Overheard in Mana

My favorite saying is all things seen came from the unseen. I like it because it so graphically highlights the different worlds between the spirit and the flesh in defining faith in Hebrews 11. 

As I've indicated previously, most likely not often enough from my angle at least, I am writing for my own benefit. Everyone speaks, reads, and writes for their own benefit when we come right down to it.

One Only Believes 

What They Want to Believe

Everyone persuades themselves, even if they only agree with what they hear and read. On top of it all hearers maintain their very different views of the very same speaker. If I tell you that I had an epiphany, then that is the gospel truth only to you, that I told this to you. 

But, only to you! To anyone else you tell it to it is hearsay to them, which is quite bluntly at its' worst, gossip, and not admissible evidence to your hearers that I ever even said it at all. Now that I am so intimately involved with logic today, I only mention that I've heard some, incredibly, cast their illustrations of their truth as evidence of their truth in a matter.

Emotion is power

Energy Starts Motion

We are all born the same. Most people think first and only of the evolving flesh. The flesh will not save us, according to Jesus. 

Rather, the spirit seems equal in power and emotion across the board to everyone. The flesh however is open to variables of which I know little. If anyone has the chance, whatever opportunity, to be borne in a severely unequal state, then the unborn spirit within has the power to overcome, if God gives it to them. 

Since I, like those who deny God even exists, am not God of myself, I am not privy to everything that God has put in place. I accept God as He reveals Himself, and do not question or threaten Existence.. I am, however, aware there is a reason for everything. Jesus said everyone is saved. I might say, from themselves, only if God draws them to Him Jesus said. Many left Jesus after that saying. They had their own rules.

We own nothing in the end

Such Brief Control for So Short a Time

One has to wonder how we got here amid all this fantastic scenario we constantly see displayed before us. All the just right events, that continue to sustain us, is by itself a designer's wonder. Still, we live a little longer than wilting flowers amid grass. This all only becomes evident when, it seems, it is too late. 

Hope as Substance

Substance Without Hope

We all imagine our own hope and that hope will bring its' own substance. Even without hope, I believe, there is still substance because the absence always exists. Reminds me of an unseen dark hole from which there is no escape exit. Even if one does not believe in God, then they have to be their own god just in order not to believe it.  I cannot imagine how one can get God out of the picture without evidence. Ongoing....

Working out my salvation.....

Now we see darkly
but soon face to face.

I continue to post in Manna because the Bible obviously has more to say of significance than I could ever muster. While it is important for me to work out my own salvation, the temporary worries and temporal cares of this world have a way of intruding on what little time I have left just in order to function. Time continues to fool me even as I speak. 

The seen comes from the unseen

Imagination creates reality

                                                             Richard Wagner 

Either the mind controls the body, or the body, with its' lesser horizon, will control the mind. It is instinctive for the eye to follow anything that moves. This is what the boob tube tells us about our bodies. But the spirit, if there is one, overrides all. There are many spirits, mediums and such, but there is only one spirit that I would trust to be in charge, Jesus. 

A belief is not the same as believing

Belief in God 

and Santa Claus 

It is not so easy to believe as quite a few assume. It is more than agreeing or going along with the pastor. And especially a pastor who thinks the stories in the Bible are not true, only the meaning is true.  That is why cultivating and strengthening my faith is so important to me in today's Manna. 

Why I go to church...

 I always went to church 

  to build my faith stronger

But it has never worked that way. Instead, I actually lost my faith going to church. Luckily, but not after a long a wandering in a fruitless dessert, I did eventually regain my faith. It was built on the strength of my reasoning based on logic. 

Yet another fruitless victory on my part. In that error I proved the existence of God. Here an inch off the mark was as good as a mile. Then, I gave up, and came freedom, my decision to believe, no matter what! 

My belief came alive, from an inert subject becoming an active verb, a predicate, a pre-stated dictate to believing. But we must be careful when judging ourselves. We have no harsher judge than we ourselves. 

Oft heard quote

 Oldie but goodie

"It is one of the disasters of our lives that we get old too soon, and wise too late." Benjamin Franklin

This is the time of year for me to look back and evaluate the progress of my year previous. Usually, I discover I was quite stupid last January to be perfectly frank about it. But I am restored by the belief I learned mistakes I'll never make again. Every year I discover this, every January. 😉

 Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.     Frank Zappa

One cannot be sure progress is not regress in today's mix. But I like the spirit of this quote. There isn't a dictionary printed that can satisfactorily define progress. I think, for me, the word change would be better here.

Signs and wonders

Faith Critically More Important

 Couldn'thelp overhear an intense discussion about signs and wonders at a side table in the Naked Eye recently. 

What did Jesus say about "this" people desiring a sign? (Checking location) I am myself not overly impressed with blood coming out of stones and such. The fact that there was even universal donor blood involved does not rate any big discussion for my part. The Shroud is, on the other hand, quite interesting but is still not pivotal in any way. 

Of course, now that I think on it, I am very concerned about healings. They seem worthwhile since they are so very appreciated and attracts faith. It is still, just the same, all in the seen world, and in the end, the flesh will not help us. This according to Jesus.