OF PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE

What Elon Musk, or Bill Gates do in terms of achievements or acquisitions or benefits to humanity or sinister plots may be of interest to me, but they mean nothing to me. They are unimportant to my life. What PM Justin Trudeau, or wannabe presidents Kamala or Donald say or do, or think, is ultimately of no consequence for me. What the World Economic Council publish publicly or resolves clandestinely does not need to waste my time. My shorts should not be in knots over anything outside of myself. I am a temple of God the Holy Spirit. His presence is my security and my peace. The love of God is the foundation of my life. His Word illuminates my way. He is God and I am His child. That alone is of real and paramount importance. My communication with Him and about Him and His messages to me must be where I allow my mind to exclusively settle each day that I live here. 

Qualifier: None of the above implies an ostrich head-in-the-sand approach to personal and world events; or infers unconcern about the conflicts in the Mid-East or Ukraine, or suggests a lack of empathy and action to aid anyone around me who requires my assistance. It does declare my valid and uber-effective coping mechanism for all that is harmful and threatening in this world, and my world. 

MY BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF REVELATION

MY BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF REVELATION

 

John, was the friend of Jesus, gospel writer and evangelist. The purpose of Jesus’ incarnation was so real and empowering to John. He watched Jesus die. He saw him alive again. He saw Jesus ascend through clouds and out of sight. He knew everything Jesus said about the devil and sin and redemption, and the Kingdom were true. He wrote that God loved the world so much that He sent the divine Son, Jesus, so whomever believes in Jesus will have eternal life. 

John heard Jesus alert his followers to the fact that in this world where sin is prevalent, being faithful to God as follower of Christ is difficult and dangerous. John was sent to the island of Patmos as a prisoner of the Roman State. Before Jesus died, John heard Jesus promise that though he was leaving, he would send His Holy Spirit to be with them and in them. Now on the island, John found himself possessed powerfully by the Holy Spirit, as the LORD gave him a vision of the future. We read that this vision contained an immediate message to each of seven churches that existed at that time. Those messages contained commendations, warnings and promises. Since this is inspired scripture from God, the information to the churches is transferable to churches in every age, because evil exists in every age. 

A CHRISTIAN’S VIEW OF CREATION

The only exclusive timeless spiritual being, Triune God, surrounded by spiritual creatures, angels who worship and serve God eternally, decided to create a species of physical beings, unique, humanity, in whom God would invest a divine similarity. A delicate feature. There would be affinity between God and humanity. To affect this plan, God created a universe of galaxies, and in one galaxy he made one planet suitable to human physical life. Humanity, with this divine resemblance, both genders, should enjoy Earth and wisely govern this jewel of a planet.  God was pleased with creation. Because God knows all things, ends from beginnings, even then God knew humanity would fail to maintain God’s likeness. Sin would interrupt the affinity God had with humanity. Sin changed humanity. Transience and Mortality. God’s penalty on sin. Still God loved this Earth full of people. God’s plan in eternity was to restore this Godlikeness, this affinity in humanity. Restoration would result from God’s greatest of all time demonstration of love. The death penalty would be paid. God determined to take on a human form to briefly reside on planet Earth, then die. God’s eternality would conquer death. Penalty served. Sin’s interruption arrested. God’s prerogative. The benefit to humanity, contingent on individual faith in the efficacy of God’s death. Plus, a promise. Eternal life with God for the believer. It worked. It works.

DEATH IS NO STRANGER TO ME

DEATH IS NO STRANGER TO ME

 

This is not a gloomy mindfulness. End of life is on my mind more frequently than it ever was in previous decades. The proximity of death is easily apparent to me, particularly because of my age.  I am 78 years old. Furthermore, the passing of close friends and acquaintances who are my contemporaries occurs with increased frequency. Two days ago another friend’s life on planet earth ended. She was four years older than me.  

I am no stranger to dying and death. At the age of 27 I began my work as a church pastor. For forty years one of my responsibilities was spending time with dying parishioners and residents of the community. I sat with families as their loved one weakened and I comforted them when the loved one died. Many who died were close personal friends. I had my own load of grief to manage. I officiated funerals within the churches that I pastored.  I lost count of how many hundreds of funerals that is. Death is not a stranger to me.

My grandparents and parents and most uncles and aunts and some cousins have died. We have been people of faith, not just any faith, but Christian faith. Early in my life and then through concentrated linguistic and theological investigation I confirmed for my own satisfaction that my faith rests on promise based on evidence. So I am content to trust that God was telling me the truth when he inspired writers to record that eternal life awaits those who trust that Jesus was divine and resided on earth for the purpose of atoning for human sin. I believe that Jesus’ own dying words to a dying convict promising him life in paradise was true, and is true still. What this comes down to is assurance and hope and peace. 

Yes, I have bought the whole meal deal. It’s a worldview that includes a future beyond life here. Not for one moment do I believe that it is easier or more intelligent to accept that life began spontaneously in some cell somewhere or through some cataclysmic celestial explosion. I rest my trust in a transcendent pre-existing God who created this remarkable universe and chose to fashion humanity in his image, and who has prepared something for us after this. I am unafraid and I am content.   

REAL LIFE IN A DREAM - A POEM

It was a family meal. 

I was the eldest at the table, the head. 

During conversation, someone spoke, 

something offhand, cutting, hurtful to me. 

That was it, the proverbial last straw.  

Similar insults have occurred before. 

From the same person, flippant, rude. 

I slammed my fork down loudly striking my plate

as I rose in haste and left the dining room. 

I walked swiftly to my room, aware 

that someone was following me. 

I shut the door behind me and sat down in my armchair. 

The door opened and someone entered, 

looked at me with sorry eyes, came and sat with me. 

Sat, wedged between arm and my body, with back to me in silence. 

That gesture broke me and I cried. 

Sobbing, heaving and another person entered. 

Young, supportive, well intentioned, 

and the two exited without a word. No true resolution. 

The relationship unchanged. I was angry.

Angry with the second person for surging in, disturbing our moment. 

I yelled out loud, and the sound woke me up.

Reflectively then I wondered about the dream. 

Realized as if a light went on. The offender was me. 

The me of the dream was God. 

I was the one who repeatedly injured the Father. 

Injured is an inadequate word. Offend would work. 

Sin is more accurate. This was a teaching moment. 

How often a cohort of sorts has interfered,

diverted my attention, and pulled me from enduring repentance. 

More was expected of me, rightfully so since I am of the family. 

   

© Ron Unruh, Feb 2019

PIVOTING ON A DECISION - going to Rwanda

In mid December I was invited to consider joining a group of eight people who will travel in mid-January to Rwanda to share faith in Christ. In brief, groundwork has already been laid there for these eight people, each to have a translator and one other person accompany them to visit in family homes to share with residents how one can have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ that results in the forgiveness of sin and a new way of living life by faith. The purpose is multi-fold, to bring people to saving faith in Christ, to train people to share faith, to establish a followup discipleship program for respondents. This is a help, and it becomes an investment in local Rwandan churches where there is risk.

An apology was extended to me for what was short notice for me, since I was required to raise my own funds for the trip. I needed to ascertain my own interest in such a venture and to consider my age, my physical and financial resources. I needed to face my fears and concerns. I took several days to determine my choice. And although I composed a letter with which to respond to the person who invited me, I also wrote a poem to help myself through the process of coming to a decision. Here is what I wrote.

PIVOTING ON A DECISION

I tangle between fear and faith

With a decision I must make

So little time to ponder

Yet with years enough to make me wise.

At my current age, health and means, 

Enthusiasm yields to caution that's untimely

Since only days remain in which to choose

An action that may lead to life or death.

The life or death equation is not my own

But that of whomever waits a day's flight from here

To whom I might go to share good news

That leads from death to life.

Fear derives from details over which I have no control.

Faith rests in One for whom all things are possible.

Does plunging headlong into ignored truths 

Equate with faith? I ask myself. 

Must I discount age, health and means to evidence my faith? 

Or might faith inform me that I should stay,

That I should pray for those who go?

Such is the tangle of my thoughts.

Good news is appropriate for me to share 

Not only there but here.

If I choose by faith not to go, the One will still deliver

Life-giving news in that distant place, 

And those to whom I might have gone

Will meet me when One brings us home.

© Ron Unruh, Dec 16, 2018

THE SHACK, A FILM, MADE NEXT DOOR.

They are making the movie right here in lower mainland B.C., and I have been just metres away from some of the filming this week. This may be a good film, if it keeps to the script. John Fusco, best known for writing 1988's Young Guns, wrote its screenplay adaptation from the book by the same name by first-time author Paul Young which sold 22 million copies worldwide. Of course many in the evangelical world took issue with the 2007 best-selling book, The Shack, in the first place, castigating it and its Canadian author Paul Young for parodying God and the Trinity, perhaps even depreciating these entities.

SAM WORTHINGTON

I treated the read years ago as the novel that it was. You would throw out much of C.S. Lewis' fiction if you took the same reactionary stance against his material.  Young was not teaching theology, but telling a story, the account of a man's pain at the loss of a daughter as a result of a kidnapping and murder by a serial killer. Sam Worthington plays the lead role of Mackenzie "Mack" Allen Phillips who is plunged into a deep emotional abyss that embraces fury at God. Four years after the horror, he receives a letter from God called Papa. 

And of course this representation in the book set people off, because portrayed Papa as a woman, a black female who will be portrayed by Octavia Spencer, who has already won an Oscar for her role in the "The Help." Radha Mitchell is in the role of Phillips' wife and Amelie Eve is their missing daughter. I saw her in the canoe scene as it was being shot last night. The Shack and Papa's cabin tucked into the woods are all on site and the filming went on for the four days that we were close by holidaying in a cottage. Very fun.

Paul Young himself says that he is excited about the movie because he has been given the rare opportunity to invest his creative input into the filmmaking process. We will see how much his voice is heard.  Young calls the book a metaphor for “the house you build out of your own pain.” 

Will non-believers be confused, led astray from God’s true persona? Might viewers who never think about God, feel compelled to seek to know him outside the context of the novel? I will look forward to the movie. I won't fashion my theology, or my concept of God based upon its expressions for deity. I may however, learn to meditate more keenly on some aspects of the character of God as expressed by the three persons whom readers may discern as the Trinitarian God image. I may  be encouraged about the compassion of God for his human creatures when they suffer. 

A WORTHY HERO

I am having one of my ‘senior’ hours just now, having awoken at 3 am, and checked some art websites, some email like this, and now will settle into the middle of my current novel, reading Lee Child’s ’61 Hours.’ His protagonist in this multi-novel series is Jack Reacher. And over the past year I have read many of his works. Reacher is an interesting character, fascinating because he is unlike me in every conceivable way, standing 6’5”, an ex military man, with combat skills and awareness of other people’s weakness that makes him fearless; a vagabond of sorts who is constantly travelling across the USA, always on the move, without any possessions whatsoever, carries no backpack or anything else, purchases new inexpensive clothing every few days and discards the old stuff, and wherever he goes, he stumbles into some fascinating scenario where he has a string of heroic moments at the end of which, I as a reader feel relief from the resolution, strength from living Reacher’s story, eagerness to learn more about him as he moves on.

I can’t explain my fascination with this diversion from personal reality, in which my inadequacies are all too apparent. But I am aware that Reacher is not my personal hero. Jesus is my hero.

He is so much more than that to me of course, but Jesus is a bonafide hero. We seldom think of him in such terms, but if we do revisit his earth-time story, his character stands out compellingly against the culture and values of his time and certainly of our time.

FAÇADE OR AUTHENTICITY

FAÇADE OR AUTHENTICITY

Wish fulfillment or answered prayer

Depends on posture of the heart,

When surprised by some provision

And persuaded of God's part,

Comes the inclination to give thanks

But begs an important question.

Can I remember praying for this outcome?

Or did I merely crave possession?

Did I trust in God's involvement,

Or was I pretending to be devout?

Now abruptly God's got my attention

Of his attention there's no doubt.

I must be genuine since he is true

I cannot play a religious game

God is demonstrating his investment in me

I must bring honour to his name.

 © Ron Unruh, January 5, 2015

FLAGGING FAITH

FLAGGING FAITH

I watch, listen, and observe

Saddening signs of generations

Moving coldly from my base.

Here is what I see.

Flagging faith, not pennant-waving, flagging,

Fading of conviction, doubting,

Diminishing, losing confidence in long held beliefs.

Ancient tenets distrusted and dismissed.

Conceptions of God exposed to speculation.

Conjecture reigns supremely, ignoring holy texts,

Inducing hopelessness, post modern culture

Hungry for my offspring,

And I pray.

Must pray that God will show Himself

In mercy, grace and truth and pull them

Tightly to Himself so they with buoyancy,

Live and love life knowing

That God's promises are true.

© Ron Unruh, October 2014

FRIDAY THE 13TH

The 13th day of a month, falling on a Friday as it does today, and paired with a full moon, whose exceptional appearance earns it the designation of strawberry or honey moon, is very rare and it won’t happen again until 2049. I will be 107 years old. I don’t believe I will thrive and stay alive until then, and I don’t believe there is anything spooky about Friday the 13th. But many people do. I would prefer that people abandon superstition and believe this. The creator of everything that is visible and invisible anywhere, came to live here among us. Jesus was the image of the invisible God. By the time he came, his creation including humanity had been estranged from him through the pollution cause by human sin. He came in order to reconcile all of his creation to himself. He himself determined that such reconciliation required atonement. Jesus became that. He died on a Friday. His promise to a thief dying beside him was that the two would be united in paradise. God’s promise to us all is that whoever places exclusive faith in Jesus Christ will enjoy life that lasts forever with God. (based on scripture such as Colossians 1:15-19; John 3:16)