Month: February 2025

Images or Altars?

“If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshiped.” – Evelyn Underhill

We were designed to worship God, but we all know that sometimes that worship gets diverted into other things. The people of Israel were prone to worshiping idols made of stone, wood, or metal, so God made it clear in the very first of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) that they were not to make images. Period.

But there was something he did want them to make: Later in the same chapter we find God saying, “. . . an altar of earth you shall make for me”

Don’t make images, but do make altars. And what are altars for? He explains that, too. They are for offering sacrifices in worship of the one true God.

The God we worship is beyond limit. Anything we do to give him shape makes him something less than who he really is.

On the other hand, an altar acknowledges his existence, his presence, his authority, and his worthiness to be worshipped and adored. It sees him to be limitless, all-present, beyond understanding. And it provides a place for us to meet him in all his glory.

Sometimes we all need to examine what goes on in the deepest parts of our minds and hearts. Are we tending more toward seeing God according to our personal definition of him, a being we might be able to bargain with, manipulate, or control? Or do we see him as the transcendent, all encompassing God to be held in awe and reverential fear? To be worshiped and adored. Let’s make altars, not idols.

“The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth. He never grows weak or weary. No one can measure the depths of his understanding.” – Isaiah 40:28b

Encounters with Jesus

True encounter with Christ liberates something in us, a power we did not know we had, a hope, a capacity for life, a resilience, an ability to bounce back when we thought we were completely defeated, a capacity to grow and change, a power of creative transformation.  
—Thomas Merton 

How can we live in such a way that encounters with Jesus, as Merton describes above, are possible for us?

We start by wanting to know everything we can know about him. As Christians, one of our missions should be to read and reread the Gospels to keep gaining insights into Jesus – not only his teaching, but also his actions, attitudes, and habits.

Then we will want to know him, not just intellectually, but experientially through a one-on-one relationship with him. We will want personal encounters with Jesus – times when we can sense his presence or hear his voice as a thought in our mind or feel his love reaching out for us.

These moments with Jesus are possible, but they cannot be commanded. They can only be received. We can prepare space for them by walking in obedience to Jesus, desiring to please him in every possible way. Such a moment might happen when we pause in our prayer to listen, or when we’re driving to an appointment, or as we sleep at night. Every encounter with Jesus will cut to our heart, it will change us, we will never forget it, and we will want more.

Jesus, in the person of the Holy Spirit, lives within everyone who has put their trust in him. If we tune in to his presence and his power, he will respond in his own way and time.

“. . . “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” – John 14:2

Made Whole

This is a bonus post from my friend, Jane. I hope it blesses you as it did me.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

World of Wonders

“If we would venture more upon the naked promise of God, we would enter a world of wonders to which we are yet strangers.” – Charles Spurgeon

It’s a great quote by Spurgeon. Then we look at life and at the world around us and we ask where those wonders are. What are we missing?

Maybe it is the barely-avoided accident on the highway.

Maybe it’s a new-born baby.

Maybe it’s the sickness we didn’t catch.

Maybe it is the peace we feel even when the task in front of us seems too big.

Maybe it’s our friend’s insight into a problem we are trying to solve on our own.

The Bible tells us we humans are just dust. Some call us “mud people”. Yes, mud people in whose life is the breath of God making us into someone he loves, adores, cares for, and nurtures. He takes us by the hand, leading us step by step. That, in itself, is a wonder! There is nothing too hard for God. He is the God of wonders, working them every day in our world.

Some of them are small. We have to be paying close attention to see them. Others are big -like when we get an unexpected gift that is just exactly what we needed, or someone we’ve been praying for is healed in a way that can only be be supernatural, or someone we love suddenly sees the truth of who Jesus is. These wonders do happen. Let’s look for them and then stand in awe at what we see. G. K. Chesterton said it best: “We are perishing for lack of wonder, not for lack of wonders”.

“Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually! Remember the wondrous works that he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he uttered,” – Psalm 105:4-5

Their god is . . . .

“Each day provides a multitude of ways to improve the way we shelter the Holy Spirit of God.” – Gary Thomas

There are times when we seem to have a love-hate relationship with our bodies. As Christians, we know that our bodies belong to God, that the Holy Spirit lives within us, and that we have a responsibility to take care of the body we have, whatever its present condition may be. Much about our bodies is outside of our control. But we do have something to say about how we eat, exercise, and rest.

Paul actually refers (not favorably!) to people whose “god is their belly” (from Philippians 3:19). I think we could safely interpret it to mean that it’s possible to let our bodies have too much to say about how we live. Sometimes it is our baser instincts that rule our decisions.

But we don’t have to follow the demands our body makes for satisfaction, pleasure, or foods. We have to give it what it needs, but not everything it wants! When we make God our first priority, our one and only God, we are less likely to make our appetites, our comfort, or our happiness into “gods”.

If we’re serious about having God rule our bodies, what do we do? We learn to feed them well, to get exercise to keep our muscles strong, and to find the right balance between work and rest and between feasting and fasting. We can use our bodies to turn us toward God, not away from him, as we learn to care for these temples in ways that please him.

 “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship“- Romans 12:1