"Be Not Afraid"

(Isaiah 41:10)

Back at my old Catholic church, we were taught to fear our Maker. Fear of God was healthy, we were told. We were not told what was meant by "fear", and I used to imagine all of humanity cowering and shaking beneath the glory of God when the world ended. This image was incongruent with my understanding of a personal, loving God through Jesus. I didn't question it, I just accepted it as something I was not perhaps meant to understand. Now I'm at a point in my life where I find it healthy to question and dissect, so when my pastor began a sermon about "fear of the Lord", I listened in eagerly.

He explained it like this- do not think that the Bible was originally written in English. Scholars believe that Jesus would have spoken in Aramaic. The written language would have been Hebrew, and from there the Bible was translated into other languages, and then re-translated again and again. If we go back to Hebrew and translate the word we printed as "fear", a better translation could have been "awe", "reverence" or "respect".

How would this affect our understanding of the Word of God? Let's take Psalm 112:1 and find out.
"Praise the LORD. Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who finds great delight in his commands."

Sounds very odd, to find delight in doing things for someone you fear. Now let's change the word "fear", and see how different the affect is:
"Praise the LORD. Blessed is the man who respects the LORD, who finds great delight in his commands."

 A very different picture entered my mind's eye as the pastor spoke of this: end of the world again, with people bowed down and weeping with joy, overwhelmed at the sight of God.

A little side-story: There was a woman who oversaw my Catechism classes, who was not too friendly with us kids. She used to go one by one and make sure none of us were slouching in our pews, and heaven forbid any of us talked during mass. She would also tell us that if we received the host and chewed it, we were chewing Jesus. Yikes! She told us to let it disintegrate a bit and then to swallow it whole. This led to me being very confused when, in a Protestant church, I was presented with an actual piece of bread for communion.

"Do I... do I chew it? Is it food here?"

Be Kind Anyway

Both of my cats are getting on in years now. One is 13 (Mario) and the other is 16 (Toby). They have been best friends almost their entire lives. 

Mario

Toby

They are slowing down but getting more affectionate towards people…

NOT towards one another- Mario will sometimes hiss at Toby. In response, Toby will wait patiently for when Mario is in the mood to be nice, and then he will cuddle with him. Toby Always accepts a cuddle from Mario, no matter how cranky Mario has been acting.

Mario is asleep right now. He was hissing at Toby last night, but... Toby just walked quietly up to him and licked his head affectionately, then walked back to his spot.

Your Ministry

“Open my eyes and help me see: there’s a world outside of me.”

—

-Hawk Nelson, “Shaken” My pastor told us a story about an older woman, who was stiff and arthritic. She went to church every Sunday, and someone once asked her, “Why do you keep coming here if it’s hard for you to just get up the steps?”. And she told this man, “If I stop doing these things and just stay at home all day, I’m afraid I’ll die”. She would go to every service that the church would offer. One day the pastor told everyone that they have a gift to give to others,  that they just have to find out what their own personal ministry is. The old woman asked the pastor, “What is my gift?”, and he was stumped. So he told her, “I honestly don’t know, but I will pray on it and let you know what comes to mind in a week”. After a week of meditative prayer, the pastor was still coming up with nothing. Thankfully, the old woman came in the very next Sunday and told him, “Pastor, I’ve found my gift!”. He told her, “That’s wonderful! May I ask what it is?”. “I call people in my community who I know are shut-ins. I talk to each one of them over the phone, and then call them back the next day. But I only talk to them for 5 minutes a day.” The pastor was curious. “Why only 5 minutes?” She smiled up at him and replied, “Because after five minutes, I’m tempted to talk to them about my own problems. I don’t want to do that. I’m calling so that THEY can talk to someone.” _________________________________ “Lord use me, take me where you want me to go”, sings the chorus of "Shaken". Too often we are absorbed in our own problems, and we forget that there’s a whole world full of people out there. We all have a ministry to share with the world- we just have to figure out what that ministry is. When we all chip in with our own talents to make this world a more loving place, we bring ourselves closer to one another and to the One who made us so beautifully and wonderfully.

Judgement Day

I once read that death is the one thing promised in this life. We all will die- but no one knows what EXACTLY goes on when the soul leaves the body- maybe we can't ever know, or can't comprehend it yet. We also do not know how long we have left to live. Life is unpredictable, whimsical and mysterious. Hey, I could be killed in a freak accident tomorrow that involves a beaver, a large pepperoni pizza and a unicycle. You don't know, I don't know. As twitchy as the human mind is about dying and death, that may be for the best.

Twitchy, itchy brain... my thoughts wandered to the Afterlife at church this morning, and then roamed into The End, the Judgement Day. Both the Judgement and Death are considered an end (or just the beginning, based on your perspective). What if they are closer related than we dare to think?

Say when you are in the process of dying, you go through your own personal judgement day. The living can't see it happen. It's real to you and maybe it's real in the dimension your soul is tip-toeing towards. In that state of being, you see everyone else being judged for their sins as you are. And then, the elevator goes up or down, one more crowded than the other. What I'm saying is what if we die and there is no big wait to be sent to the afterlife?

I had been watching documented cases of near-death experiences on Youtube a month back. A lot of people that were interviewed reported that they were brought into a different state of being, and were shown (presumably by God) how every one of their actions affected other people. They were shown these things not to be made to feel guilty, but to understand.

If you have ever been around someone who is dying, they're not always mentally stable near the end of their lives. They sometimes mumble about memories and their past experiences, sometimes talking to anyone in the room as if they are there with them. Could that be their own personal "judgement" in progress?

It may follow that dementia is an extended state of Judgment. Too far a leap? Let me know what you're thinking!

Foster Greyhound Mikey

I will agree with my mom that all dogs are intelligent in different ways. They get the simple things that we tend to look past- like how having food every day is a blessing, and spending time with loved ones is essential, not just an option. But Mikey, intelligent? Oh goodness, just look.

This is our foster greyhound, Mikey. I have never seen a happier dog. He likes to run and eat and chase and sleep and play and... his tail is like a flagella, constantly twirling around.

Greys do not come off the track with "house" knowledge. They don't know what stairs are, they don't know what GLASS means (I can run straight outside whenever I WANT? Sweet deal!). Despite this, it took only a day for Mikey here to settle into a home environment. But unlike his other greyhound companion here- our dog Taffy- he does not understand "No!". He does not "do" tricks. Trust me, when you have coaxed a dog's paw into the air over a dozen times with a treat reward, that's a sign you have a do-do dog. A "silly" dog, to put it nicely.

He loves children, so I really home he gets a home where he can be some little kid's best friend. I think that'd be the best home for him.

Efficiency

Lose weight in only 30 days!

Learn Japanese in only a week!

No longer do we have to carry heavy books when we can download them by the thousands! No more wasting an hour mashing potatoes for super, buy instant mashed potatoes! Just add water!


We don't have any time to spare and shouldn't have to make time. We should enjoy ourselves immediately, because we could die tomorrow. Make more money! Watch more movies!

Increasingly alone among billions of our fellow human beings, we strive for the gain resulting from efficiency rather what we're awarded for effort, striving  for entertainment rather than companionship. Are we less patient, now that everything should be a click away and isn't my whole night ruined if the internet is slow today? Are we becoming lazier and lonlier, the more the world has to offer to us, the more we have to offer the world?

What is the price of efficiency?

We're problem-solvers. If it can be thought up, it will be attempted, then upgraded. And again, version5.33435435.  But I have a sneaking suspicion that we're never really focusing on the right problems.

UFOs and Speaking in Tongues

Not my style- a three hour worship service. Half of the time they sang, and half of the time, a woman spoke about her own supernatural experiences. Not one Bible in sight, which seemed counterproductive for any place of Christian worship to me.

Here's the deal: my brother and I are on vacation, and we were looking for a church to go to down by the shore here. This one was labeled as "nondenominational", and since my brother and I lean towards different Protestant denominations, I thought it'd do just fine. I'd done no research about what "Assembly of God" church meant, but hey, they seemed open and friendly as we walked in. Little children ran around and giggled, their parents with a watchful eye on them as they spoke with old friends. Something about their language was off. They're trying too hard, I thought to myself, and then focused on praying for an open mind and heart during the worship.

Turns out I'd need that.

One of the pastors came forward with a story about his young granddaughter. He compared his granddaughter running back to him and holding his hand on the beach to our style of faith- running back to God when it turns out we need Him after all, to watch over and protect us. Near the end of his speech, there were a few voices rising up with "Amen!" and "Jesus!". I'd only seen that happen on TV, with televangelists. I was not used to people being so vocal about their spiritual experiences.

Then, the music started. Cool-looking band, contemporary gospel music. They weren't terrible, although I wasn't paying full attention to them. I was distracted by the two women with their hands up, swaying back and forth in front of me. I eyed my brother and we both suppressed twin grins, but I went from grinning to gritting my teeth as they repeated the last words of the chorus, for another five minutes. With every song they played, they did the same thing. Little children and adults alike shouted out and danced, and then mumbled unintelligibly once each song was over- what they called speaking in tongues. I couldn't tell you if it was normally what speaking in tongues sounds like, as this was my first experience with it. My brother and I stayed seated and tried not to squirm around. Didn't want to offend the happy church-goers by scrambling out the door.
The band joined the audience, seating themselves right behind us. An older woman with long, straw-like hair took the mic and talked about- gosh, a lot. A few of the girls in the kids programs were moving up to the youth group. They were told that they would make fine "healers", "seers" and "prophesiers". The kids left then, so that the remaining adults could talk about the government, angels and aliens. She kept mentioning "Watchmen" (I could only think about the movie) and how she had these visions and dreams. She had seen UFOs often as a child. She claimed to have had a visitation from Christ Himself. She talked about when she was little and people would start convulsing in church, how she didn't know that there had been demons in them. And she spoke of the fast approach of the End Of Times.

We ran out of there the second she was done. Once we got to my car, we stopped walking as little, confused giggles escaped.
The calm and peace felt by the parishioners, it felt too showy. I felt angry about their claims to heal people with their own, human hands, especially when a woman came forward whose brother was dying of cancer. I glanced at my own brother next to me, thinking the pain of losing him would be unbearable, and that giving hope to that woman that one of the other members would heal him was cruel. I even felt bad for those kids, who were told what their role would be in the church. "You will make a fine seer", they would tell one child. Some of the kids seemed more than happy to comply, others looked dissatisfied.

It was not the kind of church I would want someone newly exploring the Christian faith to go to. Very extreme and extroverted worship styles.