Soul Tie Prayer

Living the Message Dec. 17

The Business of Holy Living

All Christians, in some way or another, are about the business of holy living, whether we have acquired a suitable vocabulary for it or not. But it is difficult to know exactly what it consists of. We hardly know what to look for anymore. For the last hundred years and more, those who have set themselves up as our authorities in how to live have been taking us on thrilling roller-coaster prospects of either social utopianism or psychological fulfillment--or both. And we are worse. The only things that have improved, if that it the word for it, are our capacities to move faster and spend more.

There are husbands who, indifferent as they are to any words about God, will be captivated by your life of holy beauty....Cultivate inner beauty, the gentle, gracious kind that God delights in. The holy women of old were beautiful before God that way...

I Peter 3IB, 4-5
(I like today's verse so much.)

Living the Message Dec.15

Dec. 15
A Holy Place

The following is a reflection on Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It and Other Stories.

I know a man who used to buy this book in lots of ten or twenty and give it away, as he put, to "those who are worthy of reading it." He gave me a copy. It soon become a family book as my wife and children and I would read it aloud to each other. One reason that we liked it so much was that it gave dignity and a sense of holiness to take place a hundred miles from where I grew up in Montana and where our family returned each summer for holidays. We already knew it was a holy place, but the book confirmed and deepened out reverence. The book functioned as shrine, calling attention to this place: this is holy ground--worship God here.

...Judas, his betrayer, also knew the place because Jesus and his disciples went there often.

John 18:2

Living The Message --Conversation with Friends

Living The Message

Conversation with Friends

Among those for whom Scripture is passion, reading commentaries has always seemed to me analogous to the gathering of football fans in the local bar, replaying in endless detail the game they have just watched, arguing (maybe even fighting) over observations and opinion, and lacing the discourse with gossip about the players. The level of knowledge evident in these boozy colloquies is impressive. These fans have watched the game for years; the players are household names to them; they know the fine print in the rule book and pick up every nuance on the field. And they are immensely about what happens in the game. Their seemingly endless commentary is evidence of how much they care. Like them, what I relish in commentary is no bare information but conversation with knowledgeable and experienced friends, probing, observing, questioning the biblical text. Absorbed by this plot that stretches grandly from Genesis to Revelation, captured by the messianic presence that in death and resurrection saves us one and all, there is much to notice, much to talk over.

I am chewing on the morsel of a proverb;
I 'll let you in on the sweet old truths,
Stories we heard from our father,
counsel we learned at our mother's knee.

Psalm 78:2-3

X'Mas Song

by Meiko

I don't think Santa's coming this year
'Cause I've been a bad, a bad girl.
I've made my bed, now I'm lying in it
Without a care, a care in the world.
And I took his heart, I tore it apart.
I left him outside in the cold.
I shot him down, in the middle of town.
Oh, I left him outside in the snow.
I won't have no presents this year
'Cause I've been a bad, a bad girl.
I've made my bed now I'm lying in it
Without a care, a care in the world.
And he took me in, he made me sin,
And I never wanna go back again.
So I did him in, I made it all in,
No I never wanna go back again.
Maybe next year I'll be good,
Maybe next year I'll be better.
Maybe next year I'll be good,
Maybe next year I'll be better.
[Dee doo doo doo....]
Maybe next year I'll be good,
Maybe next year I'll be better.
Maybe next year I'll be good,
Maybe next year I'll be better.
Maybe next year I'll be good,
Maybe next year I'll be better.
Maybe next year I'll be good,
Maybe next year I'll be better.

Only being willing to die can make me reborn

Oh my Lord, I have understood what I have done is wrong. It blocked the love from You, in particular the destruction of my prayer life. Help me to avoid from being blind with hate and angry.

I am regretful about that we did the wrong thing, please forgive that we tried to do things ahead without waiting for your leading and calling. I know I have failed You. But, please forgive me--cleanse my heart! Let me reborn. I know that only being willing to die can make me reborn.

Embrace me again, my Lord.

I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the Lord"--and forgave the quilt of my sin.
Psalms 33:5


Living The Message

Dec. 12
The Escapist Pleasures
Our cottage industry in murder mysteries didn't last long--a few weeks as I recall. But it was enough to introduce me to the escapist pleasures of detective fiction. I soon found that it is a pleasure much indulged in by scholars, pastors and theologians. Gabriel Marcel always insisted that we have to choose whether we will treat life as a problem to be solved or as a mystery to be entered. Why then do so many of the men and women who choose to enter the mystery slip aside from time to read mysteries that aren't mysteries at all, but problems that always get solved by the last page? I think one reason may be that right and wrong, so often obscured in the ambiguities of everyday living, are cleanly delineated in the murder mystery. The story gives us moral and intellectual breathing room when we are about to be suffocated in the hot air and heavy panting of relativism and subjectivism.

[Jesus said,] "We're not keeping secrets, we're telling them. We're not hiding things; we're bringing everything out into the open."
Luke 8:17

Ingrid Michaelson-- Die Alone

I like this song, I wish I have chance to hear Ingrid's live concert.

Ingrid Michaelson-- Die Alone

I woke up this morning with a funny taste in my head.
Spackled some butter over my whole grain bread.
Something tastes different, maybe it's my tongue.
Something tastes different, suddenly I'm not so young.

I'm just a stranger, even to myself.
A re-arranger of the proverbial bookshelf.
Don't be a fool girl, tell him you love him.
Don't be a fool girl, you're not above him.

I never thought I could love anyone but myself.
Now I know I can't love anyone but you.
You make me think that maybe I won't die alone.
Maybe I won't die alone.

Kiss the boys as they walk by, call me their baby.
But little do they know, I'm just a maybe.
Maybe my baby will be the one to leave me sore.
Maybe my baby will settle the score.

I never thought I could love anyone but myself.
Now I know I can't love anyone but you.
You make me think that maybe I won't die alone.
Maybe I won't die alone.

What have I become?
Something soft and really quite dumb.
Because I've fallen, oh, 'cuz I've fall-fallen, oh 'cuz I've fall-fall-fallen
So far away from the place where I started from.

I never thought I could love anyone.
I never thought I could love anyone.
I never thought I could love anyone,
But you, but you, but you, but you, but you
But you make me think that maybe I won't die alone.
Maybe I won't die alone.