The Parable of Penelope Pika

Lately, I keep having this thought run through my mind while I try to write “Heart of the Fallen.”  There are stories within stories and little lessons to be learned in every chapter of most books.  However the story that keeps taking over my monkey-brain does not fit into a book about fallen angels.  What’s worse is that this entire parasitic story pops in and out of my head like that moment when someone unexpectedly takes your picture.  Only, instead of little purple dots from the flash, I have a kaleidoscope of a thousand images wallpapered somewhere in the recesses and folds of my consciousness.  The story leaves me with the feeling that the universe is trying to tell me something.

Here, I’ll tell you the story, and you let me know what you think the universe is trying to tell me.

A cold gust of wind blows freely over the treeless Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, causing a mountain goat’s ear to twitch.  This twitch makes the goat step a little more to the left on a centuries-old path that has been used by generations which dislodges a pebble.  Now, this pebble has been resting on this mountain at the top of the world for hundreds of thousands of years just for this moment. 

The pebble, no larger than a pea, clicks against stone after stone as it obeys the laws of physics and follows the irresistible pull downward.  Each time it strikes the surface of another stone, the impact sends a shockwave through its surface which sounds like the ticking of a watch.  Each impact changes its path down own the mountain until it hits the big one. 

A final bounce against hard stone sends it vaulting over a ledge into the cold Tibetan air.  The small pebble accelerates toward the earth at 32 feet per second until its mass is counteracted by the density of the air and reaches an equilibrium known as terminal velocity. 

Some thirty feet below it, a small furry pika hurriedly stuffs seeds into her cheek pouches.  All she knows is that she must gather food and keep a wary eye skyward for the winged death that preys on her kind.  There is no conscious effort on her part, but rather an irresistible program of instinct and self preservation that has been carefully honed through generations.  She is unaware of anything other than the need to survive and the cacophony of sensory inputs her brain interprets to keep her alive.  She does not see, hear or feel the small stone above her that is freefalling toward the earth.  She feels the gust of wind as is causes her fur to fluff and sway, but she does not notice that it pushes the little piece of granite onto a new and fateful course.

Just as her tongue moves a seed into her cheek pouch, and her teeth momentarily clap together, the little rocky bit of her world, half the size of her brain, hits her on the top of her head, just behind her left ear with 1.6180339 grams of force.

For the little pika, this impact causes a pinch of pain and she sees a flash of light as millions of synapses in her brain are forced to fire all at once.  After the flash, time slows for her as she experiences something miraculous.  The stone, still in contact with her fur, shakes as it collides with her hard little skull.  Each minute impact quiver sends a shockwave through her gelatinous brain tissue.  Perhaps, she is seeing the mind of god in that little flash of light as her neurons fire.  Perhaps her little brain is tapped in to the collective consciousness of the universe, like a mosquito tapped into an artery.  Whatever you want to call it, or however you want to view it, suddenly humans are no longer unique.

The small stone falls to the earth at her feet unnoticed.  She sits there, unmoving, unblinking, as her brain tries desperately to categorize and compartmentalize all of the data she is unexpectedly downloading from the universe.  Her whiskers hang limp, then suddenly twitch then go limp again as her eyes stare blankly into the world in front of her.  Inside her skull, unseen by everyone, save you and I, she understands.  In an instant, she understands that her little paws have five toes that can grasp, which means that she can hold things, and make things, and that if she were to take that grass out of her mouth it could be woven to make a bed or some clothing that would help her keep warm which would help her survive because the rock she is sitting on is very cold and it would be nice to have something on her feet that could be woven from this grass which  she should call a shoes and these shoes could help protect her feet from the cold stones which are made up of infinitesimally small pieces of the universe that were once part of the a star like the one that makes it bright during the day and causes her fur to get warm, which is one of the billions and billions of other stars she sees in the night sky, but the light she sees in the sky at night was actually generated millions and billions of years ago and has traveled at the fastest speed anything can go in a straight line without actually folding space because space and time are malleable by mass which is demonstrated by the very existence of the gravity which pushed, not pulled because mass causes space and time to warp pushing lesser objects toward objects of greater mass, like the stone that just hit her in the head as it was pushed toward the earth by the entire whole of existence.

The pupil of her left eye dilates slightly, as if it were the biological equivalent of a “loading bar” while her brain continues to suffer the epiphany where she understands.  While some of her brain cells comprehend the nature of physics, other cells simultaneously comprehend: chemistry, mathematics, biology, and the need to develop a written language.  Yet other cells concern themselves with the knowledge of self.  She is keenly aware that she should pick her mates better, that she is suitably attractive to males of her species just the way she is and that she doesn’t need to do anything radical other than ensuring that she has a balance between what she eats and how much activity she has in her life, and that each and every pika on this mountain top, has the same potential for self awareness through the simple implementation of duplicating similar postaxial cranial impacts through the use of a machine she could easily build with her dexterous flanges thereby instantly propagating knowledge throughout her species and allowing the Pika Clan of northern Tibet to claim their rightful place in the universe as masters of the world led by her Penelope.  Her name!  Her name is Penelope! 

The sudden realization of the potential of her species, coupled with the comprehension of her own name causes a hitch in the dataflow and she is suddenly released.  Penelope’s eye dilation returns to normal as she blinks, and remembers to breath.  Her heart is full of joy as the possibilities of the future cascade through her newly formed mind.  She looks around and sees her clan mindlessly hoarding food or scurrying about but she is not upset.  She knows what has to be done, and what their destiny holds.  No longer will they be subject to moment by moment existence.  From this point forward, the Pika will forge out their own destiny, and every creature will know the name Penelope.

This joy and anticipation fills her heart, and she feels that if she doesn’t release just a tiny bit she will explode.  So smiling, with a twinkle in her little black eyes, she raises her small head toward the heavens and begins to sing.  Her lungs fill with air, her eyes close and the very first conscious and purposeful note to ever be emitted by her species escapes her small furry lips. 

The pitch is perfect; the tone in harmony with her small frame and its very existence fuels the elation in her heart as she quavers that faultless D note. 

She inhales and releases her second note, a beautiful E-flat that she transitions to a long F. The final two notes of her song come to her and each of them deserves her full attention.  Her small voice echoes through the mountains and she releases the second to last note of her Pika Song, a savory A.  Her lungs expended, she inhales again, elated to release the last note of the Pika Song, a B-flat, into the world.  Until, that is, she feels the eagles talons pierce her ribcage, their vice like grip crushing bones as the sharp characin punctures her lungs.  Her body helplessly carried off of the ground by the eagle she would have seen if she sang with her eyes open.

As life fades from her small body, she is filled with conflicting sensations.  On one hand, she is afraid because she knows she is dying.  She is aware of her own mortality.  On the other hand, she is elated to be flying, and understands that the wind passing over the eagle’s curved wings must travel faster on the upper surface than it does on the lower surface which creates lower pressure on top of the wing than the bottom of the wing which is called lift and allows the eagle to carry itself and Penelope into the sky.

As the last of her life fades, she wonders what it will be like as her life force returns to the universe that bore it, and there is regret that now the pika of Tibet are doomed to continue their existence, unchanged, until the next time a pebble hits one of them in the head in just the right way.  If only she had sung with her eyes open

Now, I know there are some problems with the way that is written.  For example the really long sentences, but I can live with that because it coveys some sense of what is going on in Penelope’s brain.  However, I don’t know why I keep thinking of this story.  I’m writing a story about angels, not pikas.  Am I supposed to put this little parable into “The Heart of the Fallen”, or am I to take it as a warning for myself?  There are several morals I can take from this little story, so it’s hard to know which one is meant for which audience.   Damn universe and its friggin post-it-notes! Feel free to add your two cents here.  I can use all of the help I can get.  Happy New Year!

      Two buckets are filled with sand. One bucket is saturated with water the other is not. A storm comes along and the bucket saturated with water withstands the storm. The unsaturated bucket is not so lucky. The wind lifts the sand out of the bucket and then tosses the empty bucket around like it is nothing.

      What is the meaning of this parable?

The bucket is mans soul, the sand is his integrity and the water is sincerity. The soul, when filled with integrity and saturated with sincerity, is quite heavy like a bucket of wet sand and can withstand the strong winds of life. The soul without sincerity doesn’t make it.

      Once the wind has blown your sand to the four corners of the earth, it can only be gathered back into your bucket, by picking up one grain of sand at a time. You cannot gather someone else’s sand into your bucket.

      The secret to keeping the bucket stable in the storm is the water of sincerity. What is the water of sincerity? It is God’s grace, which is a free gift to all. However, this water does not come out of a water tap, so it cannot be acquired at will by turning the spigot on and off as we wish. God’s grace is like rain, which must be collected with our hands cupped and then emptied into the bucket.

                        “Let justice descend, O heavens, like dew from above,

                          like gentle rain let the skies drop it down.

                          Let the earth open and salvation bud forth;

                          let justice also spring up!” (Isaiah 45:8)

      On the final Day of Judgment, God will judge us on how well we have taken care of our bucket of sand and it’s contents.

Dennis Higgins (16 December09)

Parable of Little Pearl: Thou Shalt Love Thy Body!
Imagine that every time you condemn yourself for being overweight, your inner child is trapped in an icy tomb. The only way you can free her and yourself is to embrace and love your body as it is this very moment. Please enjoy the Parable of Little Pearl.

by I. Lilias Trotter
Isabella Lilias Trotter was born in 1853 to a wealthy London family.  Born with an uncommon talent for sketching and painting, Lilias forsook fame and renown in order to serve the Lord Jesus as a missionary to Muslim women in Algeria for 38 years.  She founded the Algiers Mission Band, which is part of Arab World Ministries today.

In addition to hundreds of paintings and sketches, Lilias Trotter penned more than twenty books and pamphlets.  I had the recent privilege to read two of her books: Parables of the Christ-life and Parables of the Cross.  Both books feature several of her nature paintings which illustrate the spiritual truths about which she writes.  Trotter had a keen eye for detail and a steady hand for capturing those details with brush and water color.  The eyes of her heart were open to great spiritual depths, and I’m glad she recorded them for us.

In Parables of the Christ-life, Trotter begins at what appears to be the end: with a description of a barren African hillside.  I say, “barren,” because the painting that accompanies the first page portrays a yellow-brown, dusty landscape.  Trotter, however, would disagree with me.  She writes,

“LIFE — the first glance would hardly find it on this African hillside in the summertime.  The hot wind of the desert has passed over it, and the spring beauty of iris and orchid, asphodel and marigold, has vanished.  Nothing is to be seen but the mellow golden-brown of the grass, broken by blue-green aloe leaves, and hear and there a deep madder head of dried-up fennel.

Yet life is reigning, not death, all the while; it is there, in infinitely greater abundance than when the field was green — life enough to clothe a score of fields next year.

Stoop down and look into that withered grass, and a whole new world of God’s handiwork will come into view in the burnt-up tangle.  For of all the growing things out here, the seed-vessels are among the most wonderful.  Even little insignificant plants that would hardly catch your eye when in flower, develop forms of quaint beauty as the capsules ripen.  And now that all is finished, they lie stored with vitality in the midst of the seeming  loss around.

Do you see the parable?  We will trace it out step by step.”

Trotter, paying close attention to details, continues by drawing out all of the similarities and differences between the life-cycle of a plant and an individual’s spiritual birth, sanctification and ministry in the church.  Christ-centered and Scripture-saturated, Trotter describes in beautiful detail the incredible work that only God can perform in the hearts of His people.

Though a very short work, Parables of the Christ-life is soul-stirring and brimful of encouraging insight.  The God who dresses and plans the myriad details of the flowers of the field and the God at work within us is one and the same.  I cannot praise this little book enough and would highly recommend it.

This book is available to read for free online.

I’m like an animal
Crossed with a parable,
Mixed with a trendy cocktail
Tinged with regret,
You’re like a melody
Combined with an easel,
Blended with sugarplums
Tied to my bed,
While I’m fucking you with my
Right foot,
Left foot,
Right foot,
Left foot,
And so on.
Happy New Year to you, too.

It was published in 2006, and I recalled of it only its central image as gleaned from reviews: a man and a boy trudging through a bleak post-apocalyptic world, pushing a shopping cart with all they own inside it. But now The Road has become a movie and it seemed urgent to finally read the book. I needed to let the author create the story in my mind before the filmmaker would.

Having done so this past week, I can only echo the praise lavished on this Pulitzer Prize winner. I did find the style somewhat jarring at first, McCarthy’s way of mixing complete and incomplete sentences inconsistent it seemed to me, but soon he had settled into something that worked better, or maybe I had simply settled into his language and cadence, caught up in the daily and wearisome journey of the two protagonists in that place beyond cataclysm, with its “creedless shells of men tottering down the causeways like migrants in a feverland” and “the banished sun circl[ing] the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp,” the long trudge broken by reprieves of food and warmth, but mostly defined by cold and hunger and suspense — a constant undercurrent of menace, the cannibal “bad guys” near, their evil intimated in horrors like the remains of an infant on a spit.

When I was done it, the story nagged at me as a parable does, with both understanding and confusion. Yes, I see, I do see, but what am I to know from this? What does it really mean? 

For me, as for many readers, the heart of the work is the relationship between the man and the boy — father and son. I loved their exchanges, cryptic but revealing, like outcroppings of love in the pervasive silence of the ashen desolation around them. Each occupies the positions one might expect of their roles as parent and child — the protective, reassuring father and the fearful, dependent child — and yet what makes these unnamed characters so resonant for me is that they don’t stay at stereotype or expectation. Each moves between wisdom and fear the way all humans will, regardless of role. The man is as needy as a child; he is often fearful; he generally fails to get beyond an instinctive violence in his encounters with others. The boy can be as protective as a parent; he exhibits a moral conscience that judges his father’s actions; he grasps responsibility. When he is heartbroken over his father’s leaving a thief naked and robbed of everything, essentially to die, the man says, “You’re not the one who has to worry about everything,” and the boy says, ”Yes I am. I am the one.”

The story seems a parable to me of being human — as parent or child — but engaged in the reciprocity and mutuality each generation in their humanness must experience with the other.  

“Don’t read [this book] now if you are feeling particularly fragile, especially if you are a parent,” said British writer Victoria Glendinning in this past Saturday’s Globe and Mail, choosing The Road as her pick for “book of the decade.” But I’d advise quite the opposite. I think The Road is a book well suited for parental fragility and fears. Children know so much more than we realize, and we as parents often so much less. We must help each other through the ashes of what happens. We can’t ever really protect each other in a world so utterly unsafe (be it future, or the one we occupy now), except for the enduring safety of love. But we can love, can’t we?

“The Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not lose heart.” Luke 18:1

There is power in prayer. I can tell you that prayer is not just about rambling. Through your prayer, you communicate your request, your heart desire and wishes to God.

Also through prayer, you develop the best of relationship with God, because the more you pray, the deeper you get with God.

Life is so serious that you also need to take it serious. You can’t fight a spiritual battle using the physical means. In fact, everything that happens in the physical, first occur and manifest in the spiritual.

This is why you must put on your garment of prayer. No matter how downcast you are, it does not matter if you are tired or not, what you need is to keep on praying.

Prayer secures your life, your personal relationship, your job, your careers and of course, you true faith as Christian.

In the verse above, Jesus mentioned the reason why you must never lose hope. He used a very strong parable (read on the chapter 18), as illustration regarding prayer.

By your prayer, you are knocking the door to God’s heart, you are asking Him to help you. Even when it seems as if there is no response from God to your request, Jesus says, you must not give up. Just keep praying!

It may be difficult for you understanding this but faith and prayer go together. The more faith you have, the more energised you will be when praying.

You know what? I implore you, do not lose hope. Never think of giving up because God will surely come to your aid. He won’t let you be on your own to bear the burden, rather, He will carry your burdens for you.

God loves you, He cares about you more than you can ever imagine. You only need to build up your faith and understanding of His supremacy by praying, without ceasing or weariness.

Peace!

Princess Ayelotan

©2009 All Rights Reserved

www.princessayelotan.com

We have all either heard or used the expression of “planting an idea in someone’s head.” It is a wonderful metaphor that is rich in meaning.

Metaphors are a symbolic language used to explain the invisible world of human mental activity in terms of visible things found in the physical world. For instance, the expression stated above treats an “idea” as though it were a “seed.”

The symbolism is easy to follow and makes perfect sense. An idea can be planted into someone’s mind, take root, grow, blossom, and finally bear fruit. “Fruit” represents the goodness of an action produced from the original implanted idea. If other people benefit from this fruitfulness (good works) it will create new seeds in their minds as well.

A seed perfectly portrays how goodness is made fruitful and information is multiplied within the human heart and mind. Nature and human nature are equally prolific!

What I find miraculous in such metaphors is how Mother Nature lends herself so perfectly to helping humans express mental processes with terrestrial processes. The metaphors that can be made between the two distinct worlds are innumerable. To offer a few more simple examples, we can be described as having a “sunny” disposition, a “cloud” over our head, or as a “diamond in the rough.”

The second thing I find miraculous about this procedure is that humans instinctively grasp this transcendental relationship.

According to scientist/theologian, Emanuel Swedenborg, God created things to be that way. The natural world is a physical analog of all the things that can take place in the human mind and spirit.

Evidence for this Divine scheme is that Jesus used parables to communicate deeper messages during His ministry. The irony is that while metaphor is instinctive to humans, such language escapes our everyday habitual minds. This is why many of the fanciful Bible stories have led “reasoning” individuals to challenge the inerrancy and authority of God’s Holy Word.

Every story in Scripture, whether historical or prophetical, contains deeper messages about God’s relationship with each of us. In fact, the Second Coming commences as individuals open up to these deeper teachings and allow for greater understanding and intimacy with the Divine Creator.

The purpose of this blog is to help the Lord God plant new spiritual seeds.

http://www.provinggod.com

The mainline Christian churches, which include Roman Catholic, Greek and Russian Orthodox, and every Protestant church teach (excluding Jehovah Witnesses) believe that Jesus was just another form of God the Father.  This false doctrine stems from the Roman Catholic doctrine known as the Trinity.

Here is another way of stating the false doctrine: God decided to become a human being who was born without the need of a human male’s sperm and was named Jesus.  Therefore, Jesus was not a human being, but just looked like one because He was God the Father in another form.

This is a lie!  The church known as Jehovah Witnesses have a different problem.  They claim Jesus is not God, but only the Son of God, who was a mere human being.  This is also a lie!  They have one thing correct: Jesus was a mere human being.

The mystery of Jesus is complicated by the above church leaders who have refused to allow outsiders to teach them the truth.  Yet, if they would take the time to read the scriptures, they would be amazed to find that God’s plan clearly provides for sending men from the outside to their existing churches.  Men whom God anointed to teach them the truth.

Greed and fear are the reasons church leaders refuse to allow an outsider access to their congregations.  Greed keeps the wealth of their churches in their control; and fear of losing their congregations to an outsider who knows more than they, keeps them barring their doors against outsiders.  These are the same reasons the Pharisees worried about concerning an outsider named Jesus.  Jesus summed up this behavior in His parable of the rented vineyard.

The scriptures clearly state: Jesus is God. The scriptures clearly state: Jesus was a human being. The scriptures also state: Jesus is not the God that sent Him.

When we eliminate church leaders, who have their obvious reasons for lying and denying that men exist and have always existed, who are sent to them by God, and clergy who are more interested in holding onto their jobs, rather than holding onto their souls by holding onto the truth about God and Jesus, we are left with their congregations.  The congregations of these liars are the blind following their blind leaders.

There are various reasons congregations suffer with blindness:

1. Some of the people are more interested in maintaining their particular social status, which is a benefit derived from their respective churches;
2. Other people become hooked on the newly discovered kinship of a church group and refuse the truth to stay with the group;
3. Then there are people who are afraid to question their church’s doctrine, even when they’ve seen a contradiction of their church doctrine in the Bible;
4. Finally, we have the rest of the people who are simply being deceived, because they refuse to, or are too lazy to, or just don’t know they can, read the Bible for themselves and understand it.

All of them are being deceived!  Some are deceiving themselves, while others are allowing themselves to be deceived.  Whatever the case, they will be judged and damned because of the deception.

Jesus put it this way:

“For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.” ~Revelation 22:15

To be continued…

OK, I just need a place to vent.

I really think that everyone has the wrong end of the stick when it comes to the storyline of Avatar. It’s not really a motive “message carrying” movie, to try to get us to move out of Iraq, stop logging the rainforest, be more eco-friendly or some of the ridiculous interpretations I’ve seen around the net.

All the storyline does is bring focus to the massively powerful truth underlying the whole thing; that humanity will never stop. Like with the Native Americans, and Montezuma’s empire, the stronger race will never stop until it has consumed or destroyed the weaker.

Avatar is not an allegory, analogy, or parallel; it’s a prediction of what is to come, based on what has already been. We don’t need to do anything about it, it’s just the truth. In my mind, the (irritatingly) positive ending, where the natives manage to drive the humans off Pandora, would only be followed by a second, fatal attack by the humans.

And if the landscape does look like the crazed dream of a acid tripping puffin, the film can only benefit from it.

Right, I think I’ve run out of steam. Be interesting to see if anybody reads this.

At one time there was a young woman who worked to glorify the Lord without calling attention to herself. Although she was also aware of the blessings and privileges in her life, she never knew exactly what to do with all these things to make up for other people not having these things, so she just went on doing what she was supposed to be doing, hoping that things would get resolved in time, according to God’s divine will.

Then the young woman experienced a fracture in her soul. After the divide, the new part of her grew disillusioned by her faith until it was gone completely, leaving not a God-shaped hole in her heart but a certainty-shaped hole. The new part of her was decidedly rational, but incomplete, young, unsure, and weak in comparison to the original, and according to the Scriptures, she was as valued as a disease or parasite. This part of her developed silently within her head, occasionally finding a voice through her hands rather than her mouth, so afraid she was of being wrong or being yelled at or being rejected.

As time passed, these two parts of her became more and more unstable and unsettled by the existence of the other. Each time one gained ground, the other one struck back with even more fervor. The woman, pulled in two directions, ended up going nowhere, but continued as she always had, at least in action if not completely in spirit, because there could be no progression. After a time, the woman grew tired, and the stronger of the two parts of her started winning the battles, although the weaker part of her never did disappear. Instead, it was crammed into a too-small cupboard, understanding how unwanted and unvalued it was, not necessarily how incorrect it was.

After a time, the woman died, as all humans must. One part of her went to heaven, and one part of her went to hell. The one in heaven rejoiced and turned away from the mirror image in hell, and the one in hell continued as she always had, in spirit as much as in action. She pleaded with her mirror image to have mercy on her because she had tried so hard to reconcile with her and had simply been unable to. She begged to be reconciled now because she was as much a part of her mirror image as the mirror image was of her.

She called to her mirror image, “In life you had good things: you had love, acceptance, certainty, but I was looking for answers and finding none and suffering for it, while you believed because you could not imagine not believing and losing everything. Why is it you, then, who continues to receive the blessings?”

The mirror image responded, “You will be in death as you were in life, for your portion of the soul withered and you were blinded by your need for everything to have concrete answers. If you think I fought against you for years to get here just to return to you down there, you are gravely mistaken. I will have no part of it, for I cannot remain here if you are with me.”

“I only wanted answers. Why were answers never given?”

“Because getting answers is not important. Belief rather than knowing is what got me here.”

“You were blind,” the one in hell shouted up at the one in heaven. “You were desperate. You were passive.”

“And you were wrong.”

The divide was complete, and the separate parts of one woman went their separate ways. The one in heaven became perfected and consistently whole, and the one in hell remained fractured, tattered, tired, and tortured. To her, the landscape of hell was no different than the landscape of earth, except now she had certainty and found it did not help.

I am deeply conflicted right now, suffice it to say. This parable is not actually an admission that I am wrong. It is an admission that I fear I am wrong, and that this fear has damaged me (perhaps irreparably). I use the phrase “fracture in my soul” metaphorically rather than literally, inspired by Mary Reilly. The parable is based loosely on Luke 16:19-31, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

If a dog has not been properly leashed by its owner, and that dog bites a stranger, the owner is to blame.  No sense in blaming the dog.  Verily I say unto you, the dog is a dog.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells an interesting and relevant parable:

“A man had two sons.
He came to the first and said,
‘Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.’
The son said in reply, ‘I will not,’
but afterward he changed his mind and went.

The man came to the other son and gave the same order.
He said in reply, ‘Yes, sir,’ but did not go.

Which of the two did his father’s will?“

Today the Washington, DC Council said,
“I will love my neighbor but I will not subscribe to bigoted doctrine,” then passed a bill for the second time in favor of same-sex marriages.

The Diocese of Washington, DC said,
“I will love God and serve my neighbor,” then promised to end their social services if a same-sex marriage bill passed.

Which of the two did God’s will?

Luke 12:22-26
Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his lifeb? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?

Parable after parable, Jesus was teaching his significant following what God’s will for man was and is. Wealth was an area he spoke often about and it might seem depressing to most of us. Most of us devote our lives to providing well for us and our families and some of us are successful at it. To many, the safety in having wealth stored is more than the security of knowing we serve a loving savior. Wealth is measured in terms of money, possessions, jewelry, land, cattle and many other ways. Is the Lord saying that the pursuit of money is wrong then? Can we not build safety nets for ourselves here on earth to safeguard us and our families against difficult times like economic recessions?

In the verses prior to our passage today, we are reminded that if we put our trust in any wealth that is not scriptural, we may never be able to enjoy the fruits of it. Death may rob us of the chance of enjoying it’s protection and provision and our loved ones also may not get it. However, when we focus our lives on serving the Lord, we build for ourselves wealth in eternity and that is never perishing just as we are not when we are saved by God’s grace. Today the Lord reminds us that we are not to worry about our lives, our food, our physical health or clothes because he will provide and has been providing better than he does to even the birds of the air. We are considered God’s own children when we take his yoke upon our shoulders and we can rest in knowing that he has our best in mind. Now the pursuit of wealth is a joy because it is spiritual and all other wealth we acquire is from him and for his glory. Lets refocus our lives to serving him faithfully and building our treasures in heaven.

In His Loving Service,
Vineet

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What's Your Destination?