Two Short Thoughts

There’s a documentary about George Harrison airing on HBO right now. In one of the little snippets of interviews, George says that one of the things that drew him to Krsna Consciousness was that he wasn’t expected to believe in something until he had experienced it. But when he was a child being raised as a Catholic, he was expected to believe everything that was presented to him without question.

I had had the same thought years ago, when someone said that you had to believe something or the other because it was in the Bible. George expressed it much better than I did, and much better than I have paraphrased him here.

Frequently when we are discussing religious thought, we have to spend some time talking about semantics. You can accept and acknowledge all kinds of things because you read it, or someone explains it to you clearly. But when you believe it, you incorporate it into your thought process, it goes down into your core and becomes part of your operating system.

I wonder how many potential Christians we have run off by insisting that they accept every facet of our beliefs before they were ready.

How do you believe something you’re supposed to believe if you don’t believe it?

I’ve had a resurgence of interest in the Bible itself in the last couple of years. And I find things that I know I’ve read before, but not paid any attention to.

The parable of the seeds is one of those things.

In Matthew 13, Jesus talked about a farmer who planted seeds. Some wound up on the road and were eaten by birds. Some went on rocky ground. There was very little soil, and when the plants came up, they were scorched by the sun, because their roots were shallow. Some seeds were tossed into thorn bushes. This wasn‘t a very careful farmer. The thorn bushes choked them out. But some seeds were planted in good soil and they produced a hundred times more than was planted.

When He explained this parable, He said that the seeds on the road were the people who heard the word but did not understand it, and the devil came and snatched it away from them. The seeds in the rocky soil were people who heard the word and took it in while things were going well, but when times got hard, they gave up. The seeds in the thorn bushes were people who heard the word but let the world take priority. The seeds on the good ground, of course, are those of us who hear the word, accept it, take it, live it and pass it on.

I heard this and it really resonated with me. Because I knew people who fit into each category. And I thought if someone hears the word and just doesn’t understand it, how is that their fault. I knew someone like that. She went to church and she told me, she gave up, because it just wasn’t sinking in.

I have heard people say that there are some people who cannot be saved. I don’t think that’s true. I think there are people that I cannot reach. And maybe you cannot reach. But I don’t believe there are people that God would just write off.

She’s a reasonably intelligent person, not particularly emotionally mature, but she should be able to get it. And the only thing I could think was that she wasn’t ready to give up her own thoughts, give up what she was doing, and listen to what God was saying.


My friend Robbie was giving the sermon a couple of weeks ago, and while she was talking, I had a thought, and I have no idea why, because it didn’t have anything to do with what she was talking about.

I thought you can know all the Bible in the world, you can quote chapter and verse, know every detail we know about Jesus’ life and all kinds of things about the culture and times, but if it stays in the book, if it doesn’t come out and become part of your life, then it’s useless.

It’s easy to say Live by Faith, but do we? Do we make our decisions, determine our actions, knowing that God has our back? Do we pray about a problem we have, then put it aside and assume God is handling it? Or do we continue to worry and fret?

We were preparing to move again, go to the next track. I didn’t have a job, and we weren’t sure where we were going to be staying, and my mother asked me if I was afraid, and I said no, without even thinking about it.

And I realized that I wasn’t just saying No, I am not worried because I knew I was supposed to depend on the Lord, but because it had finally sunk in. God had my back. If I let Him handle it, we were going to be okay.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have problems. I have financial woes, frustrations at work, people I have difficulty getting along with, traffic snarls and things that I am just not happy about in my life. But I also have the peace that Jesus gives me, and if I depend upon it, if I allow myself, then I have nothing to fret over.



Three things are told to us: “Be still”, “My Peace I leave with you” and “Fear Not”. Someone counted, and Fear Not is repeated more than any other phrase in the Bible. Which means not only is it important, but we can count on it.

Do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.  Isaiah 41:10

Exactly That

It was suggested that all the Jews should leave the Vatican. When the Jews protested, the Pope agreed to have a debate, and if he won, the Jews left. If the Jewish debater won, they got to stay. Because of the language difference, they decided it would be a silent debate.

A council of Rabbis decided that their debater, for the sake of irony, should be a Jewish carpenter. And they chose a man named Mosche.

First the Pope “spoke”. He held up three fingers. Mosche held up one. The Pope waved his fingers in a circle around his head. Mosche pointed to the ground. The Pope brought out a wafer and a glass of wine. Mosche held out an apple.

The Pope threw up his hands. “I admit defeat. They can stay.”

The Cardinals surrounded the Pope and said “What happened?”

The Pope said, “I held up three fingers, to show him the Trinity. He showed me with one finger, that there is one Common God. I showed him God was all around us, and he showed me that God is right here. I explained that God absolves us of our sins, and he used the apple to remind me of original sin.”

When Mosche was asked for an explanation, he said, “I don’t know what happened. He told me we had three days to get out. I said not one of us is leaving. He said the whole city would be cleared, and I said we’re staying right here. Then he showed me his lunch, and I showed him mine.”

I was raised by a woman who would not let us say the word “fool”. My mother believes that that particular word was forbidden by Jesus. That He said Call no man a fool. She didn’t want us to call anyone names, but if you had to, you should say idiot or moron or dolt. But not fool.

I am not criticizing my mother. I’m just using her thought to illustrate a point. She had been raised with the same edict. Jesus said Call no man a fool. Even when I was young, something about that didn’t feel quite right to me. And many, many years later, I found the verse she was talking about.

Matthew 5: 22, Whoever calls another believer a fool will answer for it in hellfire. [God's Word]  You notice that my translation says “believer”. And if it’s read in the full context, I accepted that what He was saying was Do not criticize the belief system of another believer. That if the Christian sitting next to you said that the Sabbath was on Saturday, let him go with that. And maybe even if the guy on the other side of you said God was incarnated as a little blue boy, let him go with that.

But then I found so many other translations that said Brother instead of Believer. I found the Greek translation on biblos.com, and it is brother. Literally Brother, so then I thought that maybe my interpretation was wrong.

But then I realized that the key was what we interpret the word “brother” to be.

So what to do.

I looked at other verses, other messages, and more importantly, I talked to God about it, and in the end, at least for now, I have gone back to my original interpretation.

We cannot get too wrapped up in the specific words in the Bible.

A friend of mine gave a sermon, and it was a good sermon and she had an excellent point, but one of the keys to her sermon was that the word “heart” appeared in the three verses that she was tying together. But in my translation, the word “heart” only appeared in two.

This doesn’t negate her message. I think instead it proves mine. It’s the meaning of the verses that matter.

We get in trouble when we try to take everything too literally.

I had a disagreement with a man who thought it was very important that Genesis 2:7 read Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostril the breath of life; and the man became a living soul. My translation reads living being. He said My Bible was translated from the original Hebrew and Greek. I said So was mine.

I have heard someone say that we must take Genesis 3:20, The man named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living things, literally. That we had to accept that Eve was the mother of all mankind. But it’s poppycock that the angels had children with earthly women.

We go three chapters further into Genesis and we find a couple of references to the angels laying with human women. Such as The Nephilim were on the earth in those days -- and also afterward --when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. Genesis 6:4.

So which is it? We’re taking things literally, or we’re not.

I could be accused of doing the same thing by ignoring the verses which say that women shouldn’t speak in church. I am not speaking in church but I am putting out a blog, using the internet as a pulpit.

Paul, who incidentally is the one who said women shouldn’t speak in church, settles the argument. He tells us in Second Timothy not to argue over small things and words.

I think we’re better off looking at things through the lens of study, of appreciating the difference in our times and theirs, in viewing the Bible as a source of learning, a guide to spiritual life. I think the key to all of these questions, literal or not, women speaking or sitting silently, is Prayer.

Read the verses, do the research, compare translations, talk to other believers. Or brothers. And pray and let God tell you what you should believe.

God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? Romans 14:3-4 [English Standard Version]

We are the Church

This guy moves to the big city. He finds a nice church, and he goes the first week, and he wears the same clothes he wears to church back home. Nice pressed jeans, a good looking shirt, his best boots and a nice jacket. Bible in his hand, he goes in, sits down in a pew, and no one comes near him. They sit in other pews, no one shakes his hand.

He enjoys the service, and when it’s over, the preacher comes up to him, and says, ‘I see you’re new here.’ And the guy says, “Yes, sir, I am.” And the preacher says, “We’re glad to see you here, but I think before you come back, you need to ask the Lord what’s appropriate to wear to a church like this.”

The guy says, “Thank you, preacher, I will.”
Next week, same thing, he comes in his best clothes, looking about the same, and no one talks to him. Service is over, and the preacher says “Glad to see you’re back, but I thought you were going to talk to the Lord about how to dress.”

The guy says, “I did. I said ‘Lord, what’s the dress code for that church?’ And the Lord said, ‘I don’t know, I’ve never been there.’”

There’s a saying that if you go to Church, so everyone can see your new hat, that’s exactly what you will get. You will go to church, and everyone will admire your new hat, and a few people will probably wait until you leave and say that’s the stupidest looking hat they’ve ever seen in their life, and you will sit in the pew, and the music won’t touch you and the prayer won’t touch you and the sermon won’t be able to get past all the feathers and flowers wrapped around your head. But everyone will see your new hat.

There are some places where I go to church for the music, and I love the music. I sing all week. And there are some places I go to church for the fellowship. I have good friends there and I feel the love. I even go to a Krsna temple once in a while to dance and sing and I feel such joy there. There are only a few places I go to hear the message.

And none of these things are wrong. Well, the hat thing probably is.

I stumbled upon these verse recently. I don’t do a lot of work in the Old Testament, but I found this and I really liked it.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Now I am not an Orthodox Jew, I do not wear a phylactery on my forehead or have a mezuzah on my door. I had to look those words up.

But figuratively, I want to have His name on my forehead, on my hands and on my door. I want people to recognize my visage, my face as Christian, I want my hands to do Christian work and I want my house to be a Christian house.

You know, most of the churches I attend are not churches at all. One is a dining room, another a rec room. But because we meet there, because we gather in fellowship there, because we pray together there, those places become holy, they become sanctified, and people who walk through those rooms receive blessing whether they know it or not.

You can make the place where you are, the area around your desk, your home, the same way.

When Jesus talks about the church, He means what I call the church with a small c. There were no buildings yet, no organization, just people who believed, who wanted to believe, who were ready to believe.

We are the church, no matter where we are, or what we’re wearing. We are the church and we become what people think of when they think of Christians. Both our fellow Christians and those we are trying to reach.

For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them. Matthew 18:20

In Conversation

In recent years, I have spent a lot of time in the Bible. I carry it to Church with me. I make notes. My copy of the God’s Word translation is a paperback, and I’ve got it highlighted in different colors and tabs marking passages all along the edges. So much that it’s hard to flip the pages. I go to Bible Study class, I listen to people talk about the Bible on the radio.


When I am looking for verses for these blogs, sometimes I just sit and read, and it very quickly becomes too much. I have to put it down. Too much to absorb, too much to think about. And passages that I just don’t understand.


The Bible is a big confusing, conflicting, complicated book. You would have to be a Bible Scholar for decades to resolve it. And there are people who are willing to do that and that’s very good for the rest of us. There is so much that can be misinterpreted, and you have to worry about which translation to use, and you have to remember to read the whole passage to get the proper context, and you have to remember where Jesus was in his ministry when He said each little thing. Was He just reforming the Church, was he saving the Gentiles too at this point, is the sacrifice in the plan, did the Pentecost change what He’s saying.


There comes a time when you have to put the Book down and bring yourself, your problems, your questions, to God. You bow your head, lift up your arms and say Fill me, Lord. Talk to me, Lord. Tell me what you want me to do.


There is nothing you can bring to the Lord, nothing you can surprise Him with, nothing you can ask Him for that He doesn’t already know you want. He knows what you need, He knows what you want and He knows what is best for you.


So you say, why should I pray. What can I say? I know sometimes my prayers become nothing but “whatever”. Not a sarcastic whatever. But a kind of devolved, there is this thing that I need, or that I think I need and that I want, and all of this You know, Lord, and You know what is best for me. You know where You want me to be. And I have put myself in Your hands so…whatever.


God knows everything that is in your mind. He also knows everything on the mind of the atheist.


What God wants is to have a conversation with you. Just a conversation.


It’s not magic. You can’t go to the Lord thinking, Now, if I say enough words of praise, and if I say enough words of thanksgiving, and if I word my request just right, then I will get what I want.


It’s easier to petition the Lord if you’re already in conversation with Him. Ideally, you are in conversation with the Lord all day, everyday.


I do little things throughout the day that help keep me mindful of the Lord. Sing the chorus of a song now and then. When I put a bridle on a horse, I always say Thank you, Lord. Maybe if you work with cow ponies, putting a bridle on is not that big a deal, but when you’re working with young race horses, sometimes it’s a ten minute fight, and sometimes after that fight, I think What am I thanking Him for, but it just kind of centers me back to that mindset.


It’s really easy to get busy and forget to send your thoughts to Him and just think I’ll do it at the end of the day. But I find that when I do that, when I go for the day without turning to Him, and then one day I realize oh my, it’s been four days since I had a conversation with the Lord.


Or even more, when I‘m getting involved with a church and there‘s been a lot of concentration on formal prayer and I‘ve neglected my daily conversation, and then when I get to it, when I sit down and open myself up to the Lord, and just say Hey, Here I am, He always tells me that He’s missed me.


The Lord talks to me. I know some people think I’m just nuts. That I’m talking to myself and saying it’s the Lord. But I know that the Lord talks to me, and I know that the reason He talks to me is simply that I am open to listening.


I was at Bible Study at Remington Park and before the Bible Study starts, they have a dinner. We didn’t have a music minister at the time, and the guy who had been filling in wasn’t there, so Chaplain Carl put on a DVD of music.


One of the songs was I Can Only Imagine by Mercy Me. And I was thinking about how cool it would be that if when we got to Heaven, we each get some alone time with the Lord. And I was getting kind of emotional, thinking about walking with Jesus and seeing the actual color of His eyes, and He said, “But Beth, I’m right here with you now.”

And remember that I am always with you until the end of time. Matthew 28:20 [God's Word]