ready to move on to the second piece of Noah’s advice, to obey the commands. I was going to need a lot more help with this so I turned to look up at my fairy that by now was fluttering around the nearby olive tree. “What are the commands?” I shouted a bit to get her attention. “Did he mean the Ten Commandments; how did he even know them since he lived centuries before Moses?”

“Goodness-me! No wonder your feet hurt so much when you walk! Don’t you know anything? Noah didn’t need the tablets of stone because he simply did all that the Lord commanded him. That is how he distinguished himself from the rest of humanity. For you, it’s different. You need all the help you can get; the Ten Commandments are a start. But Jesus gave you about an hundred more commands. Remember what He said.”

 I was stumped. “Give me a hint.”

The Taste Test

Greeks think differently than the English which is reflected in the two languages.In this piece I want to bring Greek thinking to English speakers. English-speakers say that God tests people.He allows us to be tempted and to suffer to see how we will respond. Will we become angry or patient? Will we hurt back or turn a cheek? In bad times, will we still trust Him or abandon Him willy-nilly?

There’s the vehicle crash test and there’s the mid-term exam. One test aims to destroy to find weaknesses to correct and the other one determines whether knowledge has been absorbed.

On the other hand, the Greeks say that God ‘tastes’ us. To be tasted is less about achievement than about being. A good pudding is not like a strong Volvo or a math exam. There is artistry in cooking that doesn’t exist in testing.

As the world turns things happen by natural causes and by human causes. Hurricanes, earthquakes, and droughts create situations that can be compared to poverty, divorce, and crime. When very bad, or even very good things happen in our lives, whether we see the situation as a test or an opportunity to add flavor may inform our response. We are the chefs of ourselves. We become sweet or sour by our own making. A test, on the other hand, is done to us. React to tests, or create tastes?

Does God send us disease or misfortune to see if we pass or fail or does He merely taste us to see how we are turning out as a consequence of living in nature and among a variety of flavors of other people?

Cooking is the relationship of flavors and textures, of ratios and of becoming something better with extreme heat or cold, with whipping, and whisking, chopping and dicing. Food goes through much of what we could call abuse with some fabulous results, so do some people.

God tastes Frances who just had a mastectomy. Did she become more tender and devoted to Him by the experience or did she harden? That depends on the other ingredients that she chose to add to the whipping of the mastectomy, either a cup of self pity or a cup of wonder? Did she whip up some inner courage and bravery or did she bruise and rot in fear? Frances is delicious; many ingredients go into her sweet being.

We cook ourselves while being exposed to various situations and by absorbing wisdom and knowledge through the arts (e.g. literature, music, painting, and theater.) God is simply the taster, not the chef. We are the chef of ourselves. The Greeks would claim that to say Frances was tested by her mastectomy is too simplistic to be accurate. Also, the notion of a test pits the testor and the tested at odds with each other. The concept of being tasted creates a friendlier relationship between the foodie and God.

Even English-speakers see people as having flavor. We say things like, ‘David is so sweet that honey pours out of his mouth. Rona is a bitter person, always looking for blame and fault. Little Sammy is so cute; Beth wants to eat him from head to toe.’ People as food; it makes sense.

We are asked to taste God too. Psalm 34:8 says, “Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.”

We love to eat! Let us take the art of cooking, to heart!

Bon Appétit, Lord!