Salt and Light

   The other day our pastor emeritus preached on Jon 16:1-14 I realized that in my attempts to grow my relationship with God that I had become unbalanced. God exists as a trinity and though all three parts are God each has it own unique role.  God the Father is the creator the Alpha and the Omega the beginning and the End. He is,,,,, Creator and Sustainer: As the source of all life, He created the universe through the Son and by the power of the Spirit. Initiator of Salvation: He planned, purposed, and sent Jesus Christ into the world to redeem humanity. Sovereign Ruler: He is the ultimate authority, with all things existing from, through, and to Him. Loving Parent: He is portrayed as a caring, affectionate father who adopts believers as his children, providing for, protecting, and disciplining them. Goal of Worship: While Jesus is the mediator, the Father is the ultimate recipient of worship and glory Jesus is His son and our salvation His roles are Savior and Re...

Usually, I end these posts with a poem or song, but today I am going to begin with one SCARS by I Am They Waking up to a new sunrise Looking back from the other side I can see now with open eyes Darkest water and deepest pain I wouldn't trade it for anything 'Cause my brokenness brought me to You And these wounds are a story You'll use So I'm thankful for the scars 'Cause without them I wouldn't know Your heart And I know they'll always tell of who You are So forever I am thankful for the scars Now I'm standing in confidence With the strength of Your faithfulness And I'm not who I was before No, I don't have to fear anymore So I'm thankful for the scars 'Cause without them I wouldn't know Your heart And I know they'll always tell of who You are So forever I am thankful for the scars I've been thinking about pain, healing, and the scars that remain. I know a lot about scars because after my first knee surgery, I had hypertroph...

So I’m reading a book again, Captivating by Stasi Eldridge. This time, I am talking it out with a dear friend. I hate this book. Hated it the first time, too, because it convicts me. In the first chapter, it makes several statements. Here are some of them paraphrased: every woman is beautiful, every woman wants to be romanced, every woman wants to be involved in something bigger than themselves, every woman struggles with feeling like she is alone and not enough. The heart is the key to a woman, and we are all designed for relationships. For me, because of my past, I equate beauty with danger. I don’t want to be attractive, I want to be safe. Part two of this is that men are often not safe, so romance? I don’t think so. The desire to do something important to have an impact, I can relate to and agonize over. What am I doing, God? Am I leaving a legacy? Every time I could or should do better, I hear my mother’s voice in the background calling me to raise the bar, that I can do better if...

By the time my mom was my age, she was legally blind from macular degeneration. My aunt also had dry macular degeneration, so I have taken vision vitamins for decades. However, because of my diabetes and general health, I still deal with vision problems. I had cataracts in both eyes removed, but have to get bimonthly shots to prevent floaters in my eyes because of diabetic retinopathy. In addition, I am at risk for glaucoma because of high intraocular pressure. A recent treatment made me blind for 24 hours, a very stressful 24 hours. Needless to say, I have educated myself about vision. We see when light enters the eye. It is focused by the cornea and lens, and lands on the retina, where light-sensitive cells called rods and cones convert the photons into electrical signals.  These signals then travel through the optic nerve to the brain, where the images are perceived. No one has seen God's full glory ( 1:18; 1 Timothy 1:17; Exodus 33:20).  However, people can "see" God ...

One of my favorite verses is Luke 2:52: "And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man." I love it because it shows that Jesus was growing in more than one way all the time. We all know how to grow in wisdom, read a book, take a course, study something! Favor with God, obviously, means to grow spiritually. How do we grow spiritually? We seek God. We pray, read our Bibles, worship, fellowship, tithe, serve, etc.... To me, being in favor with others speaks to our emotional and social well-being, which Daniel Goleman refers to as emotional intelligence, or EQ. This is a little trickier because some of us have closed down our hearts or developed what the Bible describes as "hearts of stone."  In Jeremiah 17:9-10, we are told,  "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?"  This verse highlights that the human heart is inherently prone to deception, corruption, and self-deception, often leading peo...

In my last entry on quantum faith, I briefly mentioned my fascination with the brain. I'm going to belabor it here because I believe it may help some folks as they study Christ and the Bible. I first started really studying the brain about 30 years ago. I felt that as a science teacher, I should know the science behind how we learn, so I could help my students learn. There are two ways to affect learning: presynaptic and postsynaptic. Literally, before and after the synapse, the two main ways to remember something postsynaptically are by rote and by association. Rote is where you repeat the material. To move information from short-term to long-term memory, the magic number is 7. This means you must repeat the new information a total of seven times to move it into long-term memory. You all remember this approach from learning your ABCs and your times tables.A quicker approach to long-term memory is associational memory, where you attach new information to something you already know ...