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passmeabook · 4 years

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Servamp Tarot Analysis: Kamiya Tsurugi

I’ve decided to do an analysis of the tarot cards in Servamp. Many of the meanings are taken straight from the books they were found in because I feel they explain the meaning of the trumps better than my own words could. I’m looking not only at the official tarot cards assigned to characters, but also headcanon unofficial cards that may have been quietly assigned by the author.

First up is Kamiya Tsurugi. The official card assigned to him in canon is The Hanged Man. In this analysis I will also share headcanons of how he has been unofficially assigned the cards of: Justice and Death.

The Hanged Man #12

Number: XII

Alternative Name: The Traitor

Numerology Link: III, The Empress

Astrological Sign: Neptune

Element: Water

Hebrew Letter: Mem

Symbol: Water and the Oceans

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The Hanged Man XII

The Hanged Man Key Meanings:

Transition

Waiting

Sacrifice

Enlightenment

Upright Meaning:

“Events are not moving with speed, but all you can do is wait patiently in the knowledge that the universe has its own plan. The card can also indicate that you may have made sacrifices just now and are eager to see rewards. Unfortunately, you cannot force an outcome that fits with your timetable. There are many other factors about which you can have no knowledge or influence. Therefore, you may also expect delays to travel plans and projects… On a creative level this card appears frequently when a person is feeling frustration with their progress… Another message from the Hanged Man is to try to see things from a new angle.” (Dean).

“In readings the Hanged Man bears the message of independence. Like the Fool, which signified doing what you sensed was best, even if other people thought it foolish, the Hanged Man indicates being who you are, even if others think you have everything backwards. It symbolizes the feeling of being deeply connected to life and can mean a peace that comes after some difficult trial.” (Pollack.).

Feeling trapped

Confined

Self-limiting

Uncertainty

Lack of Direction

Needing Release

Letting Go

Reversed Meaning:

“The Hanged Man reversed can be a sign of rigid thinking and martyrdom. You may need to revise your expectations; what you think you want may not be possible. In this position, the card asks you if you are hanging on to a fantasy that may make you a victim rather than a victor. Take another view and liberate yourself from a contract or other obligation that cannot offer you what you want.” (Dean).

“The trump reversed indicates an inability to get free of social pressure. Rather than listen to our inner selves we do what others expect or demand of us. Our awareness of life always remains second-hand, never a direct experience but only a series of stereotypes, like the person who models his or her behavior on the orders of parents and the actions of movie stars. The card reversed can also mean fighting your inner self in some way. It can mean the person who tries to deny some basic part of himself or simply the person who cannot accept reality and who in some way or other is constantly battling life.” (Pollack.).

Discontentment

Apathy

Disinterest

Stagnation

Impulsiveness

Negative Patterns

Detachment

The Hanged Man understands that his position is a sacrifice he needed to make in order to progress forward. The time he spends dangling from the tree will not be wasted on his journey. The hanging is not death, but life in stillness. It could be a repentance for past wrongdoings or even a calculated step back to rethink the path he will take once he continues on with his journey. If an approach isn’t working then look at things from a different angle to gain a new perspective. This card is one that tells its reader that waiting and suspension are sometimes what you need to do in order to achieve success. Sometimes action is not needed, and one needs to wait patiently for the proper opportunity.

The Message of the Hanged Man:

Use your time wisely.

The Hanged Man & Numerology:

“TAROT SYMBOLISM: Key 12 The Hanged Man. The keyword for the Hanged Man is reversal. The corresponding symbol means oasis, sea, or water. According to the alchemists, water was the basis of all life, the fluid substance that solidified into physical forms… Water was the first mirror in which the reflection always appears upside down. The significance of this card is that things are not as they appear on the surface. You must look beneath the surface for true understanding. The man is suspended by his foot, like a pendulum at rest. His crossed legs form a figure 4, indicative of key 4 Reason. His elbows and head form a triangle with the point down which is an ancient symbol for water. The Hanged Man represents a person who is poised in consciousness and under perfect control… He sees trouble in the world--people unhappy in marriage, in trouble financially and lost because they have no goals--and he knows it is because they all see things upside down. Yet they look at him and think that he is the one who is crazy. The Hanged Man’s philosophy sets him apart from the crowd and, at the same time, brings him peace of mind and perfect contentment.” (Javane and Bunker.) [Emphasis mine.]

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Looking at these meanings and ideas I find that Tsurugi very strongly if not perfectly embodies the Hanged Man.

I speculate that for a majority of the C3 arc Tsurugi is in the position of the reversed Hanged Man. The lines that really stood out to me while researching this were, “Rather than listen to our inner selves we do what others expect or demand of us.” and “In this position, the card asks you if you are hanging on to a fantasy that may make you a victim rather than a victor.” because they seem to fit Tsurugi so well. Tsurugi clings to Touma and the idea of family he idealized Touma as being. Tsurugi also does what others expect of him, and before his breaking away from Touma just did what others wanted him to do. Even in the TAROT SYMBOLISM section that I highlighted the line about things not appearing as they seem on the surface resonated with me about Tsurugi because despite Tsurugi’s smiles on the surface inwardly he has a lot of trauma.

The symbolism the Hanged Man has with the connections to water, the oceans, and the planet Neptune also tie into together with Tsurugi. Water as an element is related to the Cups suit. Cups/Water has the meaning of “I feel”; the suit focuses on emotions and relationships. The planet Neptune, the Roman name for Poseidon the Greek god of the seas, holds the symbolic meanings of: dreams, intuition, and imagination. Which negatively connects to Tsurugi and his inability to metaphorically grow up, dreams and imagination being viewed as childish, but also to his magic Neverland. In the series we’ve seen Tsurugi be visually connected to water rather directly. Both in his drowning before being saved by The Mother/Freya in Ch. 56 “A Windowless Room”/Ch. 57 “Born” and also in the bonus chapter Ch. 57.5 “The Person Searching for the Key” where Tsurugi is underwater behind his locked door. Tsurugi is also an incredibly emotional person, and has worked on coming to terms with his emotions and what he really feels instead of just doing as other people tell him too.

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Tsurugi’s/The Hanged Man’s Dilemma:

A great showing of Tsurugi and his dilemma of choosing between the upright and the reversed meaning of The Hanged Man is in Ch. 52 where Tsurugi is caught between Touma and Junichiro in making his decision to follow Touma’s orders or to heed to Junichiro’s words.

In Ch. 52 we have the scene where Junichirou and Touma are asking Tsurugi to come to a decision. Tsurugi is physically in the position of the Hanged Man, but he’s divided down the middle into a black side and a white side. On the black side where Touma asks him, “Are you going to ignore what I say again?” Tsurugi’s hair follows the course of gravity as if he were standing up, his long length of ribbon does as well, and his hood lays flat against his shoulder. Compare this to the white side, Junichiro’s side: the background is white and Tsurugi’s hair, hood, and ribbon follow the path of gravity that they naturally would if Tsurugi were hanging upside down. This choosing of Touma, and of the reversed meaning of the Hanged Man, allows readers to see that Tsurugi is not following the upright meaning of the Hanged Man, and that his trump has yet to be flipped to the upright position.

In the side by side comparison Tsurugi’s collar is black on Junichiro’s side and white on Touma’s, but when Tsurugi chooses Touma the collar is black. The collar represents both control and Tsurugi allowing others to make decisions for him. The removal of the collar in Ch. 74 represents Tsurugi taking control of his personal agency and decision making.

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Headcanon Tarot Analysis:

Tsurugi is directly portrayed as the Hanged Man in Ch. 50 “The Hanged Man”. The closest version visually of the Hanged Man as it is as a trump card is on the cover page of the chapter. Then we have another section in this chapter later on which portrays Tsurugi as both hero and criminal. Right before this Mahiru has just asked Tsurugi if he has been fighting to protect people all this time. Tsurugi denies this and instead tells Mahiru that to humans he is viewed as a hero, but to vampires he is viewed as a genocider.

What is fascinating is that visually he’s portrayed as physically being in the position of the hanged man, only as both lauded hero and condemned criminal. As the hero of humanity he’s in a upright Hanged Man position. As the criminal he is in a reversed Hanged Man position with a noose. Looking at the two side comparisons I feel that they both represent #11 Justice & #13 Death more so than the Hanged Man, “In the major arcana sequence, the Hanged Man falls after XI, Justice, and before XIII, Death. We had our values on trial in Justice, and now we must hold on until Death, when we can figuratively let go. Death brings transformation, while the Hanged Man prepares to make the sacrifice Death needs so he can move on.” (Dean)

Justice XI

Justice Key Meanings:

Fairness

Balance

Perception

Objectivity

With Tsurugi wearing a cape and a sword I feel it represents a reversed #11 Justice. Tsurugi’s hero is in the upright position for the Hanged Man, but in the reversed position for Justice. Trump XI portrays the personification of upright Justice on a throne with scales and a sword. Important to see is that the Justice trump is not blindfolded, her vision is clear. The scales held in her left hand represent favoring the deserving with the scales of mercy, and the upright sword in her right hand represents seeking retribution for past wrongs with the sword of retribution. The scales also symbolize the thought process put into making a judgement, and weighing both sides of a story. The sword symbolizes the action that results from judgement. The sword, when it is held upright, symbolizes success.

Tsurugi as a reversed Justice fits in many ways. Tsurugi, as an instrument for furthering Touma’s and C3’s plans, is furthering the goals of those that use him via corrupt justice. Vampires are captured we've seen, but are they given legal trials and do they have protected rights? From what we’ve seen of C3 I highly doubt it. Hence why he is in the position of reversed Justice. Tsurugi has often been connected to a sword, and his name can even mean “sword”, look at the sword of hero-Tsurugi. It is covered in blood, but Tsurugi’s arms are held behind his back. The blood on the sword is not boldly in your face, and is even a bit hidden behind Tsurugi and a speech bubble. Tsurugi does not hold the sword in his hand showing that he himself does not actively choose to to make any decisions with the sword, and instead I feel it represents Tsurugi's passivity and his following what others want and will of him. Later on we also see that when Touma manipulates Tsurugi with his spell power Tsurugi becomes blindfolded, and this is perhaps a symbolism of justice being both blind (traditionally) and blinded (corruption hiding the truth).

#11 Justice Reversed

“Reversed, the card indicates dishonesty with yourself and others. It shows an unwillingness to see the meaning of events and shows especially that you are missing some opportunity for a greater understanding of yourself and your life. In outer life it indicates dishonesty and unfair actions or decisions. Sometimes it is others who are unfair to us. The reversed meaning can refer also to unjust legal decisions or to bad treatment from someone. On the other hand we must not allow the suggestion of unfairness to act as an excuse for denying our own responsibility for what happens to us… ‘Nothing can save you but yourself.’” (Pollack.).

“Life goes out of balance as work, relationships, and money issues spiral out of control. A decision may go against you, so there may be dishonesty or a miscarriage of justice. You are treated unfairly, which is compounded by bad advice from a trusted individual. You are not able to speak your truth and feel overruled by those who don’t understand your predicament. It is important to find your voice and stay strong to your values- if you are in the right.” (Dean).

Death XIII

Death Key Meanings:

Decline

Rebirth

Transformations

Change

As the condemned criminal Tsurugi is in the reversed position of the Hanged Man, but he’s also in the upright position for Death. With Tsurugi wearing traditional black and white striped prisoner clothing and have a noose around his neck I feel this gives weight to the idea of connecting him to #13 Death. Tsurugi in this side comparison is on a scaffold. He wears the clothes of a criminal and he seems to be a minute away from hanging. Yet, the noose around his neck is loose. As the Hanged Man trump has told us, the Hanged Man is not going to die. Instead he is merely hanging around waiting. The trump card Death arrives after the Hanged Man as death follows a hanging. Only in the case of the Hanged Man this is a spiritual death and rebirth after a time of contemplation. The black and white colors Tsurugi wears are associated with Death in the thirteen trump. In the trump Death wears black armor and sits astride a white horse while holding a black and white flag in his left hand. The thirteen trump is associated with change, an extreme change in your life to be exact. When I read this page I see Tsurugi’s Reversed Justice representing who he is right now, and that his Upright Death represents that he needs to and will undergo a great change. Especially since the manga is written in Japanese and we read the pages from right to left.

#13 Death Upright

“In diviniatory readings Death signifies a time of change. Often, it indicates a fear of change. In its most positive aspect it shows a clearing away of old habits and rigidness to allow a new life to emerge. In its most negative aspect it indicates a crippling fear of physical death.” (Pollack.).

“Death brings ending and beginnings-sometimes all at once. This is a time of fast and deep transformation and an opportunity to let go of whatever you no longer need. Unlike card XX, Judgement, which signals a process of self-examination, Death’s impact is sudden and may be shocking. You have little control over external events when Death looms, but in time you will be able to see this sharp change in circumstances as a blessing. A break with the past-from relationships and friendships to work that is no longer satisfying-is the only way forward. In this sense, Death can be a release and a relief. Death, after all, is the ultimate reality check, and he leaves you with the bare bones, the truth.” (Dean).

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These are the views I have on Tsurugi and his tarot cards. I also thought about him perhaps having reference to the Ace of Swords, him being C3′s Ace and his name relating to a sword, but just decided to focus on the major arcana for now. Maybe I’ll do another post about that at a later date. I had fun writing this. I hope to make more posts like this in the future, but if I do they will likely be very, very sporadic.

References:

Dean, Liz. The Ultimate Guide to Tarot: A Beginner's Guide to the Cards, Spreads, and Revealing the Mystery of the Tarot. Fair Winds Press, 2015.

Javane, Faith, and Dusty Bunker. Numerology and the Divine Triangle. Whitford Press, 1997.

Pollack, Rachel. Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom A Book of Tarot Part 1: The Major Arcana. Aquarian Press, 1980.

#servamp #kamiya tsurugi #servamp meta #servamp tarot analysis #tsurugi kamiya #servamp tarot

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dailyaudiobible · 4 years

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02/01/2021 DAB Transcript

Exodus 13:17-15:18, Matt 21:23-46, Ps 26:1-12, Pr 6:16-19

Today is the 1st day of February, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian and it's great to be here with you today. Obviously it’s a special day because we’re transitioning into the second month of the year, but it’s a special day because we've completed a whole month together, which means we are settling into a rhythm and we are settling into community for the year. It's…it’s interesting. If we…we make it to Valentine's Day, then the chances are really good that we are going to make it through the year together. And, so, well done for making it all the way here to the second month of the year. Let’s just take a second to think back. It's only been a month, but look at all that has happened. We…we found our origin story. We discussed that. We found out in the third chapter of Genesis what happened to us. We know this is the fall of man. We…we saw the repercussions of that immediately, both in the world and in the human heart. Mankind was naked and unashamed. That was the natural state of things. That’s how it was supposed to be both inward and outward week. We weren’t supposed to have to hide. We weren’t supposed to have hide from each other or from God. But that's what happened, naked and ashamed and hiding. And that's what we see everywhere we look, including in the mirror. And, so, we got some context. And we went through famous stories that we've probably heard our whole lives, like Noah and the flood. And we then met this man Abram and God calling this man Abram to a land he didn't know and giving a promise for this land and changing his name to Abraham and entering into a covenant with him. And then we watched the miraculous story begin to unfold as generations passed to new generations and more and more children were born. And, so, Abraham has Isaac. Isaac as Jacob. And we hear this often in the Bible, “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” And then Jacob's name was changed to Israel. And all the sudden we have a context for what we hear about the children of Israel. The children of Jacob and his offspring, the children of Israel. And we watched the story of Joseph at length, one of the children of Israel, who was trafficked by his brothers into slavery in Egypt. We watched God save Egypt from plague, saving Joseph's family in the process. And then we watched them prosper in…in Egypt, four centuries. Like, four centuries, but they were enslaved and then we met another powerful pivotal figure in the Scriptures named Moses, who was sent back to Egypt to be the…the prophet of God and to demand the freedom of God's people. And that brought on all these plagues that we’ve been reading about the last few days. And that's where we find ourselves. The final plague has descended upon Egypt. The…the children of Israel have been forcibly forced out of Egypt. And that's where we pick up the story as we begin this second month of the year. And we’re reading from the Voice Translation this week. Exodus chapter 13 verse 17 through 15 verse 18.

Commentary:

Okay. A few things we should probably take note of from our reading today because they will help us with our day and our week and this brand-new shiny sparkly month that we find ourselves in. Let's go to the book of Exodus first. The children of Israel have been set free from the bondage of slavery in Egypt. And we watched all of that unfold plague after plague after plague sort of systematically dismantling Egypt. And Pharaoh's arrogance in believing that he is a deity, that he is divine, that he is a God himself, and who is this Hebrew God that would come. And you can kinda get in his head and understand why he would think this. If he has been raised to believe that he is a child, a son of God, that he is the Pharaoh, like a divine being upon the earth, the king of Egypt, and he has a population of people who are his slaves and this population of people who are his slaves come and say, “our God says that you should let us go.” I mean if you think you are divine yourself then you would be thinking, “well, at bare minimum you are my slaves. Whoever your God is is no way near as powerful as the gods of Egypt or me.” So, we can see him resisting and we can see God just demonstrating His power before them at first but then things definitely begin to take a more serious turn and things amp up all the way until Pharaoh and the Egyptians demand the children of Israel leave, which they did. And then we…we read something really interesting that could really help us in our lives. So, the children of Israel were freed from slavery. They entered the desert because that's…that's the way to go to the promised land, across the Sinai Peninsula, but God did not lead them by the shortest, easiest coastal route. He led them deeper into the desert. So, in other words, He set them free and did not give them any easy path, did not give them the most straightforward path. There was work to be done in that desert. And we’re in that desert now, right? They’ve crossed the Red Sea and they are on the other side of the Red Sea, but they are in the desert and they are going to be there, and we are going to be there with them for what feels like an awful long time, 40 years to be specific. Actually, even more than that. And, so, we’ll be spending some time in the desert. And this is our desert portion of the year and we need to embrace it because there are so many lessons in the wilderness. And I mean that metaphorically in our lives, but I also mean that literally in the stories that we’ll find in the Bible that come from the wilderness. So, the children of Israel are in the wilderness backed up to the Red Sea when they notice that an army is coming against them. And the closer that tis army gets the more they realize these are the Egyptians. This is the Egyptian Army coming to destroy us and re-enslave. Of course, the Egyptians and Pharaoh after they…after they let the people go, they start imagining the repercussions. This is going to be devastating to their economy because now you have…you have about a million people that are your slaves that have been propping things up that you've set free. And, so, they’re reconsidering and hardening their hearts again. And they’re gonna go back and get going back and get the Hebrew people. Meanwhile the Hebrew people are kind of boxed in. It’s the wilderness in front of them, the Red Sea, the ocean behind them and the enemy army is bearing down upon them. We could pause here and just think about seasons in our lives where we have felt trapped and boxed in, like where there is literally no good way to go. The enemy is coming down against us. It’s the sea behind us and the mountains and the wilderness before us. There is no way to escape. And, so, the Hebrew people do basically what we would normally do. They start to complain and gripe about the predicament they’re in because now God has come to set them free and things have only gotten worse again. Do you see a theme emerging, though? Is this not the story of Joseph where when he did everything right things only got worse? So, they're ready to abandon Moses, see if they can maybe go back to Egypt and become slaves again because that might be better. While here's this army that’s gonna destroy them. They are trapped. And God speaks to Moses and Moses speaks to the people. The only thing you need to do is shut your mouth and watch this. This enemy that you see today you will never see them again. And that is indeed what happened. And that is indeed something that we should put in our pocket or purse and carry around with us for the next year.

Then we move into the book of Matthew. The religious leadership, we are talking about the clergy, right? We are talking about men of God who are leading the people are getting pretty fed up with Jesus. God in flesh. Like, they do not believe. And, so, they confront Jesus about how…who gave Him permission to do what He's doing. And, of course, as we have come to notice in the first month of the year Jesus is always going to speak to the truth of the situation. He’s always good to talk to the plot behind the story. He knows that what's being presented is a mask, that everyone is naked and ashamed and hiding. And, so, He's like, “well, let me ask you a question.” And He talks about John because they didn't believe in John either. And, so, Jesus ends up telling the story about a man who had a vineyard and he fixed it all up and got it ready for business, and then he leased it and went away and when a harvest time came he wanted his share of the harvest, but the tenants refused became rebellious, beat up the people who came to collect the harvest on a number of occasions until the master sent is heir, his son to come and collect because he's the heir, he that…he's the owner. And, so, they should respect the owner of the vineyard but they don't. They conspire to kill him, which is what they do. And then Jesus asks the religious leadership what the Masters gonna do. And they immediately answer, “the master is gonna destroy those people.” They were speaking out their own future essentially, because in the story the vineyard is the Kingdom, and the master is the Father, and the Son is Jesus. And this story is an interesting warning about religious dominance. When religion is used to ensnare or entrap or control people then there is no value in it. That might sound bigger than it should. But it's simply the story that's coming out of all of the Gospels. The people that were against Jesus were the people of God, God's leaders who did not recognize that God was doing a new thing in the world and did everything to destroy that new thing including...including killing God, including killing Jesus. God made flesh. So, we should get some clues that this journey we are on as we walk alongside Jesus and listen to what He has to say and watch the away that He operates and observe His character that we may find a bunch of challenges, that we may need to listen to Jesus instead of what we've been told about Him, that we might need to press in closer and deeper as we watch the amazing and that's an understatement…the amazing thing that God had chose to do when He chose to come and rescue people again from slavery. Slavery to the oppressiveness of what was going on around them in their culture and slavery to sin. And we also may need to understand that when we become free we may not be taking the easy road. We may need to go into the wilderness because there is work to do there.

Prayer:

Jesus, we invite You into that because it doesn't sound like it would be fun. We don’t want to go wander in the wilderness. We felt like we did that all year last year. And yet the thing You are after is our freedom. And we confess that even as we see it in the Scriptures, we see it in our own lives. We fight You on that because it might be hard, it might be difficult. We might have to endure. It may get more difficult, before it gets easier and we don't like that. We don't like that. And yet You've been very clear all along that there is a narrow path that leads to life and that that is the path that leads to life and few ever find it, but wide is the road to destruction, the easy path. And, so, as we move into this second month, we are inviting Your Holy Spirit to begin to align us with where You're going, to begin aiming us in the direction we need to head in no matter what it looks like because we as the children of Israel are going to have to learn that there is no other hope outside of You. You are the only hope there is and we must trust You utterly. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

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And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi, my DAB family this is Truly Thankful Taylor just wanted to say hi tonight. I have three of my little ones with me…2 littles and one teenager. Girls do you wanna say hi? Hi. We've been talking about our reading for today in DAB Kids and Chronological and all the different stuff 'cause all of our family are doing different ones. Some of us are doing all five in English. Some of us are just doing Chronological or kids and we're just loving God's word even more but we were talking about having faith as small as a mustard seed that it can move mountains. So, each…two of the girls wanted to pray tonight. So, sister do you want to start? What did you want to share? That people would have faith in God and that people would love God even more and let Him be in their heart. Jesus thank you for the day. Thank you for everything you have done. Thank you for being our God. And I want to…I want people to let you into their heart. In Jesus’ name. Amen. OK sister. Jesus thank you for the day that we have faith in us and faith in Jesus and that everyone starts praying and those who don't pray now pray. And have Jesus where? In our faith, in their heart. That's right. We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen. Love and blessings everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Hi, my name is Luanne from Texas. I just want to say thanks. This journey so far has been so good and so revealing. It's been so wonderful to watch the creation and then the de-creation and with the New Testament seeing what the recreation could be. I'm just so grateful. I'm grateful for Brian for this. I'm grateful to the community who’s reading it along with me and it's just been so healing after 2020. I'm just so grateful. So, Lord I just ask that for those who are weary, come. Come to the Bible. Sit with us and learn and you will find much joy. I ask this in our most holy savior's name, Jesus. Amen.

Good morning fellow DABbers this is Sally in Massachusetts Amazed by Grace it's January 27th and I am so thankful this morning that I listened as I do most every day to the DAB and so blessed by the word of God and so encouraged today as we read of Moses and Aaron and pharaoh and the people, how God works through everyone to carry out His plans and purposes. He worked through pharaoh. He worked through Moses. He worked through Moses mother and father. He accomplishes purposes through people and He's accomplishing His purposes in and through each of us day by day as we yield to Him. And I'm just so thankful that we worship a God of power, a God of a plan, a God with purposes. And I am so thankful that we have this family to worship God together, to encourage and strengthen each other. Thank you, Daughter of the King from Tennessee. I so appreciated your prayers and your thoughts today. And Pamela from Pennsylvania how easy it is. I have also often been guided by fear instead of faith in making decisions. And dear brother McQueen from Utah. Lord we pray Your comfort to this family. Thank You for Betsy Lopez and the wonderful grandma she was to him. We pray Your comfort to this family at this time. And Lord we thank You that although world at times feels like it's out of control You are God alone from before time began and You are on Your throne because You are God alone. Increase our faith in You Lord we pray and thank You in Jesus’ powerful name.

Hello Daily Audio Bible my name is Gail and I'm calling from Las Vegas. I'm calling in response to a boy that just called in about his grandma, Grandma Lopez who was in a car accident and he wanted to get the word out to us about his grandma. I am so proud of you for the courage that you showed to call in and let us know what happened to your grandma. I felt that you two had an amazing relationship and you were so close. And I bet you miss her. I really know that you miss her because you wanted to make a lasting memory and let us know that she died, and it was important to you to get the word out. So, I applaud your courage sweet boy and I just wanted to say that we hear you and we are praying for you. Keep calling in. Keep calling in. We love to hear from you. Bye for now.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible I'm calling in to speak to Golda McQueen. Young man your courage to send in the message to speak to the people about your grandmother and her legacy of love in your life touched my heart in so many ways to remember my own grandmother. I want to know not only Betsy Lopez will be remembered today for her own life but for the life that she poured into you. And I just want to encourage you with two verses that I thought of when I heard you speaking. Exodus 4:12. So, go Golda. I will be with you. When you speak and I will give you the words to say. And in Acts Jesus himself came to Paul and encouraged him to keep speaking. He said in acts 18 9 and 10 during the night Paul had a vision and the Lord said to him don't be afraid and don't stop talking to people I am with you and no one will be able to hurt you. Many of my people are in the city. Heavenly Father I pray You pour out a triple blessing upon Golda McQueen as he goes to the funeral of his grandmother whom he loved so much and wants her to be remembered and it made such an impact to remember my own grandmother I know prayed for me, but I never got to grow up with her. So, I…I thank you Golda. You have touched my heart in ways you'll never know until we see each other in heaven. God bless you son.

Hello, my name is Richard today is my first day listening in several years. I just listened to February 27th recording that I was blessed by. Some of you may remember I was Richard from Mississippi back in 2018 I went through a divorce. I moved back home to Arkansas. That’s where I stay at now. I work for my dad part time. I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm trying to get back into reading the word and listening to DAB every morning. So, I covet your prayers that you would pray for me as I establish a new habit and to know the Lord. Bless each and every one of you in Jesus’ name.

Good morning this is Radiant Faith in Georgia. I'm listening on January the 27th and I just heard a young man from Nevada I believe his name was Golda McQueen. He's nine years old and he was on his way…I hope I can get this out. He was on his way to his grandma's funeral. I'm a grandma and this just really touched my heart, the love that he had for her. He said that it's hard to get messages out from where he lives and he's only nine years old but let me tell you something, we heard you loud and clear. We heard the love that you had for your grandma and I just pray, and I believe that Jesus let her hear you. Oh, Lord I know she was proud of you.

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thecomicsnexus · 5 years

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Wavelength

SWAMP THING #62 JULY 1987 BY RICK VEITCH, ALFREDO ALCALA AND TATJANA WOOD

SYNOPSIS (FROM DC DATABASE)

Near the Source Wall, Metron examines the plight of two giants who hoped to gain access to the Source by enlarging themselves. Suddenly, he hears a signal and follows it into the sleeve of one of the giants' spacesuits. Inside, he finds some interesting flora growing, but beyond that, he discovers a giant Mother Box. After shrinking it down to a manageable size, he sets a course for Highfather's staff.

Unfortunately, he finds himself immobile. His Mobius Chair's energy source was depleted by the shrinking process. Angrily, Metron kicks the Mother Box, which rendered his chair useless, away. However, he is surprised when that same Mother Box transmits the consciousness of the Swamp Thing there, and into the plant life which Metron had collected earlier.

Swamp Thing discovers the Mother Box, and believes that it has told him that he was brought there because Metron wishes to enter the Source. Metron responds that he merely wants to go to Apokolips. Swamp Thing states that no, Metron's destiny lies with the Source, and so does his own. With the help of the Motherbox he can transport Metron into the Source and back out again.

Swamp Thing alters his appearance into that of a chair, and uses the Mother Box to lift off, and fly toward the Source. He explains that having learned how to control his electromagnetic field, he can transcend the barrier by altering his vibrations.

After an uncomfortable transition through the barrier, they burst into the domain of the Transmuters – beings posted along the fringes of reality, working the compost of creation into higher matter. One of them notices them, and they are forced to escape before they are transmuted. Swamp Thing alters his vibrational pattern at the last second, bringing them past the final barrier. What the two of them see in the Source is too much for Swamp Thing to handle. Metron manages to focus on certain elements, seeing all of creation's marvels and follies.

Metron recounts the tale to Darkseid, who laughs, revealing that what they had seen was not the Source, but an Aleph – a point from which one can view all other points in time and space. This information depresses Metron, as he'd hoped to barter the information gleaned from the source in exchange for X-Element, the fuel for his Mobius chair. Even so, Darkseid wonders if information about the Swamp Thing's nature could help him solve the Anti-Life Equation. Metron explains the Swamp Thing's nature, and notes that he has already left for earth.

Metron reveals that the Mother Box had to remove most of Swamp Thing's memories of the Aleph. Darkseid asks to view the record of those memories. The record shows that Swamp Thing thought only of his wife, Abby. The moments he observed spread from past to future, but all ending in fire and death. The images drove Swamp Thing mad.

In exchange for the information, Darkseid offers Metron the X-Element, then, crushing the Mother Box in his fist, he curses that he had forgotten to add the element of love to his equation.

ALEPHS (FROM WIKIPEDIA)

Aleph or Alef (א), is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the number 1 in Hebrew. Its esoteric meaning in Judaic Kabbalah, as denoted in the ancient theological treatise Bahir, relates to the origin of the universe, the "primordial one that contains all numbers." The aleph (ﺍ, or ʼalif) is also the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, as well as the Phoenician, Aramaic, and Syriac alphabets. Aleph is also the first letter of the Urdu and Persian alphabet, which are both written using Arabic script.

THE ALEPH, BY JORGE LUIS BORGES (ALSO WIKIPEDIA)

"The Aleph" is a short story by the Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. First published in September 1945, it was reprinted in the short story collection, The Aleph and Other Stories, in 1949, and revised by the author in 1974.

In Borges' story, the Aleph is a point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping, or confusion. The story traces the theme of infinity found in several of Borges' other works, such as "The Book of Sand".

As in many of Borges' short stories, the protagonist is a fictionalized version of the author. At the beginning of the story, he is mourning the recent death of a woman whom he loved, named Beatriz Viterbo, and resolves to stop by the house of her family to pay his respects. Over time, he comes to know her first cousin, Carlos Argentino Daneri, a mediocre poet with a vastly exaggerated view of his own talent who has made it his lifelong quest to write an epic poem that describes every single location on the planet in excruciatingly fine detail.

Later in the story, a business on the same street attempts to tear down Daneri's house in the course of its expansion. Daneri becomes enraged, explaining to the narrator that he must keep the house in order to finish his poem, because the cellar contains an Aleph which he is using to write the poem. Though by now he believes Daneri to be quite insane, the narrator proposes without waiting for an answer to come to the house and see the Aleph for himself.

Left alone in the darkness of the cellar, the narrator begins to fear that Daneri is conspiring to kill him, and then he sees the Aleph for himself:

On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand...

Though staggered by the experience of seeing the Aleph, the narrator pretends to have seen nothing in order to get revenge on Daneri, whom he dislikes, by giving Daneri a reason to doubt his own sanity. The narrator tells Daneri that he has lived too long amongst the noise and bustle of the city and spent too much time in the dark and enclosed space of his cellar, and assures him that what he truly needs are the wide open spaces and fresh air of the countryside, and these will provide him the true peace of mind that he needs to complete his poem. He then takes his leave of Daneri and exits the house.

In a postscript to the story, Borges explains that Daneri's house was ultimately demolished, but that Daneri himself won second place for the Argentine National Prize for Literature. He also states his belief that the Aleph in Daneri's house was not the only one that exists, based on a report he has discovered, written by "Captain Burton" (Richard Francis Burton) when he was British consul in Brazil, describing the Mosque of Amr in Cairo, within which there is said to be a stone pillar that contains the entire universe; although this Aleph cannot be seen, it is said that those who put their ear to the pillar can hear a continuous hum that symbolises all the concurrent noises of the universe heard at any given time.

You can read it online.

REVIEW

So how did I know this was a reference to that short story? Well, Borges appears in this comic-book (I just updated the DC Database with this little fact). He is the blind writer in Buenos Aires.

The Alpeh allows us to take a look at recent events in the DCU and the Saga of the Swamp Thing as well, so it also works as a “greatest hits” issue. It also brings Darkseid closer to learning the anti-life equation. But in the end, if you skip this issue... well... you wouldn’t really miss much for the ongoing arc. It is a nice story though, and it is a good thing they didn’t reveal what’s behind the wall.

This is also Rick Veitch’s first solo issue of Swamp Thing.

I give this issue a score of 7

#steve bissette #dc comics #comics #review #1987 #modern age #swamp thing #aleph #jorge luis borges #apokolips #darkseid #metron #source wall #new gods

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olicitysecretsanta · 6 years

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someone to watch over me, pg, 4664 words

A very happy holiday season and the best of New Years to you, @emeraldolverqueen! You said you liked soulmate fic, so I tried to do that. It’s less Christmassy than I’d intended, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.

—–

She knows them longer than it took to meet herself.

That this place where she died becomes the place where they learn to live is an understanding that comes only in time – and amidst many curse words spewed among missed sips of hard liquor. Because while she’s honored to Guard them – even as far from an angel as she is, was, or ever will be – even as much as the light within them, between them, acts as a uniting beacon between their souls, guidance and a reminder that sometimes stories don’t have endings such as hers, goddamn are they frustrating sometimes.

(Because, honestly. His coffee shop was in a bad neighborhood? He ran out of sports bottles? It’s like he’s not even trying sometimes. And what, exactly, does the man have against tennis balls? Or shirts? And while she’s at it, can she just mention the entire Napa Valley worth of red wine he’ll owe his partner-slash-wife-slash-best-part-of-his-always when all this is over? But she digresses. It becomes second nature, given the many stops and starts to Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak she has to endure but still somehow wishes she could live through.)

There is a jubilance in her when she slides quickly, hungrily, through their line together for the first time, something light that lifts her even higher than her perch Above and that she hasn’t felt, well, ever. She feels the raindrops on the window he waves rather dorkily to her when she’s too scared to come to his house; smells the flowers she brings Walter Steele in the hospital when he introduces her as his friend. Her mouth waters for the fries they order at Big Belly Burger, and her head spins just as much as Felicity’s does – will – on the power of narcotics and Oliver Queen saying she’ll always be his girl. She feels the swooping stomachs of the leaps Felicity takes, literal and figurative, to save Oliver, from Lian Yu and Ra’s al Ghul and himself time and again. Her fingers itch for the contradiction of soft butter and coarse salt on popcorn when Felicity reconfigures Oliver’s systems, and wishes she could pass it to John Diggle – who, literally, bless that man – points out Oliver doesn’t have a problem with Felicity’s performance until Barry Allen shows up. Then she wants to throw it at the looks they give each other after she locates a shipment of weapons for “Mr. Queen,” and her “a you were right and an apology; I really should be recording this,” because, just, ridiculous.

She floats at the inevitability contained in the words there was no choice to make and the redux of I know two things; the number of times they say yes even when they don’t think the other one is listening.

She is ready light years ahead of them; knows everything while they know so little.

What she doesn’t realize is how much she still has to learn herself.

She’s an eternal twenty-something when she’s finally allowed Below and sees him in person for the first time, in the place his father brings him when the son becomes the scion at barely eight, the place the young boy doesn’t want to be but where the man will try to find himself in leaps and lifetimes, fingers fidgeting for his Gameboy where in too short a time they’ll be wanting a weapon. And for the first time in generations, this isn’t the underground speakeasy where she overheard one too many men speaking down to one too many of her girls and fought back, only to get a pistol to the chest for her trouble. It’s the first moment she’s in since her soul left this place, the first thing she Sees from within rather than Above, feels deeply and is tied directly to since her time ran out, and though her lungs haven’t worked for decades, it still takes her breath away a little bit. The stacticity of the inevitability, the moveable objects and unstoppable forces, the idea that this is finally, that this is the start of a – every – moment, leaves her buzzing.

It falters ever so slightly as she takes in how much greyer the reality is against the light she sees in him, the one that shines with and partly because of a Vegas-reared card shark he’s already destined to go all in with, and the contrast is heavy enough even in its haze that it makes her realize everything she’s going to try to help them do will be caught between black and white.

It’s a lesson, a harbinger of a constant reminder that they – Oliver, Felicity, and her own being, such that it is – will forever be caught between life and death, right and wrong, light and dark, yesterday and tomorrow. She stumbles slightly against the knowledge that even though she knows what, she doesn’t know how, and she glances up for an answer she somehow knows she’ll have to live – such that it is for any and all of them – to tell.

(“The things you’ll do here will be great.” Robert Queen might say it to his son, but the woman neither know is listening hears it just as loudly. “Your work is just beginning.”

It’s truer than any of them know.)

She returns to Above to Watch the first Hanukkah after Noah Kuttler leaves, and it’s her first and greatest failure, because she has to turn away from the little girl on her eighth night lighting her menorah and speaking hitched Hebrew as she tries to pray for anything other than her greatest wish: her father to walk in the door of the home that feels less like shelter now than it ever should. She almost misses the burn of the tears on her cheek; almost wishes she could take them from the sweet little girl with glasses that fall down her nose more than they help her see, and eventually she has to turn away because she’s just not as strong as Felicity Smoak is now and forever will be.

It doesn’t matter that she can See other Hanukkahs, the ones where Felicity teaches William how to play the dreidel, or the ones where Oliver starts a list on his phone in June for gift ideas to give their children across the holiday evenings. It doesn’t matter that in the seemingly endless in-between, she Sees the there and here, how the blended family time comes together, be it margaritas after a bomb-collar wielding psycho and a gold dress that starts and stops their Witness and Oliver Queen’s hearts in the same go, or six years later, when they finally return with their son from to Star City on the 23rd of December only to find that a longtime resident who wishes to remain nameless has bought a Christmas tree at one of the downtown lots and paid the owner for weeks to keep it healthy until the castoff-turned-castaway-turned-man with too many masks until he found his true self didn’t darken doorsteps again, but instead enlightened them all with his presence.

(She’s not allowed to See that she’s the longtime resident – because she will be just that for them, longer than she’s actually supposed to be – that it’ll be one of the only times They actually let her be seen by the living world. She doesn’t know that she’ll ponder over what to say in the note she’s asked if she wants to leave, and that in the end, she’ll write with a shaking hand the only thing anyone should ever say to either of them, the things she wants them to hear echo for eternity, which is thank you and I’m proud of you.

She isn’t allowed to See, but should still know, because she yells those very things through the wandering years – Lian Yu, Hong Kong, Russia, Boston, Starling when it’s built on bones and standing on secrets – when things are so dark they seem to blind. She knows she can’t interfere; can’t change course. She knows the things she Witnesses now are the things that make them who they are, perfectly imperfect and right even in their wrongs. But the pain of it all settles in her – Oliver will later talk about five years where nothing good happens, and she’s got five times that as she Watches how the world shapes and scars their stories, and goddamn it, she hasn’t felt this helpless since she realized there was a gun in a gangster’s hand; hasn’t felt this sharp a pain since the impact of a bullet beneath her skin.

She’d waited for the light then. Now she stares at the light she’s seen in them, hoping it’ll bring her home, too.)

She begs Them time and again to let her down, a plea in a second of the infinite to remind herself it’ll be okay in how it’s meant to be; desperately needs to soothe herself with the knowledge that their path is as long as it is alight, and that the pain of the wait will lessen with whispered words of transition from “you’re my partner” to “you are my always”; from “someone’s broken our coffee maker” to a failsafe code that includes “latte” among its inspirations.

She needs to breathe those moments from her Before and their After again; needs the reassurance among the ruins.

They eventually give in, but she can’t leave the steel mill, and it’s only then that she learns moments can’t just be wished into existence, but that they have to be breathed into life, even when they feel like they’re suffocating with their entirety. She bangs her frustration on the pipes; it’s like slamming a hand against glass, starkly painful in its multitude of reminders, as they’ll experience in Darhk’s chamber, as they will when Oliver is in prison, only she doesn’t feel the inevitability of reunion then. She feels nothing but lonely and lost, wanting anything to be able to be there for them, with them, because this feels far too much like saying goodbye before introductions are even made.

It’s in that moment that she realizes that for as much as they’re going to fall for each other, she’d Fall a hundred times for them. They don’t know it yet – they may never know – but she’s just as willing to sacrifice everything for them as they will in the name of their fight for their city and for each other; for the life and liberty she won’t know again and that they’ll find only with each other.

For the love that will sustain them individually, together, apart, wholly, triumphantly, expectantly, entirely.

She makes her mind up then. She’ll stop running her parallel path, trying to get to the end because she sees how it begins, and instead Guard theirs with everything she has in her – with as much love as they’ve been destined to have for each other since before the universes within and around them had names. She’ll believe in the midst of “I don’t want to be a woman that you love” as much as she will during “you will be the best part of me for the rest of my life.” She’ll fight when he runs time and again, when she doesn’t go after him, when there are no good choices and the only certainty is failure. She’ll hear the truth in his mother’s lies, trust during so much doubting, rebuild during the wreckage.

She will Guide when they are at their most alone; even if they can’t see or hear or believe her into existence, she will be with them every step of the way, even if she has to crawl herself to get there.

(She draws the line at wiping up Roy’s training water bowls, though. Even ethereal beings have standards.)

She’s waiting at the bottom of the foundry stairs when he makes an absolute racket dragging his trunk in; “I thought you were supposed to be the shadow of the night,” she mutters as he starts putting his headquarters together. “How do you not get caught, like, forty-seven times before John and Felicity cover your ass?”

He doesn’t answer, but then again, she doesn’t need him to.

He slides into this new life almost as easily as he guides his quiver on his back; her transition is less smooth. She’s not used to interacting with the physical world anymore; time and megahertz vibrate differently, and she worries she’s leaving too much resonance as she fights between remembrance and rediscovery. He doesn’t take notice, transforming fully into something he always knew was something else, something she knows he’ll eventually understand is more, and every time the suits up – such that it his “disguise” at the beginning; it’s a hoodie. The man wears a hoodie. – she hears her and Felicity’s voices answering the question he doesn’t dare ask but that either woman he doesn’t know exist at this point would hesitate in saying: he is a hero. That he’ll go from hiding shouldering a son’s promise beneath a bruised history and the crack of leather that echoes in his aloneness to kissing his soulmate as they stand among their future and in the thick of the fight is the thing that keeps her thriving in the dank darkness of the basement; keeps her believing, and Watching, and Following.

(Tommy Merlyn feels her, though. It’s instant and obvious, and he always looks over his shoulder as they begin to set up their business and she lingers as she Watches over Oliver. It takes a few weeks, but he whispers, “Mom, is that you?” after closing late one morning. She wishes so hard that she could say something – what, she doesn’t know; what would be better, saying yes or no? – that a literal light starts to emanate from her the same way it does from Oliver and Felicity’s souls. She stands in the middle of her old building, the speakeasy that killed her, now turned into a bar hiding the man giving them both a second chance neither thought they’d get, staring at her hand as she turns it over and over again in absolute shock and disbelief.

She’s not his Caretaker, but she reaches out to him nonetheless. Her hand lingers on his shoulder, and he shudders through a deep breath as he hears the unspoken message: I’m here.

He says goodnight to her every day after that, and for all the companionship her job is predicated on, she’d never really known just how alone she’d felt.

She’s there at his End even as the foundry cracks around Felicity – as the city breaks around them all in ways that cut so deep they won’t know for so much longer just how badly they’re bleeding – and Tommy watches her in wonder and horror, glancing between his body on the ground and the sobs emanating from his best friend as Oliver begs him to open his eyes. When her hand shakes this time, it’s not entirely because she’s reaching Through for Rebecca Merlyn, but because there are no words to thank her son for the quiet conversations he’d led even without reply while restocking the bar, or the Christmas music he’d introduced her to just a few months before that he’d called classic and that she’d never heard before.

He glances between the familiar face of his mother and the scene in front of him before focusing on her, the embodiment as the confusion at the conduit of it all, and all she can do is smile.

“Take care of him,” he requests, and she nods, saying the word Oliver and Felicity will redefine for each other – have already done for her.

“Always.”)

It’s a lifetime and a half of adagio, of Waiting, but the day finally comes when he shows up in Felicity’s cubicle with a bullet-filled laptop and a bald faced lie, and it’s just…so much funnier than she expects. Of course, neither knows the monumental shift their lives have just taken, but she feels it like the electricity Felicity will soon put in his cave – his world, his heart, and how he’ll route it all back back to the woman that was always so much more than an IT girl. The look on John’s face when he wakes from his poisoning and realizes the ne’er-do-well he was supposed to be guarding is in fact guarding him makes her laugh so much it would have been audible were the rushes of both men’s heartbeats, borne of fear and confusion, not absolutely deafening.

She particularly delights in the moment when Felicity blurts out “I’m Jewish” and Oliver wishes her a Happy Hanukkah. She lingers in the QC offices as Felicity tilts her head back with an embarrassed groan once Oliver’s left the space, and can’t help but laugh as she leans against the blonde’s desk. “You marry him,” she says with utter glee and a delighted handclap not unlike the one Felicity will do when their firstborn takes her first steps toward the city Christmas tree her father once proposed to her mother by.

(She feels the shiver of the after of that moment, another cacophony of a gun and too close of a call, but she holds steadfast to the tomorrow she sees beyond it – the white lace dress and a look across a room, closeness that does not fade regardless of the distance they put between them.

She’s thought it before, but now she wonders aloud, her chin turned toward Above: why can’t this be easier for them? Why can’t the magic of a road trip summer and an unexpected home both in Ivy Town and each other last longer than a single solstice? Why can’t they have lazy Saturdays and non-burnt breakfasts instead of hostile takeovers and closing doors? Yes, they’ll have holiday plays in which one child plays the Christmas turkey on the stage and the other plays with the necklace their father gave their mother as the very first push present as they wiggle impatiently in the audience, and they’ll have William waking early one Christmas morning to mock up reindeer hoofprints in the snow, and they’ll have Hebrew school and Donna buying light-up menorahs so no flames are around her daughter or her daughter’s small children – because even at thirty, to their Nana, they’ll always be small – but words like Havenrock and Nanda Parbat and “maybe my code name could be Hot Wheels” seem to undermine the fact that he’s one of the few good ones, that she’s the last of the real ones, and she is just their Witness.

Because then they wouldn’t be Them. She hates how quickly the answer comes almost as much as she hates how true it is. But they’ve given so much up even before they have it, and it just doesn’t seem fair.

It isn’t. But it’s what makes them better.)

She stays with them after the foundry is discovered, first by Slade Wilson – and what a time she has with that madman; for all the times she’s wanted to reach out to Oliver or Felicity the way she was able to with Tommy, she is full-bodied and pissed off when he infiltrates the grave that has become the only home many of them acknowledge. He thinks she’s a figment of his imagination, a Mirakuru mirage, but instead she’s the first line of defense and the pawn in the chess game Oliver is gearing up to win.

She is red in her rage, seething in her skin – such that it is – and her voice is a hiss when it registers in his ears. “You’ve just gotten here, and you’ve already failed.”

He sets his traps, and she follows every step he stumbles through. “She’s already rebuilt this,” she says, motioning to the place that had felt like a coffin and now sings of comfort. “So has he. And they’ll do it time and again. You…” she laughs, humorlessly, hollowly. “What will you be in the end, other than a cautionary tale?”

She disappears when he swipes his sword at her, chases him around in a madness that registers a little too close for him, but she’d do anything to keep this sanctuary – the sanctity of united souls – safe. It’s why she lingers after the battle of the war no one saw coming and still somehow end one day; settles back as the unthinkable is not only spoken about but finally comes into being. Belief is truth, and it is beautiful. She enjoys those bright days even more than Oliver and Felicity will in their Porsche – Oliver Queen pretending to be confused about Ikea instructions just so Felicity will stay and help him set up the bed she insisted on buying for him is at once the dumbest and greatest thing she’s ever Witnessed, and damn it, why isn’t Caretaker popcorn an actual thing? – because it’s not just her Seeing the possibilities, the promise, the poetry even among the pain anymore.

They’re becoming them, slow and steady as it tries to be – syncopated when he makes it so, the stubborn ass; and yes, she does clang the pipes angrily – loudly – at him as he tries to settle down in the beds of his own making, cold and empty and alone – and she makes the first of her own choices.

She takes the light of that summer, of longing looks and walks for mint chocolate chip ice cream “just because” and holds it to her, even as she knows it means she can’t be there the way she wants to be, aware and awake and as alive as she can be; as she’s been for decades. She uses every ounce of energy they’ve imbued her with – both heavenly and human – and holds tight to that warmth, that belief, that righteousness, and uses it after Oliver’s own fall to soften Felicity’s descent. She uses it to fight through the biting coldness of Felicity’s despair, the pressing callousness of an empty foundry and the pain of dulled, departed souls. She clings to it while she Watches them make choice after impossible choice, after they fall apart and come together in the exquisite way only soulmates can.

She whispers it in their ears in too-empty lofts, in jail cells, in coffee houses operated alongside fake names and pink hair, and even a Dunkin Donuts in Cambridge, one Felicity frequented while at school that William makes his way to for a sense of home when he’s furthest from it.

They are her beacon as much as they are each other’s, and keeps it alight during the dark days and the navy nights.

(The second choice she makes – though doing so contradicts this ones made for her before the Beginning – is to stay long after Quentin Lance finds the foundry and shuts it down. She’s not tied to the place anymore, and should go back Above. She refuses, because if she’s learned one thing from them, it’s that you never abandon the fight. Though they don’t know she’s there, she’s still tied to them, and they have many miles to go before any of them can sleep.

There’s also a small part of her that wonders if they do know she’s there, because after the first date they both believed to be the last, Felicity appears in front of her, shimmering and shaking as brightly as the wedding rings she can’t see but that her Guardian won’t forget, bloody but beautifully aware in her red dress, even as her body lies unconscious and unmoving on a table.

“Is this…Heaven?” she asks brokenly. “Because that would be inconvenient on so many levels.”

She’s thought a hundred times – a thousand – about what she’d say to this beautiful creature if ever given the chance. Would she want to laugh with her; tease her a little bit about just how exhausting the will they/won’t they scenario was when the answer was most obviously duh. Would she be serious; speak about how for as much as she’d fought Oliver’s corner and is helping the world understand he’s a hero, she’s one in her own very big right, that she’s changed just as many lives as Oliver’s changed hers, that she’s as strong as anyone could hope to be and learned it only from herself? In the moment, she just stares, her mind racing to remind Felicity to believe when everything is broken, to relish the calm after the storm even as she loathes its furious existence; wants to beg her not to let either of them run unless it’s to each other. She wants to show her all the things she Sees – has Seen – how she’ll lose too much but find herself in the end, that she’ll hold her husband’s hand until he’s 86 and she’ll follow shortly thereafter with a smile on her face and peace in her heart because the only place they were ever supposed to be was together; wants to tell her how damn proud she is of all of them. How she’ll cheer when Felicity Smoak stares down every fool that dares cross her path, whether it’s the madman-hellbent-on-revenge du jour or her three-year-old who very clearly got into Oliver’s homemade cookies before bed and is shaking a familiarly curly head in denial even with chocolate chip smeared all over their face; how she’ll be shaking a pipe in celebration as Felicity cuts the ribbon on a building bearing her name, and how she’ll do the same at Oliver’s nonprofit office when it’s time for him to head home for dinner with his wife and family.

She wants to tell her the one thing she wishes she’d heard at her End: it’s all going to be okay.

She doesn’t say that, though, even if it’s true. Because what’s even truer – what’s even more important – is that it’s all going to be worth it.

All of it – the lies, the tears, the tribulations – will pale in comparison to vividity of the triumph. These days are long and hard, but the one thing that has never changed – will never change – is the light inside them. It’s not even just their souls anymore; not just them with each other. It’s a beacon, a road home. It’s a journey and a destination and a beginning and an ending, and it’s the most beautiful thing any of them will ever see.

She doesn’t say much, actually, because there’s just too many things to note. Instead, she follows the heart Felicity helped both her and Oliver realize they’d never lost, and the words that finally come out are instinctual. “No, my love,” she says softly, sweetly, and with a smile even as her heart bursts and breaks at the same time, because the woman in front of her really is remarkable. “It’s not.” She swallows, closes her eyes and reaches out for Felicity’s hand – not because she doesn’t know what’ll happen, but because this is something she needs to remember. “Your work is far from finished, but you’re doing great, great things.”

“I – I don’t understand,” Felicity says, glancing behind her, her body leaning toward Oliver in the same way their souls yearn for each other.

“That’s okay,” she replies. “I know enough for the both of us.”

The moment she touches the blonde, everything snaps back in place, and Felicity bolts upright with one name on her lips; the most important one.

The last one she ever says in the foundry, though, comes years and understandings later, after so much as fallen, but more importantly, has been reclaimed again. There’s a single rose in her weathered hand and an even older newspaper article folded in her pocket.

“Thank you, Millie,” Felicity whispers as she lays the flower on the spot the paper said the woman passed away on, stopping with a smile when the pipes clang noisily one last time.

“No, Felicity,” Millie whispers as she rises Above just as their souls have time and again, “thank you.”)

#Olicity Secret Santa 2018 #Olicity #Arrow #submission

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pamphletstoinspire · 5 years

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Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

Pentecost is not supposed to mark a spiritual highpoint, from which we then regress and go back to being our slovenly selves.

Rather, Pentecost should be a dramatic infusion of spiritual energy climaxing a period of formation that has been ongoing since the first week of Advent. Pentecost propels us, like a shot out of a cannon, into the “world” of Ordinary Time, in order to do effective combat with sin, death, and the Devil.

This Sunday marks approximately the half-way point in the liturgical year, and at this temporal center, we pause to reflect on the central mystery of our Faith, the Most Holy Trinity. This seems appropriate on the heels of Pentecost, because it is through the Holy Spirit that the whole Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — dwells within our soul. Predictably, the Readings view the mystery of the Trinity from different angles.

Our First Reading is a passage that became the focus of great controversy in the ancient Church, as the doctrine of the Trinity was being worked out, specifically during the Arian controversy:

1. Reading 1 Proverbs 8:22-31

Thus says the wisdom of God: "The LORD possessed me, the beginning of his ways, the forerunner of his prodigies of long ago; from of old I was poured forth, at the first, before the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no fountains or springs of water; before the mountains were settled into place, before the hills, I was brought forth; while as yet the earth and fields were not made, nor the first clods of the world.

"When the Lord established the heavens I was there, when he marked out the vault over the face of the deep; when he made firm the skies above, when he fixed fast the foundations of the earth; when he set for the sea its limit, so that the waters should not transgress his command; then was I beside him as his craftsman, and I was his delight day by day, playing before him all the while, playing on the surface of his earth; and I found delight in the human race."

The controversy in antiquity focussed on verse 22, translated in the lectionary, “The LORD possessed me ….” The word translated possessed in English is qaneh in Hebrew, which is a homonym meaning either “create” or “acquire, purchase.” During the Arian controversy, both sides — Trinitarian and Arian — assumed that Divine Wisdom in Psalm 8 was figure of the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. The Arians insisted qaneh meant “created,” and thus the text proved Jesus was a creature, thus not fully divine. The orthodox insisted it just meant “acquired,” and referred to the timeless begetting of the Son. Grammar and lexical research, however, cannot resolve the question.

Pondering this text now, so many years after the Arian controvery is passed, we may rightly ask, Who does Lady Wisdom represent here, the Son or the Spirit? Other biblical texts associate both with divine wisdom. John 1:1 famously identifies Jesus as God’s “logos,” which could be understood broadly as “reason” or “wisdom.” On the other hand, Wisdom 7:25 and other texts identify Lady Wisdom as the “breath” (that is, Spirit) of God. We may correctly say that both or either the Son or the Spirit are being typified in this passage. Both preceded creation. Both were active in creation: the Second Person as the creative “logos,” the third as the “creator spirit” who “renews the face of the earth.” This illustrates how united the Son and the Spirit are in their processions and their actions. The fathers used two illustrations of this unity: as oil cannot be separated from the skin once it is rubbed in, so the Spirit and the Son cannot be separated. As one cannot speak without uttering one’s breath, so the Son cannot proceed from the Father without the Spirit.

This passage from Proverbs reminds us that hundreds of years before the coming of Christ, the Holy Spirit was inspiring ancient Israelite authors to pen religious poetry that is difficult to reconcile with a monopersonal view of God. This strongly personified Lady Wisdom implies that in some mysterious way, there is more than one person involved in the divine act of creation.

P. Our Responsorial Psalm is Psalm 8:4-5, 6-7, 8-9:

R. (2a) O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!

When I behold your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you set in place — What is man that you should be mindful of him, or the son of man that you should care for him? R. O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!

You have made him little less than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him rule over the works of your hands, putting all things under his feet: R. O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!

All sheep and oxen, yes, and the beasts of the field, The birds of the air, the fishes of the sea, and whatever swims the paths of the seas. R. O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!

This lyrical and mysterious Psalm praises God for his gratuitous benevolence to a certain “son of man.” But who is this “son of man”? The interpretation of the Psalm hinges on it. Actually, the “son of man” could be taken four equally legitimate ways: as a reference to (1) Adam, (2) humanity generally, (3) David the author, or (4) the Son of David, the Messiah. All four meanings are inter-related. However, in the context of this Mass, we recall that Our Lord’s favorite self-identification was “the Son of Man.” Psalm 8 was among the texts alluded to when he employed this title. Psalm 8 describes a certain “son of man” who is made “a little less than the angels” — a description of the period of the incarnation — but then is crowned with glory and honor, and placed as king over all creation. The prefigurement of Christ is clear to see. This Psalm stresses the human nature of the Second Person, who nevertheless exercises the divine prerogative of rule over the cosmos on behalf of God the Father.

2. The Second Reading is Rom 5:1-5:

Brothers and sisters:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

This short and beautiful doxology is one of my favorite passages from the Epistle to the Romans, because it so fully captures several essential features of salvation and the Christian life: faith, grace, suffering, growth in virtue, and charity.

The passage also describes the particular work of each of the three persons in the mystery of salvation. We are reconciled (have peace) with the God the Father through the work of Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit we have received from him.

This passage is very important in helping to solve the (false) conflict between “salvation by faith” and “salvation by works.” How does our faith interact with our works in the process of salvation? St. Paul explains: by faith in Christ we attain peace (reconciliation) with God the Father, who then fills us with his love through the Holy Spirit. That divine love that now dwells within us, allows us to fulfill God’s law by doing good works. Can we take any pride in this? Not at all, because it is all the work of God.

G. Our Gospel is John 16:12-15:

Jesus said to his disciples: "I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears, and will declare to you the things that are coming. He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you. Everything that the Father has is mine; for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine and declare it to you."

This wonderful Gospel text makes a beautiful transition from last week’s focus on the Spirit and Pentecost with this week’s meditation on the Trinity. Here Jesus continues to teach the apostles about the Spirit, but in the process he explains the relationship of the Spirit to the other persons.

“When the spirit of truth comes, he will lead you into all truth.” When I was a Protestant, I sometimes took this verse as a promise of personal infallibility, provided I was sincere. All I had to do was pick up my Bible, pray to the Spirit for inspiration, and everything true would come to me.

However, the phrasing of this statement, as well as its context, suggests it is not a promise of infallibility to each Christian. The Greek reads, “He will lead you all into all truth,” in other words, the word “you” is second person plural. Jesus is speaking to the apostles as a group. They are the seed and nucleus of the hierarchy of the Church, the font of the episcopal conference. So we still believe: when the successors of the apostles are gathered together, as they once were in the upper room, the Spirit will not fail to lead them into the fullness of God’s truth.

“He will declare to you the things that are coming.” This line seems striking, since it is written down by John the Apostle, whom tradition identifies also as the author of Revelation, the book which reveals all the things that are coming soon.

“Everything that the Father has is mine … he will take from what is mine and declare it to you …”

Here we see the unity of the Godhead as well as the principle of the development of dogma.

The Father and Son are so united, they possess all in common, and out of the treasury of this infinite common goodness, the Spirit joined to them “declares” or makes known the truth to the Church.

Even if there is much truth about God that can be reduced to writing, nonetheless, the mystery of God and his saving works is too infinite to be exhaustively written down. Knowing this, Jesus did not leave the Apostles and the Church with a book, but with the Spirit, who would continue down through the ages “taking from what is mine” and “making it known to you.”

This is what, in fact, has happened. Down through the ages, the Church has entered ever more deeply into the mystery of God. The doctrine of the Trinity is itself a good example. The reality of the Trinity is the foundation of the cosmos. God has always been and always will be Triune. The Scriptures bear witness to this fact, even if they do not define the Trinity in its particulars. The definitions and particulars had to be worked out over centuries, as the Spirit “took from what is mine and made it known to you,” through the writings of the saints and the decisions of the councils. Gradually, the picture of the truth became ever sharper, reaching a milestone of clarity at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. The picture did not change, and never will. This is not an evolutionary process. Rather, the picture becomes ever clearer, ever better defined.

Sometimes we wish we lived in the time of the early Church, when — we imagine — there was greater energy and purity of faith. However that may be, we should be grateful that we live now, when we do, because we greatly benefit from the vastly greater clarity the faith enjoys now than it did in the early centuries. In those ancient days, if someone claimed that Jesus had been created, you would have known instinctively that he or she was wrong, and had some Scriptures (e.g. the Gospel of John) to rely on, but without any clear, definitive, written judgement of the Church. Now, every person on the globe can access the entire Catechism of the Catholic Church — which is delightfully clear and specific — via the internet in seconds. Never has it been so easy to know the truth of salvation.

We should be grateful for the many councils, fathers, and doctors of the Church through the centuries who have been instruments of the Spirit, enabling Him to “take what is mine and give it to you,” enriching and clarifying the faith and the truths of God for our benefit, making it easier to believe and to live a life of holiness.

“To whom much has been given, much will be expected.” Throughout the history of the Church, the Spirit has given us much from the Father and the Son, a great body of teaching to “guide us into all truth.” This Sunday, let us give thanks to the Holy Trinity for the riches and clarity of our faith, and all the teaching we have received to help us understand and practice the way of salvation. Further, let’s beg the Holy Trinity for the actual graces that we need to give a good return on the “deposit of faith” that we have received, in good works and apostolic outreach.

From: www.pamphletstoinspire.com

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destinyimage · 2 years

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Reclaiming America’s Prophetic Destiny

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There is a fascinating word in the New Testament, katartizo.

It means “to adjust; to put a thing in its appropriate position.” The word is used in context with mending nets (see Matt. 4:21), repairing schisms or relational breaks (see 1 Cor. 1:10), and even restoring broken lives (see Gal. 6:1). The word has also been used to describe the restoration of a dislocated joint or a broken bone. So, as you can see, the concept of this word involves proper alignment, including realignment, resulting in healing or restoration.

It should come, then, as no surprise that God uses that word to describe the proper alignment of the seasons of time. In other words, He declares in advance His plans for the future of nations and peoples of the earth. Hebrews 11:3 says, in its more literal and accurate rendering, that the “ages” (Greek—aiones) were “properly aligned or connected” (Greek—katartizo) by the word or decree of the Lord. In other words, God decreed the flow of history.

America Must Cross Over

There is an Old Testament word and concept that captures the essence of what happens when we align or realign with God and His purposes. The word is abar, and it means “to cross over; penetrate.” It is the root word for Abraham’s descriptive term “the Hebrew” in Genesis 14:13. He was called “the Hebrew” because he had crossed out of his homeland and into a new region when instructed to do so by the Lord.

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Although this word is often used in a generic sense of transitioning from one place to another, it has also been used sometimes to denote very significant “crossings” that became landmark events in people’s lives, as was referenced in Abraham. Some examples are:

The Lord “passed between” (abar) the pieces of the covenantal sacrifice Abram offered to God (see Gen. 15:17). It is as though God was saying, “You have, in obedience, crossed over to Me, Abram; now I’m crossing over to you in covenantal alignment.” Crossing over can be a covenantal act.

God “passed by” (abar) Moses in Exodus 33:19-22, showing him His goodness and glory. When God crosses over to us, facets of His nature and character are revealed.

A new generation “crossed” (abar) into their inheritance in Joshua chapters 1–4. In Joshua 3:4, the Lord instructed Israel to watch or follow the ark of the covenant “for you have not passed [abar] this way before.” Each generation must have its own crossing over. They were not true Hebrews just because their forefathers were—and neither are we.

The air passing through the jubilee trumpet was described as abar. Crossing over can be the release of the breath of God to us, bringing freedom and new beginnings.

These and other usages of abar have significance for America. God needs for us as a nation to “cross” back into a meaningful and covenantal relationship with Him. When we do, we receive the benefit of His covenantal crossing to us. We cannot rely on what our forefathers and foremothers have done to dedicate this nation to God; we must have our own crossing over in our day. As we do, Christ our Jubilee will breathe on us again, bringing true freedom and restoration.

To Receive the River We Must Accept God’s Rule

Finally, there is one other usage of abar that is significant and needs highlighting. Ezekiel chapter 47 is the great passage that describes the increasing levels of the river of God flowing out of the temple. The verses are filled with symbolism—the river flows into desert regions and brings life; everything it touches is healed; there will be many fish (souls)—of what occurs when this river flows.

But another of the interesting points of the passage is that the prophet had to pass through (abar) each new level of the river. Many have speculated as to why this was required. One of the interesting explanations has to do with the fact that between each level there was a thousand cubits, which led to the next level and another crossing. One thousand, being a multiple of ten, is the number of divine order and government in biblical numerology. This would suggest that for every new level of God’s river—life, healing, and restoration—to be released, there must be an acceptance of God’s order and government. In other words, His plan and rule must be followed.

In America, we have not yet been able to experience spiritual recovery and restoration back into the fullness of God’s blessing, though many have asked Him for it. This is because we must do more than ask; there is an order and pattern that must be followed. As that pattern occurs, however—humbling ourselves, praying, seeking His face, and repenting (see 2 Chron. 7:14), just to name some of the things required—we are then positioned (katartizo) for more of God’s healing to occur.

It is clear to us that God is realigning and positioning America so we can cross over into a new era of revival and blessing. He is adjusting us, bringing healing to our broken places and dislocations. America is about to see another great awakening, which will result in many salvations and the turning of a nation back to its God and its destiny. Curses are being broken, blessings are being released, and our God-given voice is being restored.

What a privilege to partner with Him!

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fatherfunston · 6 years

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The Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost; Sermon, October 21, 2018

This sermon was preached by Seminarian Dillon Green who is currently a Junior (First-Year) at Virginia Theological Seminary. You can find him on Facebook. Dillon is sponsored for ordination to the Episcopal priesthood by St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan, Kansas.

Topic: The Voice of God in Uncertainty

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church 601 Poyntz Avenue, Manhattan, KS 10:45am Service 22nd Pentecost, Proper 24B, Track 2 Readings Main Focus Text: Mark 10.35-45

The Voice of God in Uncertainty

What are we truly afraid of? That’s the question I found myself asking this week after reading the Gospel. In last week’s passage, if you’ll remember, Jesus tells the rich young ruler to sell everything he owns, to give it to the poor, and to come and follow him. The rich man goes away in shock, grieving as he goes. The disciples, too, are perplexed. Peter reminds Jesus, “Look, we have left everything to follow you,” to which Jesus replies, “The first will be last and the last will be first.” Right after that, in between last week’s and this week’s gospel, we’ve got Jesus predicting his death and resurrection for a third time. Enter James and John, the sons of Zebedee. “We want you to do whatever we ask of you,” James and John say to Jesus. You can almost hear the suspicion in Jesus’ voice when he answers them. “Okay... What is it you want me to do for you?” “Grant us to sit one at your right hand and one at your left.” Jesus tells them he’s going to die and be raised again, and this is the question they ask. Give us assurance. Give us security. Give us glory. Remember, when Jesus calls them, they’re in a boat with their father, and they leave him to follow Jesus. They leave their family, they leave their jobs, they leave the world as they know it behind, and they move into a life of following Jesus which looks nothing like what everyone else around them is doing. What motivates their need for assurance and for security? What motivates ours?

I have a feeling that we in Kansas can sympathize with James and John. For the past two years we’ve been in the search process for a new Bishop, wondering what the future might hold for the Diocese of Kansas. Some fellow congregations, full of our Kansan siblings in Christ, of necessity are acutely aware of the future’s uncertainty. It’s natural and profoundly human for us to be asking questions like this, to be asking Jesus to do whatever we ask of him, and to desire, as do James and John, some knowledge of what is to come. And, in fact, Jesus, in response to

James and John’s questions, and in the face of our own fears and anxieties, does not rebuke, but offers exactly what James and John ask for, but not in the way they or we expect.

I, too, can relate to James and John. Before I came to Kansas, I was having a not-so-minor freak-out about what I was going to do with my life. I had spent my undergraduate years assuming that what I wanted to be was a French and Spanish professor, so that’s what I prepared for. Ultimately what scared me away was uncertainty and fear, about whether I was ready for grad school, uncertainty about the future of higher education. I decided, out of those fears, that I would take nursing classes to become a nurse. A solid job, needed everywhere, that pays well and that would give me a degree of autonomy over myself and my own decisions about where I would live and work. After a year of classes, though, something inside me wouldn’t rest, so I decided not to finish the program. Again, I found myself directionless, with no idea of what I wanted to do and only an idea of what I didn’t. My friend Will told me about the position at Kansas State. I had never been to Kansas and had no certainty of what this job would look like. I interviewed, got the job, and moved to Kansas all within the span of six days. I spent my first year here thinking I would leave to go to optometry school, until I was hit with this sense of call, here at St. Paul’s, at Canterbury, at Camp, working with the youth program. It’s an ironic path God has set me on now, because, though I got here from a fear of uncertainty, I am now in one of the most uncertain processes. When you’re in the pre-ordination process, you are meant to enter with a willingness to hear God’s voice in your life, to be truly open to a yes or a no from your discernment committee, from the commission on ministry, from the Holy Spirit. Any step along the way that might happen. Even still, once Bishop Bascom begins, she could decide to freeze the ordination process until she gets an idea of the diocese and gets settled into her office. Not that she will, but that possibility of uncertainty is ever present in this journey toward ordination.

Reflecting on these moments in my life, on this process, I see now that it’s when we are most uncomfortable that we are most ready and prepared to hear God’s voice in our lives. It's when I was distressed and without direction that I was able to receive Will’s suggestion and come to Kansas, a decision which I can confidently tell you has changed my life. So it goes here in the Diocese of Kansas. We are in a state of change and transition, and it may feel at times like we’re a little off kilter. But it is at those times of discomfort that we are most able to hear God’s voice. And it’s with that knowledge that we can be confident that we have listened to God’s voice, and that God has directed us to the faithful leader we have elected in Bishop-elect Cathleen Bascom. But, as exciting as elections are, we know that discomfort doesn’t dissolve at the ballot box, and that the work already begun must continue on.

What motivates our need for assurance, for security, if not fear? What are we truly afraid of? It’s the fear of discomfort, and from this fear springs forth a host of others. The fear of embarrassment. The fear of not being provided for. The fear of awkwardness. The fear of uncertainty. The fear of death. In response to this fear of discomfort we build walls of money, of education, of autonomy around ourselves to minimize it or, if possible, to neutralize it altogether. But God shows us another way. Jesus himself feared death, as our reading from Hebrews today alludes to. “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death.” He cries to the Father, and the Father, who hears him, doesn’t save him from death and discomfort, but makes him perfect in death and makes him our hope for eternal life, because God offers us only one kind of certainty, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus says in today’s gospel, “The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.” This is the certainty of Christ for us, the sacraments. Every time we take the Eucharist and every time we renew our baptismal covenant, we are living into Christ’s message for us here, that we take comfort in the uncomfortable. This life won’t feel or look like what the world thinks is certainty, and it won’t be comfortable. In fact, it will most certainly be uncomfortable. But it will bring into reality God’s kingdom, in which the first will be last and the last will be first. It is said that death and taxes are the only two things certain in this world. But Jesus answers back. The only two things certain are death and resurrection. Amen.

#sermon #sermon audio #episcopal #stpaulsmanhattan #dillon green #uncertainty #fear #anxiety

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ramrodd · 3 years

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How can liberals old enough to remember the 1980s and what a happy and prosperous time they were, continue to bash Ronald Reagan whose policies created that wonderful era?

COMMENTARY:

I voted for Nixon before I went to Vietnam and I voted for him when I got back. I actually worked, briefly, as a volunteer at CRP ( or CREEP as everyone on Capitol Hill called it) and hung out, briefly. at the same Georgetown saloon, The Guards, where “Pitchfork Pat: Buchanan and a number of the White House Plumbers, and their women, hung out, but I really didn;t want to be around people like that and most of them would become the Movement Conservatives who came to town with Reagan and formed the cult of personality around him as part of Newt Gingrich’s political strategy for the Contract With America to make him Speaker of the House.

I am what I describe as an Eisenhower-Romney Republican. I’m an Army brat and a hard-wired Eisenhower-Marshall Republican, in the sense that they were about as apolitical as you can get. In an Officer’s Mess, you don’t discuss politics, women or religion: a common fellowship that obtained around the Roman centurions in the secrete Roman intelligence committe that published and distributed the Epistle to the Hebrews. The only political activity I participated from my sophamore year in high school until I got back from Vietnam in 1971 was a mock student body presidential election voice vote in assembly between LBJ and Barry Goldwater, who was as crazy as MTG. LBJ won, pulling away and the nation agreed with us. Plus voting. The people around “Pitchfork Pat” Buchanan were variations on the theme of crazy like Barry Goldwater: it’s a cultural charateristics of the Movement Conservatives who came to town with Reagan and, until Trump was elected, was running the GOP.

As an Eisenhower-Romney Republican, I was declared RINO by Charles Z. Wick and put on a Movement Conservative black list which persists to this day. Wick was running Reagan’s transition team and he told me I would never work on K Street again for anybody and it came true.

That wasn’t much fun. That was the era Movement Conservatives like Tukkker Carlson remember fondly as the time when Being Conservative was Cool, not like the ‘60’s, when being Conservative meant you didn’t get laid on campus because the Conservative women didn’t fuck and the liberal women liked big black dicks and guys who burned their draft cards with hair stylings like Mike Jagger or Stockley Carmichael. Basically, all Pro-Life men and Pro-Life women like MTG missed the Sexual Revolution entirely, at the time, and continue to resent the rest of the world for not being Amish. This is a featue of the structural white supremacy of the Movment Conservatives.

So, in 1981, when the Movement Conservatives came to town, they moved into the most racially mellow urban culture in America. In spite of Kent State, the tribal experience of Woodstock and the esprit de corps of the anti-war/civil rights community defined DC’s collective culture, universally. And, in DC at the time when white bigots from Wall Street, Hollywood and Vine and white gated communities in Florida began trickling in with their ideolgical MAGA caps showing up in liberal bars around town, the racism meter went from 0 to 11 overnight. It was like hitting a switch. DC was playing Chuck Brown’s “Bustin’ Loose” as a legacy of the organic unity of the 4th of July, 1976 and the Movement Conservatives brought in Toby Keith complaining about the Dixie Chicks.. Racially, the DC culture from that day until January, 1981, was like a champagne bath. And, then, the Movment Conservatives became the turds in the punch bowl.

And that wasn’t fun.

So, if you remember how happy everybody was when Reagan moved in and the Movement Conservatives began to pollute the culture inside the Beltway like the CO from Cadillac limo idling in a basement parking garage.

Whenever I hear someone from Tukkker Carlson’s demographic allude to the paradise of the Reagan years, and how cool it was to be Conservative, like J. Michael Fox and Willam F. Buckley, and I think of Ben Shapiro, the Kool Kid’s Philosopher. This guy has built a career around his testicals failure to descend.

The most important event during the Reagan administration was when Nancy fired Donald T. Regan for betraying her husband and denying him a share in Gorbachev’s Nobel Prize. Reagan promised Gorbachev America would provide essentially a continuation of the Marshall Plan to support Russia’s conversion from Soviet Marxism to a Russian version of American British constitutional capitalism and Regan sabotaged the program in favor of the criminal agenda he was pursuing on Wall Street with off-shore banking.

Now, see, when I got back from Vietnam, I was a white guy with short hair who didn’t share many of the values of the SNL demographic, but I was a combat vet and that was catnip to a certain community of international sport fuckers I stumbled into by blind luck. It was like that Seinfeld episode where George’s picture of his fianncee got him into serious clubs and raves, like an escort past the velvet rope at Studio 54. I couldn’t get there by myself, but the women sort of passed me around and that went on until the Tukkker Carlson demographic came to town and fucked up the Sexual Revolution by monitizing everything. “Pretty Women” and “The Big Chill” pretty well marked the end of the Woodstock victory party in the cultural war and the beginning of the Harvey Weinstein/Movement Conservative cultural distortions arising from the class warfare of Supply Side economcs and the evil enchantment of the Reagan cult of personality. The ’60s really ended by the 1982 midterms and the economic policy that defined “The Art of the Deal” ended with Bob Dole’s 1984 Tax Reform. In 1981,

Trump’s business model defined the leading edge of the Green New Deal beginning to emerge from the Nixon-Moynihan-Carter Affirmative Action legislative package designed to transform the Military Industrial Complex to the Aerospace-Entrpreneurial Matrix at the core of the Green New Deal. The object of the exercise was to build on the success of Apollo 11, globally, and put a NASA-Soyuz base on the moon by 2001, just like the movie.

The Supply Side Economcs of the Movment Conservatives stopped that process in its tracks. Under Reagan and Supply Side Economics, Space Shuttles began blowing up. But before that happened, Trump was on the Entrepreneurial side of the equation and his business model, which was based on his vision and Barbara Res’s operational competence, was leading the way into the Green New Deal until Supply Side Economics pulled the plug on the New Deal structues underwriting it. In 1981, The Art of the Deal led directly to Space X, 30 years sooner.

The irony is that AOC shares Trump’s 1981 vision of the Green New Deal, but she also embodies the operational comptence of Barbara Res and the ways and means of Nancy Pelosi. After 2018, the only thing standing between Trump and the Green New Deal was Reaganomics and the Contract With America.

And MTG.

Here’s the thing: if the Democrats and the Eisenhower-Romney Republicans in the Senate can conspire to create veto-proof legislation for Biden’s Infrastructure Capital Budget, the economy will slip naturally into the Green New Deal before the mid-terms and Biden will be able to end the Korean War. And maybe the people who misremember when Conservatives were Cool will shrivel up and vanish like a persisten migraine, never to return.

Now, that would be fun.

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giftofshewbread · 4 years

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Knowledge of the Holy 1 is Understanding

By Gene Lawley Published on: February 12, 2021

This title comes from Proverbs 9:10, which reads, “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” The importance of that proverb cannot be diminished by any effort of mankind. It is superior to man’s finite limitations. But what is the “fear of the Lord,” anyway?

It is both the reverence and the respect for God, the Creator, the Sovereign of the Universe, the One who has no beginning nor ending, the Alpha and the Omega, as Jesus claimed it. It is the reverence for this God of love, grace and mercy, and respect for this same God of justice and truth.

Knowing those two sides of God’s character is the foundation of our understanding of His relationship to His creation, and to mankind, in particular.

It faces off against fallen man’s wisdom. In logic, of which my thinking is mere nibbling on its edges, two basic approaches to the truth of any subject rests in the terms inductive thinking and deductive thinking. My understanding is that inductive thinking starts from the inside, so to speak, and looks outward to the results. But deductive thinking starts on the outside—with a preconceived theory or idea—and searches for truth to give it foundation. Thus, we can see how “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” From that, then, we can begin to understand how the latter part of that verse fits in: “And knowledge of the Holy One IS UNDERSTANDING!” (capitalized for emphasis.)

The greatest standoff between these two approaches to truth, no doubt, is Creation versus Evolution. Public schools in America, funded by government funds, have legal backing to teach the Science of Evolution, but not Creation. Evolutionists seem to be fixed on three targets that are claimed as support for the evolvement of the universe and its inhabitants:

Billions of years that allow natural “development.”

The discovered universe of planets and stars “way out there.”

Mankind’s transition from animal to modern man.

But when one asks, openly or quietly within himself, “How did all these details, especially of the human body and its functions, come together with such obvious requirement of intelligence,” science has no meaningful answer.

Stephen Jay Gould, who found out the answer when he died in 2002, formulated a very impressive label for that situation when he described the issue as “Punctuated Equilibrium,” meaning, apparently, ‘We have no idea how the link, or gap, between animal and man was solved.’ Thus, as we must conclude, it takes a lot more faith to believe in evolution than it does to believe in God.

Again, “Knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

The contrast between the two approaches to the discovery of truth is very clear with Creation versus Evolution.

How, then, does this “inductive versus deductive” thinking show up in regard to understanding of the Scriptures? False doctrines arise from a person’s erroneous concept of God. It starts with a preconceived idea that has an incorrect understanding of Scripture, or has no Scriptural basis at all. When one verse is taken out of context, or without consideration of the whole counsel of God’s Word, it will wreak havoc on a claim of truth.

There are some basic principles we can learn from the attributes of God that give us immediate understanding. From Scripture we learn that:

God cannot lie nor change His position on good and evil.

He does not contradict Himself.

He does not act unjustly toward mankind.

He does not invade a person’s right of personal choice; thus, we do not become robots.

He offers the GIFT OF SALVATION to mankind and does everything He can within His own stature of character that man will accept that gift of salvation with its promise of everlasting life.

He hates evil and does not tempt man to sin. In order to accomplish His eternal plan for the ages, He allows evil to act out its own desires in a given direction of His choosing. When Satan is allowed to create evilness, God justly punishes those who conduct the evilness.

One of the great examples of this in modern times is the Nazi holocaust under the evilness of Adolph Hitler. In His foreknowledge, God had looked ahead with the promise of restoring the Jews to their own land with internationally recognized sovereignty—promised by the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel. The Jews had been scattered among the nations from the destruction of Jerusalem and their temple in 70 A.D. Much like that in the time of Moses, when it came time for God to deliver the Hebrew people out of Egypt, He had to bring the people to a willingness to leave their embedded lives in foreign lands and head back to their own land. May 14, 1948, was the date of that accomplishment, and on May 9, 1945, after Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally.

Searching out all the details of God’s accomplishment by allowing that evil to occur is obviously too heavy on the heart to be pursued. The establishment of the sovereign state of Israel was the beginning of the last days of this age of grace, as the Scriptures seem to indicate.

The previous statements are not without Scriptural precedent, and following are some quotations that speak to those points listed above, and this, in itself, is testimony of God’s unchanging nature that the whole Bible is consistent with these revelations of His character:

Numbers 23:19 – “God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?”

Hebrews 7:24 – “But He, because He continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood.”

Proverbs 8:13 – “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil.”

Psalm 103:6 – “The Lord executes righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.”

Psalm 33:5-6 – “For the word of the Lord is right, and all His work is done in truth. He loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.”

Romans 6:23 – “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.”

Ephesians 2:8-9 – “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”

2 Peter 3:9 – “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”

Revelation 3:10 – “Because you have kept My command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth.”

Revelation 3:20 – “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.”

2 Timothy 2:13 – “If we believe not, yet He abides faithful; He cannot deny Himself.” (KJV)

Psalm 53:1 – “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.'”

There is another gem from the Book of Gems, the Holy Scriptures—yes, even two, that speak volumes to a heart that is longing for that personal, intimate walk with God:

2 Timothy 3:16 – “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”

Hebrews 11:6 – “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”

It would take an eternity to search out all of the magnitude of the riches of God’s favor for those who love Him and seek Him. Let’s not turn away so soon, for we can see the Day approaching.

“Knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

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ahopefuldoubt · 6 years

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Aaron and Rameses Parallels in The Prince of Egypt

based on a few points from this list (jul.-aug. 2016). written between dec. 2016 and jan. 2017. originally posted in 2017 [x].

An interesting parallel between Aaron and Rameses seems to occur about midway into the movie, doing so off-screen:

While Moses is in Midian, both take up more prominent roles in their respective communities. Rameses becomes Pharaoh of Egypt, and Aaron assumes the position of doubtful spokesman for the Hebrew people*. Because the throne room scene with Moses and Rameses is followed by the mud pit scene with Aaron and Moses, these changes get revealed in succession, creating a nice opportunity to explore the characters themselves as well as their dynamic.

There’s some dramatic irony where Rameses is concerned. Those who are familiar with the story know that he is the pharaoh whom Moses must contest. However, for the characters, the situation is ambiguous, and their reunion is therefore able to cover a lot of emotional ground. Moses comes back to Egypt to discover that his brother has taken their father’s seat, and suddenly his mission from God takes on a much heavier dimension — “Pharaoh will not listen,” but perhaps Moses hopes that the brother he’s always loved and respected will. And Rameses is none the wiser, secure in his authority and bemused by Moses’ humble appearance. Their amicable acknowledgement of the past and present quickly turns into a tense hint at the future.

On the other hand, Aaron is a surprise to Moses and the audience. Not only does his assertiveness in the mud pit scene seem sudden, but the overall changes from the source material are also unexpected. And here is a reverse parallel of sorts: In reviews, the movie’s alternate take on Rameses and Moses’ personal relationship is often considered a unique addition, whereas the differences made to Aaron’s character are thought of as a curious reduction. Aaron is an important Jewish figure whose admired qualities include his positive relationship with his younger brother (a notable contrast from all the fraternal strife in the Book of Genesis), so in that regard I understand people’s disappointment. But his shift from being fearfully vigilant, to calling for justice, to taking the first steps into the Red Sea is compelling, and in my opinion it humanizes him in a meaningful way (just as the other characters have been humanized for this film). It also means that, like Rameses, he must navigate his past, present, and future relationship with Moses — though it’s one that has a rather different history and track.

The directors cite practical reasons for changing Aaron’s part, as it allows Moses to maintain agency (e.g., Moses performs all of miracles and plagues instead of delegating the first few to Aaron, as happens in the Book of Exodus) and puts a better focus on his conflict with Rameses. Personally, I think that the Rameses-to-Pharaoh, Aaron-to-spokesman transition also gives them this more immediate sense of opposition, or greater approximation (and makes me feel all the more deeply about certain lines of dialogue**). Maybe, in some odd way, it’s a small nod to the story in the Book of Exodus.

Representing Aaron as someone who frets and questions things brings me to the next parallel, which is that now both brothers are skeptics of God and of Moses. In The Prince of Egypt, Moses must convince them both (to very different ends, of course). There are moments in the reunion scenes where their responses to Moses sound alike in topic and tone:

Rameses

I do not know this God. Neither will I let your people go.

Aaron

God? When did God start caring about any of us?

Here they sound angry and faithless, but it’s another similarity that separates them, I feel, since their doubt in and experiences with God differ quite a bit.

In reaction to the conditions of slavery, the persistent threat to their lives, Aaron has turned to wondering, bitterly and from a place of anguish/fear, if God has abandoned them. Moses’ return means many things to Aaron, and the unintended outcome of Moses’ confrontation with Rameses probably seems like further proof that God does not care. Rameses, on the other hand, has no experience with the God of the Hebrew people. To admit inexperience with something isn’t necessarily bad; however, he speaks about God and those who practice the faith as the Other. Moses’ return means many things to Rameses, too, and Rameses perceives God — and even/eventually Moses — as a challenge to his sovereignty.

Beyond the parallels discussed in this post are others that visually and auditorially connect Aaron and Rameses. Serious and cautious***, Moses’ brothers tend to carry many troubles and hold on to negative events from the past. It’s possible to treat Rameses as a prisoner of tradition, or a victim of his family and God’s wrath. It’s possible to criticize Aaron for his fears and lack of faith in God. But neither is fully or fairly illustrative of who they are as characters. (For me, that interpretation of Rameses absolves him of too much responsibility. And that reading of Aaron causes too much oversight of his courage and compassion.) Indeed, it’s important also to recognize the choices they make in the film and the paths they walk. I think that there, too, lies a vast difference between them.

* From here: It’s worth noting that Aaron’s role throughout the film is representing his people’s doubts and concerns. But I also think it’s something that develops as he grows/ages…

** I’m referring to the line, “Pharaoh still has the power over our lives.” Also, as I note here [link to be added], there’s really no film-canon evidence that Rameses even knows of Aaron’s or Miriam’s existence. This is interesting to me because it deviates from the Book of Exodus, in which Aaron deals with Pharaoh directly. But, it’s also interesting because of course viewers know how all the characters in the film version are related, and I feel that fans like to project some kind of “rivalry” onto the brothers, usually boiling down to which one is the “real” brother. The line of dialogue above helps underline the grossly uneven power dynamic between Rameses (Pharaoh/Egypt) and Aaron (the Hebrew people).... and this dynamic is one of the many reasons why any “rivalry” over “real brother” status will never sit right with me — especially if it's one that disparages Aaron (to be frank).

*** “Cautious” describes Rameses as a teenager. He loses his uncertainty and self-doubt when he becomes an adult — though he’s still afraid of being “the weak link.” Aaron remains cautious into adulthood, and the source of his uncertainty is markedly different. Not to keep belaboring a point, but Rameses does not want to lose power (at the same time, he doesn’t believe that his power can be threatened); Aaron is afraid of losing his life (losing Miriam, losing everything). [2019 edit] I might also need to rewrite this sentence with a word other than “serious” because I don’t think it’s quite the right word. But I know there must have been a reason why I used it.

i’ll probably be adding a few notes to this space, so… stay tuned. [eta] here are some:

This is a multi-pronged subject, and rather than address the adoption aspects, I decided to concentrate more on the themes, character motivations, dialogue, etc. of/in the movie itself. I tried to think about the implications of the changes that were made to the original story; I’m sure a lot of it is conjecture on my part (but reasonable conjecture?). While writing I also discovered even more depth to the story and characters… which I worry I didn’t include enough of in this post…

I don’t know if I’m going to do another one of these, though I’d like to… and back in August [2016] I did start to write an analysis of a parallel from the first half of the movie, which would examine more directly Aaron’s and Rameses’ relationships with Moses (as well *clears throat loudly* as Aaron’s with Miriam). And of course the adoption stuff is always on my mind. It’s natural to want to show and seek out similarities and differences between the biological and adoptive families in The Prince of Egypt, especially since the characters and their relationships are so rich. At times, the movie draws conscious comparisons: for example, having baby Moses grasp Yocheved’s finger, and later, Tuya’s. I probably tend to view things through a more critical, and personal, lens, but I’ve also given much thought to these parallels. And as usual, there’s just a lot I’d like to write about the siblings…

Last edited: 2/23/17; 1/8/19, some clarifications

[2019 2020 notes and thoughts] Where to begin? I thought I’d have the time to edit this, but I didn’t, so I’ll write more notes later:

Added, in italics: Aaron is an important Jewish figure whose admired qualities include his positive relationship with his younger brother (a notable contrast from all the fraternal strife in the Book of Genesis).

It’s a bit hard to come back to this after another year has passed, mostly because I don’t remember what I was going to write. I think I had changed this sentence to reflect some of what I learned between 2017, which is when I wrote this analysis originally, and 2019. I wanted to make a more specific statement about Aaron being a Jewish figure and ancestor, as well as pull in some Torah interpretation and midrash (for example, that Aaron embraces Moses right away, when he could or might have been more steely towards him; and that the two have a very different partnership and relationship than do Joseph and his brothers, Jacob and Esau, Leah and Rachel ( (“sororal” is a word I didn’t know), etc.).

#the prince of egypt #aaron #rameses #my stuff #my writing #parallels #ah the mud pit scene #i've realized and learned so many things since writing this

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dailyaudiobible · 3 years

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06/30/2021 DAB Transcript

2 Kings 17:1-18:12, Acts 20:1-38, Psalm 148:1-14, Proverbs 18:6-7

Today is the 30th day of June, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it’s great to be here with you today as a come around this Global Campfire and recognize that we are at the final day of the 6th month of the year. So, with this reading when we conclude today, we will have reached the halfway point on our journey together. So, I just want to say up top right here the front, well done, well done we’ll spend a few minutes here reading and then we will reach that halfway point and sail into the second half of the year together. So, let's let's dive in we’re reading from the new international version this week working our way to the book of 2nd Kings today will read chapter 17 verse one through 18 verse 12.

Commentary:

Okay so as we reach well, we have reached it friends we have reached the halfway point in the Scriptures so as we reach this halfway points, today's reading gives us a bit of sadness, to be honest in both Old and New Testaments. As we leave this first six months of the year, we’re leaving it without 10 of the tribes of Israel. In today's reading. The Assyrian Empire attacked the kingdom of Israel and its capital, Samaria, and defeated them and exported them exiled them. So, these 10 tribes of the north are taken from this land that took century after century to make happen. Well, I mean, there were 4 centuries alone where they were slaves in Egypt so it's been centuries that it took them to get there and then they were there for centuries, but it's over. They they were taken away. They were assimilated and they disappeared and those 10 tribes of never been cohesive tribes ever again until this very day. The land is still there, where they were but once they were sent into exile they were gone. And we saw how exile works how Empire building it at this time works you defeat a nation you exile, its people to another defeated nation and then you move other defeated people in and out over time then, it's just the Empire left. Over time, the generations go by nobody remembers who they were. Their ancestral homeland and yeah, generation after generation, when kids grow up in one place this is their homeland, this is all they know and so they don't necessarily want to go back to an ancestral place and so they assimilate and that is what happened. And so, we will turn the page and going to the second half of the year and certainly will have references to Israel, the kingdom of Israel, those tribes but they're gone, we won't accompany them anymore, they are history. And then of course in the New Testament in the Book of Acts, Paul has determined to go to Jerusalem wants to get there for Pentecost. Jerusalem is a very very unsafe place for Paul to be. He was educated there. He was known there. He was a rising star, a rising Pharisee there. He was zealous for the things of God there. He was persecuting the followers of Jesus there; he was there when Stephen was stoned. Like Jerusalem is not a foreign place to Paul, he’s known there. But when he had that Damascus Road experience and met Jesus, he came back to Jerusalem and started teaching the good news of the gospel of Jesus, and he has mortal enemies in Jerusalem. He has had mortal enemies everywhere he's gone among the Hebrew people, but he’s saying that the Holy Spirit is instructed to go to Jerusalem. He’s saying that the Spirit has told him that yeah, captivity in chains are in his future hardship is before him. And so, they sail and he sends for the leaders of the church in Ephesus and that's where we have that sad scene where he knows he's not going to see them again. He knows they're not going to see him again so he's trying to make statements and give them opportunity like if there's anything between us, essentially, if there's anything then we need to make it right now. This is kind of the language and this is kind of the meeting and he’s telling them I haven't held back anything from you. Your blood is not on my hands. I did not withhold anything that the Spirit told me to teach you. I spent and invested all of the time and so I’m asking you to honor that and shepherd God's people because none of us are going to be able to see each other anymore. And that's sad. And Paul will sail to Jerusalem, we’ll see this in the coming days. It's going to be difficult. It's actually going to be some of the most difficult things that Paul has to face that's recorded in the Bible and he’s never going to be free again. So, as we passed this six-month mark. We pass it soberly. We pass it giving honor to the first half of this year, everything, every story, every person that we met, every scenario that we've encountered all of the things that have been spoken into our hearts and lives through the Scriptures we honor that we honor the territory that we’re in. There is no more kingdom of Israel, there is the kingdom of Judah. Jerusalem is still intact. There is no more kingdom of Israel and the Apostle Paul is on his way to that very city Jerusalem, where nothing will ever be the same for him again either.

Prayer:

And so, Father, thank You for bringing us this far. This halfway point. Thank You for bringing us this far. We honor You and we worship You and we are grateful for use for Your sustaining us and bringing us here, and it gives us confidence and faith that You will continue step-by-step day by day to lead us forward. And so, as we acknowledge this first half of the year, we thank You and we invite You with all of our hearts to continue to transform us as we move into the second half of the year. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base. Gosh can you believe it guys that would that's the end of June. I guess it's just it has been on the calendar and I've seen it coming. But it’s just like hitting me now that we’re halfway through our journey of this year and we do have something that comes up in the middle of the year each year that is just our own little holiday inside the Daily Audio Bible around the Global Campfire and it's a week from today which will be the 7th day of July, and every seventh day of July, that's the Daily Audio Bible Long Walk. And it's pretty self-explanatory, but explaining it but it's it is exactly what it sounds like a Long Walk just go somewhere beautiful wherever we are in the world. Whether it's just a little walk down the street to a park or whether we get in our car and drive for a few hours or whatever, where, wherever is beautiful, wherever you think is as lovely and allows you to get out into nature into the beauty of what God has created and go for a Long Walk with God where there is no hurry where the pace, where there's nothing else to do that. That's the beauty of that day where if we’re taking the day off to do something we’re taking off day to do something to catch up on something to get ahead on something that we can’t get to. But the purpose here is not to do nothing but to be instead of do, to walk with God and have no no reason to hurry to say everything that needs to be said, but to give silence voice and hear how nature is worshiping how nature is crying, how beautiful things are, or how much life is actually happening around us that we mostly ignore because were too busy doing other things. This is a day in the middle of the year to regroup and reset and just reprioritize and set the path forward with God as we move into the second half of the year and drink in the healing beauty of nature. And maybe take a picture wherever you go, or make take a video wherever you go. We’ll have a post at the Daily Audio Bible Facebook page for this event. You can post your pictures or videos into that post and then we have this one post full of all these different long walks and we get another little minivacation by just looking into each other's part of the world and seeing the beauty of God's creation all over the world on the same day. That's coming up a week from today. So, plan that, it's already circled on my calendar. I love this day. That, just to have permission, like I'm not gonna be fallen further behind. I am doing what I need to do. I’m actually going to be surging forward by resting, drinking in the beauty of God's creation, walking with God, challenging what the trajectory is, reprioritizing and realigning and that's gonna save way more than a day in the second half of the year. It’s gonna set things a right. So, I'm looking forward to it. I hope you are too. There is a resource available for the Long Walk, it's called Heart: A Contemplative Journey. You can go to the iTunes store or Google play wherever you get your music and search for my name and Heart, and you'll find it and it is a really good conversation starter. If you go for a Long Walk and if you feel like you’ve said everything you need to say in five minutes that's fine. You'll be surprised how much more you have, say, as time goes by but the Heart album is really good at starting that conversation and opening our hearts to the different things that we’ve been feeling whether whether that be sadness or confusion or transition or comfort or just worship. It is there for the journey of the Long Walk. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that @dailyaudiobible.com as well. There is a link on the homepage. I thank you humbly for your partnership. We wouldn't be a Global Campfire community or anything if we weren't in this together. And so, thank you for your partnership during the summertime. There is a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner. Or the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996 Springhill Tennessee 37174.

And as always if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the hotline button in the app or there are a number of numbers that you can call: in the Americas 877-942-4253, if you are in the UK or Europe 44 2036 088078 is the number to call and if you are in Australia or the lands down under 61 3 8820 5459 is the number to call.

And that's it for today, I’m Brian, I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Prayers and Encouragement:

Good day Daily Audio Bible family. This is Ekberg from California by the way of Belize City Kurdish, Honduras, Belize. I am calling for your prayer concerning a job that I applied for here in the country of Belize. I pray that you would pray with me concerning securing that job. I want to thank the Hardin family for all they’ve done throughout the years and for the many prayer warriors: Blind Tony, Biola, Delta Alpha Foxtrot, Slave of Jesus, Prodigal Son, Joe the Protector, Tony the Truck Driver, All Seeing Tony, so many to number and to say I pray that God would be with you all the new members watch over you, protect you all the prayers that has been submitted. I pray that God would blanket His love and His protection over you. Your concerns and that you would continue to trust Him and believe that He will never leave us nor for sake us. I thank you for all that you do encouraging each other. I pray for the persecuted saints throughout the world that are being persecuted for the name of Jesus that you would pray for them continually as they confess our prayers. So, thank you again God bless you today is the 27th love you.

Hi neighbors it’s Lisa the Encourager. Tonight, I just wanted to give us an opportunity together to be encouraged and praising our Father together. And the reason I just really want to give him praise is the simple things. The simple things that we take advantage of or take for granted every day and that is, I’m thinking about our hearts. Our hearts beat approximately a hundred thousand times a day and we never even have to give it a thought, we never have to turn it on, it’s just there beating, beating, a hundred thousand times a day. Running the blood throughout our body to our brains and functioning for us without us even giving it a thought. And I just want to give God the praise, I want to give Him the praise because that same heart beats approximately 35 million times a year. And that same heart in an average lifetime of a person is 2.5 billion times, your heart is gonna beat. So, I’m just so encouraged in that God has blessed me with a heart and I want to do something with it that’s going to bring Him happiness and joy and that He can be proud of me. So, I hope that this blesses you, this encourages you. I hope that you will give your Father praise for the heart beat that’s gonna beat a hundred thousand times today. So, I love you all. Thank you for letting me share this with you.

Blessings to all my brothers and sisters in Christ. This is His Child from Canada. And I will lead us pray in a general prayer for all the DABers out there. Heavenly Father God, we just want to thank you today for Your love, we thank You for Your forgiveness. Oh God, we thank You for your mercy and your grace. Where would any of us be today Lord without any of those attributes of Yours? Father God, You are the God that holds the whole world in Your hands. You are the God that have all the DABers in Your hands today Lord. And You know what each and every person is experiencing at this time. So, Lord, I pray and ask You, that You will bind up their wounds Lord. That You would heal the broken-hearted Lord. I pray for peace for the weary, comfort to the lonely, strength for the weak today Lord. Heavenly Father, each of us may have the same experience in life Lord, but none of us truly know how the person is feeling because we are all unique and all deal with situations differently but You are God and You see all things, You know all things, You see each tear, and You know each pain Oh God. So, I call upon you today Lord to help and comfort each person in every situation that experiencing today. Heavenly Father, we pray and ask that we continue to look to you for our strength Lord. Look to You Lord and seek Your face in everything. And I pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

Good morning DAB. This is Ben Little, I’m calling from Pennsylvania. Today is June 28th. Now, I’m headed to class right now. You can pray for that, it’s very important that I do well on this final for my career. But that’s not why I’m calling today, I’m actually calling for my wife. We’ve been married for almost 6 years now. And we have 3 children, 3 daughters, our oldest is 4, our middle is 2 and our youngest is about almost 4 months. And my wife feels like she’s drowning. And if anyone who has young kids or you know have experience with a number of them or even one knows that when you’re home each and every day with your own children it can be hard. Especially when you want to do well. So just lift her up cause she’s having a hard time. She feels like no matter what she does that she just can’t do the right thing. And she gets frustrated and it’s obvious to anyone that she loves her children so much and that she wants to do really well. She just gets discouraged and is worried that because of her actions our children are going to turn out to be delinquents or something. If you could lift her up and pray just that she wouldn’t listen to what the devil has to say, she’ll listen to what God’s word says. And pray for me that I will be able to encourage her. Amen. Thank you very much. Have a good day.

Hey Daily Audio Bible Family, this is Billy from Montgomery with The Trinity Stone. I’ve been working with our Kiros Group, we’ve been doing through the fence meetings here lately. Before that we were doing videos, they shut us down due to COVID. But July 1st there gonna start opening up the facilities again, there gonna send one person inside to do a reunion. And so, that person is gonna be me, I need to be covered up in prayer. I’ve got to do a talk with the guys, I need to be covered up in prayer to make sure I give a good message to these guys inside for our first reunion group that’s going to be actually July 7th, I know it’s on our Long Walk Day but I’m gonna have to take a break from doing my Long Walk and go inside prison. But anyway I just wanted to cover myself up in prayer and keep covered up in prayer because I’ve got to be a leader that night. So, anyway, I will talk to you guys later. Love ya’ll, talk to ya’ll later. Bye for now.

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mattprivettwrites · 4 years

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What was the Word up to before He became flesh?

Author’s Note: This post was originally written on December 9, 2010, and posted at my original web site, The MATTrix. As I transition away from that web site, I’m re-posting some things here along the way.

________________________________________

The prologue of the Gospel of John should be well known to us because these eighteen verses tell us so much about the Lord Jesus Christ. John 1:1-18:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.

There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. John testified about Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.'”

For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.

Jesus is the Word who the apostle John is writing of here, and one of the reasons this passage is so important is that in it we pretty much get an explicit declaration of both Jesus’ deity, the fact that He is fully God, and His humanity, the fact that He was also fully man.

Verse 14 includes the words, “And the Word became flesh.” And it’s those words I want to use as our springboard to the discussion of the question, “What was the Word up to before He became flesh?” When we think of the Lord Jesus Christ we usually think of Him in one of two eras: 1) Either the time of His earthly life and ministry, or 2) the day of the LORD, the time of His return and when His kingdom is fully manifest.

But we must not forsake that little word “became” in verse 14. We must not forget that Jesus Christ did not come into being when the Child was conceived by the Holy Spirit in Mary’s womb. The Word BECAME flesh, which shows that the Word existed prior to becoming flesh. Indeed, the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity, is just as eternal as the Father and the Spirit: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.”

The fact that Jesus became flesh is foundational to the gospel, and thus it SHOULD be paramount in our hearts and minds, especially when we consider the Greek text from which we get our English “became” carries the weight of Jesus willingly leaving the glory He had to become a man. It was an act of humility for Him to do that, so that He could finish the work of redemption. But Mary’s womb is not where the Person and Work of the Second Person of the Trinity began. Let’s, then, consider Jesus before Bethlehem, Jesus in the Old Testament, or what you might call the work of the Preincarnate Christ.

Scripture could not be more clear that Jesus did not come into existence at a point in time, but is eternal. In John 8 Jesus as much as says it Himself when He was talking with the Jesus and they said, “Surely you are not greater than our father Abraham, who died?” Jesus essentially answers their question, “Yes, I Am greater than Abraham” when He says that Abraham longed to see His day, and then He goes one better in verse 58 and says, “Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am,” which to the Jews was unmistakable. Jesus was saying that He is YHWH. He is the one true eternal God.

But that’s the New Testament. What about the Old Testament? Micah 5:2 is one of the well known prophecies of the Christ who was to come. Micah writes, “But as for you Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity.” When we see that verse quoted in Matthew’s Gospel it is to show that Bethlehem, the city of David, was the prophesied birthplace of the promised Messiah. But the last sentence of the verse reveal the glorious truth that the Messiah, though born at a point in time in Bethlehem, has always been. Jesus’ goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity… or “from everlasting,” which A.R. Fausset asserts is the strongest assertion of infinite duration of which the Hebrew language is capable. Jesus Christ is eternal, which means He has always existed.

Another familiar Messianic prophecy is Isaiah 9:6: “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.” The term “Eternal Father” used to puzzle me since this was always referenced as a prophecy of Jesus, who is the Son. But I got some clarity when I began to read that probably the most literal rendering of that phrase isn’t “Eternal Father,” but “Father of Eternity,” and that way I believe better illustrates Jesus’ role in everything proceeding forth from Him, of Him being the Creator. Because that is exactly what Jesus Christ is: Creator. All three members of the Trinity were undoubtedly active in the creation of the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:2, for examples, tells us that the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. But the Bible tells us that Jesus played a very active role.

Back to the New Testament, again, John 1:3, “All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” Or consider Colossians 1:16-17:

For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities– all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

What these verses clearly teach is that Jesus is the Creator, so that’s one thing the Word was up to before becoming flesh… but also He holds everything together. God hasn’t created the world and left it to itself, like the old Deists believed. If He were to not hold it all together we would cease to be. He is even now holding it all together.

In it only in these last days, as Hebrews 1:2 says, that God “has spoken to us through His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom He also made the world.” Among the God-head it was the Second Person of the Trinity who took on the role of Savior and Redeemer, a role He accepted in the plan of God in eternity past, but in time and space worked out in the flesh in the Person of Jesus Christ. But as we see, He was active in creation and in holding it all together before the beginning.

Before He became flesh the Word was also One in fellowship with the Father. In John 10:30 Jesus declares Himself to be equal with the Father. “I and the Father are One,” He says, and in essence He’s saying that whatever is true of One is true of the Other. No one has seen God (the Father) at anytime, but the Son has come to explain Him. In Jesus’ prayer in John 17:5, He asks the Father, “Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.” Paul writes in Philippians 2:6 that Christ Jesus “existed in the form of God,” but “did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.” So very plainly we see that Jesus Christ in form, in nature, in eternality, is every bit as God, every bit as eternal, as the Father.

It is in function where the Three in One differentiate themselves, and in the New Testament, in verses I’ve already read, one of the roles of Christ in the flesh is that He explains to us the Father.

He is the physical representation of the Father to us. Colossians 1:15 says, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” And I believe that, in addition to His active role in creation and in holding all things together, and in fellowshipping with the Father and the Spirit, before the Word became flesh Jesus was also manifesting deity.

There are what theologians call “theophanies” in the Old Testament, incidents where God manifests Himself to His creation. One of the ways in which He did this are the “angel of the LORD” passages found throughout the Old Testament. Sometimes when we see the word “angel” in the Bible it does literally mean an “angel” like Gabriel or Michael. But we need not get hung up on the word because it can and does also mean “messenger.”

There are several times in the Old Testament where I believe the Word who would become flesh serves as the Messenger of God, the Messenger of YHWH, and manifests deity to His creation.

He speaks as God. He identifies Himself with God. He claims to exercise the prerogatives of God. There are times where He shows Himself to be both distinct from YHWH, as His representative, and identified with YHWH, having the same nature and essence. This is a picture of Christ being the image of the invisible God, the exact representation of the Father, yet He Himself being fully God. This is Jesus in the Old Testament with the name Jesus.

Let’s just very quickly survey of some of the “Angel of the LORD” appearances.

Genesis 16:7-14

Now the angel of the LORD found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur. He said, “Hagar, Sarai’s maid, awhere have you come from and where are you going?” And she said, “I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarai.” Then the angel of the LORD said to her, “Return to your mistress, and submit yourself to her authority.” Moreover, the aangel of the LORD said to her, “I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be too many to count.” The angel of the LORD said to her further,

“Behold, you are with child, And you will bear a son; And you shall call his name Ishmael, Because athe LORD has given heed to your affliction. He will be a awild donkey of a man, His hand will be against everyone, And everyone’s hand will be against him; And he will live to the east of all his brothers.” Then she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, “You are God who sees”; for she said, “Have I even remained alive here after seeing Him?” Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered.

The first time we see the “Angel of the LORD” is in Genesis 16. Sarai had treated her maid Hagar harshly after Sarai, who was barren, had given Hagar to Abraham to that he would have an heir. Hagar conceived and Sarai got angry and Hagar fled and we pick up in verse 7. Notice the angel, or messenger, says, “I will multiply your descendants.” That’s something God does, as He had promised to Abram in Genesis 12. Notice, too, how Hagar responds, “Then she called the named of the LORD who spoke to her, ‘You are a God who sees,’; for she said, ‘Have I even remained alive here after seeing Him?’” So surely this Egyptian maidservant didn’t believe she was speaking to a mere Messenger, but to God Himself.

Genesis 22:11-18

But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now aI know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.” Then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son. Abraham called the name of that place The LORD Will Provide, as it is said to this day, “In the mount of the LORD ait will be provided.”

Then the angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, “By Myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son, indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies. “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.”

In Genesis 22 we read the story of God telling Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. And just as Abraham is about the take the knife to him, the Angel of the LORD stops Him. In verse 12 the messenger says Abraham hasn’t withheld his son “from Me.” And then beginning in verse 15 the angel messenger identifies Himself as the LORD. “By Myself I have sworn.” So the Angel identifies Himself as the One who blesses, the One whose voice is to be obeyed.

Genesis 31:11-13

“Then the angel of God said to me in the dream, ‘Jacob,’ and I said, ‘Here I am.’ He said, ‘Lift up now your eyes and see that all the male goats which are mating are striped, speckled, and mottled; for I have seen all that Laban has been doing to you. I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar, where you made a vow to Me; now arise, leave this land, and return to the land of your birth.’”

In Genesis 31 Jacob was telling his wives, Leah and Rachel, that they were about the leave Laban, after recounting to them how Laban had treated him but how God had continued to bless him. So it’s the angel of the LORD talking to Jacob in a dream, but it’s the same angel of the LORD identifying Himself as the God of Bethel, which is the place Jacob had previously made a pillar to God, back in chapter 28.

Exodus 3:1-6

Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. The angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed. So Moses said, “I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up.” When the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then He said, “Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said also, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

This is undoubtedly the most famous biblical example of the angel of the LORD. What we have here is the angel of the LORD not appearing as an “angel” as we think of angels, but being made known through a burning bush. It could not be more clear there that this was no created being manifesting divine qualities, but it was God Himself, I believe, the Second Person of the Trinity, a physical manifestation of deity. Moses was afraid to look at God. There is no indication in the text of Moses being incorrect in believing that it was God Himself, in this case the Preincarnate Christ.

Other Examples

Numbers 22:22-38

Numbers 22 is where we read the story of Balaam and the donkey. Verse 22 says, “But God was angry because he (Balaam) was going (to prophesy against Israel), and the angel of the LORD too his stand in the way of an adversary against him.” And the donkey stops because she sees the angel of the LORD standing in the way. Balaam strikes the donkey, but the donkey is more afraid of God than Balaam and the donkey lies down and then the LORD opens the donkey’s mouth, “What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?”

What I’ve always found funny about this story is verse 29, Balaam’s response to the donkey, “Because you have made a mockery of me!” It doesn’t strike Balaam immediately that it’s utterly absurd he’s talking to his donkey in the first place?

Anyway, finally the LORD opens Balaam’s eyes and he see the angel of the LORD standing in the way with sword drawn. The angel tells Balaam he’s only going to speak what what He tells him to speak. And in verse 38 Balaam acknowledges that his encounter was with God, no mere angelic being.

Judges

There is a trio of these angel of the LORD appearances in the book of Judges. The first is in Judges 2:1-4, where the angel of the LORD is the One who brought Israel out of Egypt. He is the One Israel has not obeyed. And He is the One who will not drive out Israel’s enemies as a result. In Judges 6 Israel is being oppressed by Midianites and in verse 11 we read of the angel of the LORD sitting under an oak tree and encountering Gideon. In verse 14 we read, “The LORD looked at him and said…” with no angel reference. It happens again in verse 16. So the writer of this section of Judges was clearly equating the angel with YHWH. It’s in Judges 13 that we read about the angel of the LORD coming to visit Manoah and his barren wife. The angel, the messenger, promises they will have a son. He would be a Nazirite to God from birth. No haircuts. No strong drink. It’s Samson, of course. In verse 6 the wife explains to Manoah the angel as a “man of God” who came to her. Later he’s described as an angel again when He visits the wife a second time and Manoah meets Him. And by the end of the visit Manoah and his wife know that they had seen God.

1 Chronicles 21

King David has fallen under the discipline of the Lord because he had a census taken, so God gave David a choice of three years famine, three months of being destroyed by enemies, or three days of the sword of the LORD. David chose the sword of the LORD, “for His mercies are very great,” he said in verse 13. And in the following verses the angel of the LORD brings judgment upon Israel for David’s disobedience. Verse 16 describes David as lifting up his eyes and seeing the angel of the LORD standing between earth and heaven, with his sword drawn. The story ends with the angel of the LORD bringing judgment, but also bringing mercy, and David fearing God.

1 Kings 19

In 1 Kings 19, right after Elijah called fire down from heaven he fled for his life from Jezebel, and in verses 5-7 it is the angel of the LORD who comes to him who comes to him and comforts him and touches him and gives him food and drink that strengthened him for forty days and forty nights.

This is no exhaustive look at the various e angel of the LORD passages but what we find is that, in the Old Testament He takes on several forms, including fire and man. He is a messenger, delivering the Father’s decrees, He is Guider and Protector, showing the way and preserving those who follow. He is the Instrument of judgment upon Israel, rebuking them for disobedience as the One who ultimately judges them. He is the One who promises a better future, a sure hope. And He is the One who is the Agent of refreshment, bringing renewal to those who are oppressed by the effects of sin.

He sounds an awful lot like Jesus Christ.

And that’s without even mentioning times when Christ appears in the Old Testament not described as the angel of the LORD. He wrestles Jacob in Genesis 32 and changing His name to Israel, giving the deceiver a new identity, just as we are giving a new identity in Christ. Jacob knew he had seen God face to face. And in Daniel 3 tells us of the fourth man in the furnace, one like a son of the gods, about whom Nebuchadnezzar said, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, who has sent His angel…”

And I bring all of this up just for your edification, as a reminder, to help us keep in mind that Jesus Christ is the Second Person of the Eternal Trinity, and He was quite active before He was born. The Word did a lot before He became flesh. Yet, at the same time, He saved His best work for when He did become flesh.

It is worth noting that the angel of the LORD does not appear in the New Testament. The Second Person of Trinity has at that point taken on the form of a man. He has added humanity to His deity. Yet, His preincarnate acts foreshadow His earthly ministry…As the God-man He was the Father’s messenger… As the God-man He guided His disciples and protected them… As the God-man He pronounced judgment on the nation of Israel when they rejected Him, and He will judge the living and the dead according to 2 Timothy 4:1… And as the God-man He is the ultimate Agent of refreshment, the Savior who gives new life to sinners who are dead in their trespasses and sins, the One who raises us up out of the depths by His grace and gives us His peace.

Why is this important? Well, “Who do men say that I am?” is the question Jesus asks, and most of them, if not in word, then definitely in deed, deny that He is the Son of God.

We must affirm an eternal Jesus Christ, because if there is no eternal Christ, there is no eternal Trinity. He is not fully God, and that makes Him a liar, and that makes the Bible something we can’t trust, and that means our faith is lost because we have no biblical Christ, no Savior, no hope, and we are to be most pitied among men. Praise God that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is the One who was, is, and is to come.

I hope this quick study has been helpful to refresh your memories to the fact that Jesus Christ really is God, and He always has been and He always will be. His story doesn’t begin in Bethlehem. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity.

#bible #Jesus #christology

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croissantbae · 5 years

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Best of the Decade

This has been the most nonchalant 12/31 of my life. Jimmy, Jason and I finished Bridesmaids (Jimmy fell asleep) and when it was over Jason asked “... should we go somewhere? should we do something” and I had no idea what he was talking about. It took me a second to realize it was NYE. Instead, I asked if we could each take some time to reflect on the decade. Peloton (my lord and savior) has been having “Best of the Decade” rides and a lot of the instructors have been talking about how much they’ve grown over the decade and it’s inspired me to reflect not just on this year but everything since 2010. I thought about one major event per year in the past decade:

2010: Got Into and Started Law School

2011: Spent My First Summer in New York (Getting Paid$$$$)

2012: Moved to San Francisco (from Berkeley)

2013: Graduated From Law School. Moved to New York

2014: Jason and I Officially Got Together

2015: Jason and I Got Engaged and I Moved Back to LA

2016: Jason and I Fought A Lot [this isn’t a major event but its all I can remember from this year]

2017: Jason and I Got Married

2018: Got Pregnant

2019: Naya Was Born

Looking at the trajectory of the above, my life shifts from focusing on school/career, to relationship, to baby (which is a natural progression for many people’s lives I think). I can’t believe that I’ve been in the legal world for a decade now. I never wanted to be a lawyer and here I am 10 years later still in it. I made a $50 bet with one of my coworkers that I would never make partner and somehow, by a loophole, I lost the bet. A lot of people talk about how 2020 is going to be their year (”gonna see clear in 2020″) but I hope 2020 is going to be my worst year. I say that because I am planning on throwing myself into my work so I can get my bonus. Then I want out. I’ve said this literally every year since my second year and I could see myself getting stuck (the mostly likely candidate for keeping me in is getting enticed by another maternity leave) but my true and genuine hope is that after one horrendous year I will be free. Free to enter into a boring, mediocre job that pays just ok (acc to big law’s standards). Watching Marvelous Mrs. Maisel I feel small smokes of desire stoking in me, hoping to enjoy my job, to love what I do (and to look marvelous doing it) but I don’t want to go down that road. My last decade was spent languishing over my career - just really grappling with it. I’m over it now. I want this next decade to be about more than that. As noted above, my life transitions into Naya. In this next decade of life I will be turning 40 (assuming I get to live that long). I don’t want to keep wasting so much of my brain space on my job. [Note: I really admire Christine Paik for taking the brave step to quit big law and taking this time to figure out her next steps but as she’s noted this year is for a “character change”, not just career. I just wanted to note this because I don’t want to imply that I don’t think it’s important to figure out what job or career one may want to have but (1) it was such a source of stress for me that I can’t and don’t want to do it anymore and (2) I think a whole character change is so much of a better way to think about it. Career is only one aspect of who we are. It’s not always about what we do.]

I used to care a lot about experiencing new things. Everything had to be new. If I went to a restaurant, I only ordered something I hadn’t tried before. I didn’t even like going to the same restaurant. I didn’t like re-watching movies, or shows. To me, if it wasn’t new it seemed like a waste of time (I could not understand people who watched re-runs of Friends... ie. Hera). There was so much to see and experience. But over time, I realized there really is nothing new under the sun (perhaps a plague of globalization). The jig was up. But parenthood has brought back true newness in my life. In pregnancy, everything was new. I have one million videos of Naya kicking in my stomach because it was so fascinating. I pored over articles and posts about child rearing and a whole new world of information was exposed to me. Giving birth was one hell of a new experience. Breastfeeding was new. Bathing a child was new. You get the picture. I got to experience new things in taking care of her but I also got to see the world in a new way (again) by looking at things from her perspective. The other day, we went to the doctor’s office and when Naya was getting weighed, instead of laying her down on the scale, I sat her upright and she teetered a little bit, struggling to balance. I could see the fear in her eyes. She cried out, alarmed, unsure of what her body was doing. And I got to feel, through her expression, what it feels like to acknowledge being alone, sitting on your own, for the first time (she’s sat up on her own before, but this appeared to be the first time she knew what she was doing). Another day Jason was using a power drill to put a curtain up and when I took her closer to see what her dad was doing she screamed at the noise. She seemed scared by it but also like she was yelling at it to stop. She has no idea what the noise is from, she just knows that its loud and scary. She has to learn everything about everything from scratch and witnessing that has been a wonderfully new experience for me. Naya’s name actually means “new” in Hebrew. She is our firstborn and through her there will only be firsts - first time experiencing terrible twos, first time raising a teenager, first time sending a kid to college, etc. And that’s how I want the decade to go. But this first year, 2020, is going to be a horrible one. It’s not a great way to kick off a decade but it’s worth it, because of what I hope will come afterward.

This maternity leave has truly been the best vacation of my life. I don’t know if its amnesia but I don’t think I’ve felt this good about a break EVER. I think that’s the benefit of big law. It makes you feel so down sometimes that the good times feel EXTREMELY good in comparison. I love living with my mom. A few weeks ago I was upstairs on my computer and Jason was away in San Diego. I thought my mom had long fallen asleep but she came out and started cooking, eating leftovers while it was still heating on the stove. She got hungry and needed a snack so I joined her and we just stood there, next to the stove, talking while eating bomb ass leftover Korean food. I’ve loved seeing her laugh hysterically at the tiny little things Naya does. She calls Naya beautiful and princess and it always surprises me because my mom is just not a tender person like that. She usually calls babies ugly. I’m so happy that my brother is back from New York. I’ve always had this image of my relationship with Jimmy. That we were so close but in reality we’ve drifted since I’ve been in LA and he was in NY. I mean we’re siblings so we’ll always be close but now we can be a real family again in our adult lives. I always remember something my cousin posted about her college friends. She said that they had become “update friends” where you talk to each other just to update each other on the latest happenings but that she missed living together, doing nothing together, and just existing together. That’s what I look forward to with my brother. Not having to update each other on anything but just being around each other, raising our kids together, etc.

Now, on to Jason (I have to say nice things about him because he’s going to read this post. Jk. But he is going to read it). Other than Naya, marrying Jason has been the best thing to happen to me (and I mean it) from the past decade. I’ve said this before but he’s a better person than I realized when we were friends and when we were dating. I can’t believe how lucky I am that it worked out that way. There are so many losers out there, both in hiding and in the open, but I found a guy that was hiding how great he was! He just took his good heart and wrapped it up in a soft lanky body with an awkward personality (jk Jason you’re not awkward anymore). He’s been such an amazing dad and partner. I’m curious to see how he’ll change in the next decade -- will he bald (its not just me turning 40...)? will he get fat? will he become a director at Kaiser? how will he father our kids once they can talk and they actually have personalities? will he do social work? One thing I do hope, however, is that he’ll always be a romantic and we’ll always be happily married. We’re still kind of newlyweds. We’ve only been married for 2.75 years so we’re still young in our marriage but I want us to continue to have our pillow talks, to explore farmers markets and restaurants and new places together (with or without kids). I hope we can retire like we’re always dreaming of. I hope we can build a garden and cook using the fresh veggies and herbs we grow from it. I hope we make it to the end together... somehow with neither of us having to die before the other.

And now onwards to the future. Resolutions! I don’t have many this year. I pretty much failed all my resolutions from last year (walk 10k steps a day, finish a first draft of my book, finish my children’s book -- all failed). But here are the few I’d like to attempt this year:

1. Peloton: Ride 2-3x a week. Jess King and Cody Rigsby both talked about how they made a change in their lives by deciding to say “yes” to new opps. I want to have a bit of that mentality this upcoming year given the fact that I’ll be making a transition shortly afterwards. Good to keep my heart open to new opps (even if its not the one that I think I want). I know this is going to sound like I’ve seriously drunk the Kool-Aid but at this point I don’t even ride the Peloton to lose weight. It’s because I physically and mentally feel better after riding. Also I (apparently) get life lessons too! I just got my century shirt (HEHE).

2. Writing: write at least 10 minutes a day. That way I will have written 1 hour a week. I’m sure I’ll fail on some days but “shoot for the moon and at least you’ll land amongst the stars” (Jason thought the saying was the opposite (shoot for the stars...) because stars are farther away than the moon).

3. Money: Save 60% (collectively). I dream of buying a gorgeous 3,000 sq foot home either in Glendale or Los Feliz but realistically we can’t make that happen right now and I want to squirrel away as much money as we can while we can. For Naya’s future, for our future. I need to stop buying stupid useless stuff from Amazon (and I hate myself every time I do because I know Bezos/Amazon is so evil). My mom is so excessive, it really is a problem -- we’re constantly throwing away food because its gone to waste. I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want Naya to think its okay to be so excessive either.

4. Church: I would like to try going to church again. My goal is to check out a few churches. We don’t have to commit to any, I just want to see a few. It’s been so long since I’ve been to a service I don’t know what it’s like anymore.

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