Our Lighted Path

It's so important to keep Jesus in heart. It's important to love the Lord: the one and only one who so many of us have learned to speak of as "Jesus." So any post that tells of Hebrew history on this blog, isn't meant to take away from His name. I say that, because it's a very troubling time in our history, when a few Congresswomen don't realize why Israel is as it is, and who actively protest its security — and when, on the other hand, more than a few African-American men are engaged in a movement called the Black Hebrew Israelites. It's all sad. More than a few young men are wandering a strange path they believe will lead to Christ, trying to cleave to Old Testament ordinances, and also hoping for the re-birth of Jesus in the flesh. (It's crazy that anyone is feeling that way about the scriptures, at a time when even some of those who have found new life in Jesus for the first time in life, plainly understand that we are all Abraham...

We're used to young people banding together for victory in sports; but what about victory in Jesus? Do young people know repentance and faith the way Jesus meant? Do they know Heaven doesn't see sins based on race, but based on how Jesus' church lives, overcoming sins? Do they group together by His example, walking together without sinning or even wanting to sin? This post may explore questions like these, one day. But, Meanwhile, Here's the Beginning of the Rest of the Story ... I think this image, in bronze, hung on a dining room wall for a long while. In hindsight, maybe that image (a relief image someone created to illustrate The Last Supper) was better than drawings from that time in life, because drawings, at that time, usually depicted the disciples as like European. And there's nothing upsetting about that. The paintings were an understandable product of the church that spread through Europe. But the relief illu...

Do you ever get confused about why some souls, even in the Baptist church, sometimes call God Jehovah, at least in songs? One song, Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah (Bread of Heaven), is a permanent part of my memory. From the time I was a baby, it was sung as a hymn of preparation at my mother's home church. Clearly, it was important to sing this song, because it was powerfully sung (and I don't mean theatrically, but from the soul). The congregation also rose and sat and rose again during its singing. It required devotion to the heavenly Father to whom the congregation was singing. At least one version of the song calls on our " strong deliverer ." But, at my mother's home church, it wasn't as if for a funeral. It was as if every soul in the congregation was crying out from the deepest part of the soul to our Lord, as if there were a lifeline between Heaven and every soul, every unique voice, even the voice of my grandmother. The song was  never sung ...

I didn't set out to say this in this space, but I've learned so much about coping with the impossible. So, after a prayer meeting, it didn't shock me to find myself in a church office, talking as if I'm living normally. For once in many years, I chatted (just a little) without wanting to cry out that I've coped with an unimaginable hell. (Apart from the prayer meeting, I had thought that, when someone will finally interview me to re-enter the workforce after many years' trial, I may be tempted to tell that employer of my sometimes brokenness.) But where I was, in the talking after the prayer meeting, gave me reason not to want to cry out — thank Heaven. Another reason I didn't want to cry out in that office was that I had just spilled my heart for Christ; and realized I was learning to love impossibly, like Jesus. Even when I sounded as unloving as a clanging cymbal, even when I had a heart of muted angry rebuke, like when Jesus rebuked the unrepentan...