Constancy And Thee

"6“For I, the LORD, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed."
Malachi 3:6

"8Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever."
Hebrews 13:8

The other night I found a passage in Psalms which sounded quite familiar. I'm sure that many, many Christians have made this connection over the years-bear with me as I mix it up a little:
Words in Red are from Psalm 107:23-30
Words in Blue are from Luke 8:22-25
Black words are mine, commenting.


23 Those who go down to the sea in ships,
Who do business on great waters;
At least a third of the disciples were sailors: Peter and Andrew, James and John. They worked daily, fishing on the Sea of Galilee.
22Now on one of those days Jesus and His disciples got into a boat, and He said to them, “Let us go over to the other side of the lake.” So they launched out.
24 They have seen the works of the LORD,
And His wonders in the deep.
25 For He spoke and raised up a stormy wind,
Which lifted up the waves of the sea.
23But as they were sailing along He fell asleep; and a fierce gale of wind descended on the lake, and they began to be swamped and to be in danger.
26 They rose up to the heavens, they went down to the depths;
Their soul melted away in their misery.
27 They reeled and staggered like a drunken man,
And were at their wits’ end.
28 Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,
24They came to Jesus and woke Him up, saying, “Master, Master, we are perishing!”
And He brought them out of their distresses.
And He got up and rebuked the wind and the surging waves, and they stopped, and it became calm.
29 He caused the storm to be still,
So that the waves of the sea were hushed.
30 Then they were glad because they were quiet,
So He guided them to their desired haven.
25And He said to them, “Where is your faith?” They were fearful and amazed, saying to one another, “Who then is this, that He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey Him?”
New Testament or Old Testament, man gets in trouble, calls out to God, and God answers him, saves him.
Praise God for never changing!

Bumpersnarkers

This morning I had to turn around and drive by the car again, the one with the bumperstickers. Sometimes you see something so wrong-headed, wrong hearted- just plain wrong- that you have to look twice.
I imagine it was intended to be humorous, insightful, sharp. Fail fail fail.
“I PRAY THAT GOD ISN’T TOO PICKY”.
Sorry, sister. All have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God. Sin is sin is sin. Sin is the trouble you are in in in. No Christian would put that slogan on their car, so I assume you are of the camp of ‘Ain’tasaint’.
Evidence to support such assumption? The other bumblesticker:
“HATE IS NOT A FAMILY VALUE”.
No, it isn’t a family value. Hate is to Satan as Love is to God. Lets see-who is known for promoting ‘Family Values’? Hmmmm...oh yeah-”Christians”. Do they get smeared with the Hate appellation? Is Bret Farve a Viking?
Here’s the thing-a lot of self-righteous moralists who assume that they are RIGHT...would never set foot in a church to save their lives. They think so highly of themselves that they sneer at the idea that they are sinners. They have successfully thrown off the religious gunk their families had tried to instill in them. They are too good for God.
What bumpersticker would I put on my car to answer that other driver?
“I PRAY THAT GOD WILL HAVE MERCY”. Hateful enough?

End Times Began The Day Adam Fell

9then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, 10and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority"
2 Peter 2:9-10a

Lord, preserve us.
I do a fair amount of looking towards the future when Christ returns and sets up His Kingdom on Earth, but not that much about the 'End Times' which captivate many.
Things are bad-Man messes up, makes things all the worse before Christ's return.
That's all I need to know about the 'End Times'.
'the Lord knows how...to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment'.
You can stubbornly cling to your ideas about God, reject His existence for the duration of your life on earth...futile.
God IS...and your opinion doesn't matter. Neither does mine. God IS.
Jesus said, “He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me, scatters." Luke 11:23
If you are not with Christ, you are against Him. Not good. Deadly. Consider yourself one of the unrighteous kept under punishment for the day of judgment.

But Christ also said, "

²⁸“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. ²⁹“Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰“For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30

Seek the Lord while He may be found.

Would You Like To Know Your Future?

Here you go, un-Happy Campers:
"7 “I will surely tell of the decree of the LORD:
He said to Me, ‘You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You.
8 ‘Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance,
And the very ends of the earth as Your possession.
9 ‘You shall break them with a rod of iron,
You shall shatter them like earthenware.’” Psalm 2:7-9

The very Messiah, Jesus Christ, whom you have rejected, ignored throughout your life...if you survive His return, you, your nation, everything you know and love will be ruled by Him with a rod of iron.
Iron. While His people enter into His gates with Thanksgiving, enjoying His Mercy and Grace...you get iron.

"9And the LORD will be king over all the earth; in that day the LORD will be the only one, and His name the only one.
10All the land will be changed into a plain from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem; but Jerusalem will rise and remain on its site from Benjamin’s Gate as far as the place of the First Gate to the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Hananel to the king’s wine presses. 11People will live in it, and there will no longer be a curse, for Jerusalem will dwell in security.

17And it will be that whichever of the families of the earth does not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, there will be no rain on them. 18If the family of Egypt does not go up or enter, then no rain will fall on them; it will be the plague with which the LORD smites the nations who do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Booths."
Zechariah 14:9-11,17-18

Actually, all of Zechariah 14 is a good image of what your future looks like. The plague of no rain for those who do not worship God is part of His ruling with a rod of iron.

In Psalm 66:3 we find mention of: "3 Say to God, “How awesome are Your works!
Because of the greatness of Your power Your enemies will give feigned obedience to You."
This shows the blackness of the human heart filled with sin. Even with the Lord ruling the entire world from His throne in Jerusalem, there will be hardened peoples who would rather endure famine than obey Him. Or, they will pretend obedience, as if He cannot see what is in their hearts.
What's in your heart?

Alexander Supertramp, My Left Foot

I think that there is a lot of nonsense dressed up as 'nobility' and 'morality' which actually, when you get down to the dirt of it, is nothing more than Ego on a grand tour.
Ego, as in egregious. Ego, as in look at how wonderful I am. (God looks at the heart.)
I just finished (if that is the word) watching "Into The Wild", a movie by Sean Penn starring Emile Hirsh as Chris McCandless, a young man who dropped out of 'Civilization' and died alone in the Alaskan wilderness.
McCandless was all of 24 years old when he died, and I am in no way disparaging him, his life, or death.
I would say that he didn’t seem to be comfortable in his own skin, something which usually takes more than 24 years to accomplish.
That he was an idealist is evidenced by his giving away or burning all of his money before heading to Alaska. He was an idealist, fine. God love him.
But I think that McCandless would be troubled that millions of dollars have been made off of his story. The ego which is *Sean Penn* made “Into The Wild” a noble and moral tribute...a memorial making good bank for Penn. You won’t see him burning all of his money (as a capitalist, that would offend me).
But Penn’s money is safe from becoming tinder instead of legal tender (please forgive).
I’m reminded of Leo Durocher who, in his autobiography gushed on and on about what an honest and noble soul Leo Durocher is. Handsome, too! Why, he had no idea(!) why that darned old Baseball Commissioner would kick him out of the league for a few seasons. Everybody gambles and lifts drinks in the company of underworld mobster gentlemen, don’t they?
Durocher (how can I say this?) kinda sorta fibricated a bit in his book.
Penn does the same in his movie, making McCandless into an angel bound on earth, one disgusted with the world he wanted so much to leave behind him.
Well, eventually he did.
I have a feeling that, had McCandless lived a few more years, he would have matured into a different human being. In the movie (and in life?) his parents, especially his father, are monsters-hateful, cold, members of a greedy older generation.
One of the steps to adulthood is when we stop blaming our parents for everything, accept them as they are, and rid ourselves of resentment.
A 24 year old McCandless might not yet have arrived at that step. So Penn made the parents hateful caricatures. His younger sister, played by Jena Malone, is a saint angel loving giving angel saint. Of course.
Some of the Alaskan scenery was magnificent. But my intolerance for saints being saintly (noble, moral...) kept my finger on the fast forward button. I missed the hippie stuff entirely. well, maybe missed isn’t the right word, but it will do.
Right at the end is a picture of the real Chris McCandless, smiling into eternity. Looked like a nice guy.
Tell you what-listen to Sigur Ros, and thank me later.

...But You Disappoint More

If it seems as if this world is going to Hell, its not because of God, or Christians. It's because of EVERYONE ELSE, possibly including yourself. Nice job.

Christians Disappoint...

You will never be pleased by how they exercise their faith. If they refuse to be defined by YOUR defini, they miss the mark you have set, your opinion of what a Christian should be.
Do Buddhists fail you? Ever meet a hypocritical Hindi? Does it ever knot up your gut that some Muslim isn’t as good a Muslim as you think he should be?
What? You don’t care about how all of those others live their faiths? Live and let live?
Ah, but those Christians...

Keeping On Trakai

It occurred to me that ‘Prosperity Preachers’ who subvert the Gospel and suck in the gullible might have a hard sell in the near future. What is the use of promising people that ‘God wants them to be rich!’ if President Obama has determined that ‘the Rich’ are the main villains in his Grand Guignol game?
The picture above is of the island resort named Trakai, near Vilnus, Lithuania.
I have a friend whose family used to vacation there. She is one of the teachers in the windmill picture below.
Lithuania after the fall of Communism was in bad shape.
Their economy was nonexistent, as the USSR had run everything…right into the ground. It was a broken country…which has healed with time, time and the perseverance of Lithuanians. The people never gave up on their country; the young people, my friend’s generation, have worked hard to make their Lithuania thrive.
President Obama can ‘redistribute the wealth’ in the name of equity and fairness, but no matter the amount of harm he does to our country in the short term, he is doomed to fail. We are a better country than he supposes. He is only a man, this generation’s Jimmy Carter, and that’s not a compliment.

"My Country, tis of Thee
Sweet land of Liberty
Of Thee I sing!"

Everything Old Is Old Again, Or, Striving After Wind

“Lord, make me to know my end
And what is the extent of my days;
Let me know how transient I am.
Behold, You have made my days as handbreadths,
And my lifetime as nothing in Your sight;
Surely every man at his best is a mere breath. Selah.
Surely every man walks about as a phantom;
Surely they make an uproar for nothing;
He amasses riches and does not know who will gather them.”
Psalm 39:4-6

The more I think about God being Sovereign over all things, the less I worry about the stupid stuff Men do.
Man continually rages against Man and God. I’m over it.
The current crisis, the latest war, the daily hatred can be summed up in:…Mankind acting up all ‘Man-unKind’.
One blessing from God which has kept man from destroying all life: we sleep for one third of our lives, so we can only get 2/3rds as vicious as we would like. Kings, peasants, Hitlers and Caesars all are limited to 2/3rds troublesome. Including me, thank God.

“Why are the nations in an uproar
And the people devising a vain thing?” Man at his best is a mere breath. And he uses that breath within him to curse God and man. I’m glad we’re all transient! Do you realize that “IMPORTANT MEN” (oxymoron)
Build tributes to themselves(or have followers who build tributes) in the vain hope that they will be remembered? Eiffel Tower? Washington Monument? Lincoln Memorial?
We all die, and I would be ashamed to show up in Heaven with a granite likeness of “Doug” polluting the landscape down here. I’m a mere breath, and I prefer to use that breath to Praise God.

Dr Domo

A doctor named Smet
Caught my ear’s eye-
Contrived and voluted
his writing is mooted
and that is his best
efaturette.

I’m extending grace to Dr Smet, but I have to temper it with a little justice. He won’t ever read this, unless he Goooogles his monica and appears fuming over my horizon.
I’m a forgiving cuss, and when I come across typos online, I assume that the writer is so confident in his or her write-ability that spell/grandma checks are deemed unnecessary. I usually just move on, but in a movie review a DOCTOR prescribed these pills:
“A streak of loses”
“becomes Clough ones he appears on the screen.”
And my favorite: “efaturette”.
Blu-ray dot com is the depository for Dr Smet Atanasov review glory. I’m guessing that English is not his native language-his writing is formal, over-intellectualized, and he seems to be throne by homophones.
I would like to see a picture of an efaturette, though.
I do not seek praise, but I am pleased with the few lines beginning this post-I decided that Smetty would be best honored with a broken limerick. The second line refuses to rhyme the first by design. Which is put-offing, but fine.

"I'm Not Stuck in Here with You, You're Stuck in Here with Me!"

Ah, the fun to be had in reading a book in which some Christians say bad things about other Christians! No! Not in front of the civilians!
It's a good thing pagans can't read, or at least won't read this stuff.
Though they (the paganists) might enjoy the 'Christian-on-Christian-strong-dislike-for-their-stupid-views' debate, the worry ever present is that the Christians might turn away from their uncivil war and begin to proselytize the spectators.
I'm a few chapters in to Dave Hunt's "What Love Is This? Calvinism's Misrepresentation of God". Hoo-boy.
Possibly I'm too worldly, hardly spiritual enough to fight in that battle. I am not a Calvinist, or an 'Arminian'. Calvinian? Arminist? And what of Hobbes?
I'm making light of the light bearers, but bear with me-rather than join in the argu-fight
I am a contentious objector. If the Calvinists wish to expend energy showing the Arminians the errors of their ways(at full volume) they can do it without me.
On the 180* (or verse vica) , the Arminian camp of Dave Hunt can include me out. His book (so far), though filled with quotations and footnotes, is weak on logic, long on emotional appeal. I get enough of that from the Obama administration.
I'll just stick to the Bible, and fellowship with my fellow Christians, contemplating the Savior who unites us. Works for me.

Some Days

...are just for enjoying. May God richly Bless you today.

"resta

It's funny, sort of, but I don't live here. I live, and I'm here, where I've spent most of my life...but I am as unconnected to my area as I am to Belgium.
Where you live-is it you? Are you defined by location? Or eye color? Or rumor? Or

My Egypt

In the Bible, God makes Egypt a refuge, a place of protection for Abraham and Sarah, Jacob, his sons and their family. In the NT, it is a safe haven for Joseph, Mary and Jesus.
Proverbs 18:10 reads, "10 The name of the LORD is a strong tower;
The righteous runs into it and is safe."
I do not worry about Obamacare or the depredations of rapacious politicians. I speak out against them, I exercise my rights of free speech, but that is from concern for my country, my state, my friends and family. For those who think it all ends here.
But I have an Egypt, a strong tower where I am safe. God has placed me where He wants me. I have a good job, a place to live, a church family which cares for me as I care for them-we lift each other up in prayer and support each other. We are all in that strong tower, and will someday be in the safest of places, God's presence, for eternity.
But for now, we live here, and try to honor God with our lives. Believe me-I know how often I fail to do that. But God is faithful, and all of this is temporary.
If the most remotest of possibilities were to come true-if our country became a Socialist state, where the government rules and the people suffer under tyranny...God is still in His heaven. Watching. His children are safe, and the sins of those who would persecute His children, punish or torture them-those sins are not forgotten. If I have a brother in Christ being put to death in China, Sudan, Saudi Arabia or France...that brother is in the same safe tower. God is faithful, and all of this is temporary.