Wisdom 45 Attitude, Our Twilight Zone

 ‘That guy is just a plain jerk.’ ‘He doesn’t know his head from a hole in the ground.’ ‘Anybody in his right mind wouldn’t have said or done that.’ Ever offered one of those? What was the occasion? Was it a right observation? Was it accurate? Was it said to agree or get agreement or to look good or feel good and better than someone? Perhaps…

Wisdom 44 The Next Step, You and Me

 It’s doing life His way. If we are serious about personalizing Jesus’ mission and ministry in our heart, it is the first miracle at a marriage in Cana that defines our role, being a disciple. His primary mission was the restoration of personal intimacy with God. Through Him the spiritual marriage relationship between man and woman, begins…

Wisdom 42 Back to Basics

 Jesus and His disciples arrive at the wedding on the third day. Mary turned to Jesus and told Him the wine had run dry. He questioned her, “Why do you involve me? My hour has not yet come.” Everyone usually asks why this reply. I believe it is an obvious question to make both her and His disciples aware of the circumstance, what it means and how He will…

Wisdom 41 It Takes a Cross to Make a Marriage

 The shift from religion to relationship becomes a reality when Jesus transforms a wedding ceremony into a miracle ceremony at a wedding in Cana of Galilee (Mt.2:1-11). It makes very clear that God is personally involved in the lives of those He created to be images of Him. It’s His first miracle and therefore His foundational plan to redefine, reorder and restore the…

Wisdom 40 Knowing the Difference: a Transition

 There is no clearer shift than the ones between Jonah and Jesus, the Pharisees and the Apostles, the secular mind and the spiritual mind. It’s like this: Jonah dependent on himself, Jesus on His Father, the Pharisees on religion, the Apostles on Jesus and the secular mind on itself, the spiritual mind on God. Jonah was religious,…

Wisdom 38 Jesus, Jonah and Judgment

 We’ve spent a lot of time with Jonah. Hopefully we have been drawn into an atmosphere that spiritually discerns his plight. Jonah is the story of a man trapped in his aloneness that was not resolved. So, we are left with a frustrated man in another fish-belly conflict, attitude. Until we see Jesus arrive on the scene, the attitude or…

Wisdom 37 The Rest of the Story

 Ah, but Jonah’s story doesn’t end on a good note. Yes, he turned to the Lord God and resolved to make good on his vows.   But there’s still a lot in him that needed resolving. The story ends with a question for Jonah. His answer remains unknown. I believe that was God’s purpose so that every succeeding generation would, through faith, be the resolution as they came into every next…

Wisdom 36 Jonah, Jesus and a Time for Personal Parallels

 “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me.”

Jonah recognizes his deliverance and then he recounts what he went through. See his prayer as a foreshadowing of the death and Resurrection of Jesus. Consider the internal struggle Jesus had when He prayed in the Garden…

Wisdom 35 Spiritual Identity vs. World Identity, a Personal Testimony

 We live in a 'humpty-dumpty' environment. Remember 'Humpty?' He fell, broke into pieces and all the king's subjects and horses couldn't put him together again. As we have already said, that is the picture of fallen humanity. When Adam and Eve were separated from God and filled with aloneness, they sought their…

Wisdom 34 Jesus and the Need to be Right

 So far, we have put our human condition under a spiritual microscope. We have seen that we operate in two dimensions, the seen and the unseen. In that two-dimensional existence, one overtly obvious conclusion stands out. Each of us is alone, isolated in a visible body, driven by needs that are invisible. We share that condition with every…

Wisdom 33 Aloneness and Its Vulnerability

 Aloneness is our single greatest internal stress factor. Just ask anyone who has had a breakup, a lost job, an impending surgery, a visit to a dentist’s office, a call to go into battle or a dreaded confrontation with someone who has power to do you in. There is no question it is you and you alone that must go through the experience.…

Wisdom 32 Why Jesus?

 Aloneness raises the immediate question for us to present an answer to it, Jesus. Jonah’s condition is everyone’s condition. So, let’s digress to this question:

                                                           Why Jesus?

 …

Wisdom 31 The 21^st Century’s Key Issue

I can’t seem to leave Jonah quite just yet. I started reading it in my third day in the hospital. I’m not sure why I was led to read it until the words began to take on a new meaning for me. New in the sense that a constant spiritual theme I’ve been dealing with for years was right there in Jonah.…

Wisdom 30 Spiritude, an Answer to Jonah 

What’s this? Jonah not happy? Now he is “greatly displeased and angry (4:1).” What could he possibly be angry about? He did exactly what the Lord wanted. He preached repentance to the Ninevites and they responded. What was the root of his anger? First, Jonah was a Hebrew and therefore a born and sworn enemy of Assyria. Second, being a…

Joan's poem gives me great comfort. Thank you for posting it. 

Wisdom 29 Jonah Refocused

 “Think again about my fraternity brother dragged into the darkness of the night terrified. In this sense then the world without God, people with no God, society without God, is the belly of the great fish. Our personal aloneness is the belly of the fish. The world of people without God is the dark belly of the fish. Sin, death and the grave are the…

Wisdom 28 The Belly of the Great Fish

 I had a fraternity brother who had experienced being jarred awake in the middle of the night, tied up in a gunny sack, terrified as he was dragged into a car, driven to a dark dirt road, thrown out on the ground and left there alone. He got out and found his way back to town but never ever got over the experience. Keep this in mind as we…

Wisdom 27 Jonah: A Whale of a Story!

 When you were ten or eleven what did you answer when people asked what you wanted to be when you grew up? Policeman, fireman, football or baseball player, forest ranger? As you grew possibilities expanded into professional dreams, travel and people and setting goals on how to achieve the dreams. This is when the gods of success, wealth, fame…

                                                                           The Scream

                                                                The scream says: "I am unlovable!

                                                                                   Love…

Wisdom 26 Jesus, One Above Us

 Last time we talked about the Atonement, the choice Jesus, by faith, made to give His life for ours on the Cross so that by faith we could be one with Him. Why? When Adam and Eve, the first people, chose to think and act apart from God whom they knew and follow the devil’s temptation they didn’t know, sin replaced the Spirit and they found themselves alone, frightened and self-centered.…