"Double-talk................"

The air-conditioner in our bedroom blows directly across us as we sleep, Beth always with the covers thrown back and complaining she is hot, while the old man usually stays under the quilt with a wool thrown over it and pulled up over my head. The direct flow of the freeze irritates my sinuses. I awoke this morning early with some sniffles, went into my recliner, couldn’t go back to sleep, and opened my copy of Edersheim’s “Jesus the Messiah” to my last point of perusal. The text before me began to draw a picture of, not only the political environment, religious and otherwise, back when Christ, as a young boy, was taken to the temple in Jerusalem, but also the inner structure of that sacred edifice. If, in the last forty years, my education in this ever included knowledge of the stone within the Muslim’s Dome of the Rock being believed by some to be the actual foundation upon which the Ark of the Covenant once rested, somewhere along the way it got lost in the shuffle. It’s funny just how much our mind, in gathering together information, shapes data according to our individual perceptions at the time, often losing vital contributions to the “whole story” while becoming a point we would defend as absolute truth. That’s why I enjoy a mid-week Bible class where we all can discuss various portions of Scripture, disagree perhaps here and there, but walk out still brothers and sisters solidified in Him. It’s why Friday afternoon a young Catholic committed to the teachings of his church and an old Pentecostal deeply planted in a Holy Ghost experience that has lasted for forty years now could both relate and rejoice via an inner connection as they shared their faith. It’s the sword “of the Spirit”, not a leather-covered hammer given to beat people over the head. Compromise doesn’t necessarily equate to surrender; but it could well require admitting that you’re not the only guy in the room......