Mary Christmas

I think we had about as small a group in Bible study tonight as I have ever seen. 6 weeks ago tonight we had about the most I’ve seen at church on a Wednesday evening. It wasn’t for Bible study, although we certainly studied the Bible. It was for the last night of our dear Brother Spruill’s latest revival. But tonight’s study was just as good for me.

I remember pastor Spruill’s message that evening, it was on the Kingdom of God. And tonight’s study was about the King’s mother. Mary.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, as part of Christianity knows her. Holy Mary, Mother of God. The Blessed Virgin Mary. Saint Mary. Joseph’s espoused wife. Maryam in Syric and Aramaic. Miryam in Hebrew. Maron in the Septuagint. Maria in the Vulgate. Possibly Mery or Meryt in Egyptian.

A German, O. Bardenhewer, in a publication dated 1895 (Der Name Maria. Geschichte der Deutung desselben. Freiburg) discussed 70 meanings for the name Mary.

Most a result, I imagine, because Jesus came into the world though a very humble, apparently very young, woman named Mary. And Jesus is the singular name that has most impacted the entire world.

But let me back up to the worship in music part of the service and discuss something that set my mind in motion.

We had a soloist tonight who has sung many times in our church. He was accompanied by his wife on piano and a young woman in our congregation who plays a violin as well as any I’ve heard. And I am a big fan of the violin. I sometimes like fiddle music, but mostly I have two favorite instruments. Violin and piano. And they both move me in ways other instruments can not.

The song they sang for us tonight I don’t remember hearing before. I was told tonight the song, written and recorded by Chris Rice, Untitled Hymn and known also as Come to Jesus, was released in the early 1990s. I somehow missed it then. But I’m a big fan, now! The words, which I won’t take the time to cut and paste into this entry, jerked me fully awake.

But let me print one line from each chorus.

Come to Jesus Sing to Jesus Fall on Jesus Cry to Jesus Dance for Jesus Fly to Jesus
I want to pull out the third chorus and talk about it a bit. Fall on Jesus.

When I thought about fall here are some of the things that processed in my mind faster than I could develop and certainly faster than I could write.

Fall on. Fall out. Fall for. Fall down. Fall back. Fall at. Fall line. Fall fast. Fall into. Fall behind.

And out of those I want to explore only one. Fall back.

Now if you were to conduct a survey as to the meaning of those two words used together you would get a variety of answers. I would hope you would. Fall back as in fall behind. Running but not keeping up. Fall back as in admitting defeat and retreating. Fall back as in fainting and falling backwards.

(Watch closely when people in movies, on TV and on stage faint. They will nearly always fall forward. That is, of course, so they can subtly break their fall. Men who really faint, normally fall backwards. Watch the groom or best man at a wedding. Women who faint, normally fall forward. No, I have no idea why. And it is only my observation, not statistical fact.)

Fall back as in giving up. But the song used only one adverb with fall. On. Fall on. Fall on Jesus.

Here is my thought in very short form. No matter why we find ourselves falling, as soon as we discover we are falling, do what ever it takes to fall on Jesus.

Twist and turn and move and cry for help and whatever it takes, but fall on Jesus. There is no sense in falling deeper than we have to. There is no sense in falling and pleading we can’t get up. There is no sense in falling and lying in the dust. Or rolling into the ditch. Or laying where we land until we die.

So we fall. It is just a fall. We are human. But we don’t have to fall away from Jesus. Because as we live a life dedicated to Christ we will not fall without knowing it. I am sure of that. We might find ourselves in the process of falling, but as soon as recognition comes, fall on Jesus.

So we fall. It is just a fall. We don’t have to say, “Woe is me, I’m down for the count.” Get the *%@@ up and run back to Jesus. If you are having trouble getting up, cry to Jesus. He loves coming back and picking us up. He’ll never come back and say, “Did it again? I’m about to give up on you.” He will come back, and come back, and come back 70 times 7, to pick us up.

But we won’t need picked up near as much if we will learn to fall TO Jesus.

So many more thoughts, but I’ll let the Holy Spirit help you with them. You don’t need me. Think about fall back as in regrouping, recommitting, renewing, and not as retreat. Think about fall down as a process in which you have time to fall TO Jesus.

Don’t think you need to worry about falling? Ah contraire my friend. If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall. 1 Corinthians 10:12 NLT.

The other thing that got me excited this evening was this thought put to us by Kerry. Have a Mary Christmas.

Now in light of Luke 1:26-38 which was out text this evening, that is a powerful, and the best, thought I believe I’ve ever heard about Christmas.

Please, please reread Luke 1 and listen to what Mary tells Gabriel at the end of his announcement to her concerning Jesus.

And this is a card I am seriously thinking of developing and sending next year.

You can click to enlarge.

Thank you Pastor for the inspiration.

Twisted Words and Tortured Thoughts

Posting here lately has been on my mind, but not my heart. While I often have thought progressions that formulate in my mind, I sometimes don't get them processed to the point of resolution or closure. So it is difficult to put into words, when the process in my mind is incomplete. Sort of like a joke with no punch line, or a sermon with no conclusion.

But when the heart is behind the mind's thought process both in the inception of the thought and in the resolution of the thought, it is easier to put into words. And for a little while now I have not had my heart in blogging here.

But what I share today isn't really much thought process on my part as much as it is comment on a quote I heard on TV last night. We happened to catch an airing of the show "Search for Noah's Ark" on the National Geographic channel. If you haven't caught any of NG's stories on Biblical themes I recommend them. They seem to be as unbiased in their reporting as any programs I have seen.

During this program one of the commentators was the Reverend Dr. Francis H. Wade, retired rector of St. Albans Episcopal Church. In a video taped commentary on Noah's Ark Dr. Wade said, ""The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say."

I was watching but having just returned from a pretty strenuous day of biking I was not as alert as I could have been. But that quote brought me to full attention immediately. Moments later our daughter Jill called and told me about the quote. She, of course, knows the struggle I have had with bible literalists, and she picked up on the quote as well.

I began to process that quote and thought, "this is a very good statement of literalist and fundamentalist operational agenda." Bear down on the scriptures until what you want or need it to say comes out of the pages. If you want to put your people in bondage to legalism, you can pull about anything you want out of the scriptures somewhere. And it is done in many pulpits around the world.

While I am up here on this soap box, I was reminded by my wife the other evening in the car about something that was said from the pulpit at my brother's funeral last April.

Not having a recording or a script of his message, I will have to quote him as accurately as I can. If I miss quote him and you know more accurately what he actually said I will be pleased to retract my statement and correct it.

The pastor said something close to "You may wonder why God took Brother Phillip home. I know why. Because God could see down the road and knew of the heartache and suffering he was about to go through."

I remember a murmur across the room of agreement. The comment was, of course, aimed at Phillip's wife who had been in the process of divorcing Phillip. A cheap shot to be sure, and a blatant lie besides. God didn't take Phillip home. A propane truck sent him home. A whole lot of difference. God did not plant or plan that propane truck to be suddenly in Phillip's path.

It was a tortured twist of scripture to suggest that God decided it was Phillip's time to die. And the people that continue to blaspheme God with this kind of teaching will answer for their lies.

Time for reading list

I mentioned in a much earlier blog entry that I wondered if killing someone and being sentenced to life in prison would allow me to catch up on my reading. Well, that is, of course, nonsense. There is no way I could intentionally kill someone. But I do have another plan.

If I could, through a battery of tests or otherwise, convince the authorities that I mentally incompetent and should be committed to an institution I might then be able to catch up on my reading. Do they ever discharge you if you show signs later of mental competency? Might be tougher to continue the masquerade than to begin it.

Seriously, though, I really feel that I am cheating myself of so much by not having more time for reading. And my reading interest is ancient scriptural text. The writings that were considered for inclusion in our canon of scripture, whether included or not. Some of those not included tell us much about the peoples of the time in which they were written.

If you closely examine how some of the ancient text became canon it is really nothing short of divine that we have maintained and grown such a devote and large following of believers world wide. I believe it bears testimony to the life changing power that Christ brings to the world. Take away the entire Old Testament, leave out significant parts of the new, leave in the gospels, the actions of the apostles and some of the letters and you still have the central gospel message.

Much of Paul's letters are such a "thorn in the flesh" to many and fodder for the denominational and splinter groups' cannons that some of it could have been left out and we'd have less to fight about. So many forget the differential in time, customs, and societal norms in reading Paul's letters. They pull out his letters to use them as measuring devices to measure the ship of Zion. Sorry, the stadia rods of the first century are Greek to our modern society. No pun intended, of course.

I have discovered an extensive list of titles when researching analytical works concerning ancient texts. Of those, of course, one has to be selective and stay within one's own faith comfort zone. I am a Wesleyan because it fits best and I have strong leanings toward scientific explanations of temporal processes and leave the divine to the nontemporal. I believe that homo sapien sapien is the only dual entity in all of the universe, both divine and temporal. I believe there are beings and creatures that are wholly divine, some that are wholly temporal but only mankind is dual.

I am still reading Kugel's How to Read the Bible as I find the time. It will become a reference for me later I think as I explore other works concerning the ancient text. I expect to discover other viewpoints on many of the issues Kugel raises. And that is what makes all this interesting. Everything I know spiritually is becoming more clearly fluid than solid. And I believe that is closest to truth.

Living on the line

A few weeks ago I slipped over to a sister congregation on a Wednesday evening that we did not have service at my home church. A minister/evangelist was speaking there that I have come to appreciate and love very much. He used in his message an illustration I have seen many times by many speakers, but it is always sobering to me. Several of my previous pastors have done this, including my dear pastor, Kerry. This is just the most recent time.

He stretched a string across the front of the sanctuary. Then with a marker marked a line on the string. While it couldn't be seen by most of the audience because it was so small, the line had an edge on both sides. If the string represented timelessness, or eternity, from never beginning past on the left to never ending future on the right (a very European convention, designating left as beginning and right as future on a time line), the left edge of the mark could represent our birth. And of course the right edge would represent our death.

With this simple illustration we are capable of formulating in a small way how insignificant is our time in this life.

But from that point, it gets deep if you will stay with the thought.

This string was perhaps 20 or 30 feet in length. Actually way too short to represent eternity. And even a line from a fine marker at perhaps 1/32 of an inch way too wide to accurately represent our time in relation to eternity. The ratio there would be something akin to 11,520 to 1. If we take three score years as a nominal life span, that would make eternity only 806,400 years long.

So with the understanding that this illustration ratio already limited by physical space available, we can almost have a brain freeze trying to get our minds around the amazingly short time we live on earth compared to eternity.

Why am I belaboring this point? Because we get so attached to this life and what we obtain and achieve that we often leave little love, time, resources and efforts for things that will last for eternity. And I wonder why? No wonder the Bible says in Mark 8:36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? 37 Or what shall a man give in exchange FOR HIS SOUL?

And to bring this to where my mind has been churning a while. What things are worth getting so worked up over in this life? Is what just happened so important that I am about to pop a cork? Go ballistic? Say something mean or ugly?

How important is it in light of eternity? Trust me. I had to examine myself long before I was able to put it into words here.