Thoughts for Thinkin' On

• Some stuff and nonsense could be fun.  ~Mary Poppins Returns

Some lengthier quotes from a book I read recently, Courage, Dear Heart. 

• During's Christ's time on earth, John got close enough to hear his heartbeat.  He felt God's warmth.  He head God's voice.  He listened to him breathe.  Seeing this intimacy makes me grieve for John.  How hard it must have been for him to stand at the food of the cress, watching his best freind's blood drip upon the dust - the same blood that he had heard thrumming through Christ's arteries and veins.  This apostle said, "The Word became flesh," because he had leaned against that flesh, and he had seen it suffer and die.  Imagine watching the surprise on John's face when he finally put two and two together, realizing that the teacher he loved so dearly was actually a God who held the whole law of Moses inside a single human body.  Thousands of years of festivals, prophecies, and sacrifices all complete in one divine person!

• Examine the "believe in yourself" doctrine closely, and you will find Eve longing for a forbidden piece of fruit - not because one pear can ever be as lush as an entire garden, but because one pear is tiny enough to clutch in the palm of one small hand.  This single pear represents all self-trust, an eternal folding inward, an eternal reduction.

• Alongside every disaster of human pride, attributes of the holy one also flicker.  His threads are woven into the fabric of all disciplines.  His sovereignty resounds in the symmetry of the mathematical world.  His paradoxes stand in the unreconciled gap between quantum physics and Newtonian physics.   Biology teaches us his music.  His promises are tucked into the peony.  His poetry is written on the back of the barred owl.  His mysteries hide with the snapping turtle who sinks down into the black deeps.  A choir of fog angels resigns to the morning sun, and I long to obey.

• Twitter is my rage candy.  Whenever I'm incensed with the latest political debate, I can tag any charlatan in America and blast away at him.  I don't mean to imply that exhortation is always out of place - sometimes a stern word is fitting.  It's important to call out evil where it has taken root. But too often, I don't fight in the Spirit.  Too often, I fight in disgust, in disappointment, in cynicism - operating entirely out of my own power.  The Lord will usually let me run a while on this leash, but after an hour or two, I'm exhausted.  Why do I feel so awful? I wonder. Well, because the greatest battles of this world weren't meant to be conquered by human effort.