Reversing the Curse

Adam, through failure to "walk with God," rearranged the atoms of the universe:  Cursed be the ground because of you!....Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, as you eat of the plants of the plants of the field...until you return to the adama (ground) from which you were taken; for you are adama (dust), and to adama you shall return.

I used the Hebrew "adama" because without hearing the word-play between Adam (the human),and adama (the soil, the earth), we at first cannot understand why the earth was cursed.  Adam, taken from the ground, was made of the "adama," the soil.  And in the blessings, God says, "Let the earth (the adama) sprout forth with sprouting-growth, plants that seed forth seeds, fruit trees that yield fruit, after their kind, (and) in which is their seed, upon the earth."

Adam and the earth have the same DNA, so to speak.  What happens to Adam, the man, the living soul, has a correspondence with and in the ground, the adama.  After eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge (Intimacy with) of Good and Evil, Adam will produce seed of the same kind.  We have all heard, "You are what you eat;"  what we eat becomes part of us.  To participate in, become intimate with, evil is to eat the fruit that contains the seed of evil.  From that time on, Adam (his name in Hebrew simple reads "the human") will produce both good and evil.  Thus, he will continue to eat the fruits of the soil, but with difficulty, as the adama--the soil--will produce both good and evil. 

That is why the Christ had to undergo death---there is no remedy for flawed DNA except death and starting over with a new body.  Rising from the ground, as did Adam at the beginning of time, Jesus reverses the curse of the human (Adam) and of the ground (adama).  He has re-arranged the atoms of the universe and restored our DNA, bringing life to the ground that was cursed.  Isaiah 55 says this:

Yes, in joy you shall depart,

in peace you shall be brought back;

Mountains and hills shall break out in song before you,

and all the trees of the countryside shall clap their hands.

In place of the thornbush, the cypress shall grow,

instead of nettles, the myrtle.

This shall be to the Lord's renown,

an everlasting imperishable sign.

In taking upon His own head the crown of thorns, Jesus bore the curse of our flawed DNA, which produces both good fruit and prickly thorns that wound and pierce others.  But in rising from death, He replaces those thorns with the "cypress and the myrtle."  And we thought that Isaiah was just writing poetry!

Friendship with God

What God really wants from us is a marriage, a union, a oneness between us and Him.  Jesus said, "I no longer call you 'servants,' but 'friends,' for a servant does not know what his master is doing."  God wants friendship with us--not perfection--but cordiality and communication. 

I think it is fair to say that our friends change us; we cannot 'hang out' with people who are very different from us.  The old adage "tell me who your friends are, and I'll tell you who you are"  is very true.  If we want to be friends with someone who is very good, we need to adapt to their goodness, for it is clear that they will not take on our bad habits, nor participate in our evil ways.

It is true, as the Book of Jonah says, that we "do not know our left hands from our right" in our blindness to what is truly good and holy, but God's way of opening our eyes and changing us is through friendship.  We cannot discern His ways unless He Himself break through the fabric of our existence and say, "Here I am; I am with you."  None of us will change unless we know Him and love Him.  And we change not in order to "be good," but in order that we can continue to walk with Him and be with Him.

The Gift

The Psalmist says, "What return shall I make to the Lord for all He has done for me?"  And his answer is this:  "I will take the cup of salvation and drinking, I will praise His name."

The greatest thing we can "do" for God is to allow Him to establish within us His kingdom of love and peace and joy.  The same One who established the earth and the fullness thereof will, if we permit, establish within us the fullness of His Presence and overflowing joy---

---not in abstract rules or principles;
----not in the practice of faith or religion;
----but in the Presence and Gift of His beloved Son, in whom all things are created and come to be.  In Him, the kingdom arrives and is sustained.

Learning to Pray 2

When I first began to read Scripture, there was much I could not understand.  What I did not know then is that, like often-repeated oral histories, one part of Scripture comments on and explains another part.  I remember reading a book at the time called How to Live Like a King's Kid.  The author, whose name I do not recall, tells of finding something in Scripture ---healing, I think----that people claim is not true for today.  He said to God, "If this is not true anymore, show me where you took it out of Scripture."  I remember thinking, "I don't talk to God this way, but I think I'll try it." 

Not long after that, I met a woman, an angel I think now, who was able to unfold for me mysteries of Scripture.  I could not get enough of  listening to her explain things to me.  I asked her, "How did you learn all of this?  Did you go to ministry school?"  She hesitated a moment and then said, "When I see something I don't understand, I ask God to show it to me."  Later, I recalled how the disciples did the same thing with Jesus and the parables.  So I started to pray Scripture instead of just reading it.  I asked the Holy Spirit to illumine my mind to grasp the things of God as I read.

Gradually, I began to see different Scriptures in relationship to one another.  I realized that the Bible was not written as a "Book," but as a library, and we could not read it as a "book;" we have to browse the library---and only the Holy Spirit knows what we need to read at any given moment of our lives.  If we enter the library alone, we are most likely to leave it soon; if we enter it with the Spirit of God, who so wants to teach us and guide us, we will probably want to spend more time there.

Springs and Streams

If we drink, we drink from the fountain that is Christ.  The Spirit makes available to us the heart and mind and strength of Christ, the Source of Living Water. 

"If anyone is thirsty," says the Lord, "let him come to me, and from his belly will flow streams of living water."  All that He requires of us is that we be thirsty.  He Himself suffered extreme thirst that we might be filled with the water of eternal life and never again know thirst.

In Sirach 24, the writer says, "I sought to water my own little garden, and suddenly this rivulet of mine became a river, and this stream of mine, a sea.  Thus do I send my teachings forth shining like the dawn, to become known far off."

John 4, the story of the woman at the well, tells of Jesus offering the woman a spring of living water, that she not be thirsty again.  John 7 tells of those who come to Jesus as having streams of living water flowing from within them.  The difference is that those who drink from the spring to satisfy their own thirst then find that same water flowing out of them to others.

God Has No Grandchildren....

There is nothing we can "inherit" from our parents regarding our relationship with God.  We can see from them what it means to walk with the eternal and true God, or we can observe a rigid following of rules and regulations that fail to bring life and joy.  But ultimately, every person has to come face to face with God him/herself.  Before that encounter, people have only heard about God, but they do not know God.

When God appeared to Isaac, He said, "I am the God of your father Abraham..." i.e., the one you have heard about----but now, here I am, face to face with you.  It is always an I-Thou encounter, unmediated by a third party.

If our parents, like Abraham, truly walk with God and have a relationship with Him, God honors their friendship and reveals His face to the children of those who love Him.  But the next generation must cultivate their own friendship with the Almighty.  The "Faith of their Fathers" will not sustain them as adults; they must have their own faith and trust to walk with God.

Establishing the Corners of our lives

What has been put under our control and power?  What belongs to us?  It is only in these areas where we can truly pray, "Thy kingdom come; thy will be done."

I like to think of my property lines as having 4 corners, or pillars, established by God.  Every time I have moved, I have asked Him to establish the corners of the property---and this can be true also for those who live in apartments.  I wait in prayer for revelation of each corner, because the answers don't always come at the same time.  Once I have the foundation stones, I continue to pray "into" each corner that has been given to me.  For example, one of my "corners" where I am now living is "Protection."  Whenever I am in that edge of the property, or just looking in that direction, I ask for God's protection not only on the property, but on those who live there and on those who visit. 

Within the property lines, there are many issues and concerns that make up my life.  I like to think of these issues as the "ten acres" given to me to cultivate.  As a farmer divides his ten acres into smaller fields with different crops, I picture family, friends, finances, health, work, etc. as smaller divisions of the ten acres.  All need attention at different times; all need the peace, harmony, goodness, and truth of the kingdom of God.  Here is where I can pray "Thy kingdom come; thy will be done."  While I can enlarge my vision to include the entire world in that  prayer, it is only my own ten acres for which I have responsibility and some sort of control.  Praying over my small domain makes the Our Father come alive!

Are we so slow to understand?

On the surface, there is much that Jesus commands that seems impossible:  Love one another as I have loved you;  Be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect; Look at the lilies of the field; they neither toil nor spin, yet not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these.....

Like the parables, these commands seem at first blush incomprehensible.  Paul's letter to the Corinthians, however, explains why:

The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.....

No one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.  We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us (1 Cor. 2:10 ff).

It is not enough to "study" the Bible, in terms of merely reading what it says.  The ancient Greek icons depict Jesus holding either a closed book or an open book in one hand, with the other hand raised in the position of a teacher.  Both images convey the same message---the book remains closed to us until Jesus illumines its meaning, as He did with the disciples when He told the parables.  Many who heard Jesus teach failed to understand what He was saying, but later, He explained the meaning privately to the disciples who asked. 

When we read Scripture, or listen to the teachings of Jesus, it is critical that we pray also, asking for wisdom and understanding.  Often, what the Spirit teaches is a great surprise to us, even though we thought we understood what we had read.  We must ask the Spirit to show us what to read as well as how to read it.  People often give up on Scripture because they are trying to read it as a book, not knowing that it is in reality a library, and that the Holy Spirit must guide us through it if we are to grow spiritually.  Only He knows what we need to read and understand at any given moment of our lives, so we need to allow Him to make the words real and alive to us at the time we need them. 

It is only when we learn to pray and learn to listen attentively that the Bible becomes a living document instead of a dusty tome. 

Walking with God

Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him (Gen. 5:38).

If we walk toward God during our lives, God is also walking toward us.  There comes a point where the two meet.  God begins to walk with us, and we begin to walk with Him.  Scripture tells us that before the fall, God walked with Adam in the garden in the cool of the evening.  And, after the resurrection, Jesus walked with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, unfolding to them the mysteries of Scripture as they went. 

I would say that the Old Testament was a period of men walking toward God, as the Jews observed the rituals given to them for leading lives of purification, not "going their own way," as Scripture puts it.  And for the individual, our lives also have a direction---we are walking toward Him as we grow up, observing the rituals and commandments we have been given.  But unknown to us, God has also been walking toward us all the time.  Finally, as at Pentecost in the history of salvation, there comes a moment in our lives when the Spirit is given to us, and from that moment on, we begin to walk with God in the Spirit.

We may not be able to pinpoint that "moment" in time, as it may not be as dramatic as the Pentecost event, but we recognize that something has shifted in our lives.  No longer are we "trying to observe the law," but we are communing with God, as did Abraham on his journey.  He does not know where he is going, but he knows that God is with him.  He finds himself in strange situations, (i.e. Sarah taken into the harem of Pharoah), but recognizes the hand of God who delivers him and sets him on high in each situation.  By the time he is settled in the Promised Land, he is able not only to walk with God, but to stand with God and discuss the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. 

The journey begins simply, by walking toward God. But the initiative is God's, and one day we realize that something has changed in the relationship, and we are now walking with him.  It is not unlike our custom of courtship and marriage, where two people first walk toward one another, and then with one another through the rest of their lives.

He is here....

The Psalmist says, "God is an ever-present help in distress," but what he does not say is that God is ever-present in all times and circumstances.  Psalm 139 does say that we can never be absent from the Presence and thought of the Most High:

If I go up to the heavens, You are there;

If I descend to the netherworld, You are there.

If I settle on the far side of the sea,

even there your hand will guide me,

your right hand will hold me fast.

To live in the consciousness of God's loving Presence is one of life's greatest gifts.  We can never be far away from the Spirit of God, who dwells within us to comfort us, heal us, rejoice with us, hold us up, make us unafraid.....

Our help in is the name of the Lord, Who made heaven and earth.  He makes all things work for our good, and He opens our eyes to see the good and not the evil.  He makes us to dwell upon the heights and gives us hinds' feet that we not dash our feet against a stone.

I will fear no evil, for Thou are with me in every time and place, and You have taken up all the causes of my life (Lamentations 3:58).  I will station myself on the ramparts to see what God will do in the lives of those for whom I pray.

New Explorations

In The World of Prayer, Adrienne von Speyr, a Swiss mystic (1902-1967), says that prayer is our participation in the eternal dialog of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Although I have not yet read the book, I am already intrigued.  We know the energy generated in us by fruitful conversations with people we know and trust.  We are re-energized, sparked by insights and new ideas, and feel loved when our words are truly heard and received by another person. 

Von Speyr says that the intimacy of Adam and Eve with God was expressed by simply walking with God in the cool of the evening.  What a wonderful image!  During the heat of the day, in the workplace or in the field, we are struggling to "make things work."  In the evening, in the cool of the day, we seek peace and rest and quiet friendship to satisfy our souls.  Of course, television has probably robbed our culture of the experience of quiet intimacy at the end of the day. 

When Jesus breathes on us His Spirit, He enables us to enter into the conversation and intimacy He eternally enjoys with His Father.  We are "born again" into a new realm of existence, of understanding, of truth.  We converse with the living God, who knows us intimately and who still loves us eternally. 

This is a book I cannot wait to read!

"The Father is Working even now...."

It has been said that the Second Vatican Council changed the way the Church saw missionary work.  Previously, we believed that we had to "take" God and His message to the "natives," who were, of course, ignorant.  But when all the bishops from around the world got together for real dialog, what they discovered was that God is always at work in the lives of people, whether they had heard the Gospel or not, as Karl Rahner claims in his reflection on "anonymous Christians."  The image of a missionary thus became one who lives among a people long enough to see where God is working, and then, like John the Baptist, to annouce, "There He is!" 

Rahner got in trouble briefly with the Vatican as well as with the Buddhists, who were offended by his statement that they too were "anonymous Christians."  But Rahner asked whether the Buddhists believed that God pours out His Spirit on every man, and they readily agreed with that belief.  Rahner claimed that if we began with the message of the Spirit of God working in each culture and in each life, we could come together to explore the ways in which the Spirit was working.  As we explore that question, we open ourselves to "seeing" and welcoming God in our lives.  Thus, we no longer have to "teach" people to know God, for as the Scripture says, I will place my law [instruction] in their hearts, and they will all know me, from the greatest to the least (Jer. 31:33).

We have been told that we are all missionaries of the Good News; perhaps if we see "missionary work" in this way, that of penetrating the lives of others to see where God's Spirit is at work and pointing it out, that idea might become a reality.  At the very least, doing so would create bonds of love rather than dividing us because of our doctrines.

On Reading Karl Rahner...

I was convinced that...I experienced God directly and I wish to communicate this experience to others, as well as I can.  If I thus claim to have had a direct experience of God...I mean only that I experienced God, the ineffable and unfathomable one, the silent yet near one, in his trinitarian bestowal upon me.  I experienced God also and especially beyond all images---who when he thus approaches in his grace cannot be confused in any way with anything else...I have experienced God himself, not human words about him...This experience is truly grace, but for that reason it is nonetheless essentially refused to no one.  Of that I am convinced...One thing remains certain:  God can and will deal directly with his creature....a person can experience God's very own self.

Harvey Egan's book, Karl Rahner, Mystic of Everyday Life,  quotes extensively from the writings of the man some consider the greatest theologian of the 20th century.  But Rahner's theology was not academic speculation; it was rather a search for ways of explaining what he himself experienced---the gift of God's offer of himself to every human person.  He contended that we consciously experience grace, that is, the working of the divinizing Spirit of God within us.

To someone who once told Rahner that he had never had an experience of God, Rahner replied:  I don't believe you....you have had, perhaps, no experience of God under this precise label "God," but you have had or have now an experience of God---and I am convinced that this is true of every person.  [Just because we do not know how to express or explain it] is no proof that we have not experienced God.

Reading Rahner's thoughts makes me wonder how people would say they have experienced God, or if they have experienced Him.  Maybe that is a book in the making......

Seeking the Spirit

Like most relationships, a relationship with the Holy Spirit must be cultivated.  Welcome Him, turn to Him, talk to Him, ask Him questions, seek His counsel.  He will not disappoint those who seek Him.

Thy Kingdom Come; Thy Will be Done....

Why does God want us to pray for ourselves and others, except that He has given over to mankind control/dominion of the earth?  What He desires to establish therein must be willed by man as well as by God, for He will do nothing against man's will as long as the earth continues to be man's domain.

We must ask, that it might be given; we must seek, that it might be found; we must knock, that the door be opened.  We must yield whatever is in our power and control to the the will, the power, and the control of God.  He has chosen to act through us and in us to restore the earth.  When New Orleans was out of control and in chaos after Katrina, General Honore stepped off the helicopter to restore control and order to the city.  The General had long before yielded his life to God, and God honored his prayer. 

Jesus became incarnate that God would once again have access to the earth through the spirit, the heart, the will of man.  His power must flow through us; His love must be our motivation; His truth must be our way; His kingdom must be our own.