Forgiveness

Of all images or ikons of Christ, this is my favorite.
Why? It is His look. His eyes say,
‘I know everything about you,
and I love you.’

O God, You show Your power especially by granting pardon.

People recognized Christ because He remitted sin. That was the Good News, the meaning of His advent: ‘Go tell everyone his sins can be forgiven!’ Jesus is essentially ‘the Savior.’ ‘Where there is much sin, there's even more grace’ (Romans 5:20). He came, not to abolish sin, but to forgive it. ‘I've come for sinners,’ He used to say, ‘not for the righteous’ (Luke 5:32).

Those who couldn't tolerate such mercy rejected Him. Mohammedans, for instance, refuse the believe in the divinity of Christ because they can't accept the idea of a God who's so ‘unjust,’ as they see it—who doesn't take vengeance on His enemies but suffers all manner of abuse from them, who lets the wicked do as they please and, instead of pulverizing them, anxiously hopes they'll reconsider returning to Him. ‘There's more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents…’ (Luke 15:7).

If this thought fills us with warmth and gladness, we're close to Christ. If it annoys and vexes us or makes us shrug our shoulders in resignation, that's because we still have none of His spirit. We're deists, perhaps, but certainly not Christians. Many of us are Mohammedans and don't know it.

‘God alone can forgive sins’ (Mark 2:7). Above and beyond its juridical meaning, we must read this statement as a sort of description of God. Only He ‘knows how’ to pardon. We surely don't. According to the old saying, women forgive but never forget. And as for men, they're so self-centered they forget and very rarely take time, thought, or trouble to forgive.

All in all, human forgiveness is a crushing thing, an unpleasant memory we can't shake off. The superiority of those who grant pardon utterly quashes those who receive it. There's forgiveness, but no reassurance, no consolation, no encouragement. God is the only one who can manage all four together. You see, forgiving kindly entails humiliating oneself.

The prodigal's father doesn't want to hear another word about the whole episode. He gives a banquet. That's how God does it too. He alone can make forgiveness something glorious to remember. He is so glad to absolve us that those who have afforded Him that joy feel, not like disagreeable, troublesome pests, but like pampered children, understood and heartened, pleasing and useful to Him, and infinitely better than they thought.

‘O happy fault!’ they could cry. ‘If we weren't sinners and didn't need pardon more than bread, we'd have no way of knowing how deep God's love is.’

I wish these words were mine, but I have only made them mine by trying to live out what they say. The passages above are taken from Fr Louis Evely’s book That Man Is You (1966). I offer them to you, brethren, following the precept,

“Remember who your teachers were…”
2 Timothy 3:14

That is why we are

The personality of the God of the universe? Oh, please! How can we have anything at all to say about Him, except the words that He gives us to describe Himself, in our terms, our languages, our thoughts, at our scale? No less than He reveals Himself to all sentient creatures according to their scale and capacity, He reveals Himself to us. But as to the personality, what He is—for even ‘who’ is too inadequate to grasp Him—that is as far beyond our nature, let alone our thought, as the distance between eternal self-existence and sequenced creatures. Yet, for us He ‘came down from heaven and was made man,’ if we will have it, knowing that this is neither spatial nor directional, this ‘coming down,’ nor is it knowable, what it means to be God and man at the same time. What mode of consciousness rides the back of Eternal and temporal cohabiting the same spirit, soul and body?

Let scientists probe the infinite recesses of His shadow, they will never come at the sight of Him. Let theologians struggle in the desert and the darkness with His angel, they can never capture any part of Him, save His blessing. Yet we make laws in His name, lecture ourselves on His divine energies, and play and dance before Him in worship, who is not in fact tangible to us as we are to each other. When we say He is jealous, or that He is judge, we do not know what we are saying. We have no images, again, but those we have made, blind artists yearning to paint the rainbow, never having experienced its colors. But for us He ‘came down,’ and, turning the whole universe inside out, balanced His infinite against our finite, exchanging with us What He is for what we are, never mind who. The God of the universe has only One personality, like us, and only One will, and that is love. And that is why we are.

The Message…

…nobody wants to hear. No, we simply can’t bear it. Things simply can’t be that bad. God really can’t care about things like that. He’s making it all up. Why does he have to keep raving like he does? Lock him up! Shut him up where we don’t have to hear his raving! Deep, down deep! Let him rant at the stones in the dungeon, yes, in the dark dungeon! What? What did you say? You actually think he’s right? Is that why you won’t let me have him killed? You know we’re living in sin? You really believe that? Is that why you’re always going to listen to his raving at the grate? Is that why you insist on keeping him here?

Herod Antipas kept the prophet and forerunner John the Baptist imprisoned in his dungeon and would not kill him, despite his wife Herodias’ displeasure. Herodias had left her husband, who was Herod Antipas’ brother, to marry him. This was a social climbing marriage for Herodias, kicking her status up another notch in the politics of that day. She wanted to keep up appearances and insisted that John be done away with, since he was defaming her new marriage. She wanted the people to see her and Herod Antipas as Torah-observant Jews who followed the commandments, well, at least the important ones. What did a little history of adultery matter?

So what, if they really were living in sin. They were having a good time, weren’t they? They were successful, they had lots of friends, important and influential ones. They were in the flow of things, they were going the way the world was going. Soon it would all be theirs. But there was that noise again! That persistent, stinging invective, those flaming words, “Did you not know, have you not heard? Was it not told you from the beginning? Have you not understood…” Why couldn’t that voice be silenced? But their party must go on, their celebration of the king’s birthday must go on, something or somebody must silence that voice!

Herod arose from his drunken stupor, casting aside his cup, but he was helpless, a man who couldn’t go forward or back. As a “good” Jew he knew what was right, what Torah required of him as a king and as a man, but he couldn’t do it. He was trapped by his own ambitions, by his own lusts. The world had made him its slave, while he pretended, while he went through the motions of being a king. Ah, but where a man can’t be depended on to do a man’s job, a woman will always step forward. Herodias knew exactly what to do. “Music! Music!” she called out with an allusive smile and a broad sweep of her commanding, graceful arm. The music was jacked up and for a moment they thought they couldn’t hear the Word coming up at them through the pavement, echoing along the walls. They and their guests splashed wine down each others gullets. More and more, soon to drown out that voice with its dreaded Message.

So it is with the world. When it can’t bear to hear the Message any longer, it cranks up the music, adds more lighting, wears fancier clothes and better perfumes, it wigs up and makes a bigger pitch for the audience’s attentions, promising ever greater rewards, if only that voice would stop raving, if only that Message would go away and stop spoiling the fun…

Who now are the big players on stage?
Who are the actors? Who has written today's script? Who has the Message and who is proclaiming it, and who is pretending to be Torah-observant so they can continue reigning on earth? It doesn’t matter that it’s not the real Torah but only a replica, only a man-made concoction of the latest platitudes and politically correct mantras. Add more wine to the party, add more inebriants, more medication, let the death-dealers come in too, there’s nothing wrong with bringing a little bit of hard, cold reality into the party, and death on demand would be a perfect ending to a perfect life, for some people.

Brethren, the time is close, very close now. Yet we do not proclaim the salvation of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. We play juggler with His words, we pantomime Him ceremoniously, we make converts to ethnic festivals, we educate with museums, make our people culturally aware. The Message? What’s that? Oh, is that what you’re talking about? Nobody wants to hear stuff like that. It spoils the fun we’re having. ‘I don’t think we should have dogs in our church!’ as a woman was heard to bark at someone who was actually witnessing for Christ at the Festival last October. We want the world to see that we’re observant like they are, that we’re educated, not like those others who keep raving about some Message or other.

Not only the Gadarenes, once having heard and seen what Jesus does, have implored Him to leave their neighborhood, or their world.

Wisdom in abundance

Here is a testimony with many applications, written by the servant of God, Christian pastor Zac Poonen, of Christian Fellowship Church, Bangalore, India.

Avoiding Hasty Actions

by Zac Poonen

In 2 Samuel 6, we see how even good intentions cannot save us from missing God’s will, if we are not exact with God’s Word. David was taking the ark back to Jerusalem - which was a good thing. But he didn’t do it the way God had commanded in the Law. God had commanded the Levites to carry the ark on their shoulders; but David modified that command and placed the ark on a cart and let the oxen pull the cart. There he was imitating the Philistines who had adopted that method a few years earlier (1 Samuel 6:8-12).

There are Christian leaders doing the same thing today. They run their churches according to the management techniques of worldly businesses rather than according to the teachings of God’s Word.

As the oxen carried the ark, they stumbled. When Uzzah saw that, he reached out his hand and held the ark to prevent it from falling. And God killed Uzzah, immediately, “for his irreverence” (v.7). It is sad, but true, that when God’s shepherds make a mistake, the sheep suffer too. David had made a mistake and Uzzah suffered for it. And David learnt there that God is very strict with His servants. Uzzah had the best of intentions. Yet “the anger of the Lord burned against Uzzah” (v.7). Uzzah had been taught from childhood that only the Levites could touch the ark; but he took God’s commandment lightly in that moment and suffered for it.

The error of Uzzah can be repeated today. When we see things going wrong in our church, we can reach out our hands “to steady God’s ark”; and God may smite us, because even though our intentions may have been good, we went outside our “boundaries”. We may have done what our reason told us was right; but we did not wait on the Lord to find out His will. We acted in haste.

Jesus said, “I will build my Church” (Matthew16:18). Building the church is the Lord’s business, not ours. He has never delegated that task to any of us. So when we say, “I am building the church in such-and-such a place”, that is arrogant conceit. If ever we begin to think that the Body of Christ is our own private business, we will certainly make the mistake that Uzzah made, one day or the other. If we see the church shaking, let us go to God and tell Him, “Lord, YOU are building the church, not me. Preserve Your church.” And when we feel that things are not going as they should, let us ask ourselves whose work it is and who is in charge of it. Is it the Holy Spirit or we? At times, we may feel that something has to be done immediately. But if we act without listening to the Holy Spirit, we will always act in the flesh. And our actions, even if done with good intentions, will cause more confusion than if we had done nothing. So we must say, “Lord, You are in charge here. The government is on Your shoulders. And I want to listen to You. Tell me what YOU want me to do.”

There are many types of fools described in the book of Proverbs. But finally, the greatest fool of all is described thus, “Do you see a man who is hasty in his words (or his matters)? There is more hope for a fool than for him” (Proverbs 29:20).

The one who is hasty - hasty to say something or to do something - feels absolutely confident that he knows what is best for any situation. He doesn’t have to consult God at all. He can act on his own. Such a man is the greatest fool in the world.

It was prophesied about Jesus that, “He will delight in the fear of the Lord and He will not judge by what His eyes see or His ears hear” (Isaiah 11:3). Jesus could not avoid seeing many things because His eyes were not blind. Neither could He avoid hearing many things because He was not deaf. But He feared His Father so much that He would never make a judgment or form an opinion merely on the basis of what He saw or heard. As He once said of Himself, “The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father doing” (John 5:19).

When the Pharisees came to Jesus with the woman caught in adultery, Jesus did not reply to their question for some time. He was waiting to hear from His Father. When He heard, He spoke. It was just one sentence: “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7). That accomplished more than an hour-long sermon would have done!

When someone comes to us with a complicated problem, if we give him advice based on our cleverness and our past experience, the problem may only become more complicated. But one word of wisdom from the Father can work wonders.

And so, the next time we see “the oxen stumbling and the ark about to fall”, let us not be eager to put our names at the top of the list of fools!! Let us not be quick to judge by what our eyes see and what our ears hear, and act in irreverence. Instead, let us put our faces in the dust before the Lord and say, “Lord, I lack wisdom here. What do You want me to do?”

It is so difficult to acknowledge that we lack wisdom, especially when we know that the others in the church are younger and more immature than us. But if we humbly acknowledge our need, God will give us wisdom in abundance.

Fasting

Fasting is never a form of self-punishment.
Fasting is never a way to build our heavenly bank account.
Fasting is an act of worship, 
giving back what we always knew never really belonged to us, 
so that God can bestow on us
something greater—Himself.
Fasting is an act of hospitality, 
cleaning out, 
emptying some organ or attribute of us, 
so that God can have more room during His visit.
Fasting is always a deliberate spending—even wasting—of our lives
on the slim chance that we might buy the world for God.
Fasting is always an act of abandonment—even of desertion—
of what we thought or have been told 
was our post or position in life,
in the hope that we will be proven wrong after all,
and find that God alone was right.
Fasting has little to do with food, 
but we do sometimes forget to eat 
while we're doing it.

Into the depths

The Incarnation is a deep mine that is very dark but is never exhausted of rich treasure. Let us bow our heads at the humble entrance of that cave, and then follow shepherds and kings as they seek the bright Daystar where men think it unlikely to be found. Let us plunge into that darkness, into the depths, as did long-suffering Job, that with him we may behold the One he beheld, saying,
‘I know that my Redeemer lives.’

Easier said than done

The Nativity Fast, observed from the 15th of November through the night of the 24th of December, is the last of the four fasts of Holy Church, and probably the hardest to faithfully keep. Why? It shouldn't be. The rules are very relaxed. On the Greek calendar hanging on my kitchen wall the fish symbol (fish permitted) occurs on at least half the days, and the grape symbol (wine and olive oil permitted) on perhaps another quarter more, the rest being marked with a cross (strict fast). But it is hard to keep. We do not live in an Orthodox world, even if some of us live in a 'Christian' one. Wherever we find ourselves, except within the walls of a monastery, there will be tugs to join the party. Which party? The ongoing Christmas and End of Year festivities. Family, friends, co-workers, business associates, school mates. Everyone is celebrating. How does one get out of that without offending someone? And who's going to be offended if we don't keep the fast?

In America, we have an additional problem, unless we're on the 'old calendar.' The greatest American family holiday (yes, even holy day), Thanksgiving, also known as 'turkey day,' falls near the beginning of the Nativity Fast. And what's on the menu? Turkey, turkey, and more turkey. This is the holiday when America outdoes itself in the eating category. Unless you celebrate it nearly alone and with an 'out of the box' turkey roast, you will have lots of leftovers. That is intentional. That way you and the family can have enough for turkey sandwiches for almost a week after the Thursday of the feast. What to do with all that meat, my Orthodox brethren? Isn't it bad enough we broke the fast to celebrate the holiday, but now we have all these leftovers? Well, years ago my spiritual father told me, 'Just keep eating it till it's all gone, and then resume the fast.' 'Even on the Friday?' I asked. 'Even on the Friday,' he replied. That's ikonomía for you!

Back to the problem, the pre-celebration of Christmas (or of the winter solstice, or of the year's end, if you're in a very secular context) will always preempt the keeping of the Nativity Fast, sometimes even in 'Orthodox' countries. To keep the fast we will have to duck out of sight when hands are being raised as to 'who's coming to the party?' and we'll have to keep close watch on our cell phones to see who's calling—it might be another invitation. The alternative is to just graciously give in. That's what I usually do, although thankfully, I am a social recluse as a matter of fact, and people rarely ask me out, even to lunch. Through all this dissipating activity, who's to blame if we don't keep the fast? We will give it a half-hearted try, and be relieved when it's all over after attending the Nativity evening liturgy. Then we can eat all those same foods again that we just stuffed ourselves with the preceding nearly forty days. Ever wonder why we miss the feeling of ending this Fast?

The reality can be quite different than what I have described. The Nativity Fast, just like the other three seasonal fasts, doesn't have to focus on food. In fact, it shouldn't. We're reminded by Holy Church that we should not fast from food if we are not praying and giving alms, that is, helping the poor. 'What poor?' There we go again, trying to let ourselves off the hook. 'Don't I pray enough already?' Well, the Church offers more services than usual during the four fasts to give us more opportunities to pray together. 'Well, I just like to pray at home, alone, as I always do.' 'That's okay too. Just do it!' as my spiritual father used to say. All of this boils down to a case of 'reality versus unreality,' exactly the kind of mental conflict we all like to avoid. When we see it coming, we tell ourselves to just 'turn up the music,' so we can forget that this least of all moral issues is pressing us. What moral issues? Well, if nothing else, the Nativity Fast reminds us of the moral issue of the sacrifice of the unborn.

In fact, everything we do hinges on moral issues, whether we are aware of this or not. We go through life thinking we are making choices based on what we believe are good reasons, often without ever realising that the correct choices have already been made. Already made? You mean, there's no such thing as free will, free choice? Well, yes and no. We do have free will, but what we do with it when we ignore pre-existing morality, the 'real right and wrong' as C. S. Lewis puts it, is usually a disaster, even when we are personally untouched by the result (at least we feel we're untouched—it wasn't my baby!). It is, in fact, choice that defines all personal beings from the higher animals, through humans, up to the bodyless powers (the angels). So we have a choice, from finding a mate, to buying a house or car, to voting for a candidate, to cheating on our taxes, our spouses, or our God. Yes, it all comes down to choice. What will I do with the Fast this Christmas?

See also Guidelines for the Nativity Fast

Beauty

‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’
— John Keats (1795–1821), Ode on a Grecian Urn

Early one morning I was at the market purchasing some medicine and a couple of items of grocery. As I was walking past the refrigerated displays, I approached a woman who was making a careful selection of a carton of eggs. Her back was to me, and she was rather tall, but she looked very familiar somehow.

A feeling of my childhood came over me and then quickly yielded to speculative thought. It was very cold that day. Even though it was still November, an autumn month, the air was very chilly that week. In fact, that's probably why I started to feel sick the afternoon of the day before, catching a chill sitting at my desk at work. The office was very cold.

The woman was dressed in a simple but elegant long coat with luxurious fur collar, something that seemed a little out of place.

Her head was covered by a white scarf with subtle raised patterns on it. The way the head scarf was arranged over her head, combined with the long coat, and underneath a long skirt, summoned feelings I hadn't had since a young boy.

That's exactly how my grandmother dressed, my sophisticated Warsaw busia, who would never go out unless she was sure of being properly attired and head covered, but not with any old babuszka on her head, rather, something elegant like this woman's head covering. I could tell from her height and her confident stance, even from behind, she was no grandmother.

As I passed her, I very quickly and shyly looked at the face peering out of the white silken head scarf. Ah, just as I thought! An African woman. I looked hurriedly away so as not to make her uncomfortable. The speculation that my mind played with as I came up behind her, that she might be an Eastern European Orthodox woman, quickly dissipated.

One part of me fully expected to see a Polish or Russian face with rosy cheeks peering from under that headscarf, but another part of me wasn't surprised that it was probably an Ethiopian or even a Somali woman, though neither of them should have been dressed quite that way. The Somali women especially are too colorful, and their head coverings are Islamic.

This woman wore her clothing and scarf like a European woman. I'm still at a loss to decide what her ethnicity was, but she was definitely an African, and though I did not look at her facial features long enough to visualise them, I knew she was a beautiful woman. Her beauty radiated from her feminine heart, expressed in her choice of clothes, and her womanly confidence.

I haven't seen such women in a long time.

I grew up in inner city Chicago in the 1950's and early 60's. My mother wouldn't dream of leaving the house without something on her head. This wasn't just something to wear to church. No, every journey outside the home, her head was covered. My mother was very modern, though, and I knew by her style, she would do everything differently.

My older sister, five years my senior, reluctantly covered her head too when she went out, from about the age of 8 to her high school years. She would wear the head scarf, but once she passed the first house on the opposite side of the street, I think she often took it off and put it away in her purse. I did the same with my spectacles, because I was ashamed of being ‘four eyes.’

I remember, in my 7th and 8th grade class, most of the girls still tied at least a skimpy little scarf over their bouffant hair styles, and it made them look almost comical. They were all very pretty, and it seemed to me a bit ridiculous that they'd cover their heads like that. We were almost all second generation children of Polish, Ukrainian, Slovak, Greek and Italian immigrants.

We moved away suddenly as I entered high school to a new, suburban village where everyone was a transplant from somewhere else. Everyone had to form new relationships and evolve new customs and ways of dressing. I almost never saw girls or women with covered heads in that town, or anytime after that. Femininity would learn to express itself in a different way.

A lot of thoughts like these passed through my mind as I walked past the woman selecting eggs. The mystique of woman, something totally absent in today's society, was located in her. I could feel that too, and ‘I was awed by the beauty’ of it. Again, quickly, images of the Theotokos and all the women saints in the ikons, surrounding Christ the true Man, held me.

‘What have we lost?’ was answered with ‘What we have lost!’ in my rational mind, as I realised that I had just experienced a glimpse of a lost world, the world of my childhood, where men and women knew who they were, were confident enough in it that they could be different, where the secret doctrine of ‘man builds the outer world, woman nurtures the inner’ was still happening.

Strains of Chopin's Nocturne #2 in E-flat major drift through my head, as I remember that lost world. The autumn sun filtering in through the lace curtains in Busia's sitting room, as I sat quietly with her while she taught me to embroider. Embroider? Yes, for Poles it is not an art for women only. Perhaps my older sister was too rambunctious, but I could sit still.

Women's things were for women, and men's for men. Busia never went down to Grampa's workshop where he handcrafted small items of carved furniture. She let him be, and he returned the favor. There she was, all afternoon, tending the roses and vegetables in her half-lot garden, while he sat on a wooden stool talking man things with my other grandpa.

Beyond all argument in words, wisdom is proved by living, and living by the Word of God.

Counterfeit of love

War is sweet when brothers stick together,
and bitter, when every man is for himself.

Faith is fake when men manipulate the scripture,
but when they let it form them, firmly fruitful.

This is the proof of scriptures.
What book, when men obey it, brings grace and peace,
but hate and war when they surrender to it all?
Yet either, only worshiped, slips men’s souls.

Beauty, and the body, incite to love
that enters by the eyes and departs the same,
that is no love, but feeling and self pleasing.

Love, and the soul, incite to beauty,
that enters by the heart and does not gray,
that keeps its youth and knows no age.

Lost to pleasure only, enslaved by need,
devouring flesh, burnt up in the fire of passion,
the memory infected yields life for death.

Counterfeit of love, it blinds its victims,
making dark seem bright,
but love, it dies as it is seeded,
and rises to be harvested as light.

— Romanós

Trisaghion

Αγιος ο Θεός, Αγιος Ισχυρός, Αγιος Αθάνατος, ελέησον ημάς.
Aghios o Theós, Aghios Is’chyrós, Aghios Athánatos, eléïson imás.
Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us!

One only is Holy, but He is God, He is Mighty, and He is Deathless. Not three Holies, but One, we know Him as God the Father, as His Mighty Son, and as His Deathless Holy Spirit. Even in this most ancient of all prayer cries, the undivided Triad is manifest. The undivided Trinity, as believed in and lived in the Holy Church for, yes, we do not presume to know the how, but the Who, of God.

We know that God is One. This is no secret even to the polytheist if he is a thinking man. Humankind did not evolve an idea of One God by gradually adding spirit to spirit, god to god, by a sort of mathematical reduction. If anyone has arrived at the idea of such a ‘one god’ in this fashion, that ‘god’ is certainly not the God of the Bible, not the God of Jesus Christ.

No, for the only God that is, the self-existing Divine Nature, revealed through His manifold works, the material universe and seen by the mind of rational men, was at the beginning with man, just as the Bible tells in the story of Adam and Eve and the original paradise. ‘The man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day…’ (Genesis 3:8).

It was the devil’s envy that brought death into the world, as well as the worship of many gods. Man devolved from relational monotheism to religious polytheism. Religion in the Garden of Eden? Hardly! What would be the need? There God walked with man and spoke to us face to face. Religion only came upon our race as sickness comes, a sickness called sin that brings death.

Human beings the world over have always believed in the immortality of the soul, but this is an unfounded belief. It is more of a hope, and a vain hope, as there is no proof in nature of our personal survival of death. ‘Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?’ (Ecclesiastes 3:21). We find ancient graves well-stocked for living somewhere.

Almost all religions believe something like this: ‘The soul of man is immortal and cannot die.’ This is what you find among Hindus, for example, who believe what is taught by their god Krishna, ‘That which pervades the entire body you should know to be indestructible. No one is able to destroy that imperishable soul’ (Bhagavad Gita 2:17). For them, the ‘imperishable soul’ lives on through reincarnation.

For others, especially in East Asia, the souls of their ancestors are alive ‘somewhere’ and must be appeased, cared for, and helped. This is the most prevalent belief of most of humanity. In the three ‘Abrahamic’ faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, this belief takes on added content: the good ‘go to heaven’ at death, the bad ‘go to hell.’ This is, of course, at the level of popular religion.

As C. S. Lewis has written, ‘To believe in the popular religion of modern England is retrogression — like believing the earth is flat’ (Mere Christianity, Book 4, Chapter 1), and the same is true of the popular religion of the biblically illiterate everywhere. For many people, it’s just not worth the time and effort to learn and understand the truths of faith, what man is, who God is, and how He deals with us.

The soul of man, despite our wishful thinking, our pious hopes, and our individual speculations, is not immortal by nature. Only One is Immortal, just as only One is God, and only One is Mighty. Having been originally made in His image, our first parents shared in the Divine Nature, in Might, and in Immortality, but by their rebellion, the image of God in them and us was broken.

We are born into a fallen world, disfigured, that is, dis-imaged, damaged, and what would have been an immortal soul in us, is immortal no longer, by nature.

We live and move and have our being only in God, only by His grace, only by His gift, only by His remembrance of us. Why else do we find in the psalms the petition to ‘remember us’, why else did the thief say to Christ, ‘remember me’?

We are living souls only by the good will of our Creator, who remembers us in life and in death. The soul of man, as it turns out, is immortal after all, but not by nature. Our lives are in His hands. Whether we are alive in the body or gone to ‘be with the Lord’, it is all by His will, by His mercy. How totally we are dependent on Him for everything! Knowing He loves us removes the fear of death.

When we pray the Trisagion, ‘Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us!’ how true this prayer is, how wonderful that it has been revealed to us! We can depend on God, in fact He expects us to depend on Him, for everything, especially for our earthly life, and for the immortality that only He can grant us. There is so much more I would say if I could, but all I can say is, Thank You, Lord.

Death by stoning

I have read the five books of Moses cover to cover many times. It was by reading them in the Jerusalem Bible that it was impressed on me that God is very definitely a person, that He has a will, and that He has a very distinct idea of what is right and what is wrong. He expects us to agree with Him. How He deals with us when we don’t agree, and when we do things our way, seems to change over time. This, however, I think is an illusion. I don’t think God changes, but our perceptions of Him, and how we interpret what happens to us, changes. This can’t be helped. He humbled Himself from the beginning in His dealings with us, taking up our limited understanding and still speaking to us through it. Eventually and inevitably, He ‘bent the heavens and came down’ not by setting the mountains and sky on fire, but in utter humility flowing His divine nature into our human one by becoming one of us. Meanwhile, there are still people who don’t quite get it when they hear Him say, ‘If you have seen me, you have seen the father.’

One thing I’ve noticed in my reading is how severe the punishments were for offenses committed while the people of Israel were wandering in the desert. No less than ten offenses earned the punishment of death by stoning: Touching Mount Sinai while God was giving Moses the Ten Commandments (Exodus 19:13); an ox that gores someone to death should be stoned (Exodus 21:28); breaking the Sabbath (Numbers 15:32-36); giving one’s seed (presumably one’s offspring) to Molech (Leviticus 20:2-5); having a familiar spirit (or being a necromancer) or being a wizard (Lev. 20:27); cursing God (Leviticus 24:10-16); engaging in idolatry (Deuteronomy 17:2-7), or seducing others to do so (Deuteronomy 13:7-12); rebellion against parents (Deuteronomy 21,21); getting married as though a virgin, when not a virgin (Deuteronomy 22:13-21); sexual intercourse between a man and a woman engaged to another man (both should be stoned, Deuteronomy 22:23-24).

The foregoing are just those offenses whose punishment was explicitly defined as death by stoning. There were a great many others for which the punishment was just ‘death,’ without specifying how the condemned were to die. Later, the rabbis finished the work of defining exactly what was to take place in the cases of capital punishment. The strange thing is, however, that there are very few mentions of such punishments being actually inflicted. There are three cases in the Bible in which a person was legally stoned to death as a punishment, and there are also five or six cases where someone was stoned by a mob, not in a legal fashion. A detailed case of stoning occurs in Joshua 7:24-26 when a man named Achan (עכן) was found to have kept loot from Jericho, a conquered Canaanite city, in his tent.

The time of Israel’s migration to the Promised Land was when Torah was given. At this time, there was no such thing as Judaism or Jews, only the Hebrew people, whom the living God, Yahweh, had chosen as His special possession. Not just Torah, but particularly these laws of punishment, were given and followed during that stage in the process when God was fashioning Israel into His unique people, using a sort of shock treatment to winnow and purify them, because He knew that over time they would eventually stray and devolve back into living like the other nations. So there had to be a very severe beginning to ensure that at least a faithful remnant would still exist on earth at the appointed time, through whom would be born the Ransom for the sins of the nations—Jesus the Messiah, the Word of God in human form.

Even though the laws of punishment, such as death by stoning, were still ‘on the books,’ by the time Judaism emerged as the religion of the Jews (as the people of Israel came to be known after the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom), the legal infliction of these punishments was rare. Doubts in Jewish society about the morality of capital punishment in general and stoning in particular were growing. For example, according to Rabbi Shimon ben Gamaliel in the time when the religious courts had authority over capital punishment, a court that executed more than 1 person in 70 years was considered a ‘bloody court.’ The incident recorded in the Gospel (John 7:53-8:11) of the woman caught in adultery has to have been an instance of illegal infliction of the penalty of death by stoning, which was still probably rather common in the time of Jesus, at a grass roots level. So also would have been the stoning of the first Christian martyr, the deacon Stephen. Remember, even the Jewish authorities could not legally execute Jesus for committing what to them was blasphemy. ‘We have no law to put a man to death’ (John 18:31).

Modern-day Judaism is almost unanimous in rejecting the severe punishments found in the Torah, though with various explanations and justifications. Perhaps there are some Jews who today would revive these ancient punishments, but they are in the minority. Again, these punishments were ordered by the living God for a specific purpose, to fashion Israel His people. They were never intended for the nations, as can be seen if one studies the Talmud, where it states that they apply only to the people of Israel. Seeing that even for themselves their purpose has been achieved, Jews of today do not apply the severe penalties found in Torah.


From a Christian viewpoint, the death of Jesus Christ put an end not only to the laws of sacrifice in the Jewish Temple, but also to the whole body of Jewish laws. Again, the account of the woman caught in adultery cited above is an example of where Jesus was heading, along with His famous sayings, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath’ (Mark 2:27) and, ‘The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath’ (Luke 6:5). Some would see this as religious evolution, others as the plan of salvation of the living God, whose purposes are not revealed to man all at once, but only as He wills, who Himself is changeless, though we learn more of Him as we encounter Him again and again.

What of death by stoning in today’s world? Perhaps there will always be instances of such punishments inflicted illegally by irrational mobs anywhere in the world where memory of such cruelty survives, but surely no civilized nation on earth would sanction it or enshrine it in its legal system. Think again. That which is called ‘the third great monotheistic religion’ has such punishments enshrined not only in the legal systems where it holds sway, but in its very scriptures. This religion, claiming to be the last and greatest revelation of God to man, supplanting not only Christianity but Judaism as well, holds up and holds to a penal code more severe than even that of the ancient Hebrews.

The living God, the Only God there is, crafted them He chose as His own hereditary people and shaped and formed them by means of these severe statutes, in order to chasten, purify, strengthen and preserve them, who were also going to be the mother and brothers of His Son, the Saviour Jesus Christ. There is only one Israel the heir to the promises, and only one Christ, who come of the seed of Abraham through Isaac. Yet another came claiming to be a prophet, who reversed the story, seized the promise given to Isaac and laid it on Ishmael, taking for his own tribe the rôle of God’s hereditary people, and imitating the rigor and severity of the ancient laws.

If inflicting the penalty of death by stoning is the sign of the true faith, then we all know which true faith that is, and we should hurry to embrace it. Doubtless, such severe punishments will craft us into a perfectly pure, sinless and moral society as it has crafted many another people before us. It doesn’t matter that we will not be free, because look what freedom, what free will, has bought for us—societies impure, riddled with vice and sin, idolatrous beyond imagining. It would be for our own good, it would be worth it, to submit to the loss of freedom, if it meant an earthly paradise, where everyone would be happy, healthy, safe, at peace. Everyone, of course, except those who disobey the law—the divine law that comes from the prophet and his followers—everyone who deserves to die.

Yes, for them, death by stoning is really no less than their just reward from ‘God, the compassionate, the merciful, owner of the Day of Judgment.’

Ah, but what if the real God shows up?

It can only happen

It can only happen, when you give up all.
It can only start, when you have sold all your possessions.
No, not your house, your car, your job, your clothes—
though if you want to leave these to others, you may—
but possessions kept so close, held onto so tightly
that no one but you sometimes even knows they are there.

The ownership of privacy is the root of all evil,
though the love of money can take second place,
but both stop the sun from rising on your neighbor’s field.
To wish for ourselves a happiness that excludes all others,
to hedge about our garden to keep out all comers,
this pride of privacy hides the truth, and mocks the life.

Not only world rulers despoil and defraud the poor,
but meek shepherds lolling in the sheepfolds smiling lies
hoard for themselves not money only, but stranded souls.
Not only vineyard laborers beat and blaspheme the past,
but presently murder the Owner’s sons and daughters,
with stone arrows shot from behind their lookout towers.

It can only happen, when you walk away shaken.
All your pockets emptied, your feet unshod, hands staffless,
heart moved like mountain cast into churning sea,
driven out by the darkness that enfolded you in your tomb,
blasted open with the dynamite of unexpected light,
when you walk away shaken, your eyes and ears, opened.

When you have sold all your possessions, return and follow Me.
No point in questioning until you want to hear the answer.
Playing a game of rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief,
preventing others, by your privacy, from entering in,
stopping all at the gate, demanding what cannot be given,
only your door have you locked and barred and sealed by unbelief.

— Romanós

Building on the rock

‘God who becomes one of us precisely to put religion to death...’ [Waiting is]

You know, I feel the idea, but can’t grasp it logically, put it into words. For myself, and more, for sharing/witnessing for others when the time comes. Can you describe the difference between the religion of Christianity and what Christ actually created and wanted us to be? Again, I feel it, but can't formulate my thoughts, put it into words.

It is perhaps too simple to be put into words.

Religion is an attitude of fear of God (not awe, but real fear) coupled with an anxiety to propitiate Him, to buy Him off, so that we can have time to ourselves, so that we can think our thoughts when we’re on our time. We hope He will be satisfied with the moments we give Him, but we’re never sure, and so we stress over it in various ways.

Another kind of religion begins as I have described, but eventually devolves into a pious fraud, when we find out (or think that we’ve found out) that God, if He really is there, couldn’t care less about us and what we do, but we continue going through the motions for a variety of reasons, some of them still related to a kind of anxiety, only this time, fear lest we be thought irreverent by others.

Both of these kinds of religion, as I have written elsewhere, ‘end at the feet of Christ.’

How Christ intends us to be, or rather, what He calls us into, is above all else a close, personal relationship with Himself, mediated through the events and thoughts with which He fills our lives.

Of course we don’t see Him physically, but we can read His acts and His words both in His little book, the Bible, and His big book, the world around us. When we understand this, and then begin to do and say the same things we see Him doing and hear Him saying, we are ‘building on the rock’ not on sand, lives that are infused with paradise even now, both in ourselves and in those around us.

Like the apostles, we no longer think we can earn heaven or salvation as did the righteous among the Jews. That was the basis of their religion.

Instead, learning to live in close friendship and discipleship with Jesus our Lord, Master, Savior and God, and following Him, we begin to get used to heaven, we start forming the kind of spiritual lungs to breathe the air of paradise, and the musculature to climb the mountains of God. Yes, we begin to get used to heaven by imitating it here, by living the life of heaven on earth.

This is so radically different from mere religion and so much better, that we forget all about religion even while we continue to practice it. What we do in church or about it may not look any different from what the religious do and look like, at least within the context of ‘church,’ but not only there, but everywhere we find ourselves, we radiate the gospel, the good news—

Christ risen from the dead,
Christ within us and in our midst,
among us and for us, over, under, around and through us,
Christ the tie that binds us to the Father
and in that binding soothing all our sores
and healing our every sickness.

Ours and, through our witness, everyone else’s, without exception, not limited to or divided from any human being, regardless of what they think or believe or even do. To do as Christ commands, to ‘be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,’ this is no more religion than is Christ’s raising of Lazarus, or His giving sight to the man born blind, or His forgiveness of adulterers and thieves, or His dying tortured, rejected and alone on the Cross.

He tells us, ‘You will do even greater things than I have done, because I am going to the Father.’

These ‘greater things’ He gives us to do—for it is indeed He who gives us them, not we ourselves—cannot possibly be what we see in Christian ‘religion,’ and yet we find that precisely those who have, like Peter and the holy apostles, been given ‘the keys of the Kingdom,’ unlike them do not unlock lives, their own or those of others, but jewel themselves, or bait or threaten others. It’s obvious that they no longer even know what they hold in their hands. The good news is for them ‘a lesson memorised’ and no news at all.

Yes, religion dies at the feet of Christ.
But if you must be religious,
just follow Jesus and do what you see Him doing.
Then you will know for sure
that the veil of the Temple is ripped open,
because you will find yourself following Him
in and out of the Holy of Holies
as He mediates between
God and man.

The Mediator

At the very moment of their call, men find that they have already broken with all the natural ties of life. This is not their own doing, but His who calls them. For Christ has delivered them from immediacy with the world, and brought them into immediacy with Himself. We cannot follow Christ unless we are prepared to accept and affirm that breach as a fait accompli. It is no arbitrary choice on the disciple’s part, but Christ Himself, who compels him thus to break with his past.

We must face up to the truth that the call of Christ does set up a barrier between man and his natural life. But this barrier is no surly contempt for life, no legalistic piety, it is the life which is life indeed, the gospel, the person of Jesus Christ. By virtue of His incarnation He has come between man and his natural life. There can be no turning back, for Christ bars the way.

He stands between us and God, and for that very reason He stands between us and all other men and things. He is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality.

The call of Jesus teaches us that our relation to the world has been built on an illusion. All the time we thought we had enjoyed a direct relationship with men and things. This is what had hindered us from faith and obedience. Now we learn that in the most intimate relationships of life, in our kinship with father and mother, brothers and sisters, in married love, and in our duty to the community, direct relationships are impossible.

Between father and son, husband and wife, the individual and the nation, stands Christ the Mediator, whether they are able to recognize Him or not. We cannot establish direct contact outside ourselves except through Him, through His word, and through our following of Him. To think otherwise is to deceive ourselves.

Wherever a group, be it large or small, prevents us from standing alone before Christ, wherever such a group raises a claim of immediacy it must be hated for the sake of Christ. For every immediacy, whether we realize it or not, means hatred of Christ, and this is especially true where such relationships claim the sanction of Christian principles.

For the Christian the only God-given realities are those he receives from Christ. What is not given us through the incarnate Son is not given us by God.

Anything I cannot thank God for, for the sake of Christ, I may not thank God for at all; to do so would be sin.

The path, too, to the ‘God-given reality’ of my fellow man or woman with whom I have to live leads through Christ, or it is a blind alley. We are separated from one another by an unbridgeable gulf of otherness and strangeness which resists all our attempts to overcome it by means of natural association or emotional or spiritual union. There is no way from one person to another. However loving and sympathetic we try to be, however sound our psychology, however frank and open our behaviour, we cannot penetrate the incognito of the other man, for there are no direct relationships, not even between soul and soul. Christ stands between us, and we can only get in touch with our neighbours through Him. That is why intercession is the most promising way to reach our neighbours, and corporate prayer, offered in the name of Christ, the purest form of fellowship.

This breach with all our immediate relationships is inescapable. It may take the form of an external breach with family or nation; in that case we shall be called upon to bear visibly the reproach of Christ… Or it may be a hidden and a secret breach. But even then we must always be ready to come out into the open.

Though we all have to enter upon discipleship alone, we do not remain alone. If we take Him at His word and dare to become individuals, our reward is the fellowship of the Church. Here is a visible brotherhood to compensate a hundredfold for all we have lost. A hundredfold? Yes, for we now have everything through the Mediator, but with this proviso—‘with persecutions’. A hundredfold with persecutions—such is the grace which is granted to the Church which follows its Lord beneath the cross.

And they were in the way, going up to Jerusalem; and Jesus was going before them: and they were amazed; and they that followed were afraid. And He took again the Twelve, and began to tell them the things that were to happen to Him. (Mark 10:32)

As if to bring home to them how serious was his call, to show them how impossible it was to follow in their own strength, and to emphasize that adherence to Him means persecutions, Jesus goes on before to Jerusalem and to the cross, and they are filled with fear and amazement at the road He calls them to follow.

—from the fifth chapter of martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book
The Cost of Discipleship

Struggle

Although one falls, he does not forget the love of his Father;
and although he is loaded with trespasses of every kind,
his zeal for the service of good is not held back,
nor does he desist from his course,
nor abhor to stand in struggle against these things anew
and with the same chance of being vanquished,
nor cease from demolishing every day his building
and beginning a new foundation.

And the word of the Prophet is in his mouth:
‘Till the hour of my departure from this world,
rejoice not against me, O mine enemy;
when I fall, I shall rise;
when I sit in the darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.’
(Micah 7:9)

And he will not cease to struggle until his death.

— Isaac of Syria

How precious, God, Your love!

Psalms for the 7th Day
35 36 37

Psalm 36:5-9
…Your love, Yahweh,
reaches to the heavens,
Your faithfulness to the clouds;
Your righteousness is like
the mountains of God,
Your judgments like the mighty deep.

Yahweh, protector of man and beast,
how precious, God, Your love!
Hence the sons of men
take shelter in the shadow of Your wings.

They feast on the bounty of Your house,
You give them drink from Your river of pleasure;
yes, with You is the fountain of life,
by Your light we see the light.
Do not stop loving those who know You…

…óti pará Si pighí zo’ís,
en tó photí Sou opsómetha phós…
paráteinon to eleós Sou
tis ghinóskousi Se…

Born blind

We are born blind, we never had eyes, we have never seen light, nor known it, nor experienced it, we have no idea even of what it is, just what others have told us. But did they have eyes? Were they born with sight? Or do they speak of what they imagine but never see?

This is how it is, for us, for every human being who has ever walked the earth, but One. We are born blind. We hear the world around us, but cannot see it. We know it’s there, we bump into it, sometimes hurting ourselves, until we learn how to navigate through the darkness.

Darkness? Our world doesn’t look dark to us. It’s light, it’s beautiful, there’s so much in it to see and experience. Yes, but all that you say we are seeing, all of it, my brothers, is dark and featureless, as shallow yet as deep as a starless night, and yet you say you see.

Let me, one blind man who does not see but feels, tell you that as wonderful as it would be for a man born blind to be granted the faculty of sight, that is how wonderful, and even more, it will be when we who have been born blind and see only this world are granted to really see.

To really see, when we have received our sight, we cannot remember anymore that seamless darkness that was what we thought the world to be. We will be able to close our eyes for a moment—only the demons are eyelidless—and see the world we left behind.

And just as we close our eyes to better pray, so there will we close our eyes for our brothers who live yet in that world born blind, which never since it sold them had eyes nor sighted birth, as we intercede without ceasing for those who await with longing to receive their sight.

And open them again, to receive Him who was always everywhere present, filling all things, the Lord and Creator of Life, to receive Him into our hungry eyes, to become what we behold, finally, finally, after waiting for what seemed for ever, waiting only to be fulfilled, to see only Him.

One

As I was reading the beginning of the letter of James the brother of God, I was touched by the tender care and intimate way of speaking that the apostle employs in writing his letter, and to people whom he didn’t even know face to face—to the twelve tribes of the diáspora—and even to us.

And I thought of how this letter, along with the others, is called the Word of God, is made to be the very words of God to us, even though in its language it is just the words of men. Yet we call the epistles, the writings of the apostles, the Word of God, scripture no less than the Gospels or the Tanakh.

It seems to me that even the holy and divine Scriptures demonstrate the One God who in Holy Triad loves as three, though He is One. The Tanakh, that is, the Old Testament, seems to be the message of the Heavenly Father, who speaks to us Himself, as His holy prophets fade into nothing as they speak.

The Gospels seem to be the message of the Only-Begotten Son who is also the Word of God, which He brought into our midst not by any writing of His own, but by His being: Now the Father whom no man has seen or can ever see becomes visible in the Son, no longer hidden in clouds, but revealing His face.

The Acts of the holy apostles and their Letters, these seem to be the message of the Holy and Life-Creating Spirit, who though invisible Himself, maintains the visible presence of Christ in our midst, as the brother who walks beside us. Invisible God becomes visible Christ becomes tangible brother man.

Like the water-gushing rock that followed Israel as they moved through the wilderness shielded from the heat of the sun by the cloud by day, illumined and warmed and protected in the dark nights by the pillar of flame, our God the Holy Triad has encircled us by the words of His holy and divine Scriptures.

Not satisfied to rule us with laws, He came among us to free us to righteousness by love, and now lives among us, in us, with us, upon us, even as us: we have the Message in its fullness, of the Father in unapproachable Light, in the Light of the Face of His Son, and by the Light of Tabor in the virgins’ lamps.

Where is the God of gods who summons the earth to His people’s trial, who alone does wonders, of whom we sing, ‘Who is so great a god as our God?’ Does He dwell in the misty mountain tops and thunder in the storm clouds? The glory of the Triad has made His home among us then, now, and ever.

Holy apostles, lovingly plant in us the seed that the Master planted in you, that you write to us who live at the end of time, that the Spirit, Lord and Giver of Life causes to sprout and grow in us, that we too may enter into the mystery of life in the Holy Triad with you, one mind, one will, one heart, one love. [*]

When He returns

Anyone who has been the victim of a miscarriage of justice knows what I’m talking about. In spite of all the evidence, or the lack of it, one has been judged guilty of the crime. Tragedy is sown in the mindless inattention to facts, as scarecrows in a melon patch hang uselessly defending nothing from no one. We are satisfied to have reached a verdict that confirms our every suspicion, glad that what we believed all along was proven right. Self-vindication conquers even the mightiest facts. We have won our case.

This is what happens all around us and every day. Sometimes we are the perpetrators, sometimes the victims. It doesn’t matter because it’s usually over trifles. No one is actually sent to the block, nobody is incarcerated. Injustice is unimportant because it is so small, accusation merely a ruse to satisfy our need for self-validation at the expense of another. We think it doesn’t matter. We’ve just trampled someone else’s self image, so that our own can be hoisted higher. We are wise in our own eyes, as we live a lie.

This is what comes of the dictatorship of self. We put kings and queens to death for their alleged vainglory, ourselves presumed innocent, no questions asked. Others are not what they are but what we make them. Light has become darkness, or darkness light, not according to what our eyes tell us, but our hearts. Not the world as it is, but our inner world, is where we choose to live. This can be anything but the truth, but we call the cards. Proud of our personal divine right, we call it the kingdom of heaven.

Every human struggle from day one has been the ceaseless recycling of the same theme. Not what things really are, nothing and no one for its own, their own, sake. All that is outside us is only there for us. ‘All I have is yours, all you see is mine,’ we prefer to remember our personal divine mandate, given by the only god we really believe in, ourselves. This is the state of nature. We are the noble savage. We put kings and priests to death. We always have, and we always will. This is our divine right.

But one day He came from That Other Place, bringing the Message we did not want to hear from One we cannot overcome. We could not paint Him with the colors of our minds, so we ignored Him when, after putting Him to death, He would not go away. We don’t believe in ghosts, nor in mortal men, nor immortal gods, only in ourselves, not yourselves, not themselves, but myself. There is only one piece of evidence that we cannot admit, else our kingdom crashes. He places it before us, yet we will not see.

Sin is not what it is, but what we make it. We snatch the truth out of His hands almost before He lays it down. We hide it quickly somewhere inside the folds of our regal robes or, better yet, we mount it as a jewel in our crown, confirming our authority. Peace at last, the whole world at peace, one world, under us, just as we always dreamed, just as it always seemed. We were right after all. We breathe a sigh of relief. It was a close call. He came, He saw, we conquered. Not who He is, but what we made Him.

Everything goes on as it always has since the beginning of the world. We are still in charge. Nothing and no one can come into our courtroom without our permission. We have won our case, judged aright, vindicated ourselves. He was, He is, and He will be—that man—we are safe from Him. We made even Him do our bidding, be what we said He is. Yes, we even celebrate His birth and capitalize all that pertains to Him. We brand ourselves with His name. But what will we do, if and when He returns?

Designed by mercy

Becoming Orthodox disqualifies you as an Evangelical teaching authority, and I suppose the reverse would also be true: Becoming Evangelical disqualifies you as an Orthodox teaching authority.

It all confuses me, and I am not sure what planet I am on, sometimes. I wish I could express what I know and what I feel, but I cannot.
If I open my mouth to almost anyone, I find they are aiming a stone at me.

There is no conversion, except to Christ, who is Life, the only Life worth living, eternal, certain Life. I pray for you, brethren, whenever I think of you, and I thank God for you, and ask Him only to guard your lives. If you can just stay alive, His will provides everything else.

Sorrow, sorrow but not unhappy, quiet, unworried sorrow, sorrow that waits, sorrow that alone can endure transformation. All else is too weak. Sorrow only is strong enough to endure everything and, enduring all, is transformation.

One day by one day by one day, a cube of time, designed by mercy to be small, because small is safe. Closeness to Him holds us, keeps us safe. Closeness covers us, until the storm passes by.