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Pickwick12
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Name: Amy
Country: United States
State: Florida
Metro: Fort Myers
Gender: Female
Interests: baseball, literature, British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, writing, punk music, law, politics
Expertise: writing, talking, editing
Occupation: Student
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message me
Member Since:
11/29/2004
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| HeavenI hear people talk sometimes about how boring it would be to
just worship God for all eternity in heaven.
What?!
The moments I feel closest to God are the least boring moments of my existence.
Worshiping God doesn't mean we have to wear a suit and stand with hymnal in
hand for all eternity. No, it means we will always be with Him in perfect
communion. Our sheer delight in Him will delight His heart for all eternity,
even as He delights ours.
I cannot express the joy of God's presence, the joy that breaks my heart and
makes me hungry for an eternal dose of Him. I cannot wait for that communion to
be unending. If it was unending now, I think I would die. I believe eternity
will be like the story of the alabaster box. I will forever pour myself out
like perfume onto Him, and He will forever pour Himself into me, so much that I
never run out of perfume to give.
God showed me something that I have never written about specifically. I
was praying, and I saw myself sitting on His lap. I looked into His face,
and He showed me His eyes.
I cannot describe to you how beautiful they were. There is nothing more
beautiful in the world; nothing compares and nothing ever could. Every hunger I
had was filled in them. There was unending love and peace and acceptance and
perfection in them. Words cannot describe them. They were more than enough to
nourish the souls of every human being for all eternity. I knew that I could
sit and look at God's eyes for all eternity and be so happy, so satisfied that
nothing would ever compare to the satisfaction. In God's eyes every desire and
need I have as a human being was completely satisfied, and I longed for it
never to end. It was perfect. I could look at God for all eternity and never
stop wanting to look at Him and to have those eyes look back at me with perfect
love. No nourishment like that exists anywhere else. Nothing I could ever want
is outside those eyes.
Boredom could never enter into an equation like this. This is what life is for,
what it's meant to be. The overwhelming perfection of our union with God could
never be boring. I don't know exactly what the physical reality of heaven will
be, but I know that it will be the place where this union will be fully
realized for all eternity. I have no fear that an eternity of worshiping God
will ever get old. God is never old, and there will always be infinitely more
of Him to experience, the day after I die and the day after my millionth day in
heaven.
Psalm 34:8 O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that
trusteth in him.
Please, please taste. I promise that you will not be disappointed. The joy
of feeling Him here is so wild, so intense, that I cannot even imagine the
intensity of the unfettered experience of God that we will receive in heaven. I
cannot be grateful enough for the taste of Himself that God gave me. Never
could I ever think that a heaven of communion with God will be boring. My heart
pants with hunger for the closeness. Some day it will not be intermittent; one
day, glorious day, it will be fully realized forever. That is heaven, and that
is where I am going. | | |
| Thank You!How can I thank God enough for all of the healing He's given me? When I am at the end of my rope, He comes through again and again. Praise Him. I am feeling peace in areas that have been wounded for years. I can't thank God enough. He does uncountably more than I deserve.
Pied Beauty
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
| GLORY be to God for dappled things— | |
| For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; | |
| For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; | |
| Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; | |
| Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough; | 5 |
| And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. | |
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| All things counter, original, spare, strange; | |
| Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) | |
| With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; | |
| He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: | 10 |
| Praise him. |
God's Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins | THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God. | |
| It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; | |
| It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil | |
| Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? | |
| Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; | 5 |
| And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; | |
| And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil | |
| Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. | |
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| And for all this, nature is never spent; | |
| There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; | 10 |
| And though the last lights off the black West went | |
| Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs— | |
| Because the Holy Ghost over the bent | |
| World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. | |
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Thanks to bartleby.com
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| Beyond Physical RealityDo you ever wish you could see God?
Sometimes I do, and then I realize that if I could see Him as He really is, I probably couldn't process it. It's more like I want to experience God as someone I can see, someone who looks friendly and comforting. When I get tangled in my own head and fears and I'm clinging to faith against my feelings, I wish I could see Him outside of me, smiling, loving me, so I could be sure. But then it wouldn't be faith. I know that I know that I know (as my pastor says) who God is and how He feels about me. But I still wish I could see. I guess I want training wheels when I need to start pedaling and balancing on a "big girl" bike. But it hurts sometimes, and I need Him. He's always there, though I cannot physically see Him, and I know more than ever that He is always working on my behalf. Sometimes, though, I wish He was physical. That wish shows just how humanly blind I am because He is far better and far beyond human limits.
And yet, He was physical once, for 33 years. For 33 years He was the man who would hold you in His lap or forgive you if you said something mean or help you catch breakfast. He was everything I could ever dream of Him being.
What I must realize is that I have lost nothing by not seeing Him physically. By His Spirit, His Person is in me and with me, just as much as He was when He was a human. Seeing is a simple complication. The reality is there when the seeing is not. He is just as vibrant and alive as any physical reality I see around me.
In The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien, there is one character (left out of the film) who is beyond regular reality. His name is Tom Bombadil. The fellowship meets him in the woods on their journey. He takes the ring of power, the whole point of the quest, and plays with it. He even makes it disappear for a little while. He is in control of the physical reality of the most powerful thing in Middle Earth. People have postulated that Tolkien meant for this character to represent God.
Like Tom, God is in control of every reality. Think about the day the sun didn't move in the sky (Joshua 10). I can almost imagine God laughing like Tom Bombadil as He stopped the rotation of the earth while making sure that nothing in the whole universe got messed up as a result. I imagine His huge, still hand as He suddenly stopped spinning the blue globe. Do you think that was hard for God? No way. No physical "ring of power" is even comparable to His greatness.
And so, I return to my wish for a God I can process and quantify into what I physically desire, and I realize that my wishes don't even begin to touch His actual greatness. He is what I want, and He is so much more that I will never, ever get a handle on Him. Ten million years from now, I will be drinking Him in in perfect peace and happiness, and I will be no closer to the end of Him because there is no end. And yet, He still chose to contain Himself in a body so that, among other things, I could know Him better. And still, even though He no longer physically walks the earth, He is always present with me.
Tom Bombadil took the ring from Frodo and made it disappear. But then he gave it back, and the quest continued until its grueling, victorious, glorious ending. In the same way, God could totally alter my reality. He could come and show Himself and banish all of my struggles forever. But He knows best. He touches me and holds me and then gives the ring back, knowing that faith will make me stronger, that the quest will change my life and make me who He wants me to be. He knows the end from the beginning. He already waits for me at the journey's end, smiling because He sees the victory, the glorious epic beauty, the real meaning of it all.
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| If Jesus was a pastor today: My takeA Revelife post asked what Jesus' church would be like if He was a pastor today. I'd like to share my answer to that question:
Jesus is a pastor today. I read this in a book, and I agree with it: The goal of the Christian life is to be as much like Jesus would be in our life as
possible. Lots of pastors are doing their best to be like this. The
beauty of Christ's life in us is that He lives through us as much as we
will let Him. When our pastors get up to speak, they have Jesus
in them, and He speaks. No human minister is a perfect temple, but all
who have been saved do have Jesus' life in them. We don't have to wonder what Jesus would do if He were on earth. He is on
earth through His body, the church. He is a pastor in a large suburban
megachurch where young professionals come to know Him. He is a street
missionary who feeds the homeless. He is a home missions pastor in an
Appalachian mountain town. He is the lady who has worked in the baby
nursery for fifteen years. He is the prison chaplain who holds a Bible
study every Thursday morning. He is the house mother who cares for five
children orphaned by aids. He is the pipe organist and the punk
bandmember. He is the medical missionary and the small group
facilitator. He is the man who drives the bus to pick up kids in the
inner city. He is the tattooed youth pastor and the robed priest. What
would Jesus' ministry look like on earth? Look around and you'll see.
Every color, every economic situation, every ability. Creativity.
You'll see preachers, musicians, artists, writers. You'll see
traditional approaches, and you'll see crazy new things. In a word,
you'll see Jesus, as His life flows through His people and gifts them
with His divine creativity. Jesus is everything and anything
needed to reach every person. There are more than 6 billion people on
earth. Jesus' ministry has the diversity to reach them all.
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| Song of SolomonHow do you view Song of Solomon? Is it historical? Allegorical? Symbolic?
I know people differ on its purpose. I tend toward a belief that it is applicable to Christ's relationship to each of us maybe especially women. I believe God has used specific verses to minister His love to me.
A few years ago, I went to the altar to receive prayer for hurts I had received in middle school. The girl who prayed for me had had similar experiences, and she told me that God had given her this verse, "Like a lily among thorns is my darling among the maidens" (Song of Solomon 2:2, NIV). I have thought of that verse often since then and of what it says about God's love for His people.
Though I know not everyone believes Song of Solomon is applicable today, I believe it is.
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