On The Condition of Anonymity:

     The coolness of the cave gave way to burst of sunlight as the first hour of the day drew near.  I rolled over slowly and savored the warmth against my body. I cast the ragged and dirty outerwear aside feeling that the day was going to be hotter than the night that had just passed.  My fingers, numb and stiff and my knees sore, I arose slowly and looked around for the meagher food left to me the day before.  It was tossed in by the one who always came so silently and I could never quite see who it was.  They were afraid of me.
     Covering my face I walked carefully to the bread, sniffed it and tore the green parts off and ate the rest.   Nothing else to eat, I went outside and started my slow journey towards town.  Pacing my self for the day not only because of hunger but because I was sick.   It came on slowly but after awhile I realized that there was nothing I could do to stop progression of what I had.  My skin began to turn grey and my fingers began to warp in a ghastly and crooked manner that shocked even me.  I was used to suffering, but this, was something I could not fathom.  My heart was devoid of any caring and past feeling...desolate and desperate and alone, except for those like me.
     Walking was excruciating. I had no sandals and my feet were just stumps covered in linen rags tied to keep what was left of them from dropping away.  You see I was a Leper.....
      Today I heard that the one who healed was near, but because I was Samaritan I had little hope of seeing him up close.  The Jews would see to that.  I crossed the boundary lines and sat among the olive trees eying Jerusalem in the distance.  Faint sounds came to my ears and my understanding finally caught up with my eyes.  People, lots of them, coming up the hill following one who stood out from the others.
     They were coming my way!  I sensed a freshness, even from here, hope, maybe this was him.
I grabbed my stick, rose and waited on the side of the path and with my face hidden, turned away from any chance contact. I did not want to get stoned.

     People saw me an fear gripped them as they realized what I was.  "Unclean, Unclean", they cried and the crowd parted and ran away, all but the one who led them this far.   He stood in his spot unafraid of me.  I looked right at him. He looked back and said, "what do you want today?"
"Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean."  "I am willing. Be clean go show yourself to the Priest and offer that which Moses commanded,"
                                                         tell no one"
    I was clean!  My hands and feet whole, my skin soft and tender again. I wept and fell at his feet convulsing uncontrollably with a newfound joy.  He healed me.....A Samaritan and him a Jew.  God had truly had shown me mercy today.  

   

Born Again: So cliche?, Overused! But Yet a reality for us as Christians that means so much more!

          Several months ago I wrote about " A Visit in The Night" concerning Nicodemus who visited Jesus and in that meeting Jesus told him he must be born again to enter the kingdom of God.  Well, we in the 21st century have heard this terminology bandied about almost recklessly to a point of nausea.  This is unfortunate because this is exactly what is needed to enter the kingdom.  We cannot enter in by another way, gate, or climb over a wall and sneak our way in.
                                              What it is and what it is not....... 
       First and foremost it is a depositing of the Holy Spirit into a vessel (us) that is seriously flawed and full of sin.  Therefore we are required to repent or consciously turn away from our own ways or works that does absolutely nothing for us.  Jesus said somewhere..."Without me ye can do nothing."  And this is the truth.  Without recognizing that Jesus was slain for us as our redeemer we will continue to live out our lives without the "covering of blood" that was necessary to blot out the handwriting of requirement (or law).  This might seem savage for us to comprehend in this day and age and require us to wrap our minds around this concept, but nevertheless it must be accepted as truth in order for anyone to enter the kingdom that is 
reserved for the children of God.  
     What blanks Nicodemus lacked in understanding as a teacher of the Law Jesus filled in quite nicely that night.   
      Baptism goes hand-in-hand with repentance and symbolically we die with Christ and rise again out of the water a new creation.  A forerunner of the resurrection to come.  
                                                
                                              What it is not!
      Being born again does not mean that we are arrogant,judgemental, disputatious, people concerned only with disputes and doctrines that serve to divide the Christian Church.  So many on the outside looking in, get turned off by these types of attitudes within the Church.  Like Paul, Peter, John and the other disciples they learned that above all we are the ones that should be open and accepting of people's sin nature and whatever form it occupies for them. After all what is anyone before coming to God?   What I mean is this:  Judge not that ye be judged!  Not my words but true.   It also means that we love one another as he( Jesus) loved us.  1st John 1:1 is an excellent read for this.  Being born again has so much deeper qualities associated with it than just a surface understanding.  It is a complete change of mind.  Looking at life's issues as God would!  Full circle and taken back to the origin of our creation and seeing through new eyes.  It dispenses with so many half truths and cleans out the barn so to speak and refreshes us for new beginnings.  It is a walking out in faith that God meant what he said and we enter into a relationship personally with the Holy Spirit as guide, counselor, lover of our souls.
     One could ask themselves why should I? And what benefit is it for me?  Much.  
Jesus healed, fed thousands, taught wisdom, walked endlessly for three years and invested himself for our sake to reinforce to us that God cares for every single thing we do, could go through or have done to us and then adds eternal life as the final topping.  This is no small thing.  I dare other faiths to even come close.  
     There is cost: It means forever living for .....(not yourself) and making yourself available for each and every teaching or "word out of the mouth of God" If we do not do this but only become hearers...then it does nothing.  
       Joy unspeakable, rivers of rushing water that rise up from the belly and understanding our place in this great cosmos:   This is being born again...................

Death is Not The End of Us:

     For us as Christians we have come to know that we will inherit promises Jesus spoke about before he was crucified and risen.  We know that death is inevitable like with everyone but with a surprise ending!  We will rise again and not only live again but will live to inhabit another earth with another Jerusalem as it's center of rule and government.   Far Fetched?  No not really.  There are harder things to understand and far wilder, such as super-string theory, the theory of everything... antimatter, worlds within worlds, wormholes, time travel, side by side dimensions and alternate realities existing alongside of ours with us in it just ,,,different people!   So why not another earth? With us in it? Again!  Hard to think of?   Sounds more plausible to me.  Here's what Isaiah said nearly 2800 years ago....
     “See, I will create

    new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
    nor will they come to mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice forever
    in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
    and its people a joy.
19 I will rejoice over Jerusalem
    and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
    will be heard in it no more.

“See, I will create
    new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
    nor will they come to mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice forever
    in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
    and its people a joy.
19 I will rejoice over Jerusalem
    and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
    will be heard in it no more.

20 “Never again will there be in it
    an infant who lives but a few days,
    or an old man who does not live out his years;
the one who dies at a hundred
    will be thought a mere child;
the one who fails to reach[a] a hundred
    will be considered accursed.
21 They will build houses and dwell in them;
    they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 No longer will they build houses and others live in them,
    or plant and others eat.
For as the days of a tree,
    so will be the days of my people;
my chosen ones will long enjoy
    the work of their hands.
23 They will not labor in vain,
    nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune;
for they will be a people blessed by the Lord,
    they and their descendants with them.
24 Before they call I will answer;
    while they are still speaking I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
    and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
    and dust will be the serpent’s food.
They will neither harm nor destroy
    on all my holy mountain,”
says the Lord.

          So these words penned or should I say scribed thousands of years ago paint a pretty impossible but good picture for those who trust in God.  Failing to live to a hundred and considered accursed? The days of a man will be like a tree...hundreds of years old.   Houses lived in no longer taken away by what?  Bad credit? Loans? Death prematurely?  Even more delightful..we will and can enjoy our work!  That in itself should be something to be hoped for.  A lion that eats straw..yes I'm for that since I lost my cat to a mountain lion three months ago. Eaten.  Sorry but it's true I live in Colorado and the lions range when they are hungry into our territory.  So I believe with all my heart and faith that these things will be true.  Those who have not acquainted themselves with the Gospel..read on. It's so much more that a book of stories, but of lives lived. Impossible men and impossible women in impossible situations God had redeemed from lives that could have been ho-hum but instead.....
                               A man in lion's den and lives
                               Boys in fiery furnaces and lived
                               Servant girl to Queen (Esther)
                               Adolescent killing a giant (David)
                               Sailing a giant  boat across a landless globe for one hundred and fifty days
                               World's strongest man: subdued by a beautiful woman (Delilah)
                               Walls that fell flat (because of sympathetic vibrations? or God intervening?
                     
                                          You be the judge!  Fantastic stories, how come they don't happen now?  Because the Spirit of God has fallen to those that believe and did so two thousand years ago and will continue until The Lord comes again... and he will.  We are the fantastic story now..........

Remembering the Past; So that I may live in the now:Living in the now so I can be assured of the Future

     There is a saying that goes something like this: If we fail to remember the past we are sure to live it all over again including the mistakes.  I say this in regards to Paul's letter to the Romans regarding our state of being.  Paul asserts that we who are now alive through Christ were once dead under the law because it could not offer what Christ's sacrifice finally won for us.  Grace and redemption and no longer slaves to sin and no longer under law.
   If we go back to the works state of mind, then we are under law again and fail in our attempts to please God.  We can never do that.   When we forget this then we are easily overcome and the fallen state of mind can deceive us again. Fear,worries, and the pressures of daily living can rob us of the joy we can experience in the realization that we are truly free if we can exercise our faith, almost like body builders do in the gym.   Daily, the Holy Spirit is the guiding "counselor" of our lives along with the family of Christians we get to know.  Reading the "word" which should be translated as Jesus said, "we do not live by bread alone, but by every word out of the mouth of God" this is our strength.
   Think of it as proteins for our body and our spirit.  In the world there are myriads of ways we use to build us up in our body, soul, and spirit, many of them fail. Protein shakes, for the body, meditation for the spirit, music for the soul...etc, etc.  I do not fault these but they are limited in fulfilling what Christ intended.  These in and of themselves do not add to our eternal state or change us inwardly
    Remember in Daniel, those who fasted before God because of King Nebuchadnezzars's decree were found to be healthier than those who ate.  A testament to faith and works together.
     Christians that live in the Spirit and do what Jesus said are not merely hearers, but doers and they fulfill a deeper calling than those that merely attend meetings and rely on say a Pastors' leadership to lay out the course for them.  I know, for many years I did not exercise my faith as much as I should have and relied entirely too much on others and not Christ or the leading of the Spirit.
      I have tried this week to remember the sheer joy of the initial moment of being set free in Christ and laying down my life (repentance) and living for him.  In that moment, I could realize eternity and cast aside the fear of death I had always been afraid of.  This was my moment of freedom and( Aha!) moment that I never want to lose!  God drew close to me because I drew close to him.  This is what he always wanted, a return from a foreign land.   Study the Old Testament and one can see how many times the Israelites experienced exile because of their disobedience.
     Joy often gets squashed and pressed out of our lives because there are just so many things to contend with daily.  Raising kids, college, money worries, and trying to ignore issues of  terrorism and shootings,and bombings all  tend to steal and rob us of joy.
     Focusing on a kingdom not yet attained is harder and more of a stretch to comprehend and easier to ignore.  It is for this reason that we must daily think on:
      Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 

     These things are the excellent things we should think on.  They make for life, joy and is our meat and drink as Christians.