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Zoom Zoom

I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.  (Ps 131:2) Lord, still my soul, and let me focus on Christ.  Mazda’s slogan captures well 21st century western culture: zoom, zoom.   Mazda uses the slogan to market its cars, but the marketing works because it strikes at a value within western culture. We are a high tech, fast paced, information-bombarded people. We are here and there and hardly have time to breathe before we are back here again. We are a sensual people, perhaps more so…

Why People Do Not See God

So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. (Eph 4:17-19) My sins blind my heart from seeing You, O God.  Cleanse me, for seeing You is why I was made. You were made in…

Broken and Limited

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.  For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.  For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.  (I Pet 1:5-9) Lord, like Moses, I can see only a sliver of your…

Putting the Pieces Together

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.  (Gen 1;26) When I look inside myself and when I see the human soul, I marvel at what You have made, O Lord. A human is an amazing creature. We have written Hamlet, composed the Canon in D, painted the Sistine Chapel, sent men to the moon, invented iphones, worshiped at temples, set up complex governments, discovered calculus, and died for doctrines. We have a moral sense. We have a spiritual sense, an awareness of the holy. We…

Gazing at the Grand Canyon

We have finished addressing the questions put to us by internationals at AIF. Today’s blog resumes the discussion from February, but fortunately, the last several blogs have picked up the theme we left off with. To review: We were discussing what it means to be created in the image of God, and we have talked about things like our ability to detect moral right and wrong, our sense of a spiritual reality, and our desire for purpose. So to continue …  We have a proverb in English: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” The idea is that different…