Spiritual Ponderings

The divine Teacher bears with the erring through all their perversity. His love does not grow cold ; His efforts to win them do not cease . With outstretched arms He waits to welcome again and again the erring, the rebellious, and even the apostate. His heart is touched with the helplessness of the little child subject to rough usage . The cry of human suffering never reaches His ear in vain. Though all are precious in His sight, the rough, sullen, stubborn dispositions draw most heavily upon His sympathy and love ; for He traces from cause to effect . The one who is most easily tempted, and is most inclined to err, is the special object of His solicitude . Every parent and every teacher should cherish the attributes of Him who makes the cause of the afflicted, the suffering, and the tempted His own. He should be one who can have "compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity....

I have been reading a lot of reports and watching stories about the horrific fires taking place on the West coast recently. I have also been noticing the psychological effect these stories can have on me and have been contemplating how I should relate to this. Is it wrong or dangerous to overfill my mind with so much fear that is unavoidable aroused from having such scenes imprinted into my memory and imagination while I watch videos of houses bursting into uncontrollable flames or read stories of people traumatized by heat so intense their shoes are melting? I find myself waking up in the middle of the night because I cannot help but identity with what it must feel like to be trapped inside a burning vehicle and to experience the searing pain of your body succumbing to being burned alive. Even writing these words makes me squirm to say the least, and part of me insists that it is not right for me to dwell on such horrors anymore than it would be healthy for me to w...

This Good News of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole world for a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come. "When, therefore, you see the abomination of desolation , which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place ( let the reader understand ), ...then there will be great oppression , such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, nor ever will be. (Matthew 24:14-15, 21) I believe we live in very serious times in history, possibly the most pivotal time when our beliefs about God can make the most difference, both in our own lives and with many around us. Given an urgency to know the truth as it is in Jesus, I sense strongly that it is vital we be willing to reexamine every tenant of our faith to discover if there may be hidden faulty assumptions lurking in traditions we have failed to see because there was not sufficient light of truth about God's character that is now becoming clear. One of those ...

Today we face what some call the greatest crisis in the history of the Seventh-day Adventist church. A majority of church representatives have voted in a radical sea change of organization that denies the clear instructions of Jesus on how His disciples are to relate to each other in love and equality. Now each person faces a decision as to how they will react to this collective choice to follow the methods of the world instead of the ways of Christ. We have two choices awaiting our decision as to what path we will follow from here. The familiar path, now well tended and turned into a superhighway, is the path of law and order in the name of God Almighty where everyone is expected to bow to conformity to authority. It is the way of the world that nearly everyone presumes is also the way of God. Defenders of this course point to Old Testament models of order and insist that this is God's design and must be followed or be in rebellion. But is this the only option?...