26 October 2004 00:11
what is hope? i read this yesterday, in a book set during the early 1800's, referring to slaves,"[They] wait for hope. They don't have hope, but they hope for hope, for a reason to hope."
(there wasn't a whole lot of mention of hope in Christ...)
expect, hope, look, await.
hope, desire, trust, confidence, optimism, reliance, faith, belief, assurance, secureness, security, reassurance.
auspicious. we'll throw that in 'cause it sounds cool.
expect usually implies both a high degree of certainty and a marked sense of anticipation.
hope (often with for) implies little certainty but suggests confidence or assurance in the possibility.
look (with to) is likely to suggest more strongly than expect a county ing on or a freedom from doubt.
look (with for) does not focus on assurance; it suggests rather an attitude of expectancy and watchfulness.
await often adds to look for the implication of being ready for the event.
now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
here's an interesting concept: zech 9.12
Return to your fortress, O prisoners of hope;
even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you.
am i a prisoner to my confidence? to my trust in God? what happens if i escape the surly bonds of hope?
with that paradox, most likely in the twilight zone.
do you know why God spake his word to the ancients to be written down, instead of speaking directly to the ears of men? because we humans, in our fallibility, would never be able to understand that his constant chuckling at his own jokes and puns was never for our detriment. see, it goes like this.
we are made in the image of God. does that merely mean our souls are eternal, or does that mean we have attributes of God? For instance, God Loves. likewise, humans love (albeit imperfectly). but many people would argue that animals love too, and animals are not made in the image of God. of course, many of those same animal lovers would perhaps disagree with that, since all theologians agree that dogs go to heaven too [3].
before peta comes to liberate my pet lizard, i'll drop the animal thing and say this. i can't back it up biblically, but i'm fond of believing that some of our charactheristics are likewise charachteristics of God. I'm also fond of believing that a can of pop and a doughnut is a healthy and nutritional meal.
whenever i make something, for instance this blog, i leave an imprint of me on it. professionals could look at this blog and other blogs i've written and other blogs others have written, and given enough material to work with, they could tell which ones were mine. when God made humanity and all of creation, all the little nuances of that creation are like a fingerprint pointing to their creator, God. i think it's clear from the mathmatics of nature that God loves to have all the complicated puzzle pieces fit together. how even in the chaos of a thunderstorm, there is still a clear pattern. even how lightening is created with the buildup of static charge, the leader stroke and then the backlash, it's all so fascinating. some people say "oh, now it's explained. there is no God." i say oh, now i'ts explained. and that perfect balance happened by chance? no, it's even more fascinating now that i know how i could never create such an idea out of nothing, that all my ideas are mere rearranging of what already exists. that we can duplicate lightening on a small scale, we can even manipulate it to prevent damage to space shuttle launches (even there we can't stop it, we can only force its hand and rechannel it), but who would have thought it up in the first place? it only took the thinkers of the world five and a half millenia to get around to harnessing electricity.
back to my original rabbit trail, there is certaintly danger in personifying God. but there is also danger in always regarding God as TERRIBLE and AWEFULL. there's even validity (i think, i'm no hebrew scholar) in the argument that God shouldn't always be referred to as He. that God has both male and female characteristics (since i shore know that females got some personality characteristics that they ain't got from men, or if Adam did have them, he got them from God in the first place). (before you burn me at the stake, i firmly believe that God as our authority should be referred to as He and Father, not she, it, or mother).
God is indeed a personal God who cares for each of us individually, but he's not our "buddy". i find that nowhere in scripture, nor have i ever referred to my earthly father as my "best bud". but neither is God always aloof. you know how people tend to create a list of questions they're "going to ask God when they get to heaven"? one of the things i'm looking forward to the most is hearing God give a good belly laugh. there's so much death and destruction and doomsaying in the bible, and while joy is certaintly promised, i still want to hear the joyous side of God, to have the promises fulfilled. who cannot help but smile at the joyful mirth of a father playing in the front yard with his children? and you know how infectuous the pure laughter of another can be, there will be no way i could help from laughing in the presence of God while he's laughing uproariously at some joke. they say there will be no tears in heaven, but we just might have to make exceptions when God tells a joke that has us rolling around in stitches gasping for air. but of course that would be unbecoming of our Dignified and Ascetic Eternal Omnipresent Omnipotent Supreme Creator, and thus will never happen [4].
picture yourself after you've lived for a long time as a hermit. heh.. that reminded me of douglas adams. i shall digress... (don't peek, any ideas of which particular adams passage?)
The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was. It wasn't just that the cave was cold, it wasn't just that it was damp and smelly. It was the fact that the cave was in the middle of Islington and there wasn't a bus due for two million years. Though his throat was sore again from his early morning yell of horror, he was suddenly in a terrifically good mood. He wrapped his dilapidated dressing gown tightly around him and beamed at the bright morning.
He had just had a wonderful idea about how to cope with the terrible lonely isolation, the nightmares, the failure of all his attempts at horticulture, and the sheer futurelessness and futility of his life here on prehistoric Earth, which was that he would go mad. He beamed again and took a bite out of a rabbit leg left over from his supper. He chewed happily for a few moments and then decided formally to announce his decision. He stood up straight and looked the world squarely in the fields and hills. To add weight to his words he stuck the rabbit bone in his hair. He spread his arms out wide.
"I will go mad!" he announced.
"Good idea," said Ford Prefect, clambering down from the rock on which he had been sitting.
***
"I have detected," he said, "disturbances in the wash."
He gazed keenly into the distance and looked as if he would quite like the wind to blow his hair back dramatically at that point, but the wind was busy fooling around with some leaves a little way off.
"Are we talking about," Arthur asked cautiously, "some sort of Vogon laundromat, or what are we talking about?"
"Eddies," said Ford, "in the space-time continuum."
"Ah," nodded Arthur, "is he? Is he?" He pushed his hands into the pocket of his dressing gown and looked knowledgeably into the distance.
"What?" said Ford.
"Er, who," said Arthur, "is Eddy, then, exactly?"
Ford looked angrily at him.
"Will you listen?" he snapped.
"I have been listening," said Arthur, "but I'm not sure it's helped."
***
Suddenly the light flashed.
"There!" said Ford, shooting out his arm. "There, behind that sofa!"
Arthur looked. Much to his surprise, there was a velvet paisley-covered Chesterfield sofa in the field in front of them. He boggled intelligently at it. Shrewd questions sprang into his mind.
"Why," he said, "is there a sofa in that field?"
"I told you!" shouted Ford, leaping to his feet. "Eddies in the space-time continuum!"
"And this is his sofa, is it?" asked Arthur, struggling to his feet and, he hoped, though not very optimistically, to his senses.
"Arthur!" shouted Ford at him, "that sofa is there because of the space-time instability I've been trying to get your terminally softened brain to get to grips with. It's been washed out of the continuum, it's space-time jetsam, it doesn't matter what it is, we've got to catch it, it's our only way out of here!"
He scrambled rapidly down the rocky outcrop and made off across the field.
"Catch it?" muttered Arthur, then frowned in bemusement as he saw that the Chesterfield was lazily bobbing and wafting away across the grass.
With a whoop of utterly unexpected delight he leapt down the rock and plunged off in hectic pursuit of Ford Prefect and the irrational piece of furniture. They careered wildly through the grass, leaping, laughing, shouting instructions to each other to head the thing off this way or that way. The sun shone dreamily on the swaying grass, tiny field animals scattered crazily in their wake. Arthur felt happy. He was terribly pleased that the day was for once working out so much according to plan. Only twenty minutes ago he had decided he would go mad, and now he was already chasing a Chesterfield sofa across the fields of prehistoric Earth.
okay, so i handn't meant to quote quite that much, but i find it so humourous.
where was i? ah yes, so imagine yourself a hermit for a long time. i would certaintly have some eccentricities after that time. now think about how long God existed before our creation. not that that question is answerable since God is outside of time, but for a human, one has to get creative or go insane from boredom.
hm, which fails to explain why i haven't gotten out of the apartment yet today. ah, but i'm getting there. i have to go get some passport photos. the last one i got looks more like they just dragged me out of the gutter and propped me (still stoned) up against the building to take the shot. maybe that's why immigration officials have never been kind to me. come on, do i really look that threatening? hmm. don't answer that.
seeing as i'm a professional pilot, i should really wear a uniform, have a crew cut, and shave, but i can't bring myself to do it. i was watching some venezuelan pilots the other day, they had a load of eight tourists in i think it was a turbocommander. they were wearing jeans and casual shirts, had shaggy hair and dark aviator glasses. they rode the transport bus out with the passengers and the one pilot was off and had the right engine cranking before all eight pax were even off the bus. it was a very... ahem, thorough preflight. maybe i should hire on with a south american commuter hm?
is God's wrath and judgement a part of love, or is it a result? is a father's punishment of his son love, or the result of love. one person has said "it's a holy result of love." we were on a tangent, talking about Christian's in the military. that's when the adages "nuke 'em til they glow then shoot 'em in the dark" and "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" came up. well, i guess that person gave his view.
what does it mean that God is a consuming fire? that's hardly constructive, is it? the writer of hebrews quoted it from deut 4.24 at the end of chap 12. 4.23&24:
Be careful not to forget the covenant of the Lord your God taht he made with you; do not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything the Lord your God has forbidden. For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.
then hebrews 12.28&29
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our "God is a consuming fire."
is it good to be near a God who is a consuming fire, or is he something to dread when we're notgood?
over the weekend i read five books of a six book series in a row. and before that i read a quote,
I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars. --Fred Allen
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