Summer Time Blues

As I prepare to roll the oldometer over another year, I feel compelled to share some observations and realizations that have sprung from looking intently at the current conditions confronting us. Some of what follows will be unpopular, non-linear, and ill-defined; normally I would apologize for that but not today. Between watching the political and cultural turmoil being 'reported', embracing all the unanticipated 'feels' of becoming a grandfather, and working, the summer as slipped by in the wink of an eye.  The concepts of 'truth' and 'integrity' have been so divorced from their actual meanings that it is willful foolishness to believe or accept anything put forth by our entertainment media complex as representative of what is actually happening in our world. So mount up and hang on as this old man goes Don Quixote on the wind turbines of today.

The Republic is Listing......on Craig's List

With little more than the brain's found in Oz's Scarecrow, one can see that our country's governance has become a mockery of the system envisioned by our founders. The culmination of this year's election will see our country rewarded with either a documented unindicted felon or a blusterous business mogul with the subtlety of PT Barnum. The Clinton crime family, darlings of a fawning media, have taken their place in history as the Bonnie and Clyde of politics, grifting, groveling, and gouging their way to wealth with a hubris and lack of shame that is exceeded only by their greed. The Donald is an enigma in wingtips and a bad attempt to hang onto hair; a fastidious dresser whose mouth often outpaces his ability to contemplate what he is saying. Unlike the career pols who spend years learning to obfuscate and vacillate to avoid actually saying anything substantive, Trump eclipsed the Republican field by daring to say the obvious; America has been sold out by her elected officials while enriching themselves and the donor class.

Corporate Media and the Company Line 

There were 50 media companies in 1983 that generated 90% of the content America consumes; in 2012 that number had shrank to 6 companies. Small wonder that network and cable 'news' reporting today is indistinguishable from SNL's Weekend Update, a Pravda parody that could not be funnier if  delivered by Mel Brooks, Carol Burnett, or Harvey Corman. What passes for journalism today is a contrived and scripted spin cycle of indoctrination; information that is parsed and filtered to deflect uncomfortable truths and refocus attention on the inconsequential and superfluous. Undoubtedly the anchors and hosts of America's 'news' programs feel themselves to be the class of the media industry when in reality they are little better than TMZ or Entertainment Tonight, glibly ignoring obvious relevant events and tirelessly hammering the values and beliefs of an audience largely unable to discern the fade.The science of factually communicating an event objectively has been subverted by the need to 'shape' the perception of reality so that the bottom line is always up. How else to explain the longevity of cable news shows whose Nielsen numbers look like attendance figures for AA baseball or the WNBA? 

Cancer Inc. and the War on Drugs

This is admittedly a difficult subject because the specter of cancer visits indiscriminately and is a persistent and  fearsome adversary. My intent is not to impugn the researchers and doctors who have given their lives to stopping the carnage but there are questions about the math. The National Cancer Institute projects that annual spending on cancer treatment could be $158 billion(2010 dollars) by 2020; their budget for research this year is $5.21 billion. Those numbers have been rendered meaningless because our government dwarfs those figures with trillion dollar deficits and national debt. We have number fatigue because the figures are so far removed from our daily reality. Patent No. 6630507, held by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, covers the use of cannabinoids for treating a wide range of diseases. You can verify for yourself with the Google machine, but here is the link: http://www.leafscience.com/2014/07/25/u-s-government-patent-marijuana/. So while continuing the ludicrous claim that a plant has no medicinal value, the Fed has the only patent for cannabinoids which in their patent is described as "antioxidants and neuroprotectants". Hundreds of studies conclude that cannabis derivatives are effective in treating seizures, cancer treatment symptoms, and many types of cancer. Just another conspiracy theory we should reject because 'science' is in the pocket of our corporate controlled government. When did we sign off on Government owning exclusively a plant that grows on all the habitable soil on the planet?

Bureau of Land Management 

Because our news media is a defacto propaganda wing of the federal government, even informed and inquiring citizens have difficulty finding out the truth of events which have transpired this year when landowners have encountered the heavy hand of this agency. It is scary to realize that ranchers have been arrested and jailed and the presiding judge has sealed all information regarding their alleged crimes; scarier still is that more people have a knowledge and opinion on Tom Brady and the 'deflategate' incident than know or care about the abuses of power that occurred at the Malheur wildlife refuge in Oregon. Even less media coverage has been focused on the peaceful protest that turned violent in North Dakota this week when 'security' personnel set upon native American men, women, and children with dogs and pepper spray. To his credit, the Obama administration intervened today to halt the project until the concerns of the the protestors could be heard.  

Black Lives Matter: A+B+C2x6 = despair

There are those who would say I am 'privileged' and therefore disqualified from weighing in on this subject; my response to them is "I am privileged". Given the number of people who have ever lived on this planet, given my freedom, health, family, and ability to work, I am living a life of incredible wealth and comfort. I would be aristocracy in any previous century. That does not disqualify me from being able to reason, think, understand causality and effect. I was privileged to have both parents in a home that functioned with traditional values of respect, compassion, and personal responsibility; I cannot be the man I am without that influence growing up. I had parents who taught me that all people are deserving of respect and kindness, even if they don't behave in a way that you would recognize or approve.

A. Equating statistically insignificant fatal encounters with law enforcement as systemic racism circa 1950's Alabama is intellectually dishonest. It is a tragedy when any person has their life cut short through circumstances that could have been avoided, but it happens and will continue to happen. As individuals with free will, we get up daily and embark on a series of decisions and our education, character, and motives come to bear on each and every choice we make. Law enforcement officers are paid miserably inadequate salaries to deal with the fringe elements of our society; drunks, drug addicts, criminals. They risk never returning home every-time they dress for work. If you understand how that environment and stress could effect a person's judgement, then you will probably want any interaction with that person to be very calm, very low key, very respectful. Are there bad cops? Absolutely. The less interaction you have with police, the less likely you are to meet them.

B. If we were objective and honest on the issue of race in America we could step back and reasonably agree that there is a racist system negatively impacting black people for going on 70 years; it hides behind the illusion of compassion and its name is progressive liberalism. But we can't agree on that because 'cause and effect', 'actions and consequences' are never applied to the programs or results of the left. The driving motivation of the left is having as many citizen's dependent upon government as possible, that is why the meddling and social engineering is endless; it's simple job security. Because the true history of our Republic is largely irrelevant to most, liberals have succeeded in being the advocates of racism, implementing racism, and enforcing racism, all the while pointing at conservative ideas and principals as 'racist'.

C. "A Mind is a terrible thing to waste"....the decay of education standards, objectivity, and critical thinking skills is the legacy of progressive theory in indoctrinating young minds. The most critical indicator of the future of a nation is the educational aptitude of  its children; the NEA, Dept.of Education and the politicization of local school boards as insured that lower standards and ignorance will haunt America for the foreseeable future.

Despair. Hopelessness; Knowing your situation and circumstances are not what they should or could be, not knowing how you arrived where you are, having no clear path to making changes that will correct what is wrong. Living in a country of abundance and potential but reaching adulthood with out the skill sets, self-confidence, and belief that you can take advantage of your birthright as a citizen of America. I couldn't say these things on any 'news' program. These observations will be rejected as ignorant or racist by many and that is all I can say about that......

9/11

The truth of what actually transpired 15 years ago continues to be ignored by most people as 'conspiracy, tin-foil, nut-job' internet blather. I no longer talk to people about it in conversation because cognitive dissonance is unpleasant and we have football, the weather, and other important subjects requiring our attention. It is easier to believe that crazy Arabs accomplished the improbable rather than examining the evidence that points to the abhorrent and inconceivable. I get it. Just some facts to mull over like a popcorn hull lodged in your molar:

1. No steel frame building in modern architecture has succumbed to fire except on 9/11 when 3 buildings suffered that fate.

2. Numerous fire fighters, police, and witnesses reported explosions in the basement levels of the towers....not addressed or explained by the Commission.

3. The day before 9/11, Donald Rumsfield had a press conference and revealed that 3.2 million dollars in transactions were unaccounted for in the Pentagon's budget.

4. Evidence of short trading on airline stocks, insurance, 5-year Treasury notes prior to 9/11 that made unknown parties exorbitant sums of money.

5. WTC purchased by Larry Silverstein months before 9/11; insured for 4.55 billion; how prescient?

6. Military training exercises taking place on eastern seaboard morning of 9/11.......right?

7.The clean-up and removal of debris from the site without proper investigation: steel shipped to China like we were trying help Japan deal with Fukushima..... why the urgency?

8. Jeb Bush's startled reaction to campaign question regarding the Venice flight school, records removal on a C-130 and heroin smuggling.....oh right it's the internet wackjobs swinging wildly!

9. A/E for 9/11 Truth: career professionals calling bullshit on the Corporate Media story!

10. Project for a New American Century: "we need a new Pearl Harbor"  Rebuilding America’s Defenses, 2000.

I think, therefore I am 'deplorable' and proudly consider myself an enemy of the state as presented and reinforced by the corporate media military industrial government complex; give me truth because only the truth can sustain liberty.

Islam, Assyria, and Nineveh; There is nothing new under the sun

 

 

The recent atrocity in Pakistan in which 132 school children were slaughtered to further the cause of Islamic fundamentalists barely caused a ripple in the daily news cycle. Those waiting for denouncements and objections from ‘moderate Muslims’ on this barbaric cowardice are not paying attention; no sentiment of horror or revulsion ever follows because none exists. In Iraq, near the modern city of Mosul, lie the remains of Nineveh, an Assyrian city that served as the capital of that empire around the seventh century BC. If you have a cursory knowledge of the Old Testament, you know that Nineveh is the city that God instructs Jonah to travel to with a message of impending destruction because “… wickedness is come up before me.” Jonah 1:2 KJV What exactly qualified the Assyrian people of Nineveh an envoy from God?  Most people remember Jonah’s story because of his surviving 3 days in the belly of a great fish while the stated purpose for his journey tends to get overlooked.

The Assyrian empire was feared and reviled because they were ferocious in battle and masters of siege warfare; surrounding a city and starving the inhabitants into submission, they are acknowledged for mastery in the art of war. For well-prepared cities with walls and wells, they developed siege towers and battering rams. The Assyrians did not leave empty handed.  Women and children of conquered cities or tribes would be assimilated as slaves and typically relocated far from their homelands. Vanquished men were put to the sword, a practice common to the cultures of this time period. Assyrian cities were grim testaments to their cruelty and cunning, surrounded with the corpses and skeletons of the vanquished, impaled, crucified, and flayed; a grisly warning to the world as to the true nature of these people. The macabre spectacle would surely cause the newly captured to abandon any thought of escape or rebellion.

One of the ancient monuments discovered in the ruins of ancient Assyria has this inscription by King Ashurnasirpal II (reign began in 883 BC.) of a conquered city:

"Their men, young and old, I took as prisoners. Of some I cut off the feet and hands; of others I cut off the noses, ears, and lips; of the young men's ears I made a heap; of the old men's heads I built a minaret."

Hawlinson's "Five Great Monarchies" vol. 2, p85, note.

 

 

When the prophet Jonah is instructed by God to travel to the Assyrian capital of Nineveh, his reluctance is understandable. The thought of traveling to that people to deliver a message of impending doom must have filled him with dread and challenged his understanding of who God really is. Knowing the true nature of the warring Assyrians enables us to grasp the prophet’s decision to proceed immediately to the nearest port and book a cruise. It should also give us an appreciation for the courage and selfless obedience of today’s missionaries who answer a calling to work in the Middle East. The crux of Jonah’s incredulity at his assignment is revealed later in the final chapter.

¹⁰ When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened. Jonah 3:10 NIV

4 But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. ² He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. ³ Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.” Jonah 4:1-3 NIV

Jonah understands the heart of God to be large enough to forgive the people of Nineveh for ‘evil’ if they will acknowledge and repent of it. It is the offer that God extends to all people, of every age. In Jonah’s human understanding, there is no forgiveness afforded to a culture that is founded on violence, oppression, and barbarism; attributes that are antithetical to the God of Isaac, Abraham, and Jacob. Jonah is angered by the repentance and delayed justice for Nineveh and the book ends with God attempting to explain His reprieve to the sullen and brooding prophet. If you have never read the story it is worth the time; though very short relative to some OT books, it is full of revelation about the character of God, obedience, and repentance.

Before we come forward to ISIS, Islam, and the war on western culture, I want to address those who portray God as being the fictional crutch of weak minded and lesser men. Richard Dawkins covers all the bases with his extensive list of descriptors from his book, The God Delusion, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” To be sure, there is an abundance of evil perpetrated upon individuals, tribes, and cultures in the historical account of the 10 centuries preceding the birth of Jesus Christ. Much of what is recorded in the Bible’s Old Testament is corroborated by archeological proof and non-biblical records. The Old Testament is the record of God’s on-going attempt to reveal himself and His nature to mankind. As the source of truth, morality, and love, God is incapable of subjecting humanity to the crimes that Mr. Dawkins charges Him with; as the source of law and order, He is required to judge and punish sin. There is neither time nor space to detail the ignorant and dishonest railings of an expired scientist whose refusal to consider information theory in the intelligent design school would be laughable if it were not so sad.

The judgments visited upon the people in the days of Nineveh were because of unrepentant and prolonged evil; sacrificing children to idols, bestiality, sexual perversion and deviance, murder and rape, their cruelties and inhumanity were legendary at a time when war and destruction was the default life for most. God didn’t destroy people for their skin tone or tribal practices but He did judge and eliminate cultures of depravity and violence that had abandoned the basic tenants of humanity. The Ten Commandments and Levitical laws were given to the Israelites because they were surrounded by cultures that had abandoned the fundamentals of human conduct and civility.

The myriad facets of Islam have something in common with their ancestors that populated the ancient kingdoms of what is now Iraq and Iran. Whether they are affiliated with the Taliban, ISIS, Hamas, or the PLO, their culture requires that they destroy those will not convert to their beliefs. They are warring people whose god requires death to unbelievers; a truly misogynistic tribe that sees women and girls as property, with no restraints placed upon their treatment. The oppressive condition of women in Muslim culture is not much removed from the life they had 3000 years ago; they exist in the shadows of a disparately patriarchal culture of repression and bias that finds parents stoning daughters for being raped. There is no coexistence with Islam; bumper stickers that assert we can would be amusing if not so blatantly myopic and ignorant.

In America we distract and amuse ourselves with any and everything that our culture of glitter and wow affords while Europe is being sacked by the crescent and the sword. The misogynistic disregard for women and young girls by immigrants in England and other European countries is startling due to those countries unwillingness or inability to confront it. The American media silence is equally telling. Progressive correctness prevents truth from being spoken, laws from being enforced, and native born citizens from being protected as immigrants and refugees assail the host countries that have offered them a new life. When the citizens do speak out and dare to confront the hate and division espoused by clerics, they are charged with hate speech or have their freedoms further restricted. Angela Merkel denounces her people for demonstrating against the encroachment of Islam in Germany; immigrants who come not to assimilate, but to subjugate and establish their culture upon the host country that has afforded them refuge. You know that things are truly upside down when governments insist straight-faced that pointing out hate speech is in fact ‘hate speech’.

As has been their practice, dutiful followers of Allah are now bent upon destroying what remains of the city of Nineveh, just as they have torched, defaced, and maimed antiquities of other faiths when they take control. The existence of such sites is deemed an affront to their god and must be destroyed lest they lead anyone to doubt that their cause is just and true. How ironic that these warriors would see no value in preserving a monument to their genealogical origins, a city that declared the superiority of the Assyrian nation to all unfortunate enough to be within its range. Such is the power of love and forgiveness that a shattered remnant of a place where God issued a reprieve and withheld His righteous judgments would pose a threat to a false religion that is spread by fear and intimidation. Perhaps Jonah saw the legacy of Nineveh and the Assyrian people and realized then the veracity in God’s word that truly there is nothing new under the sun.

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.  Ecclesiastes 1:9 (NIV)

When Faith Fails Us

  People who pursue a relationship of belief in God are often forced to revisit their understanding of ‘faith’ and what that concept means. If we are truly engaged in a relationship of believing in God, we must accept that it is dynamic, fluid, and continually changing: not because God changes, but because we do. The understanding and perception we possessed as children has matured and become fuller, we gain insights and grow stronger. Exercising the tenets of our beliefs makes us more resilient, more solid; we believe in God’s promises because we have seen them fulfilled in our own experience and in the lives of those we fellowship with. We are confident, self-assured, smiling……..and it happens.

 The bottom falls out, the world is upside down, we are wrecked. The diagnosis is grim and unexpected. The career is lost. Our surety and foundation lie in a disheveled heap like the remnants of a Midwestern town after a tornado. We profess that we are okay and we put on the brave face but inside we have questions and doubt. ‘How can this be happening?’, ‘Why has God allowed this?’ ‘What did I do to deserve this?’ If we are honest we can all remember a time or times when upheaval has put us on our heels and caused us to lament ‘Why, me?’ Thankfully, God anticipated our need for order and answers and assurance and he gave us Job: the gold standard for enduring loss and destitution while still clinging to the belief that we serve a God who loves and cares for us. The problem with Job is, the deeper you delve into the story, the less comforting it becomes. The element of God allowing Job to be placed in the crucible seems unjust and callous to us in our understanding of God and how He should operate. How is it that mature believers can get swept off their rock of faith by a sudden deluge of pain, discomfort, or change? What stirs indignation and self-righteousness in our hearts when we have been subjected to an event that challenges our understanding of faith and relationship with God?


 What has happened is that our faith has failed us. The problem is that ‘our faith’ has become misplaced. We have gotten away from believing in God and His promises, and we are believing in ‘our faith’. We have slipped into a comfortable place in which we have placed our confidence and trust in the fact that we believe. We have exchanged the infinite love of our Father who has redeemed us, for a very weak and devalued currency of ‘our faith’. If we consider God’s word and the instances where He speaks about ‘our faith’, we will realize we place much more value on it than we should. How many men had their faith attributed to them as righteousness? How often did Jesus declare, “I tell you the truth, I have never seen faith such as this in all of Israel!” See, when God determined that we needed a Savior, He did so because ‘our righteousness is as filthy rags’ and we cannot muster the minute faith of a mustard seed! We, in and of ourselves, are sheep. We bleat and stumble, fall off precipices, set ourselves on fire, and run looking for wolves to invite to dinner at every turn. But in ‘our faith’, we are rams with sure feet and steady eyes, capable of traversing the treacherous cliffs, leaping over the gaping chasms.We become insured in our salvation, and we become assured that somehow 'our faith' is sustaining us; that somehow we are playing a part in the relationship, that we have earned a box seat with benefits befitting someone of our proximity to God by 'our faith'. Satan has stood quietly beside us and whispered, "Did God really say?", only this time he has helped us to understand that 'our faith' has made us acceptable and right with God.


     In His Word, God is clear about our ability to 'be good enough', 'be righteous', ' be faithful'. We can't. What we can do, and do really well, is ascribe motives to circumstance, take pride in our minuscule attempts at faithfulness, and place entirely too much emphasis on our place in the equation, giving our 'faith' a value that is astronomically disproportionate to the value of Jesus love.  While it is incumbent upon us to believe, it is essential for us to always understand that the source of our salvation, provision, existence is the benevolence of God, without whom we would have no hope, no life, no joy.  Pride and lies are from the darkness; humility and truth come from the Light. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. 

Deeper into Easter

In the rattle and hum that constitutes life today, it is easy to miss the magnitude of God's love and to have a surface level appreciation of why Easter is significant. The secularization of the church and culture's co-opting of faith based holidays work together to separate the hearts of  the casually religious from understanding the true  significance of the crucifixion and resurrection. Even diligent believer's can be challenged in grasping the implications of our God inserting himself into our lives to rescue us from sin and death; it is a gesture of love that is beyond our comprehension. Several years ago, Mel Gibson delivered a wrenching visualization of Christ's atoning love in 'The Passion of The Christ'. If you saw the film you were mortified by the brutality of Christ's final day as a man. It is possible that you wept uncontrollably as I did. Maybe you struggled to stand at the end, weakened by what you 'experienced' in participating in that portrayal of our Savior's condemnation and death. Easter might have changed for you after seeing that film but the real question is how have you changed for Easter's sake?

In acknowledging our sin and the need for Christ to come and die for us, we necessarily have a perspective that is focused on our debt, our culpability, our guilt. We respond with sorrow, brokenness, and gratitude for the incredible love that allowed God's Son to bear our sentence and redeem our lives and for most of us that is it.

We have been saved, our record is expunged, eternity is assured...what's for lunch? We are barely capable of grasping the majesty and mystery of grace so we tend to rest right there, huddled amongst fellow believers, waiting. This Easter was different for me and to be transparent, it was well into the following week before the realization came to me. Some circumstances gave me pause, and in the reflection that followed I realized how one sided and single minded my perception of Easter has been.

In considering Christ's mistreatment, maiming, and death for our sins, we are aware of the physical agony that He endured. We are physical beings and we can understand the excruciating experience that His flogging and crucifixion surely was. We recoil at the violence and abuse that He was subjected to. If we would attempt to understand the mechanics of His atonement, we realize that there was another type of suffering when the most holy one, sinless and guiltless, was smeared with our corruption and vileness. The light has nothing in common with the dark, the east and west can never meet, yet his perfect righteousness was forced to accept the totality of the world's evil, bitterness, and venom. Without fully knowing how God made that transference we can still surmise that the pain of that burden would surpass the physical torment of the cross. The measure of God's love and that of his Son is difficult to understand but we can grasp that He died because He could not endure our separation and condemnation. We are able to understand that because being made in His image, we would die to save the life of a spouse, child, or friend. What we miss is that Jesus died for everyone, for all mankind and that means He willingly submitted to that suffering for people who would reject Him, revile Him, and resent Him. Consider the hurt when someone you love denounces your concern and compassion and realize that Jesus knew those people who would reject Him before their conception. What does the weight of loving people who will refuse your love feel like on the scale that our Lord experienced it? How big is God's hurt when the ones He created to have fellowship and relationship with, reject Him?

In the epistles we learn that the apostles counted it joy to be persecuted and suffer for Christ because they were 'found worthy' to have shared in His suffering. We should study their example and strive to be worthy as well. Our burden, our hurt, should be for the prodigal and the lost, for those who through ignorance or deceit have not found the Father. We should share in the pain of loving others, even if they will revile and despise us.

2 Peter1:2-6

 ² Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
 ³ His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. ⁴ Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.


I have been trying to discern what this verse meant for some time. The divine nature? I did not know what to do with that. I did not know how that looked or if I was supposed to figure it out or if that  applied to me?
Our redemption is huge and its scale and scope can take a lifetime to assimilate. Is that enough time?
Relationship is collaborative and conflicting, embracing and recoiling, losing ourselves and gaining another.
This is what Easter means for me now. Having a heart that hurts for those who need God, regardless of the cost, irrespective of their response. Caring enough to say something, instead of huddling up with other believers and waiting.










 

Christmas Means......

In spite of the acrimony and lies of our ruling class, in spite of the meanness and depravity of the media, in spite of the disparity between the haves and have nots, today is still and calm. The air is solemn. There is a reverent quietness running through all creation. The glory of God's gift penetrates the heart of  all things and reign's majestically, independent of the world's ability to receive or recognize it. Love has come to free the lost, the disenchanted, the disenfranchised. Jesus saw the broken condition of mankind and willingly became the atonement, the sacrifice, the lamb, the gift. We have been liberated from our sin, from our selfishness, from our desperate hearts. Today is the celebration of the victory over evil. The merciful heart of God inserted love into the battle that raged between what remained of His goodness in us and the cancerous decay of men without hope, purpose, faith. Christmas is the joy of compassionate intervention. Christmas is help for the helpless. Christmas is giving to those who cannot give in return. Christmas means measuring ourselves with a different scale, seeing ourselves in a different light. Christmas means the time of striving,  of suffering, of sadness, is finite. There is Joy for the world because the Lord is come and the earth has received its King! Christmas means living abundantly in the expectation that hope can replace despair, that sadness can give way to laughter, that love can rule our lives. My prayer is that in the stillness of this day, you would consider what it means to be free from sin and death; that your heart would be broken over your sinfulness and simultaneously overjoyed that our God saw fit to call us back to Him with the miracle of His Son coming as a child, that you would vow that this knowledge will color your living from this day forward. Selah!

Happiness and Joy

Happy and You Know It




If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands (clap clap)
If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands (clap clap)

If you're happy and you know it, then your face will surely show it

If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands. (clap clap)



If you're happy and you know it, stomp your feet (stomp stomp)

If you're happy and you know it, stomp your feet (stomp stomp)

If you're happy and you know it, then your face will surely show it

If you're happy and you know it, stomp your feet. (stomp stomp)



If you're happy and you know it, shout "Hurray!" (hoo-ray!)

If you're happy and you know it, shout "Hurray!" (hoo-ray!)

If you're happy and you know it, then your face will surely show it

If you're happy and you know it, shout "Hurray!" (hoo-ray!)



If you're happy and you know it, do all three (clap-clap, stomp-stomp, hoo-ray!)

If you're happy and you know it, do all three (clap-clap, stomp-stomp, hoo-ray!)

If you're happy and you know it, then your face will surely show it

If you're happy and you know it, do all three. (clap-clap, stomp-stomp, hoo-ray!)



I am grateful to God and a dear friend of mine for showing me something fundamental and absolute about the difference that exists between happiness and joy. These words are often used interchangeably and we assume that they are essentially synonyms. I want to explain why that is not true. I am proposing that happiness is an emotion that is dependent upon circumstance or incidental happenings while joy is more or less an element of our world view or our perception of our place in the kingdom of God. I know that is conflicting and seemingly contradictory but bear with me and I will try and resolve the confusion.


Having the blessing of existing in a western culture in the 21st century,
we are far removed from the hardship and struggle that marked life for most of the generations that preceded us. We enjoy an existence that would be unimaginable for anyone except royalty; we are relatively free from want, hunger, disease, war. We eat when we are hungry, we sleep when we are tired, we work 5 days a week, we vacation annually. We have doctors if we are sick, we have clean clothes and houses that are dry and safe. Our lives are very comfortable and filled with convenience and distraction. We have standards of living that would put us in the the top .05% of people who have ever walked the planet. That should be something worthy of happiness. A life worthy of joy.

We don't need to look very hard to realize how fleeting happiness can be.
Children give evidence to this in their reactions to events all the time. If they cannot have the candy, toy, etc. now, they are not happy and that fact is communicated instantly and with conviction. Because their frame of reference is narrow and necessarily self centered, they react to not being happy with howls and tears. Sadly, we often see adults who have the same reaction to circumstances that leave them less than happy. If we are fortunate enough to have had loving parents and good teachers, we realized through our formative years that it isn't always our day, we don't always win, sometimes life is not fair. We are incredibly fortunate if we have reached adulthood with a world view that acknowledges our tremendous blessing and favor with God in that we live where, when and how we do!

I want to suggest that happiness or being happy is a choice that we make in light of our circumstances; a decision that we must make continuously as we go through the day. Choosing to be happy is part of an outlook on life that takes responsibility for your reaction to events, disappointments, encounters.
If your world view is objective and you recognize how overflowing your abundance is, you can see the minor infringements, delays, hassles for what they are. Inconvenience does not warrant a tantrum, swearing, pounding on the counter or steering wheel. You will survive the moment and it need not color the rest of your day and every subsequent event that you encounter.
Perspective, experience, and maturity separate an adult happiness from a toddler happiness; we grow into a realization that there is rain, accidents, hurt, meanness in life. We can't control those things but we can manage our response and reception of them in our lives.

You may be thinking, "I know people who are always happy and they don't have a faith in God!” which brings us to the distinction or differentiation
between happiness and joy. The characteristic of joyousness or being filled with joy is distinct from happiness by its depth and source. This is where I will struggle to define the distinction that is so obvious yet defies explanation. In the same way that a happy adult is different from a happy 3 year old, a person that has joy is different from someone who is merely happy. Where 'happiness' is circumstantial, joy is 'constitutional'. Joy is a foundational element of a person who has been delivered from sin and death.
If you have a saving faith that God is who He says and that His Word is true,
you have a flame of hope in your core that is joy. You know that the 'happiness' of this world is only a rusty, dented hint of the 'joy' that exists in the presence of God. So while it is true that there are people who do not know God who are happy, only those who have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ possess the joy that is indicative of salvation.

      For those who have joy, the burden remains; the knowledge that far too many around us are lost, seeking happiness in the moment, pursuing the
silver and gold that will melt in the end of this life. Sadly, there seems to be a window for us to learn the truth about happiness, joy, abundant living. Outside of that period, the willingness of our hearts to embrace truth diminishes, we become stiff and hard to accepting new life, new truth.
IF you know someone who needs joy, pray that our merciful God in His infinite love will heal their heart; that your Joy may serve as a light, that He will get glory because you were burdened for their salvation. Make sure that everyday you are happy about the right things, that the source of your joy is at the center of all you think, say, and do. Put away the things of childhood and embrace the joy that exists to be given away.



A Matter of Degrees

     Imagine that you are standing at the center of a clock and you are facing the twelve. You are facing that direction because beyond the twelve, beyond the edge of the clock is truth. Beyond the horizon is the source of goodness, love and holiness. God is beyond your sight calling you. Behind you, at six o'clock is the darkness. The evil one whispers from the void. Insistent. Incessant. His lies and deception continuously directed at your weakness. His subtlety and craft derailing your attempts to live intentionally for God.
     The call he issues is not blatant. He doesn't attempt to spin you around from the twelve to the six. He knows  that would be too much. His strategy is to move our eyes from God only slightly, say to 11:58 or maybe 12:01.
If he can achieve that, a slight distraction from having our focus singularly on God, then he can move us incrementally to say 9:00  or 3:00 o'clock. Then you are facing neither the light or the darkness. You are looking at the gray area; the in between, where the lines are fuzzy and distorted. Where choices and decisions are difficult  because the consequences may not be clear.The reason he doesn't need to move you 180 degrees is because he only needs  to move you 1 degree. When we take our eyes off God, when we are not living intentionally focused on Him, we have compromised with evil and a single degree is the same as 15 or 45 or 90 degrees. To not be God focused is to be focused on the other, the world, ourselves, the darkness.
     The deception of Eve in Genesis illustrates for us the subtlety and slight of hand that makes satan such a dangerous adversary. In asking "Did God really say?", he plants doubt in Eve's mind about her understanding of God's words. He suggests that she has misunderstood the intent of God's instruction. That degree of doubt, that compromise of the truth equals death. When we trust ourselves to navigate in the gray areas, when we decide things without the moral compass that is God's love, we have moved a degree and we are choosing sin. Only a focused pursuit of God, seeking His truth, allowing it to live in our hearts and control our minds can deliver us from the enemy. A degree of doubt and we are vulnerable. A small compromise and we are susceptible to destruction and ruin.
     Because he is relentless, we must never stop seeking God's truth and our redemption through His Word.
The deceitful nature of our hearts requires that we be continually washing them with the truth. If we are not cleansing ourselves and remembering God's truths into our minds, we have no defense for the whisper that slithers from the darkness; that incessant hiss of falseness that calls to our pride, our vanity, our self esteem.
When we are satisfied with our goodness, when we are self-sufficient, when we take God for granted because we are not focused on Him, we have have moved a degree, and we die.
     The deceiver is tireless in his pursuit of those who cling to the promise of the light. Those who pursue God and His kingdom are subject to the his full attention and are assaulted with doubt, fear, insecurity and angst. He sows discontent and disruption to distract the faithful from delivering what God has ordained for them to achieve. We have heard it argued that satan knows the end he faces and that he attempts to strip away as many believers as he can in a last gasp attempt to defy God. I am increasingly convinced that the opposite is true; the insistent ferocity, the determined energy of his activities are indicative of an individual
 who believes he can win. His efforts are those of someone who is confident of success. He craves the worship that rightfully belongs to the one true God, but he will settle for the vague affirmation that he gets from the lost, who knowingly or not are separated from God. Because he is the father of lies, he believes his own lies. He believes that the anguish and agony of the lost is equivalent to the adoration and awe of the saved; his pride and vanity convince him that an individual's rejection of God's love is an endorsement of his
evil, lies and deceit.
     The root of satan's fall is selfishness and pride. His self-delusion is that somehow he is more worthy of glory and honor than his creator, the maker and author of all things. He believes that his value and his worth is somehow his doing and not an imparted or reflected good that comes from God. When we choose ourselves over God, we align ourselves with satan. Rebellion, choosing ourselves or our own course rather than submitting to God's, is sin. We deceive ourselves when we believe that we are self-sufficient, self-empowered, or self-contained. We were created to reflect God's glory; in and of ourselves we have nothing that is commendable or worthy of recognition. We are reflective of His goodness and if we believe that we are good, we have swallowed the lie of satan.