In an instant, the veneer dissolved and my existential reality and accompanying despair was exposed to my conscious waking mind. While I managed to keep my outward appearance normal, inside I was paralyzed in terror
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Marriage is made with Love and Devotion. If the second part isn't there, you will never realize what marriage is or how deep love goes. I realize there are exceptional situations to this principle but most reasons given for not continuing are not exceptional. Love and Devotion make life keep getting better. Devotion makes love strong. If you have ideas about this, please post them here. Thanks.
A circle is egalitarian. There are no high or low points. There are no divisions between sides. It is unified. One. Perfect.
A circle might be a good model for community. Equality among members. No one higher or lower than another. No divisions between them. It forms a picture of people sitting, facing each other around a common center. At the center is Christ, God the Father. Like children sitting around a fire. As the Father speaks, the various members of the circle express his heart. Circles are smooth and seamless. A circular community would lack protrusions of officials and professionals. Each member would be recognized and fully respected as a child of God. That kindred fact would be the highest quality and highest qualification of the circle so that all other secondary attributes would be invisible and unquantifiable. But circles are sedentary, static, boring. A circular community might well give rise to great apathy or tedium. A spiral is a 3 dimensional circle. It is a circle that grows and goes. It is slinky. It has direction. It is progressing from one state to another. A spiral might be a better model for community. It has all the attributes of a circular community, but it is moving. The body of Christ, or, community of Christ, is a spiral. Jesus said that it does not have titled leaders. (Matt. 20 and 23) The leading parts of a spiral draw along the following parts without demarcation or division. What goes before seamlessly affects what comes along after. This is a picture of the rich relationship between God’s children, ungoverned by human design as they move through the world. Slinky. More could be elaborated on about this but why? The spiral is less elaborate and beautiful in its simplicity. So I let these words trail off to be whatever part of God’s spiral they are for the benefit of all. Yeast is good. In Bread.
What is the yeast or leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees that Jesus says to beware of in Matthew 16? What puffs up a person the same way leaven puffs up a profiterole? What makes a person look, feel or act like something more than they are? Power? Pride? “Knowledge puffs up”, says Paul in 1 Corinthians 8, “but love builds up.” Beware of this leaven, this yeast, for those with true authority among you will be the friendly servants, not those who take positions over you or exercise power over you nor those who take the foremost seats and places of visible honor. Watch out for this in others in your community and refuse the temptation yourself. Build your life on loving relationships and don’t allow impersonal, top heavy institutions to develop and rob you of your strength and dignity. Be significant to each other and share your physical and supernatural gifts as God, our friend, our Father provides. Love, Dad, PaPa, Fred Dad’s love.
Jesus said this is how we should pray. “Our Father…” STOP RIGHT THERE! Somewhere else he said if we did not become like little children, we would never see the kingdom of God. This idea of God being our Father is crucial and central! I think it matters how we address Him. How do kids address their dads? What kind of emotion do kids have toward their dads? Before we go on with the rest of Jesus’ prayer I think we have to get this part right. Our dad… Hey dad… Daddy… Yo, dad! I love you dad. If you have had a good dad on earth, you have a pretty good idea what I’m talking about. If your dad experience has been rough, you’ll have to dig a little deeper to remember the kind of feeling you really had toward your dad before things went wrong. Truth is, nobody has had a perfect dad so all of our concepts about our heavenly dad are distorted to one degree or another. But our earth dads are really only stepping stones to our true dad; the one that John says gives us our real birth and identity. (john 1:12) Our earth dads are, well, step-dads. They show us by how we feel in our innocence toward them when we were really little. I think that is why Jesus said we have to become like little children. Only little children know the daddy kind of love without all the complications that sin (father’s and children’s) produces as we get older. Can you remember just yelling to your dad, “Hey dad, watch!” or jumping up in his big strong arms and nuzzling his burly neck as he hugged you and you each said, “I love you.”? Some of us have to go way back to get that memory, that feeling. I guess some have almost never had it in the physical. However, I still believe it is there. If you are one who can’t recall that innocent daddy love, I pray that His spirit will wash over you right now as you read this. Jesus said that this is eternal life, “that you may know the Father and his son, Jesus Christ.” This innocent, intimate loving exchange is the foundation to real living and all the truth, wisdom, and doctrine in this life. I’m a dad. I freely confess that I have not been to good at it. There are many who have been and are much better representatives of God than me. I can only say to my children, ones who I have failed, that I have never been more than a step dad, just like mine was and his before that. When you look for your “Daddy in Heaven”, He will find you and fill in all the holes left by this or other earthly dads’ love. I hope this makes some sense for you. Love, Dad, Fred, Mr. p |
The DoorpostThe Doorpost is written for the family and friends of Fred / Papa / Dad Paddock in response to this admonition found in Deuteronomy 6:6-9: These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door posts of your houses and on your gates and emails.
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