"Idols..................................."

We took our granddaughter to a dermatologist Thursday. McKenna’s not so much into the “girly” aspects of her gender, a Ninth Grader and going solo to the church school prom last night, opting for the customary dress that goes with the event, but choosing a small Tin Burton adorned clutch purse that looked, to me, more like she was carrying a canteen. She and her cousin Cody are their own person. The office visit, though, was a matter of having a large wart on her elbow removed, whether requested out of “beauty” concerns or it just being annoying, I know not. Beth, however, in conversation with me, recalled waking one day with the above-mentioned grandson years ago and him showing her several of such growths across his knuckles. The solution on that particular occasion? – She prayed with him, then and there, and later that week he would show her his hand now completely void of offense…

Nearly a hundred pages into “Between Cross and Resurrection”, the author speaks of God in terms of His identity being a “unity of opposites”; and, while I can agree to the truth of our experiencing His reality through multiple contrasting characteristics, that doesn’t extend to us any freedom to assign Him concrete definition out of our own choosing. To say that He is “balanced” in judgment by His grace is to suggest that He must also be evenly proportioned to do evil as He is to perform goodness. Better to confess His omniscience, in a belief that, whatever He does, it is accomplished out of His wisdom (“All things work together for good”) and we are safely held in the palm of His hands whatever the situation around us. To say that Calvary’s Gospel, once secured by Christ, somehow changed the Father to the point that we can now simply ignore all that we read of Him in the Old Testament only speaks to me of humanity as sit exists, indeed, as it always has been, attempting to create our own deity, rather than submit ourselves unto the One who is. Can we “know” the Creator? Yes; in an on-going relationship where we continue to be shaped by Him, not the other way around. I know He heals, because He HAS healed; but that doesn’t always make tomorrow’s event mine to command. He is – who I find Him to be in a prayer closet. He meets me as I go. My faith is in who I have found Him to be in the past and it does not diminish any if, for some reason, the next problem in my path is solved in a different manner. He is a “knot inside” that He, Himself, has tied; and I am the only one who can undo the connection. Why would I do that?.......