Thoughts: October 2024

My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?

10/1/2024

Whenever I get freaked out about life, all of it… especially the yucky thoughts, sadness, worry, and things that make me afraid…I remember some of the biblical passages I’ve read which resonated with me and reminds me that this place where we are, earth, isn’t our home. We’ve been put here, in this place, by God, for a purpose. Not sure what that is other than to find Him, to know Him, to speak to Him, to build the most loving relationship with Him, to be an adoring child of His, as well as to help His other children here on earth. To help them as they navigate their way through the journey of life, and to just as importantly help them to find their way home to God through Jesus. I saw a t-shirt recently that said “Heaven is my home. I’m just here recruiting.” LOVE IT.

That being said, those instructions and reassurances from the Word of God that we are just travelers here on earth while Jesus prepares our eternal home, are what gets me through when the days are darkest.

Scripture tells us repeatedly that we are sojourners here. It’s like we’ve traveled to a place far from home (let’s call that place heaven), and we have no idea what to do. We have to depend on others to help us navigate this journey: good times, bad times, horrible times, and everything in-between. And everyone else here is also a foreigner and has no idea what to do. So everyone is trying to figure life out, on their own for the most part. You might get help from the people you’ve been partnered with by God to travel with, but you’re pretty much on your own to figure it out. And if you don’t have Jesus guiding you, then you’re either oblivious to him for the most part and your just doing your thing, whatever you feel like doing. And oftentimes it’s stuff that is pretty self-centered, even though it may seem innocent enough.

Anyway, if you can find your way to Jesus, and know God and learn His Word and His instructions through the Bible, then you have a guide. The Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit who will help you so that you’re not on your own. But you have to have faith because you can’t see or audibly hear God, you have to just trust your inner knowing, your gut feeling, your intuition. That’s God talking to you. You’re not talking to yourself really. You’re talking to God. The hard part is hearing Him speak back because our minds are so cluttered with noise and minutia, it can be hard to hear Him speak to you because he’s very subtle and quiet. Until He’s not.

GOD

God is… God is I don’t know. Let’s say a being of infinite power and love. He’s Creator of all things. EVERYTHING in our world. ALL OF IT. He’s a creative genius who created a work of art that He loves immensely. God has feelings. He loves. In fact, He is love. Hard to fathom what that means but I guess it means He is so full of love. God has so much love that He wants to share it. So He creates our world. He is the creator, the artist, the owner essentially, of the entire world that He has created. And He loves this world. He loves loves loves the humans he creates. Imagine the best, easiest, most fun, joyful and most loving relationship you could possibly have with no expectations on either side other than to be loving. Take that times infinity. God wants that kind of relationship with the humans He creates. And it works. At first. Since God is the creator and owner of His world, He gets to make the rules and the law and all of that stuff. He wants the people He creates, Adam and Eve, to be His people to hang with Him, love Him and each other, and take care of the world He created.

He gave them sovereignty (new word for me). They were given the gift of being in charge of themselves and the world that God created. They were the sub-boss there beneath God. He gave them this gift because God knew they were good and He could trust them to do all the right things because they were made in the image of God. Himself. Perfect and good.

God had one rule though. A law that they couldn’t break or they would die. They would lose their connection to God and would no longer have eternal life. They would ruin an amazingly wondrous life with God. The law was: do not eat or touch the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. One rule. That’s it. If you did that you sinned. If you sin, you’ll die. That’s the one and only rule and God was pretty adamant about it. Sinning results in the death penalty. Yikes.

While God and His humans were having the best time being together in the beautiful and loving new world that God created (even all the animals were only allowed to eat the plants… no prey or predators in the Garden), a virus got in. Not sure else how to refer to it in modern terms. A virus, a cancer, a poison. Evil. It somehow got in (I have no idea how) and took on the shape of a snake or serpent. The snake (evil. satan aka the adversary. God’s adversary) charmed Eve and convinced her to eat the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the one the humans were strictly forbidden to eat from by God. So she did, and she shared it with Adam. They knew better because God had specifically told them, but Adam followed along with Eve and ate it anyway. Their lives changed instantly, for the worse. Long story short, God found out, was so mad, he cursed the snake (evil), and banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. The heavenly place where they were with God. No more. They were sent out into a harsh world and they no longer had eternal life with God, but their bodies would wear out and they would die. They would no longer have the relationship and connection with God. The end of them. They let sin into God’s world, which caused every single human born from them (which is every single human) to have sin in them. Which meant they would die at the end of their lives. And they would be spiritually disconnected from God.

Time goes on, history happens. People live, they die. Over generations some people still believe in God, and worship Him as the one true God. But many others don’t. Whole civilizations of people in some cases. They’d been swayed by evil and the ways of the world and the sin of humanity. Instead humans believed they could do whatever they wanted, and follow and honor evil gods. Which really makes God mad because He made them. He loves them and wants them to want to come back to Him.

Evil, Satan, the serpent in the Garden.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around it all. I just listened to a couple of things on the Bible Brief podcast and the Bible Project which gave me a little clarity about evil. Still ridiculously vague, but maybe as I get it out of my head some things might click and I can then move on to learn more, or even firm up the truths. I’m taking most of this from the Bible Project video series on “Spiritual Beings).

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Before God created our universe and humans, He lived (and still lives) in His Kingdom. He’s surrounded by the Elohim (other spiritual beings… angels, demons, satan..). A spiritual reality that exists alongside ours. This spiritual reality includes beings that contain creatures that God created in the image of God Himself to give glory to God and to serve his purposes. Sort of like God’s spiritual staff team.

God creates humans for His created earth (Garden of Eden) and wants the humans to rule over His creation in the love and power of God. But one of the spiritual beings in God’s spiritual reality doesn’t want humans to rule the world so this being breaks into God’s world, takes the form of a snake or serpent, and tricks the humans into defying God, which makes God so mad. He sentences them to banishment and exile from the Garden and from Him. They are  forced to wander the outside earth without God until they die and return to dust (from which they were created). They will endure hardships and life will be hard. They blew it.

(The snake is part of a spiritual rebellion that follows humans outside of Eden. Things get worse. Babylon is when humans and spiritual rebels team up to try to take back their former glory from God. Things get progressively worse throughout history from there.)

10/9/2024

So, it’s a messed up day… although I’ve been pretty messed up and weirdly sad and lost this whole week.  Anyway, today is John’s birthday back to You. I can’t even put into words how sad I feel, I keep thinking something to write and then it’s not right. It doesn’t feel right. Hmmm….let’s leave it at sobbingly sad. Add to that this week has been off because of the hurricane that’s coming through Tampa. I’m so grateful that You got my kids to listen to You and know that they had to get out, so I feel confident they are safe in Orlando. Thank you <3.

I was wandering around with lots I could do, but nothing I wanted to do. I felt a need to pull out the laptop. To remember and write out, that this world is NOT our home. We’re foreigners in a strange land trying to figure out life. Each of us in our own way. So I did, and here I am. I’m going to look up some scripture that reminds us of that. The end. For today.

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