A Spiritual Rant or How I Talk With God

If you will allow me to rant a little, here goes:

 I get so sick and tired of all the endless posturing and religious arrogance Christians perpetrate against each other in the name of God.

As for me, I have no one left to impress and nothing left to prove. I'm in God's hands.

So when you've got a sword at the base of your neck, what does it matter? Do all the differences of our faith matter? Did Jesus die only for the Catholics, or the Orthodox, or the Pentecostals? Does Jesus only respond to a proper Eucharist, or does he  respond to our faith, our lives flung on his grace and mercy?.

Over the years, I've been excluded by the all-inclusive and the fundamentally exclusive, but never by Jesus.  So I'm with Jesus. I include anybody or group He includes.

What blows me away is that "If we are faithless, he remains faithful for he can't deny himself." This whole Christian life,  It doesn't depend on you, or on me. We GET to enter into the divine dance.  I think of the song: In Christ Alone.

For me, my time is short, and all the spiritual rabbit trails, theologies, and  just plain nonsense I've fought and quibbled over the years are lost in the face of Jesus. He takes up my whole attention. He is becoming more and more the object of my love, my affections and my actions in this world. For me, I'm learning to walk on holy ground.

Thank you for letting me rant.

The Critical Importance of a Daily Devotional Practice with A Spotlight on Advent.

It has been my experience that most questions are resolved during our daily devotional practice.

Like the colorful, fall leaves that drift off the trees while the sap runs to the roots, to deepen and strengthen, to harness the life hidden in the roots, so our lives are hidden in Christ.

Good devotional practices help discipline and shape our lives so that we might better express and integrate our spiritual life within.

Buds grow and burst into flowers and leaves, as we begin to grow the fruit of the Spirit, * the character of God in our lives.

As the love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are eternally born and grown within our lives, this eternal fruit/character radiates and remains.

In essence, we become as Jesus Is, and apart of who he was, the Theophany in the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life. Mankind chose the first tree, and our character sprung from the knowledge of good and evil. Now in Jesus, we can choose Him, the Jesse Tree, which our Christmas tree symbolizes. We can choose Jesus, and partake of the Tree of Life, eternal life.

Jesus says it like this: "I Am The Way, The Truth, and The Life,"  These breakthroughs of eternity are incarnate in Jesus and come from Him who we receive as our Lord and Savior, Jesus our Messiah.




* Note on Holy ie. Holy Spirit: for Holy think Wholeness not performance. The shining, burning wholeness of God. A burning perfection greater than the bigest, brightest star He's made. We receive this wholeness in Jesus and this wholeness is grown with, and worked out into our lives. What does Holiness look like? The face of Jesus.