Figurative Ashes

Today is Ash Wednesday. While I don't have literal ashes on my forehead, I do realize that it's time for me to begin living a more penitential life as Lent starts to unfold. It's time to plant and nurture what has been planted...

These incredibly big trees were once relatively tiny seeds. They somehow got themselves placed into a spot where conditions were favorable for something amazing to begin. Life. Growth. And time moved on. First a sprout. Then a seedling. Then a sapling. Then day by day they turned into these gigantic trees.

For years I've sensed the need to be in a spiritual "spot" where conditions are favorable for something amazing (spiritually) to begin in me. But years and years of career and work and distraction and self-focused choices and life have all been things I've pursued ahead of the kinds of conditions that would help my becoming more than I am. And now at this stage of my life, I see how ill-served I have been, and by my own doing.

Somehow, a very gracious and patient God has let me remain a little seed, or perhaps a sprout or seedling - at best a puny sapling spiritually. It's as if God knows that eventually I might come around and hasn't given up on this possibility. In fact, it may be that God is deliberately permitting conditions to be such that I can no longer ignore or set aside the inner spark of life that wants to grow in me so very badly.

For whatever reason, the last verse from Judges 21 has become embedded in my mind.

In those days, Israel had no king;
everyone did as he saw fit.

At first it seemed like God was speaking to the conditions of the "other people" out there, the pathetic ones who simply do their own thing, have it their own way; the "no rules, just right" crowd. How I could look at "them" with self-righteous contempt. But today it struck me that I'm part of that same crowd. And I'm no different. I do whatever I see fit. And it usually takes me on a life course that is in few ways consistent with being a serious disciple of Jesus Christ or growing in grace and spiritual depth.

Now one more illusion is gone and I have a clearer view of my own shortcomings in this one area. Now I must come to grips with God's continuing patience with me and my own stubborn refusal to enter into the good "conditions" which would allow those amazing things God envisions for me to take root and grow.

Spiritually, I want to want to become like a gigantic tree - rooted deeply and strong. God help me take a step in that direction, today and every day.

Blue Monday

Nothing in particular other than these windows with aqua blue awnings. Shot taken somewhere in Tampa.

On the Lighter Side

Are you reading this and snowed or iced in? Some are looking for all 50 states to get snow, somewhere. Heh. And the NYT and their fellow travellers are braying that this deep freeze is caused by global warming. Some people never quit, do they... Al Gore? I like your recent image, carved in ice in Alaska this winter. Unfortunately it won't last when summer comes -- unless maybe we drop it onto the Arctic somewhere.

Wouldn't be the first time we used the Arctic to dispose of unwanted trouble-makers. Remember the old original version of that great b-shocker, The Blob? Got rid of it by parachuting that frozen mess onto an Arctic ice field. I can see it now -- them air-dropping Al Gore's frozen statue onto a stretch of frozen Arctic tundra.

Then we could all take bets as to when his ice sculpture might melt.

Meanwhile, Back in Reality

Am still celebrating the New Orleans Saints' Super Bowl victory over the Indianapolis Colts and Peyton Manning. To this long-suffering fan base (including me), this still feels like a dream. Surreal, exciting, Daliesque lines which flow and bend and blend into an image of a startling new reality. We're the big boys now, the kings of the hill (at least for this season). It's a great experience after so many disappointing and unfulfilled years.

Meanwhile, back in reality the world rocks on. I was reading a piece by one Larry Kelley, entitled "We're All Infidels Now." Kelley is taking on the prophetic mantel once worn by the ever unpopular Jeremiah of Old Testament fame. Jeremiah was once called the "weeping prophet" because of his calling to preach doom and destruction to the people of Judah (the Southern Kingdom). In short, his message to them was: "You've blown it people. Babylon's coming! And with it comes all the baddest stuff you can think of. God says." One time they threw him alive into a working cistern. Kind of like being thrown under a stinky port-a-pottie in our own day and time. Nope, Jeremiah was no popular dude.

Anyway, Kelley is taking a hard look at Iran and Obama's way with them since taking office. And he's not seeing something that would instill confidence or much hope for the future. In his own words...

In the spring of 1945, when a liberated survivor of a World War II Nazi death camp was asked what he had learned from his ordeal, he replied, “When someone says he wants to kill you, believe him.”

Kelley next draws a connecting line between that one dark dot in history and the dots that are today located in Washington, D.C. and also the fair city of Tehran. 

Shortly after his inauguration, President Obama sent an unpublicized letter to the Iranian government. The letter was exposed when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad publicly wrote back, “We say to you that you are in a position of weakness. Your hands are empty. You can no longer promote your interests from a position of strength.” Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the U.N., commented, “What the administration saw as a magnanimous gesture was seen as total weakness by the regime in Tehran.”

What concerns Kelley is the forgotten lesson of "don't try to appease the aggressor," the one that should have been forever etched into the human brain since the days of Hitler and Munich, and Prime Minister Chamberlain's impotent and untrue "Peace for our time!" mantra. It appears once again the lesson has been either totally unlearned, or else deliberately is being obscured under mountains of nonsensical protest and politically correct verbage being slung all over the world stage by the radical Left of many nations, for their own dark reasons.

Meanwhile, back in Tehran (reality)...

The Mullahs running the regime in Tehran are apocalyptic Shiites. They are fervent believers in the cult of the Twelfth Imam who disappeared down a well in the Iranian city of Qom in 874. They believe that, although invisible, he is not absent from this world; that the Hidden Imam will return; that all infidels will be vanquished, including the Sunni Muslims; and that Shiite Islam will impose its dominion over the earth in the aftermath of a great apocalypse.

Ahmadinejad’s chief spiritual advisor, the Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, is considered to be Shiite Islam’s premier authority on the Twelfth Imam and has proclaimed that Ahmadinejad is the “chosen” of the Hidden Imam, the person “designated for his return.” Ahmadinejad, himself, has said he is in communication with the Twelfth Imam.

Pre-eminent Middle Eastern Scholar Bernard Lewis has stated that the concept of “mutually assured destruction” may not be a deterrent but rather an incentive for the Iranian regime. Given that the heads of this regime believe they can accelerate the coming of their messianic figure through a great conflagration, they may choose war over peace. According to its rhetoric, we are attempting to negotiate with a regime that claims to seek Armageddon.

 Kelley goes on to point out the ties between Iran's current regime, the terror movement embedded within radical Islamic extremes worldwide, the religious leadership of Iran, the interests of China, Russia, and North Korea in pushing the U.S. off the world center stage and into a decline the likes of which we have not seen in our nation's history. A nuclear Iran could well become the harbinger of armageddon. And it could happen sooner than anyone thinks. In fact, Kelley thinks some within Tehran are counting on it.

...a single EMP [electro-magnetic pulse] weapon has the potential to destroy the United States. Iran, which has repeatedly stated that “it is both desirable and achievable to bring about a world without America,” has been testing EMP delivery systems and missiles from platforms on the Caspian Sea...

Take the time to read and digest all of this. But [disclaimer] it might scare the bejeebers out of you and change how you think and vote for all time.

Ominous Update (2/11/10): Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that they can now make a nuclear bomb. Not a positive development in the hands of that regime.