Thursday Morning

Beautiful day.

I wish I were outside.

I hope it's not cold.

But my house is a mess.

And I despise the sight of ugly wires!

Help!

Wholly Man

"The Temptation of Jesus." I silently read the subtitle aloud in my book.  Already, my mind was rushing through the context of the New Testament story. "Jesus goes into the desert,  Satan tempts him with bread and jumping off the cliff and the whole 'you can have my kingdom' thing."  I had already gotten my piece out of the story.  If you ask me, Satan was pretty stupid to tempt Jesus.  I mean, he's God for crying out loud.  I considered skipping over it. The Subtitle, "Jesus Begins His work in Galilee," sounded much more interesting. "No, I said I'd read through Matthew." Reluctantly I focused on the first word.  

Somehow I thought that when I read each word of the Bible slowly, it might count for something in Heaven.   Like when I ask Jesus about some instance in my life when I get in Heaven He may reply with something that starts with--Remember when I spent 40 days in the desert?  Perhaps actually reading it slowly will make me remember it, even after death.  

I read down to the sixth verse of chapter 4. That was when I really got into it.   "He has put his angels in charge of you. They will catch you in their hands so that you will not hit your foot on a rock." Satan was tempting Jesus for the second time, inviting him to jump off a cliff.  (Honestly!)  The next few texts read "Psalm 91:11-12." My Bible has these references throughout the Bible and I never bothered to look them up. I thought I understood pretty well what the verses said and I did not need a 2nd source or background info. This time was different though.  It wouldn't hurt and I was curious about it.  Flipping the previous pages I found the passage with no problem.  Psalms 91 starts out with this verse: "Those who go to God Most High for safety will be protected by the Almighty."  Stop.  Is this right?  Psalms 91:11-12, okay that's the verse.  The verse that Satan quotes is in this passage.  I read the whole passage. In Psalms, the you means everyone who goes to God for safety, comfort, love, completeness.

Not just Jesus, but all of us can place claim on Psalms 91. 

Do you realize what Satan is revealing about God?  God, Jesus, Him and all his many aspects is WHOLLY MAN. I've always read the temptation of Jesus and particularly that verse to mean that God was God. So when I read "He has put his angels in charge of you" I said to myself: " Well of course, he's God's son! Of Course God has angels surrounding him!"  In my mind Jesus was more like an enlightened version of man than man capable of failing.  This changes the whole concept of the story.   

Jesus is wholly man.  

Jesus gets hungry.   Especially after forty days of fasting I bet he was famished!   I have afriend who did a forty day fast.  She ate soup but it was still a forty day fast.  I love food and I couldn't imaging how hungry and how many cravings I would have after one week let alone forty days.  I bet, as God is the creator of all creation that he loves food too!  I mean fresh baked bread...Goat's meat....Hebrew reuben sandwiches.....how could God not love food?  

Jesus meets pride face to face.

And I get riled at the thought of someone calling something of mine their own.  The same pride the same feeling we get from something we call our own is the same feeling that Jesus dealt with from day to day.  I am proud of my work, my life, my acheivements....sound familiar? Jesus had every right to say this is my handiwork, but he didn't.  At that time he chose not to be wholly God or even half or one quarter God.  At that time and all the way 'til his death, He chose to be 100% Human.  Just like me and everybody else is human. 

Jesus was susceptible to flaunts.

He could have said look what I can do! I AM SPECIAL...more so than the likes of you.  But he didn't. He didn't jump the cliff to prove Satan. I do that.  Sometimes I play the piano louder than need be on purpose so that someone would say, wow.    Jesus didn't and he was wholly man, not some alien mix of the supernatural and mortality.  He was human. 

I had heard from a Pastor that the church needs to think as if they were unbelievers in order to reach unbelievers.  You know, get rid of all the churchy habits that make no sense to someone new to the congregation.  We need to put the bottom rung back on the ladder so new believers can reach Jesus too.   It never occurred to me that, that was what Jesus did. Jesus came down from the unattainable, 'you have to be perfect to get in heaven', heaven and said, see I'm just like you, no gimmicks, no tricks and not only will I get you a ticket into heaven, but I will show you how to live for me on earth.

Jesus said it was possible

He gave us hope.

Because Jesus, God was wholly man.

Night Scene

The sun makes it a habit of setting quickly in the winter. the worst of the season has passed.  Only a cool breeze floats by every now and then.  Trees are still barren of their leaves.  Their naked limbs leave a silhouetted impression against the setting sun and lingering city lights. In the hard wind of dead winter they give the impression of an ominous haunting.  They leave one with the feeling of loneliness and depression, but not now. 

 Now the trees have found beauty in their nakedness. The simplicity of creation is upheld in God's most unfeeling season.  Stripped bare of all lavishness there lies the true beauty and greatness beneath the foliage: endurance and strength.  They form the outline of the setting sun. Images of a hot burning sahara and umbrella trees reinforce the scene before my eyes.  Leafless trees mimick the umbrella trees burned into my cerebellum from years of National Geographic.  Underneath it all, the British man's heavy accent slowly narrates the african scene and even the one before me.  

Barely a minute, yellow becomes gold and orange until the sky's canvas is cloaked in hues of purple and finally night sky. From my window tree limbs shake with the wind. Like a tortured soul they point to the one lone star that appears in the sky.  Knowlege tells me the star is a planet, not too far from our own. However the trees disagree.  "Here, here," They whisper, "Here is our hope above the sky."

Creative Drainage

I believe that I am creatively drained.

Or maybe it's my sore throat.

I think one of my students gave it to me.

The Coffee Connoisseur

I think I'll have a Vanilla hazelnut mocha with a dip of espesso a shot of amaretto and white chocolate flavoring with whole milk. That cinnamon roll looks really good. Can you put that in the coffee too?   Don't forget it must be fair trade. 

--God

He's got the tastebuds to know each flavor. I wonder what e=he would really get in a coffee shop?

Black no cream, is this from the the southern border of sumatra or the south eastern region?

No maybe he'd say something more like this. 

Wow.    

That smells really good.

I think I'll have some of that.  

Ooooo, and are these chocolate covered espresso beans?

Hmmm......4 no, 7, no, I'll keep a running tab on those.  

Espresso beans on me!

Do you think there's a coffee shop in heaven?  I'd love to have Coffee with God.  

Stop and Smell the Flowers

Walmart has a coffee aisle. It is practically a coffee lover's paradise in the middle of the grocery store.  Every once in awhile you would see random people bend over to smell the individual aromas. Awkward, right?   I'm one of them.  I love the coffee aisle. The smells, the robust aroma's of whole bean coffee: it's all so wonderful.   

I found that I became true coffee lover when I took a whiff of a bean called foglifter.   No. It wasn't delicious.   In fact it smelled just like it sounded.   It smelled like a dank northern fog at 8:30 in the morning.  It would not find itself in my cup of coffee.  In fact that day I proceeded to smell up close and personal each coffee bean that was availible there.  To my surprise out of eight I only liked two.   Vanilla and A Hazelnut blend.   I've never been a picky person, up until now.   My guess is that it happens when you find the one flavorful good thing that just changes your world.   I don't know what it was for me.  I know it was just things that I would not eat. Those things that did not smell quite good.   

It has everything to do with your senses.   Not too long ago I read a book called "The Shack"   It was very good.  A friend in Bible college recommended it.  He said it made him look closer at the things in christianity that we take for granted.  The biggest thing I got out of it was creation.   By creation I mean full force creation starting at your senses.   

I am a preschool teacher at our church.   Just recently we finished a section on God created me. My favorite lesson was the one about senses.   We played with it all, touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste.   We felt ridges on rocks and the smooth underside of a leaf we used sound to recognize the voices of our friends and smell to sniff candles and scents.   And taste....well, taste was snack time and I can't be sure if the children actually tasted their food as it skipped their tongue to plop into their hungry bellies. 

Taste is my favorite sense. Taste is the pinnacle of all the other senses because it involves the other senses.   You smell it and touch it( Especially if it's spaghetti!) You see it  and if your momma cooked it, you hear it crackling and spiffing on the stove.   Then finally, lastly, comes the taste.  It's a culmination of all the other senses.   Try eating food when your nose is stuffed. Everything is bland and lacks color so to speak.   There was one week that I became very sick in college.  My mother came up to see me.  She also brought a whole chicken and broth and vegetables to make chicken soup.   My nose was stuffed and I had that sickly feeling in the back of my throat.  So eating the chicken soup was not the best experience.  I was grateful for Mother's love and kindness but I just could not bring myself to eat it. It stayed in my fridge for the next month until I finally tossed with the garbage.  I won't eat chicken soup now, all because I was sick when I ate it and all I can remember is that sickly feeling in the back of my throat.   Mother's cooking is great, there's flavor and balance and it's just wonderful, even her chickens soup.  But I can't eat it.

 In the shack, the author portrayed the Holy Spirit as a seemingly sporadic happy being that loved to grow her garden in fractals.  A fractal is a complex design that makes no sense at all but stepping back it makes perfect sense.  Chris told me that I am, act like and would love fractals.  I agreed with him. The book led me to think that God's creation is a fractal...I mean do yo know how messy the rainforest looks when you're on the ground? All those vines random spots for trees, even our forest here.   Oh, and the ultimate example ... us.   Women seem to be notorious for being a fractal.  Men are just as fractal as we women are.   And it's beautiful.   Senses are fractal on a small scale.   

 I went to a candle party last weekend. The hostess had a basket of candles on the middle of the floor.  My friends and I smelled each scent at least five times.  It was crazy fun. But all those smells together were overwhelming.  When we left I felt that my nose was intoxicated from so many smells, like it was hyped on caffeine. Each smell was unique and lovely.  Some were down right awkward, but I still loved to smell them.    

God gave us senses to enjoy his world.   Like enjoying a cup of coffee takes at the very least a good 45 minutes ( 30 in the winter) Enjoying God's creation takes one moment of every chance you get. Slow and steady, don't rush by it, don't ignore it, or don't bypass it with an unseeing eye.  Stop and look.  It makes me smile, just like a big hug from the Father himself. There's a reason why God gave us senses.