Thursday, June 26, 2008

Prayer

Here's a post I found today that I'd love feedback on, it will most likely have plenty of response there but I wanted to share it here too: http://www.eliyah.com/forum2/Forum10/HTML/004412.html It's about prayer and how we think of it. I agree with the article author for the most part.

Perhaps that's why all my prayers go something like this: You know I want this to happen but of course I don't know all the ramifications if it does. You may have put me in this situation because of what I'll need in the future or because someone else needs me here. If you allow what I ask it may be totally wrong, I may regret it horribly, someone may suffer needlessly because of it. Basically Father, I have no clue, not the slightest inkling of what's best, I can't read the future so ... so just never mind.

It always ends up with me asking for help to stay close enough to Him that I only want what He wants whether I want it or not!

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Coincidence?

Several posts ago (Isn't Anything Too Trivial For God?) I posted about coincidence, prayer, life micromanagement and such. Now two things have happened:

One - I was making dinner and for some reason started thinking about my parents, their deteriorating health, my son's very close relationship with my father. I started feeling all teary imagining having to inform my son when my dad dies, I can't imagine how he'll react, I wondered if he may even do something drastic to escape the grief.
Well, there was no real reason to be feeling like this, yes it will happen, maybe soon, hopefully not. But I was feeling so teary and upset that I walked outside so that neither of my boys would come down and ask me what was wrong in case I actually told them. Know what I walked out to find? A little eight year old boy was heading out into traffic to kill himself, his friends were crying and scared. (He's "okay" now, I stayed until the kids got his mother.)
Doesn't it sound like that was directed?

Then another coincidence, much smaller. My son was asking for a name for a game he was playing, I said Melinda. I don't know anyone by that name, it's just a name out of life in general, one I didn't think he would have used yet. Then I turned the page in the book I was reading - a new character named Melinda was introduced! Coincidence sometimes IS just coincidence. Of course, if I meet a Melinda in the next few days I may change my mind entirely...

Friday, June 20, 2008

Food - What Can We Eat?

One principle to follow that may involve different actions from the past is that of caring for our physical health. In the beginning, humans were plant eaters, then were given meat. (This was after sin so perhaps it was one of the ways He ensured we wouldn't live forever - meat eaters get really mad at me for considering that as a possibility!) Scripture says everything was fair game.

Later certain meats were considered unclean, unfit for human consumption by the Israelites due to what YHWH told them. Now many people tell me we not only may but even should eat those "meats" now because they are no longer going to make us unclean. Those who say we "should" eat them are those who insist not doing so means I'm trying to earn salvation, I haven't really understood that argument.
Anyway, I don't see why being made righteous in Christ means we can eat unhealthy "meat" that was not considered to be food by the people set apart for blessing as an example from our creator. Jesus said nothing going into the body defiles us, my contention is that it never did. Not spiritually. The whole issue he was discussing was eating with (ceremonially) unwashed hands, it didn't have anything to do with eating poison and staying healthy. Eating poison can kill you but it won't estrange you from your Creator.

I think of pork and shellfish. Shellfish obviously has plenty of problems due to the fact that they are bottom feeders, they don't just collect the garbage, they EAT it. Well. I grew up on the east coast near the ocean, we ate shrimp, crabs, and lobster all the time. Due to pollution I suppose, there are lots of warnings about health hazards now.
Pork - pigs are no longer scavengers in the wild so it's said that it is now fine food to eat. I don't see why that wouldn't be true except that scientific findings about food varies, sometimes as often as week to week, as we learn more. What if there's something about pork that we don't yet know? I choose not to eat it but we still have the issue of all the other meats that were not considered unclean. We have health warnings about mad cow disease, something about veal, on and on. Does that mean we should just all go vegetarian?

But then we have the warnings about germs, viruses, bacteria, and pesticides in our fruits and vegetables. What are we supposed to do, take this literally?:

Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty..."

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Weird For Weirdness Sake?!

Something I'm still trying to figure out - it is said that God gave the Israelites all those "odd" laws to set them apart and that therefore those laws are not for us. I've also heard that "law" for the Israelites was actually more like "instruction".
If the Israelites were given laws or instruction to make them different, peculiar, set-apart from the other nations, why shouldn't we be the same way? I assume it's thought to be because we are set apart in a different way but what sense does that make? If we are made different by the spirit, are we to assume He only set the Israelites apart by making them odd? And that somehow shows how marvelous He is because His people do weird things that have no point other than to be strange?

Or is it that the law and instructions they lived by set them apart as morally upright, healthy, and a cohesive, blessed nation? Well, WOULD have if they'd actually obeyed what they were told! Then they got all carried away and concentrated on keeping the laws to the letter and thinking that showed something.

Are our bodies substantially different now that we don't need to follow the same health laws? And so morally advanced that we don't need the civil laws laid down? Spiritual enough that we no longer need to worry about the mandate not to incorporate the ways of the heathen worship into our worship of Him? Somehow I doubt it.

There has to be some difference though - what can we possibly do about the fact that we don't live in a theocracy? I don't believe we are to just follow as many laws as we can; I do believe we are to abide by all the principles embodied in those laws.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Prayer Time

It struck me as bizarre to have a special prayer time. That's like having your friend over, then excusing yourself for a moment to go call her. The spirit of God is in us, so how is it that we need to go somewhere special to meet with Him?
At least, that's how I thought of it. And taking time for "devotions" sounds like some sort of school assignment.

I had to think it out. It's more that your friend is over, you're dealing with children, dishes maybe or making a meal, business calls, things like that. Then you stop all the other stuff and devote your attention to your friend and nothing else, no distractions. THAT'S what devotions and special prayer time is about. It makes sense after all.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Way of the Master

WOW! On a christian homeschooling forum, a woman named Lisa mentioned The Way Of The Master. I thought it was a book but what I found was a really good website. I went to the website The Way Of The Master and it blew me away! I watched some of the videos, it has Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort witnessing to people, using the law of God to do it. None of this business about how wonderful your life will be if you just repeat after me, they came at it differently.

One part of the comment the original poster on the forum made about it doesn't make sense to me. She said, "Once we're saved, we're not under the law--we're under grace. Believers under the new covenant aren't law keepers but fruit bearers." I don't understand people saying that not being under the law means we shouldn't keep it. We're not under the law means to me that we don't get punished for breaking it because we no longer do. The law showed us what sin is because sin IS BREAKING THE LAW. How is it that suddenly we understand so we no longer keep it? Once we realize it, we repent of breaking it and somehow that makes breaking the law no longer wrong?

Anyway, I really enjoyed this site, I've got plenty more to explore on it!

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Force? Being? And what will we be?

Is God a force or a being? Is spirit like what we think of as a "ghost" or more like a fabric composed of intangible "life"?

I keep trying to decide; then realize that my decision is meaningless. It's not like my deciding will change the reality. So I try to figure out why I need to know, if I really DO need to know.
Yes. I do. It really makes a great deal of difference in our lives to comprehend our own conception of God. If God is a "person", a sentient "being", that's way different than God as the force of life. I believe we're talking about a sentient force, God is existence. The thought of God as embodied in a person can't be right, I think that's a way we try to visualize "him" so we can think about God. It's not necessary to do that but it certainly makes things easier. It's a starting place.

Another thing concerns our human capabilities - the christian consensus seems to be that we are to not use them, that any ability to cause things to happen with the power of our minds is wrong because it's depending on ourselves instead of on God. I can see the point here; if we can do all this ourselves, why do we need God? But I don't think that's the right attitude, scripture tells us a parable of three servants being given talents (money of the time supposedly) and how they used these talents. The one punished is the one who did NOT use it and increase it. Perhaps this is why so many people feel the drive to do things "just because we can" and "to find out what will happen".
Not a pretty thought to imagine becoming part of the "fabric of reality" and to see humanity as the tattered, raggedy part on the corner because we never developed our spiritual abilities. It won't do much good to use these abilities for physical, earthly pleasure, that could be the beginning - practice perhaps. That would be so limited, wouldn't it? Rather pointless in the overall scheme of things. That's if you believe there IS an overall scheme of things.