Pure and Perfect Pleasure

I was watching a cooking competition on T.V. today with my children. It was a cake contest; Dr. Seuss cakes. One of the contestants had chosen Horton Hears A Who as his theme. At one point, the contestant spun some colored sugar and made it into a pink, fluffy ball and placed it on the end of "stem". It was the flower that the Who's lived in. The contestants emotions, over the successful creation of that little flower, moved him to the point of almost crying. It was not a sappy or unmanly almost-cry. It was tears of complete joy in the ability to envision and then successfully create. Before, there was an empty stem, nothing sat atop it. After, a small, pink, fluffy, flower existed. It was perfect!

It struck me, as I was watching this artist, this sculpture, who started with blocks of regular old cake and ended with a work of art, that just as he had created for the pure joy of the process and the end product, so too, the Creator, the Sculpture, created the earth and everything in it for His pleasure.

If one man can be moved to tears of joy at the creation of a sugar flower that came out perfect, what does God feel, what did Jesus experience, how long did the Spirit rejoice at the creation of Earth, Eden, and the man and woman therein? God created us for His pleasure. He created mankind through his son, Jesus, and He offers men and women, young and old, poor and rich, His Spirit, to fill us and sustain us till the day that we once again can walk and talk with Him and see His creation from His point of view.

If we think that God is not near, if we doubt that we matter, if we doubt that He finds joy in us, if we reject that He has left us messages everywhere we go of His love for us, recall the feelings you had the last time you successfully created something for your pleasure; a meal, a cake, a fabulously green yard, the perfect play or move in a game, a craft project, a home project. Recall the joy, the pleasure you experienced in the process and the end product. Your pleasure is a faint echo of God's. If you multiply the joy you experienced by the size of God, you'll have an approximation of the pleasure God had when He created you!

Pondering His pleasure,
k8t
----
Please include the following statement on any distributed or linked copy: By Kaet Johnson. © faceofagirl.com. Website: faceofagirl.com

COME I THIS DAY

As I said yesterday, I found many wonderful prayers when researching the Celts. Below is another prayer I found that comes from the humble, soft heart of an ancient believer in the triune Yahweh. It is the prayer of a believer in who is laying himself at the feet of Yehsua with complete trust. May you be able to say this prayer and trust that Yeshua is your savior and your shelter.

Come I this day to the Father

Come I this day to the Son,

Come I to the Holy Spirit powerful;

Come I this day with God,

Come I this day with Christ,

Come I with the Spirit of kindly bairn.

God, and Spirit, and Jesus,

From the crown of my head

To the soles of my feet;

Come I with my reputation,

Come I with my testimony,

Come I to Thee, Jesu -

Jesu, shelter me.

Jesus, from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, here I am, shelter me.
k8t

this prayer and many others can be found at http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/gaidhlig/corpus/Carmina/
where many ancient Gaelic prayers from Scotland have been recorded and translated.
----
Please include the following statement on any distributed or linked copy: By Kaet Johnson. © faceofagirl.com. Website: faceofagirl.com

St. Patrick: I

I have been curious, lately, about early Christianity. And, for a long while, I've had an interest in the Celts. That interest may stem from my ancestry; both my mother and father trace ancestors back to Cornwall, England (an area settled by the Celts). I am a true mutt, so to speak, I also have Scottish (which could be Celtic), Danish, Swedish, and maybe some (a wee bit) Irish (Celtic) in me.

My curiosity in these two areas has had me doing some interesting reading. I am NOT a historian, but what I have found, I believe, is that the Britain and Irish Celts were related to the Gauls-- pagans and fierce warriors who originated over on the mainland of Europe somewhere, and were related to the people in Galatia -- Galatians, they would be. The Gauls held oak trees as sacred and sacrificed their own to their gods (they were animists and polytheists). These are the Galatians Paul visited twice and wrote to. One of his letters lives on in the Bible. The Gauls that formed Galatia arrived in that region about 279 BC. The area was formerly the home of the ancient Hittites.

By the time of Paul's visits (mid-first century A.D.), the Galatians had been absorbed into the Roman Empire and had adopted many of the Greek and Roman gods into their religion. When the Galatians witnessed a miracle done by Paul, they wanted to worship him-- to sacrifice to him, calling he and Barnabas Hermes and Zeus (Acts 14). They did not yet know Yahweh or Yeshua.

Tracking down the Celts in the British Isles led me to Patrick, the Patron Saint of Ireland. He has a very interesting account of his life-- what struck me was his complete confidence that he was called by Yahweh to reach the pagan peoples of Ireland just as Paul had complete confidence that he was called by Yeshua to reach the pagan peoples of Rome, Greece, and Asia Minor.

Out of Patrick's (and other Christian missionaries to the British Isles) travels and work for Yahweh come some wonderful prayers and blessings that focus on Yahweh, Yeshua and Spirit; the Trinity-- I'm rather long in breath today, so I'll quit here, but hope to continue more soon. In closing, I'll leave you with part of an old Gaelic prayer and a blessing:

I am bending my knee
In the eye of the Father who created me,
In the eye of the Son who purchased me,
In the eye of the Spirit who cleansed me,
In friendship and affection.
Through Thine own Anointed One, O God,
Bestow upon us fullness in our need,
Love towards God,
The affection of God,
The smile of God,
The wisdom of God.
The grace of God,
The fear of God,
And the will of God
To do on the world of the Three,
As angels and saints
Do in heaven;
Each shade and light,
Each day and night,
Each time in kindness,
Give Thou us Thy Spirit.

Beannachd Dia dhuit
(blessings of God be with you),
k8t
----
Please include the following statement on any distributed or linked copy: By Kaet Johnson. © faceofagirl.com. Website: faceofagirl.com

The Road of Good Intentions

I found this graphic today. It says it all. Unfortunately, nothing counts if you're are not in The Club, on The Right Road, so to speak.

I'm not a clique-y person, not at all, I've actually been known to leave a group if they start down that road, but the Jesus Club, that's one I'm happy to be a part of.

This is hard, I know, especially for you compassionate souls out there. I know that we want our actions, our life, to count, to get us somewhere, to get us to God, to heaven. But the TRUTH is, nothing we do counts toward reaching God. If we want to get to God, we need to call on His name. We need to call on the name of Jesus, His divine son. Then, God will make Himself known to us; He'll make it so we can see Him (He was always there), through Jesus who is the one anointed to Save.

So, instead of following the Road of Good Intentions that leads to death, instead of choosing The Wrong Club, choose the road far less traveled that leads to true wellness and has LIFE as its final destination.

Member of the Jesus Club traveling the road that leads to LIFE-- join me!
k8t

See this graphic and more by visiting the irreverent teampyro.blogspot.com and clicking on the "Emergent-see" poster.
----
Please include the following statement on any distributed copy or link: By Kaet Johnson. © faceofagirl.com. Website: faceofagirl.com

Live With LIFE

I did an inductive study on Philippians recently. Philippians is Paul’s letter to the believers, the saints of Philippi, a Roman Colony in ancient Macedonia (now northeastern Greece) on the Aegean Sea. He wrote to them during one of his imprisonments in Rome.

I was thinking; had God not allowed Paul to be imprisoned, Paul would not have had the time to write to the churches and the people he told about Jesus. God would not have had hours upon hours to speak to Paul and teach him. And it follows we, modern saints of the body of Jesus, would not have the results of Paul’s quantity time with God.

So, as we go about our days and become “imprisoned” at the doctor’s office, in traffic, with a sick child at home, in line at the DMV or anywhere else where all we can do is wait– spend some time with God. Get an audio Bible or one of paper and print and carry it with you in the car glove compartment, your bag or your pocket– go online (www.blueletterbible.org is great for this) and print out a chapter or book.

Don’t treat your Bible or the Word of God as a holy relic that can only be touched when you yourself feel holy– treat it just as you treat all other elements essential to life– you have to have them no matter what; you schedule your days around them, you fit them in whenever you can so that you can live. The Word of God is no different, to LIVE, to have LIFE you must have It!

Pondering LIFE!
k8t

----
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on our website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by faceofagirl.com.

Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: By Kaet Johnson. © faceofagirl.com. Website: faceofagirl.com

Definition: fact

fact

• noun 1 a thing that is indisputably the case. 2 (facts) information used as evidence or as part of a report.

— PHRASES a fact of life something that must be accepted, even if unpalatable. in (point of) fact in reality.

— ORIGIN originally meaning an act, later a crime: from Latin factum, from facere ‘do’.

----
© Compact Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/fact?view=get

The Truth Is...

Unchanging

"... not knowing something doesn't mean your stupid. All it means is that there's still room left to wonder. For instance about dinosaurs-- were they the same color as the sky the morning I set off for Liberty? Or were they maybe the same shade of brown as the dust my shoes kicked up on the driveway at Hilltop Home?
I'd be lying if I said that given a choice, I wouldn't rather know than not know. But there are some things you can just know for no good reason other than that you do, and then there are other things that no matter how badly you want to know them, you just can't.
The truth is, whether you know something or not doesn't change what was. If dinosaurs were blue, they were blue; if they were brown, they were brown whether anybody ever knows it for a fact or not."

Heidi, in So B. It, by Sarah Weeks

"The truth is, whether you know something or not doesn't change what was [or is]. "

The truth is, whether we believe something or not doesn't change the facts about it, whether we know the facts or not. How we feel or what we know about something doesn't determine if the thing exists or not, either it exists or it doesn't. If we believe or disbelieve a fact does not effect the fact. If we feel good or bad about a fact, our feelings about the fact doesn't change what is true, what is real, what is right.

Working through the facts,
k8t
----
© faceofagirl.com

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on our website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by faceofagirl.com.

Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: By Kaet Johnson. © faceofagirl.com. Website: faceofagirl.com