Sow

What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 

 - From 1 Corinthians 15

We have a fascinating illustration here, from nature, that is more than relevant in 2022.

The seed that you plant in the ground is as good as dead. Taken on its own, it's no different than a grain of sand, or a pebble. It is lifeless. It needs activity from the outside, in order to be animated and spring to life. 

It needs to be buried - placed under ground and then covered with so much soil that it could not possible breathe. 

It needs to be watered, cared for. 

It needs good nutrition if it is to thrive. The soil should be rich with life-giving (though lifeless) elements!

You do not have life, unless you put something dead into the ground. The way Paul orders things here: you must have death - or else, there will be no life!

Everything today is all about keeping people "safe," so that they do not "die." It's about "saving lives." But what lives are we saving? Paul says you need to die, to have eternal life!

There's a difference between the courage it takes stay indoors, with your smile covered (hidden), away from other humans (that are, like yourself, made to be social creatures); and the courage it takes to go out (like missionaries) into the world, accepting all people at face value (pun intended), putting yourself on the line, into situations that may be dangerous, but where you can provide to people the most important thing they need more than anything else, to live life fully: your presence. 

Countenance

 May God  . . . show us the light of his countenance and come to us.

 - From Psalm 67

1. The American Heritage online dictionary defines "countenance" as follows:

• Appearance, especially the expression of the face.
• The face or facial features.
• A look or expression indicative of encouragement or of moral support.

The face. Facial features. An expression.

If you cover it up, it's no longer a "countenance." The face has to be seen. Not half a face. Not a covered face. The face. 

I've written before about the light that is emitted from the face. The entire human body itself gives forth light. The face gives off more light than any other part of the body. The part of the face that gives off the most light is the lower half of the face. I may have referred to this scientific fact as many as a half dozen times, since March 13, 2020. 

I marvel that some people don't care. Or listen. Or hear. God shares the light of His countenance, and it is something we crave. 

Are we followers of God? If God's adversary in the world wanted to confound Christian believers . . . if it wanted to divide us, discourage us, weaken us, confuse us, and frustrate us . . . wouldn't it want us covering our faces? Wouldn't it want our faces hid? 

It has been said, "You can smile through your eyes." Yes that is true, you can. But I would hypothesize that the eyes also convey more ire and hate, when the mouth is covered, than not. You need the entire face, for context. I suggest that the claim that "the eyes smile" is more than offset by the opposite. A mouth-covering makes the eyes more capable of expressing hate, than love. 

You need the entire face. You need the part of the face that gives forth light. 

It's a dark world. We need light. 

In 2022 . . . perhaps this will become a parameter that some of our mask-happy friends will finally admit, must not be crossed in order to make us "safe."

Uneducated

 . . . and realized that they were uneducated and ordinary men . . . 

 - From Acts 4

I'm not going to do into all the details, or the evidence, or the science, to prove it. Let's just take it as something that is axiomatic, that is generally-understood and embraced by reflective people, and that should be (but rarely is) integral to the philosophies of people that fancy themselves enlightened, progressive, egalitarian, unbiased:

Look for wisdom among common people . . . but not from the most highly educated.

This isn't to say that highly educated people can't be wise people. They certainly can be wise. But if they lack humility and an appreciation for the less educated, it's safe to conclude they are fools. 

This is a bedrock of the historic miracle that is the United States. Freedom of thought is worthless if it doesn't mean freedom of thought (and speech) for everybody. You don't get to pick and choose whose views are worthy, and whose aren't. Even the most random nonsense may contain some kernel of truth that the rest of us are missing. 

I should add, at this time, that I am equating the term "highly educated" with "expert." They are the same. 

It's wonderful that Jesus chose uneducated and ordinary men, to build His kingdom. Those that built the kingdom before . . . the politicians of the ancient world, and architects, and wealthy people, and "bosses" did a lot of building . . . they built things that return to dust. Christ's kingdom lasts forever, and He got as far away from universities as He could, in recruiting builders for that kingdom. 

Experts have a way of getting the crowds to sort-of worship them. People are insecure. Adults are children. And adults with expertise, money, and power, are in reality, children with expertise, money, and power. The higher your profile, the broader the blinders that let you see the rest of the world. 

Freedom of speech is everything in advancing progress. It's a godly thing. God believes in dignity for individuals. The only team, or Body (of Christ) of any value, is the one in which all of the members are equally valued. 

Is it possible that the experts of 2020 . . . the builders of society in the past . . . have become too full of themselves. Is there a stone of ancient wisdom that they are rejecting? Are they pushing restrictions against such fundamental necessities as freedom of speech? 

What else would "build back better" mean, to someone so rejecting an eternal truth like Freedom of Speech? 

Kept

But you have kept the good wine until now . . . 

 - From John 2

So much trouble has come to the world, because of impatience. Maybe impatience is a sort of root of all evil. Like the love of money . . . impatience leads us down paths that become increasingly hurtful, hostile, and dangerous. 

Maybe the love of money, itself, stems from impatience. People don't trust God, so they become impatience and start hoarding money. Or they start committing violence and destruction in the streets, with impudence, right there for the cameras.

They fail to cultivate true godly love for others . . . it makes them impatient. Impatience makes people want to bend others to their will. They lose the art of empathy. They begin caring for others, less and less. 

Impatience infects everything in society. It gets reinforced in our popular culture. Our music and arts reflect the notion that problems can be solved in under two and a half hours. A three-minute musical pick-me-up can make me believe that love will be mine within moments. 

Now, I believe in the arts, and I prize music perhaps above all other things in society. But we have to control the message . . . not let the message control us.

Impatient people feed their angst. They become political people in corporations, communities and governments. They actually believe that power and wealth are owed to them . . . and they want it now.

Think about how overused the word "deserve" is today. "You deserve to be happy." No you don't. Not necessarily. We don't really deserve anything. We should be focused on becoming the type of people that actually do deserve wonderful things . . . but we're not there yet. 

The concept of Democracy is being twisted in our time. Just get the votes. Acquire the power . . . and then intimidate your bare majority so that it makes law based on the wishes of the few. And then they use that power to corral the opposition so that it fears even the expression of its honest views about all of it. 

Impatience is closely linked to evil. 

But Jesus kept the good wine for later. If we just wait. Focus on the here and now. Take care of those things that are our own business. Serve those around us. Bring joy to our own inner circle of people. Do good. Listen carefully to others. Make sure the children and elders in your midst are cared for. Do the little things. Think pure thoughts and do pure things. Don't worry about being "a good human being" by saying all the right things, liking the right posts, sharing the right memes, and displaying the right bumper stickers. Just be a good person. That's all. Be kind. Be gentle. Be patient.

That's really the exact way to solve all these vexing problems in society. Do good. 

Meanwhile . . . Christ has kept some very, very good things in store for us. And they're a whole lot more wonderful than money. Or power. Or wine.

Heirs? Heirs!

 . . . the Gentiles have become fellow heirs . . . 

 - From Ephesians 3

There have been references, my entire life, to how modern Christians can understand the Jew-Gentile divide in terms of modern, Western-cultural racism. But I have never been totally happy with that comparison. It always felt too "Apples and Oranges" to me. Modern racism, rooted in such things as institutionalized slavery, of the same still practiced (legally) in many countries today, and class identities was never, in fact, an appropriate way to understand the ancient Jews' animosity towards Gentiles. 

It was always too easy for modern 21st Century people to say "Oh of course it's just like racism," while profoundly convinced, in their own minds, that they are not racists. Yes, yes . . . this is the bigotry of ancient Israelis - - - something that I am not!

Thank you, Father God, that I am not like them!

But today, we have a better example, one that we can all feel, poignantly:

Unmasked people, versus masked. (Or, any delineator based on the public health controversy in 2020-2022).

In my experience, most anti-mandate people are quite accepting of others wanting to place restrictions on themselves. They would even become allies if necessary.

But also, in my experience, most pro-mandate people have utter disdain for the anti-mandate (or neutral) people. Social distancing is quite convenient - - - they can "legally" do what they want to do, anyway, which is to keep their distance from such deplorables. They operate with a level of contempt for "the other" that goes way beyond mere casual racism. And in the space of less than two years, have institutionalized entire sets of practices and mandates, that hastens the dividing of humanity into separate, hostile camps. 

I may be totally wrong in how I have characterized these two camps, and their attitudes. Of course there is a level of hyperbole involved, and even deliberate satiric exaggeration. 

Regardless of who is right . . . there's no mistaking the racist-like tendencies of modern people, which is marvelous mostly in the rapidity in which former friends and colleagues have come to have such ire towards each other. 

We would hope the ire is not felt by Christians . . . but it is; way too much. And they have managed to convince themselves that their hate for others is actual godly love. 

We finally understand what Paul was talking about; why it was so potentially toxic a concept to introduce: the very idea of Jews and Gentiles being brethren in the same Body. . . . In the same family!

All we have to do is go out into public, and see if we immediately form opinions of others, based on appearance, that we feel justifies getting as far away from them as possible. 

All we have to do is look in a mirror. 

 

Face

Make your face to shine upon your servant . . . 

 - From Psalm 31

When God makes His face to shine upon us . . . is it covered? Or did he create the human face as an important visual blessing to the world? If God's face shines upon us, does He also smile, to see our smiles in response? When He models such acts of grace and love for us, does He then expect us to do the same, to each other? Is the mouth an important part of positive communication, and of smiling, or is it really true that you can smile "with your eyes," and that would be good enough?

Science: The human face emits light. The part of the human face that emits the most light, is the bottom half: the mouth. The nose. The chin. 

Does God expect our lights to shine for one another . . . or does He prefer we cover our light? If a light is covered up by a bushel and thus loses it's value . . . does the same thing happen if the light-emitting bottom half of a human face is covered, as if by a bushel?

The rest of Psalm 31, before asking for God's light to shine upon us, goes into detail about the way the righteous are treated by the wicked. They're mocked. They're slandered. 

When walking down the street, the wicked turn away from the righteous - they avoid the righteous.

It's like seeing someone walking your way . . . and there's something visual about them that makes you cross the street so that you will not have to interact with them. I saw that happening a lot, during the summer of 2020. And the expression of the avoiders, showing forth from their eyes, the uncovered part of their face, had all the anger and judgmentalism that I would imagine the wicked have towards the righteous, all the time!

For I have heard the whispering of the crowd, says the Psalmist. 

I have heard it, too. Or read it, on Social Media. 

My Law

If you will not listen to me, to walk in my law that I have set before you . . . 

 - From Jeremiah 26

In 2021, out of both sides of the same mouth:

The Bible is about violence and slavery, and misogyny, and racism, and violence, and war . . . 

Doesn't the Bible say to take care of immigrants?

When it suits them (that is . . . when it fits their stratagem, to gain power for themselves so that they can get back at people that remind them of someone that was mean to them once) the certain faction of modern society finds the Bible quite useful. But when defaming the Bible can create enough dissension and confusion, also to assist them in the acquisition of power, they will do so. 

Here's a rather harsh and extreme-sounding warning from Jeremiah. Apparently, he lived in a time that had suddenly turned away from the Lord. But they didn't know they had turned away. Jeremiah spoke the prophetic warnings in the synagogues, in the presence of people that considered themselves faithful. The society, of its times, thought of itself as on the right track. Perhaps they were set on the goal of tweaking some of God's laws that were too hard, or that seemed to mean, or that didn't allow for the kind of selfish "fun" of the kind that gave their lives "meaning."

What was this "law" that God had set before them (and us)? It is summarized and repeated over and over throughout the Old Testament, and then Christ took it to a higher level in the New Testament. Here it is:

* Take care of widows and orphans

* Take care of strangers traveling through your communities

* Live purely - that is, unselfishly, not with greed, not being driven by carnal physical drives. 

Those three life practices are the very essence of practical love. 

And then Jesus further clarified it: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. 

That's it. That's what's so horrible. But notice it doesn't say anything about virtue signaling . . . and this is where perhaps people come so unglued over having to actually . . . well . . . love ALL others. 

That's the root of all the anger, all the hate, all the strife and violence. 

But I don't want to love others!

 . . . that's really what people are saying, when they resist God.