April 29, 2015
Laying Claim
We had the grandkids for a
sleepover on Friday night and I used a Subway coupon, three foot long subs for
$12.00, to buy supper. Bill and I split one sandwich, 11 year-old David ate a
whole sandwich and nine year-old Lydia ate half a sandwich. After church on
Sunday I planned on leftovers for lunch, but when I went to the refrigerator
for the remaining ½ a sub sandwich, it was gone. Apparently Lydia and I had
both mentally laid claim to the sandwich, but her church gets out earlier than mine,
so she beat me to the sandwich. Obviously Lydia and I should take a lesson from
the early church. “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed
that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had”
(Acts 4:32 NIV).
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----My favorite part of prayer is, “…Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done…” I have a way of thinking about “Thy kingdom” and “Thy will” that excites me.
-----The Greek Atomists were pretty cool. They’d say cut an apple in half and then you have two halves (which wasn’t the end of their genius.) Cut that half in half and then that quarter in half and the eighth in half and keep it up until you can no longer see the next piece to half. Now you’ve got to think about it to continue. This is where their genius started. They reasoned the process would continue until it reached a half which could not be halved. That would be the basic building block of all material things. I suppose we of the current “scientific age” jumped the gun a little by naming the atom atoms, because…well…atoms break into pieces: protons and electrons.
-----This is where my admiration for the Atomists comes in to play. Particle-physicists can theorize quarks and strings and stuff and look for them all they want; I like to take the Atomist route of reason to the basic building block. So keep slicing those halves in your mind right on to the one which will not cut in half anymore. It might be reasoned that there may never be a half that can not be halved, but that would apply an infinite nature to the material world which God created as finite. So, to reach that bottom of the finite would be to also reach the most basic nature of matter itself in the piece which can't be cut. Science doesn’t really need to tell you what it is. Just a thought reveals it to be the simplest principle of being, the one science recognizes first about all material: it is what it is -in other words, existence called forth by God.
-----Hebrews gives us another clue about a second principle this tiniest of tiny has. I call it “love”, the principle of mutual benefit. For any two of these most tiny building blocks (which, for my thinking I label a “Qu”) to interact in making a higher unit of material, they must benefit rather than aggravate one another. Mutual benefit is love. In these two properties of every Qu, the very material of our physical existence reflects Him who made it, I AM THAT I AM, and love, “…upholding the universe by His word of power.” (Heb 1:3)
-----God knows everything - every Qu of the universe and everywhere every one of them is at any time and at all times. Since man meesed up this universe, God also knows everywhere every Qu should have been at any time and at all times. No problem for His infinite knowledge! The perfect placement and interaction of every Qu with every other Qu assembles perfectly placed atoms and molecules and substances unto a perfectly placed everything in a perfect material world, a nature of His kingdom in its wholeness. I like to think of this as the foundation upon which He built the world we messed up, the same foundation upon which He will build the perfect world which nobody will ever mess up.
-----That part of His kingdom will come by His doing. But we join in this “coming” by truly desiring right, that is, righteousness (a beautiful word misconstrued by an evil world) at the base of our hearts. I like to call the most basic desire we can achieve a “Pe”, as in “personal emergence“, for we emerge from what we desire. But Pe can be for “perfect emergence”, too, since we are being perfected because we desire righteousness through Christ, and receive it. So our lives in the Lord get more and more wonderful as we join the coming of His kingdom by minding our Pes while He minds our Qus - basic intimacy with Him.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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