A cry of wonder

In The Ragamuffin Gospel Brennan Manning quotes Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, saying, "Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and He gave it to me."

Take a look around. You don't have to look very far at all to see the wonder that is displayed. Think of God showing the beauty of His creation to you and asking, "Do you like it? I made it all for you."
How insane to try and comprehend that out of the vast array of literal awesomeness expressed throughout the cosmos we would be so important that He should notice us.
And not just take notice of us, but to humble Himself to the point of death to demonstrate how much He outright LOVES us. A single act that cleanly wipes the slate of the best that man has ever had to offer.

But still, despite all He has done, we seem to think that we can build towers to heaven. We think that our "wisdom", the incredible ability of man to reason, will save us. There is no creature so arrogant as man. Our very struggle to leave a footprint on the universe will be but a grain of sand dropped into the roaring seas when time has come to an end. It is inevitable that no matter what man achieves, the universe would one day forget him.
The man who thinks himself most wise shall one day be brought low by the realization of the power held within a single act. "Wisdom" is but foolishness if it leads away from the message of the gospel.

1 Corinthians 1:18 beautifully displays the wonder of His gift to us in contrast to our own attempts at greatness; "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those of us who are being save it is the power of God."
Why foolishness you say? A man considered wise by others may see himself as above the idea of salvation, that the message delivered on the cross is nothing to which he should pay any heed. To him, it is a story and carries no weight. The power of God is understood best by those who seek to be saved, not by those that seek to save themselves, those that seek to make themselves great in other men's eyes.

How much a single moment where God acts can overshadow us, and it is in His works that we must believe, for what can we truly achieve by ourselves? Paul writes several verses later in 1 Corinthians 2:5 "that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." This is why He came, this is why He surrounds us daily with beauty beyond our understanding. It is because He wants us to know that it is by Him we are saved, through His power alone.

Cry out in wonder at the magnificence around you. Take a moment to lose your focus on your busy daily routine and look around you. If we focus too hard on the path we are walking we will miss the beauty of the sunset being painted above. Psalm 19 is fantastic in the way that it expresses the beauty of creation saying, "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world."

Don't get caught up in trying to be wise by the standards of the world; the world itself will pass away one day. Instead, seek His love, accept His gift to us, forsake all for His purpose. The wisdom and the achievements of men are as nothing when brought into juxtaposition with the cross, all it serves to do is to demonstrate how we can never reach Him without His reaching out to us.
Think of the words of Paul in Philippians 3:7-14:

----But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.-----

His word inspires me, and I am filled with wonder. For this reason I will run with all that I am towards Him, leaving behind all that the world counts as wise, and pursuing the foolish beauty of the cross.

The question of the Eternal

A little while back I tried my hand at a bit of philosophy, just for fun. The following is what I ended up with. It resembles the cosmological argument slightly, and it is by no means complete, I just wanted to share it.

The case for the eternal:
It is impossible, I find, to logically consider the existence and nature of the universe without realizing that there must be an eternal realm which lies outside the universe. This argument is best presented by looking at the nature of time. Time delineates both a beginning and an end for the universe, and so we measure the current age of the universe by time, and for all of our purposes the two are inextricably tied together.
So time demonstrates a definitive length, during which the universe exists, and the conditions within the universe demonstrate that all things are only the product of other things. The point is two-fold; first, the universe could not have simply started to exist with nothing prior to it. This idea would set the universe outside of time, at a point where it both always and never existed. Since the universe will end it cannot always exist, and since it is, it cannot never exist. Also, since the universe is tied to, and bound in, time, it cannot exist outside of it. The second part of this point is that anything of finite length, as determined by time, had a beginning, which is to say a force prior to it which, in acting in some way, caused the beginning. Following this logic, there must be a force in an infinite state (else beginnings are removed ad infinitum); that is that which resides in the eternal realm.
The question at this point is in regards to the nature of the eternal, and not its existence. We must realize, primarily, that the eternal realm must have laws that do not match our own, and that the exact nature of these laws cannot be stipulated by us given the fact that our knowledge is limited to the observable and measurable (and finite) universe. Though, assuming a physical force within the eternal there are laws that may be inferred, as shall be discussed.
The Nature of the Eternal:
The establishment of the idea of an eternal realm leads us to ask what the eternal is.
--The Universe--
Starting most locally we look at the idea of the universe itself being eternal, a view which would necessitate a looping life-span given the fact of a beginning and end to the universe (we have already established the universe cannot be eternal in the sense that is strictly sprang up, being as that would set the universe outside of time). The looping model would present a universe that acts much like the stars within it, shrinking down and exploding out again, forming new stars. There are several apparent problems with this model. Looking at the later stages of a star, it absorbs material into itself, undergoes rapid nuclear fusion (releasing a great amount of energy), then explodes and only about 1/1000 of the solar mass worth of material is expelled; this material interacts with other material to form the new star. The problems with modeling the universe after this cycle to explain it as the eternal factor are clear: much of the process requires interaction with forces outside of itself (it cannot be eternal and alone), and also it releases a much smaller amount of material, which would make any loop a decaying loop, which in turns assigns age.
--Time--
If we look at time itself as the eternal, then we would have to see the universe as a simple number on a number line, stretching to infinity in either direction. Yet, supposing this, we must also suppose that the point at which the universe exists could be any point, all points, and no points. This argument would the be seen as having been already established as false. Furthermore, time is a measurable constant, it affects but does not (as far as we have seen) produce. For time to be the eternal it would have to exist as a force and not a measure, and being a universal constant, time could not exist independent of itself (the eternal force needing to be outside of time).
--Physical Force--
The eternal realm can also be looked at as being made up of a physical force, the laws and state of which we cannot know for sure, being limited to our own universe. This idea makes the most sense of any so far since, in the physical world, something cannot spontaneously come out of nothing. However, for this to be true there would have to be, existing in the eternal, a useable yet un-diminishable physical force capable of generating [randomly generating] highly ordered systems, or universes, such as our own (which contains us, beings capable of thought, that would have been generated by a force incapable of intelligence).
The problem with this system comes upon the fact that such a system would likely have laws similar to our own, being as we are a product of, and subordinate to, this force. While it is true that we could not stipulate these laws with certainty, we can infer that our laws and the laws in this realm would be close, and if this were the case, then an useable but un-diminishable force would be nearly impossible. Following this line of thought we see that a physical eternal force, while not altogether impossible, is highly improbable. [[For a more in-depth look at an idea of a physical eternal force, see Stephen Hawking's book The Grand Design. Though keep in mind that M-theory is not proven, and poses the need for grand meta-laws that would enable many of the actions of M-theory to take place. The problem is that the meta-laws are unexplained and must simply be accepted as a given. Needless to say it is only one of the stances that physicists take.]]
--The Spiritual--
The final possibility for the eternal realm is that the force residing there lies both outside the temporal and physical realms. A force with such characteristics would follow the stipulation that it cannot be known at all by simply observing the known physical universe, and could also therefore be outside the limitations of the finite. This realm can be looked at as the Spiritual, and the force that resides within it is God, an unknowable (by scientific standards) and unfathomable being/existence.

So yeah. Probably quite a bit to still work on in that. But it was fun to write.
Questions or comments?

Reflection on Russia

Honestly, I cannot fully express everything that my recent trip has been in words.

During the debrief time at the end of my trip, I read this poem to express a lot of how the trip made me feel. 

I still think it applies rather well, to give a general view of the impact.

A missing person

   Afterthought 

      Always chasing what is not

Steady growth

   I cannot change

      Yet gaining more within my range

I do not know

   I cannot hear

      Approaching only what I fear

New desires

   Misbegotten

      Shall become old, and then forgotten

I cannot see

   Just what is true

      But I shall find myself in You

My one goal

   That I have truly

      Is to pursue You, and pay You duly

But I am at

   A loss to pay

      Forever ruined in my way

So give to me

   One more chance

      Within this, my lifelong dance

While I can never

   Pay it back

      You have provided what I lack

Now I will live 

   Just to serve

      Making straight what once did curve

A prodigal

   One that was lost

      I am forgiven by the Lord of hosts

Where found

   Empty desire

      Consume me now with all Your fire

Let my life

   My heart, my all

      Before You only forever fall

I have grown

   From no hope

      Broadened horizons, widened scope

Take me out

   Of the darkness

      So that Your Love I can harness

While I totter

   On an edge

      Still You will receive this pledge

So I stand

   Forever thankful

      For a Love beyond the hateful

Hateful lives

   That stem from fears

      Others that collapse in tears

Reaching far

   Beyond myself

      To understand those on this shelf

I would become

   What I dream

      In order to provide a seem

To fix a hole

   In Someone's heart

      Turn them from ruin to work of art

But only through

   The strength of One

      Who understood before I'd begun

So not on my

   Two feet I stand

       But on my rock, and in His hand

Ignorance is [not] bliss

There is a time and a place for all things. Well, for most things. 
Much of life calls for us to take a stand and further ourselves, and in these times we cannot simply remain unmoving and willfully ignore what is going on. Knowledge is necessary, it allows us to move forward.


Perhaps I am simply stating something that is already fairly popular opinion, but I cannot believe that God made us to live in a blind faith, in a purposeful ignorance of how the world itself relates to Him. By saying the world, I mean all aspects of the human search for truth; philosophy, science, theology, et al. It is our responsibility to use the intelligence given to us to discover for ourselves how we may both justify and defend our faith, so that we may be more stable in our own reasons for belief in a world that is becoming more antagonistic towards us every day. 
Solomon said in proverbs: let the wise listen and add to their learning, 
   and let the discerning get guidance. 

Not only is it imperative that we understand why we, each of us personally, have come to believe the way that we do, but we must also use our minds to understand others, to understand how they believe and why they have come to believe it. 

To hold a conversation, or to try and debate someone, on the basis of a less than complete understanding of either our own belief, or of theirs, will simply be babbling; incoherent and pointless. 

It is when you know what you are saying that you truly have something to say.

There is a quote by John Paul II on the relation between Faith and Reason that I will close with, I think it ties much of what I am trying to say together well.

"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves."

To begin...

A friend once said to me "Speak up. You have something to say and the world is waiting."

That was several years ago, but I can honestly say that it is something that I have taken with me and think on often. So here I am, beginning to speak up.
I wouldn't exactly say that this is an attempt to fulfill that statement, but it is a beginning, and you have to start somewhere.

As to the title of the blog, it means "with death changed my life." Stumbled across it doing some research a few years back and quite enjoy the phrase.

For those of you who will be following; thanks. I hope you enjoy it, and please leave comments on any post I put up in the foreseeable future, the discussion will be greatly appreciated.

Friends, enjoy.