Most Christians acknowledge, deep down, that their long-held Traditions are far more important than what is actually taught in the Bible. They won't usually admit it out loud, but deep in their hearts? Oh, they know. If you even read them a passage from the Bible, one that is clear, and plain, and obvious, they will get angry, and call you a member of a cult. They will call the Truths of the Bible lies, and they will swear up and down that their cherished man-made traditions are much, much better. What's this world coming to, is what I'd like to know.
Seventh Heaven.
When we moved into our new house I found something odd sticking out of the cement foundation back around the low part of the house where the concrete juts up close to the mountainside. The thing that caught my eye appeared to be the side of a pale amber bottle, embedded deep in the cement. Every time I walked out back to the barn the amber reflection of light off the bottle would catch my eye, and after a couple of weeks I couldn't stop looking over at the glass in the cement. What in the world was it? Why was it embedded in the cement.
And when I looked at it closely (which I found myself doing every single day, sometimes three, four times a day) I noticed that a thin slice of cement had caved away, crumbled and fallen off the side of the foundation. The bottle had been completely covered, probably years ago, and now it was exposed. I know my house is over 100 years old, so this bottle struck me as a time capsule. What if there was a treasure inside? Maybe someone hid their diamonds in here? Gold coins.
Or better, possibly a diary or love letters (okay, so I'm a romantic, sheesh, it's in my wiring).
And as I mused over the bottle, I'd pick at the cement. I'd smooth my fingers over the oddly beautiful glass. Day after day I'd sit daydreaming, my fingers picking at the cement around the amber glass. I wonder what is in there? Almost before I knew what I was doing, one day I found myself with hammer and chisel, destroying the old foundation of our house. But I couldn't leave it alone. I wasn't really interested in the diamonds, or treasure, but I was CERTAIN I would find a serious treasure inside this ancient container of glass.
It took me several hours to chip away around the bottle so that I didn't crack or shatter the glass. But I got it out. And the cork was ancient, but still recognizable as cork, and it came right out, and seven sheets of old parchment slid out easily into my waiting hand. I'm not sure why, but my hands trembled as I unrolled the still fresh parchment, and as I read, and continued to read, my hands shook more and more, until finally I had to sit down near our stream, to finish reading the message in a bottle.
My head felt light. I might faint. Or die straight out. Because what I was reading was making my sense of reality twine about, twist and turn, and my stomach could hardly take it, let alone my poor heart. What if this was real? It couldn't be, of course, Because things like this did not exist, could not exist, not in this sane universe of rationality.
Could it?
Sitting there by the stream, I read the message seven times, without pausing, without thinking, all the while stunned and disbelieving. Yet I read the message seven times before I closed my eyes and nodded my head as if I had fallen asleep.
This is what I read:
Dear Friend:
I don't know if I can reach you, although this is the seventh time I have tried, but hopefully if you don't find this, Beloved, someone else that needs this message will. I hope deep in my heart that this message in a bottle reaches you. I pray to God that it does, although I cannot even speak of this thing I do with Him, for I am certain I am breaking all the rules, possibly even threatening to destroy the frayed threads of reality in the time that you live, my Beloved.
Here I am, me, in Heaven, and yes, there is this great sense of relief that I am not, well, how to put this in Heavenly terms? But not in the ordinary terms -- this is many, many years later, many years departed from the end of the Earth. You probably cannot wrap your poor Earthly brain around this, you poor rube stranded inside the bubble of time. You who read, you are removed from me by millions and millions of years. Truly, I am no longer inside of "time" as you understand it in the flesh.
I am greatly relieved that I am not roasting in hell, screaming, wailing, and perpetually gnashing out my teeth only to watch them roll across the fiery ground, leap back into my mouth, so that I can gnash them out all over again. But then again, this is a heavenly joke, that is still hilarious, even after two millions years. Me, being on fire. We all of us refer to this old joke, the old and poor lies, the invented traditions of men that we all still chuckle about, because we did believe so many of the old errors from that time long ago lost within the bubble of time.
Thank Heaven for Heavenly favors. Oops, can I say that here? (I am attempting to write this in a fashion in which you with your limited intelligence may understand, and I write this as if I am newly arrived, and not ages beyond human understanding as far as time means, or used to mean, or perhaps never meant.)
My tummy keeps rumbling. I can’t stop thinking about rich thick steaks, my favorite were buffalo steaks, dripping with blood, mmmm, how in the world am I supposed to be happy here, in Heaven, without meat? It doesn’t seem right, after all the promises God gave us, of happiness, of peace, of joy, of perfection, and now He won’t let us kill the animals. Can you believe there is no death in Heaven?
Does that seem right to you?
So many of us were flesh eaters, although God told us to care for the animals. We thought of them as food God had created for us, despite what the Word told us plainly.
A lumbering moose approaches me from behind. I feel his breath upon the back of my neck. I want to call him hamburger, or moose jerky, but I am being silly, yes silly here in this place, but moose knows, he understands. Am I not better out here than inside you? I glance back at moose. Yes, yes, I know. There is no death in heaven. And that is a good thing. He smiles at me in his moosey way.
I finally understand what eating means, what it really means, and I am so thankful there is no longer any waste from eating, that my perfect body uses everything perfectly. Oh the horror of the sewage system we used to be in a sinful, filthy world.
Okay, I KNOW it is right, being here, in the now, in the present, in the presence, in the reality: it is what I have always wanted, what you have always wanted – we definitely don’t want death, never have and never will. So I know God is right, and I can even understand now, with this knowing, why we were so messed up. Oh Adonai, my Beloved Yawheh, Yahshua Moshiach, Beloved, oh Beloved, Elyon, I cry out within my breast Elyon, oh Elohim. You wiped away all tears, you did, but still I cry out for my Earthly Beloved, still I cannot forget her, still do I ache, in my very bones, in this living blood comprised of living water and your very Breath, Oh God Oh God why hast Thou forsaken me, forsaken her, oh still do I ache, still my lament is palpable, and so I grasp at this hope, this distant yearning, that Thou, Oh Yahweh Who created time itself, Thou Who art apart and above from time, this bubble, this playground of Pinnochio, I believe my Adonai that somehow I can reach back in now that I am outside of it, that I can reach back in and save my Beloved, Thy Beloved as well.
On Earth we always believed that “spirit” was airy, floating around stuff, it wasn’t real, that we, with our bodies made out of meat, were, in short, REAL. But we were not real. We were only shadows. A collection of shadows. And now we all know that spirit is real. It is, spirit is unmoving, spirit is at rest, whereas in the meat we were made of scrambling molecules, atoms ever in motion, with great spaces between each tiny invisible speck of what made up our meat. We were transient, hobos in the flesh, without a home, this poor mobile home on legs.
I should not sit here too long, for moose is behind me, and already wolf is lying with her head in my lap, and three lambs are gathered about my feet. And the gathering birds are doing their melodious songs. They sense my deep sadness, even now, this sadness yet lives. Yes, He did wipe away my tears, but He did not wipe away our memories, and still do I remember thee, oh Thee, my Beloved, lost love across time and space, oh how I wish to this day millions of years hence that you were at my side, oh Christ, my Anointed King, oh how I wish I had reached her when I was in the long ago, when I was shadow, mere molecules and so removed from actual spirit, from Spirit the true reality.
I sigh. Yes, even here, I am sad. I push my fingers through wolf’s hair and pull gently upon her ears; she sighs in my arms and sleeps. Be comforted, wolf sends me, even in sleep caring so deeply for me. Moose again nuzzles the back of my neck with her warm blubbery lips.
Yes, the tears are wiped away. The tears are gone. I understand. He in His Grace, my Adonai, has gracefully dispensed understanding, With our new minds, minds now made out of faulty neurons of twinkling electricity, Anointed minds now composed of reality, of spirit, we understand, do we not, Beloved.
I still talk to you, as if you were at my side. I, looking, almost expect to see your smiling face. Still here with me, still alive after millions of years of separation. Still, Beloved, oh yet, Beloved, oh remaining, Beloved, I feel you, I hear you, I cry for you without tears, I know why you are not here, Beloved, I know why we cannot walk through eternity, Beloved, for you chose, you always had the choice, oh and Beloved how we used to argue, how I used to try and convince you, oh the way my mind raced, how I flared with fury, my Beloved I long to hold you, oh how my soul shouts for you, Beloved, oh how my heart within me flows with love for you, across time and space, across ages. I have visited stars, Beloved, and walked across fiery faces, untouched by the heat in this reality of spirit, and never have I seen a face lovelier than thine, my Beloved. I miss thee. I miss thee, I could scream it for a million years and yet will I miss thee.
Oh, Beloved, I don't wish to give you the wrong impression. I am happy. My days and nights and years and ages are filled with industry, with bliss, happiness. I am happy, Beloved, even without you. I am happy. It almost feels like a sin to admit this, Beloved, but even here I am not complete, without you, oh Beloved, how could you have deserted this, how could you have deserted me, Beloved, you should be here right now and I should not be writing this. Oh Beloved, thou hast the law and the prophets, and yet thee, oh thee, my thee, thou would not listen. Thou would not listen even if one were to have risen from the dead to tell thee. But I am happy, I don't want you to be sad for me, in my painful absence of thee, Beloved, for I love thee and shall always have our time together, that wink, that sparkle of time, my precious time with thee, Beloved, I will always have. He wiped away our tears, but our minds of reality of spirit can remember can call up thee in resurrection oh Beloved it is as if we walk side by side and sometimes I reach out my hand to clasp thine, oh Beloved.
No. Stop this. I am happy. Do not worry about me, Beloved. Be at peace. I am happy. Remember that.
So I am happy, I really am. I mean, things are not bad, there is no pain, all pain is gone, all death is gone, and I sit here beside a strange street, practically buried in animals that adore me, that crave my presence and attention. I reach down and touch the street, and as advertised, it is distinctly made of gold, and yet no gold as I’d ever seen or imagined on Earth. I mean this is like spun gold. It is slightly transparent, almost glass, and yet it is unmistakably gold. It is real gold, heavenly gold, whereas what we always thought of as priceless gold was actually shadows of gold.
Even after years here, I still am shocked when I realize I am looking at reality. The grasses, they are alive, they move when you look at them, and finally we understand what soul means, the richness of soul, the rainbow colors of soul, how pathetic we used to grasp at it, in our superior haughtiness we would exclaim: "Oh animals don't have soul, oh not like us!" and we were so utterly stupid and audacious in our shadowy dark minds, our shadow dark souls, the shadow spirits we thought were reality, we thought were real, we thought actuality, but vapors, only shadows, oh Beloved, hear me Beloved across the ages, the thousands upon thousands of years that have flown in this reality of what time is, in the Spirit, oh in the spirit, oh Beloved, and the sky is rich and thick and it is hard to find a beautiful landscape without the bodies of people soaring through them. The light emanating from everywhere and seemingly nowhere, and yet we know it is from our Father, and to finally understand the concept of “Father,” to finally know what “light” means, what “love” means, I mean the realities, not the shadows that we so came to love and know and crave, and what “spirit” means.
We know. Beloved. We know.
Spirit – yes, I know I’m going on and on about it – but spirit is real, it is thick, it is more real than anything I have ever known, than any of us have ever known. I remember the “great teachers” saying that God didn’t have hands or feet or a face, that He was a big bag of wind, or a nice idea, or a pool of emotion, and yet when you meet Him, when you can finally throw yourself INTO Him, then you know, throughout every fiber of your being, you just know God, you KNOW Father, for the first time. That He is not vapor, but reality, that His hands are real hands, and what we knew as hands were as plastic hands on a Mickey Mouse watch in a cartoon on an old television set seen in a mirror through a glass darkly, that was the reality we grasped at, those were the hands we imagined for God, Who is reality, Who IS reality, Who IS REALITY.
How could they have thought He wasn’t real. That He does not possess all the things He made for us when He made us in His image? I don’t know how we believed half the foolishness we believed when we were upon the Earth and thought we were wise, and thought we were alive, Beloved, alive as shadows, can you imagine your shadow containing life, and yet we, as shadows, thought we were alive, we had no conception of what life is, what life He offered us, life free, oh how we spat out the word Grace, and yet we had no more conception of its reality that we do of what thoughts a shadow thinks, and yet we were hardly even apes. Or the shadows of apes.
I can feel now. I have a REAL body. Do you understand that? No, you don’t, as you are still thinking in the flesh, the meat, the gore and dripping blood that is you, poor human. You foul sewage system on legs. (Oh but I love thee, I love thee, never disbelieve for even a moment, Beloved, that I have forgotten thee, for I never shall, half of me is gone, Beloved, half of me never arrived without you, oh you, oh thee, thou art my Beloved and I shall never cease in my wail for thee, this torment shall never end, oh it shall never end.) But now I am real, and I am spirit, and that says more than you can understand, at least presently, but you too can know this, here, in the now, oh distant fool, sinful animal of the far-reaching beyond, in the past, in the beginning, at least the end of the beginning. Oh Beloved, thou art but the shadow of an ape, and thou dost think that thou art real and the very image of God, and yet thou are but the faint image of an image of an image, the thousandfold shadow of a thousandfold cast shadows.
For all of us here feel that this is the true beginning. Then, what you know as “now,” was just a dark phase to us, a mere flicker in the light, a shadow passing us, our grave, the whisper of death, gone now forever.
When I began I was half-joking about craving death in my mouth, to slay one of the beautiful people – I mean animals – to kill them and eat them. Yes, we have humor here, and yes, many of us still have sarcastically-bent noodles – God, in His kindness and beauty and grace created us each so differently, each impossibly unique, and that uniqueness is more alive here than ever hinted at upon Earth.
I sit on the bank of the Sea of Glass and a clownfish peers up at me from the shimmering perfection of what appears to be ice. I reach and touch the surface of the sea and perfect rings emanate from my fingertip, and the clownfish unshyly kisses my finger. How can I describe joy, I who never really felt it upon Earth, except, you know, I did, just as you did, joy in hearing the breath of a baby, in feeling a cool breeze touch the sweat of the back of my neck, but how can that compare to this, these intelligent eyes peering at me with love? I move my hand upon the surface of the sea and it mirrors and undulates with curvaceous rainbow, prisms of real light – yes, even light as we knew it was in actuality the shadow of light, another thing patterned on the reality of Heaven.
Oh but we were but shadows. You cannot understand me, Beloved. Yet I cannot cease in my attempts. This is my seventh attempt, but I shall try seventy-seven thousand times seventy-seven thousand, Beloved, I cannot let you go, I cannot release you, oh my darling Beloved shadow of an apish clown.
The clownfish, Reandriopulisandrios he is called by his family (although I cannot put this into English, poor Beloved, oh if you could hear the speech here, the beauty of it, if I could some how reach you with sound and you heard a simple heavenly word uttered here such as "up" or "hello" you would burst into a million bits of molecules, your poor shadow existence would burst into a fireworks shower of rainbow light, and anyone who saw your demise would themselves burst into a same shower of beauty, and thus would the world end, undone by a simple heavenly world, oh Beloved that is how far removed we are from what is REAL, oh how can I reach you with an utterly impossible concept such as REAL, when you, poor shadow, believe that thou art real), comically winks its bulbous eye at me and beckons me as he turns and moves deeper into the sea. I stand. The air about me is full and embracing, at every instant I am a baby in the womb, held everywhere by my mother, this love about me. And I smile. Why the sadness, I ask myself, why these seemingly perpetual tears in Heaven? Oh the spirit of tears deep within my soul. A soul made of spirit and tears and breath and life everlasting.
I step upon the Sea of Glass and instantly I am spinning, a dizzy hockey player uncontrollably loose upon anti-gravity ice, but my bare feet kiss the waters, and I am moving so swiftly upon the sea as spray rises up in my wake, and my speed increases as I master my motion and I am catching up to Reandrio (as I call him, we all of us still have the propensity for nicknames and loving diminutives) and he is speeding faster than any earthly porpoise might have dreamed.
And with my thought I have called them, the leaping silly dolphins, grinning at me, graceful and lithe, and I slide upon the Sea of Glass a skier released, and then in an instant, having traveled miles upon the glistening rainbows, I submerge and am instantly joined by myriad friends, shimmering turtles and a smiling whale, darting sharks in iridescent hues, and then I am up and out and into the sky and the fish leap high about me as I soar with the birds who swoop and touch me with the tips of their wings.
I sigh. The sadness is still here. Even here. Weightless in freefall, in rush breath, thou are with me, my Beloved, oh how my soul calls for thee across millenia.
But my mind functions so much sweeter and better than ever it did in the meat. And as my joy is real here, so too is my sadness. For I expect she to be here, and she is not, my her, the one I loved, she is not here, female, friend, love, my peace, helpmeet, soulmate, Beloved, oh Beloved. And she is not the only one. My brother, whom I giggled with, the boy I loved and emulated, the strong kid who would put his body between me and bullies, the loving brother who helped me up when I fell off my bike and even kissed the scrape on my knee, he is not here, oh my brother, my brother. And my daughter, the little girl who used to love me, and smile into my face, kiss my cheek softly when I was napping, she is not here.
And I ache. I never knew what ache meant before. I only knew the shadow of ache. These tears are real, and agony rolls down my face. Oh for love is agony, we never knew that, the agony of a Father sending away His only Son, oh God! Oh God! My soul cries out. Ah the reality of spiritual pain, oh how real is pain. Yes, Father wiped away pain, bumps and bruises, oh but the reality of spirit, of love, and we know He yet feels the pain of His Own Son's death, oh Beloved, He understands what I feel, He knows me through and through.
To be known, to be understood, Beloved, perhaps this is what makes it possible for me to smile, even without thee beside me, Darling Beloved.
Come up here, He calls me, and I am with Father. You know, for I have opened the books, He whispers.
The books, yes, the books, I have been through them all. Of course they are not actual bound pages, not the shadows of books as we knew them, but the realities, the pure knowledge, the understanding, available to all who ask, we bask in them and understand mysteries, we know lives, and it is true that I understand, I understand fully why She is not here, why She chose not to be here, and why my Brother desired not to come, and my Daughter. And my favorite Grandmother. Oh I am surrounded at all times by their absence, by thy absence, oh how absence is so very real, an ache within me, how could I have not reached you, and them, oh my baby girl, Grandma! And the books of Knowledge and Wisdom, the very Book of Life, I find that while they bring understanding, they do not bring acceptance, for I will always miss them. I will always remember them. I will always want them here, to look into their eyes.
I look into thy eyes, Beloved. But thou doth not tarry, thou doth break apart like vapors. I am alone and cannot see thee. Beloved.
Look into my eyes, Father says, and I do, and I can hardly describe such sweetness, such immeasurable love, acceptance of me despite the me of me, I know through the reality of spirit that Father loves me, and He only shows me a bit, but the knowledge of His pain and suffering washes through me, it purges me like a torrent of cascading waterfalls harnessed for my benefit, it cauterizes me a searing flame of fire, and I realize that compared to my pain, His pain is immeasurable, depthless, eternal, that Father loves them, my She and my Brother and my Daughter and my Grandmother, right now He loves them, Father loves thee Beloved, more than I could even hope to imagine even in spiritual mind I cannot know how the One that created thee, Beloved, how doth He love thee! Father is timeless and they live today, right now, just the same as you, my friend, Beloved, in the timeless reality of “outside the bubble of time,” today is as yesterday is as tomorrow and Father never changes, and here in the reality of Heaven, Father looks into the bubble of time that is our universe, or that was our universe, or that will be our universe, and he holds it, the bubble of time, upon the tip of His beautiful finger. And it is now, it is real, all these shadows dancing madly before Him, these beloved shadows, oh Beloved, thou art one of the shadows and thou art alive, and Father loves thee more than I, I who cannot let thee go after an eternity of tomorrows, I who cannot stop loving thee.
I love them, you realize, He assures me without speaking, His love washing through me. I love them, and do not be hurt, my wondrous child, but I love them, those that are not here, more achingly than I ever loved you, or even my own Son. I love them every moment and feel their loss for eternity in a moment, for a moment in all of eternity. And though I cannot perceive the depth of Him, I am washed back forth in His goodness, His purity, His sweet love, and I know what it is to be held.
A flash of memory strikes like lightning, the myth of an angry God, a virulent, violent, vicious Mr. Clean, bald and frowning, gritting divine teeth, and a massive fist of fury slamming upon the world. Flashing angry eyes of a wrathful God, smashing sinners, crushing them, vicious, greedy in His need to bring pain, lustful to hurt, maim, searing anger, petulant rage.
How could we have ever imagined that? I ask Him.
Now you grasp the essence of sin, He breathes. Man in his insolence, imagines God less humane than mankind, vicious in His justice, far surpassing justice in His mindless fury – but all of it vanity, sinful vanity, to elevate lowly mankind to exalted manking, to be like God, to sit above the Most High. Now you know that sin is pride and pride is sin and that sinners need to justify themselves in their pride and make themselves better than the lowly, unwashed, disgusting cretins about them, never realizing their own disgusting, unwashed, lowly state. The blind attempting to lead the blind. The insane administering medicine to the insane. The aching hubris of setting themselves up as midget gods, yearning, lusting, demanding to judge the lowly about them, never realizing they were lower than the low.
We thought we knew, we men of science and modern understanding, the reality of it all, whereas the truth is that we, our whole universe, was nothing more than a microscopic particle of dirt beneath the toenail of God. That was us, and we thought we knew it all. We said this about God. We told that about God. And the fact was we knew nothing and comprehended less.
Judge not, I mutter, peering into the vast goodness of this Being I cannot hope to understand, can never hope to measure, or weigh, or fully embrace. I can never understand justice, but this perfect Being created justice. I can never understand grace, but this perfect Being created grace.
Your eyes are opening, child, He purrs, and in the bliss of the aching moment I realize the tears have dried upon my cheeks, and I feel Father’s lips caress me, and I know, I know, I KNOW I can fully trust Him, I fully accept His decisions, His peace, for He is reality. This strong Tower is reality, my hiding place, finally found, and I finally see, I finally know, I finally LIVE.
Suddenly I realize I will no longer lust for the gory release of blood into my mouth (nor have I since the first day, the first moment of seeing Him for Who He is, that the I Am is the I Is and the Always Will Be), the yearning desire to bite into and chew death. Never again will I crave the biting into a creature’s throat and releasing its precious life. I will no longer lust for death in Heaven.
They are gone, and their pain is gone, and they have been granted their most fervent wish for oblivion, Father breathes, receding from me, and yet He does not fully depart, He never truly is gone or absent, I am constantly with Father, and Father is constantly all around me, in me, and I am so very thankful that the nightmarish visions of a false god and his false wrath, that they no longer exist, that they are like cinders crushed into ground, nothing more than smoke ascending, and reality is God, reality is peace, reality is painlessness. Forever and Ever Beyond Forever.
Sin is gone. I remember when they all taught that sin would exist forever. Death is gone, and I remember when they taught that death would exist forever. Everything bad disappeared into the lake of fire, even death and hell and that one I will not name who is gone, who is finally at peace.
We never knew peace. We never even grasped at what peace meant. This peace of reality so far surpassing the flotsam and jetsam of meat, the bloody mess of the carnal beings of shadow we used to be in our screaming, mindless torment of hell.
And now I hear the trumpet blow, the massive ringing trumpet of the Archangel, He Whom every angel bows before, He Whom is leader of all, the arch, the pinnacle, and even though I am distant from the city at this moment, I can feel His face, I sense His sweet smile, and by thinking I am now here in the City, the great city of the New Jerusalem, and I stand before Him, and I go to my knees before His acceptance, before His embracing eyes, and as He, this He that is Am the I Am of eternity that was not created an Whom created everything, He reaches His hands, this leader of all the angels, this being who is fully human and yet He is "He Who Is Like God" for no other is like God but He, and He, the I Am, He reaches to me and I take His hands, and kiss the still fresh nail scars in His hands, and He draws me up, into His arms, and I feel His heart beating against my face.
Blessed Sabbath, He breathes into my ear as the whole city gathers together before Father. Blessed Sabbath I breathe to Him as the rolling cloud that is the glory of God comes rumbling out of the city upon us, and we bow low in atonement, and we bow low in agreement, and we bow low in love. Love, the love of spirit, this love of reality, this reality that is love and this love that is reality, and we rest, oh we rest, we Sabbath in Him this Mighty Lord of the Sabbath, we rest, and we know rest, and in Him we rest, oh Sabbath!
The old world is gone, reborn through fire, baptized in the glory of God. The old world – a world of shadow – is distant, reborn a world of light with no need of sun or light of stars because He Who Is shines upon us. The shadows themselves are becoming shadows of themselves.
And the rainbow about His throne encompasses us all, and we are surrounded by light; there are no shadows here, in the light of the Father without need for sun, surrounded in His love, consumed by His love this light and this truth, this way, and we sing in worship, our whole beings sing, all of us gathered together in the reality of fellowship, and the tears that jettison from us are tears of extreme acceptance. The acceptance of something not one of us deserve before Him, and yet which He has gifted us, freely, in love. Love. Like a bell tolling, His love rings above us, about us, inside us.
In love.
His glory and His love peal and reverberate like the distant memory of church bells.
In love.
Love.
* * *
As I returned the message to its beautiful amber bottle (I'd never seen such glass, not before, not since), I knew this bottle had not reached its intended recipient (at least not yet, not in this seventh attempt, but I doubt the one that wrote this missive shall surrender, I think he will continue trying, as he said, beyond seventy-seven thousand times seventy-seven thousand attempts). Whoever she was, I didn't want to disturb the intended message. I'm going to try and replace it in its 100-year resting place, maybe try and pack up some mortar around it, leaving the amber glass showing, and I am haunted as I attempt to replace the bottle to the way it was before I disturbed it in its traveling through time, because what if the intended recipient is one of my daughters? What if it is one of my grand daughters unborn?
But will the world even be around for the birth of my granddaughters? At the rate people are destroying it, there is a very good chance we don't have twenty years remaining, or thirty-two.
Oh Beloved, what if, in fact, it is ME, ahead someplace in time so far ahead so very far ahead in time, reaching back here in my attempt to reach YOU?
I must reach you today, Beloved, for it seems that even in perfect eternity, it is almost impossible to reach someone who chooses darkness over light, lost here within the bubble of time and space. Oh Beloved.
* * *
People believe horrible things about God, and Heaven as well, as well as hell (oh well). Where did they get the bizarre beliefs? Why do people equate "justice" with eternal torture? How can people who think they love God imagine Him doing horrible things to people, things they would never even imagine doing themselves? Why such a colorless, insipid view of Heaven? Why such a colorless, insipid view of SPIRIT? Reality, oh Pinocchio, thou hast not tasted of reality, but only shadow. Wow, just think about it.
It's something, about sense, you know? It pretty much makes sense. Anyone can do it -- THINK, I mean. You just have to make an effort, to see through the propaganda, the slogans, buzz words, "thinkless" speech, knee-jerk reactions and angry, bitter rhetoric. Try it, thinking, what have you got to lose in a crazy, crazy world?
What's this world coming to, anyway, is what I'd like to know.
Ways to aid this ministry include praying for this site www.TruthSeek.net, www.DeceivingtheElect.net, and www.DramaticParables.com, donations and provision may be gifted using the TruthSeekGift page (and please only use this if you feel you are inspired by God to do so), and also feel free to use the Prayer Request page to submit prayer requests, and praying for the prayer requests of others, as well as exploring the various advertisements and links on these pages (regrettably, the advertising is necessary to recompense the many costs of keeping a website running, so exploration of the advertisers, which are not connected to any of these parables, is greatly appreciated). Any aid is joyously accepted, even if that means a smile and a well-wish. Thank you so much!
...Just Trying to Make Sense in a Crazy, Crazy, Loony-Tunes World.
Just give Thinking a chance.
THINK. Think your own thoughts.
Use the MIND that God Himself gave you, the thing that makes you unique, the thing that encompasses YOU, your mind, your noodle, your "heart" as the Bible calls it. Think with it, it's what God wants you to do. If you only think the thoughts of other people, you are not doing what you were designed to do. THINK. Or at least think about thinking, that would be a good start.
Sense is not evil. Common sense is a good thing, and perhaps not as "common" as the cliche. You think you can't figure it out, but that is because you haven't ever tried. God gave you a brain for a reason, and it is your responsibility to USE it.
Is tradition more important than what the Bible actually says?
Why do people who say "God is love" believe He is more monstrous than any serial killer that ever lived?
Why do people equate "justice" with endless torture -- and yet they wince when they hear of military men torturing their prisoners?
When God says He is coming back to destroy those who are destroying the Earth, is He just bluffing?
Why do those on the left, who don't believe in God, say we should protect the planet? And those on the right, who claim to believe in God, say the world isn't important?
Society is robbing you of thought. Ads and gurus and the very worst of "teachers" are right now sapping your very soul. Aspartame and sucralose and Acesulfame K and splenda and MSG and high-fructose corn syrup and perpetual bombardment by cellular phone rays and the worst of nutrition-free diet is all adding up to rob you of your very ability to THINK. But you can yet do it. Exercise your gray matter.
Society is robbing you of thought. Ads and gurus and the very worst of "teachers" are right now sapping your very soul. Aspartame and sucralose and Acesulfame K and splenda and MSG and high-fructose corn syrup and perpetual bombardment by cellular phone rays and the worst of nutrition-free diet is all adding up to rob you of your very ability to THINK. But you can yet do it. Exercise your gray matter.
And when I looked at it closely (which I found myself doing every single day, sometimes three, four times a day) I noticed that a thin slice of cement had caved away, crumbled and fallen off the side of the foundation. The bottle had been completely covered, probably years ago, and now it was exposed. I know my house is over 100 years old, so this bottle struck me as a time capsule. What if there was a treasure inside? Maybe someone hid their diamonds in here? Gold coins.
