"Sir, we want to see Jesus John 12:20"
The Bible is full of incidences where "certain men" show up at opportune time. A "certain man" drew a bow at a venture and killed Ahab. A "certain man" told Joseph’s brother which road Joseph had taken. A "certain man" put the poisonous gourd into the pot of stew. Sometimes the names of the "certain men" are probably known to the Bible authors, sometimes not. Sometimes the "certain man" seems to be helping God’s will, sometimes he seems to be helping Satan. Sometimes we even see a "certain woman." But always, whether man or woman, God’s messenger or Satan’s, the certain person comes at a most important time in the life of the Bible character, and thus an important time in the life of Israel and/or Christ’s church.
On Palm Sunday, certain men from Greece told the disciples, "We want to see Jesus." What timing!
Jesus had recently brought Lazarus from the dead and Jesus had entered into Jerusalem where the people were in expectation and intended to make Jesus their king. Remember Satan’s temptation in the wilderness: "I’ll make you king of all the world"? Here was another temptation. Would Jesus allow the people to make him king?
Some have said the men from Greece probably wanted answer to the deepest questions of meaning, philosophical questions that they sure Jesus could answer. Others have said these men probably wanted to take Jesus to their cities where Jesus would be honored and free from the danger of death. Some don’t consider the men from Greece at all, because it seems –at first glance– that Jesus didn’t consider these men either.
But what does Jesus do when he hears that the men from Greece want to see him? He says, "My hour has come. Time for a grain of wheat to fall to the ground and die so that there will be a great harvest."
Like the call Paul received in a dream, "Come to Macedonia and help us" so Jesus is reminded by "certain men" that the rest of the world need to see Him. These men from Greece came at the exact time Jesus needed them to come. Jesus was Perfect God and Perfect Man, but Temptation is a tough thing. Whether or not Jesus actually needed to be reminded of his primary reason for living – to bring many sons to God– God sent him a reminder anyway. The Bible tells us that "because of the glory He saw ahead of Him" Jesus endured the shame of the cross. If Jesus was in danger of forgetting what his purpose was, here was the moment. The crowds were calling to him, they even seemed ready to believe in his gospel. But when the men from Greece arrived, Jesus remembered: He didn’t come on earth only to make Israel believe the gospel. He didn’t come to live one perfect human life and then die and be forgotten. He came to die, that he might live forever and might cause others –including those not in the fold of Israel– to also live forever. He had come for the salvation of the certain men from Greece.
All of us are born with a life’s purpose. As is evident from the amount of people in prisons, and the wrong jobs, many people simply miss their purposes. All our purposes have one simple goal: to bring many people to Christ, to bring many children to God.
Whether we are called to be artists, firemen, teachers, pastors, nurses, lawyers – whatever we do, we are doing for God’s glory and to help people see Jesus. A Christian artist must remember that those outside the family of God must be given an opportunity "to see Jesus." A Christian teacher must remember that she is teaching young minds to think so that they will not be deceived by the world’s views. A math teacher can show the beauty and order of nature, a health teacher can teach the beauty and order of the human body. A Christian nurse shows God’s love but also keeps the unsaved alive, giving them more time for them to live and "see Jesus."
Many times people lose sight of their original purpose in a particular job? When was the last time you realized that the world needed to see Jesus?
Prayer: Lord, help me to understand how my work helps me to show Jesus to others.
Carole McDonnell’s fiction, devotionals, poetry and essays have appeared in many publishing venues, in print and online. She is the author of a How to Write and Teach Bible Studies which is available for free download from ebooks-and-authors (dot) com She lives with her husband, their two sons, and their ferocious tabby Ralphina in upstate New York
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Monday, October 16, 2006
Christian Bravery
I had an interesting little temptation this morning. I was writing a general email to folks -- from my other screenname- in which I talked about being a born-againer being in a book of transgendered persons. I realized that one of the people was a liberal who disliked born-againers. I was about to remove her name from the general address SEND TO and send her a solitary email in which I removed all mention of being a born-againer. But the Lord reminded me of what destroys the seed...the cares of the world and when persecution comes people are disloyal to Jesus and deny him. It took bravery but I sent the general email.
This morning I was listening to a Christian program which showed a tape of what had happened on the View where poor Elizabeth -- the bornagainer-- was being slammed by Rosie O'Donnell. Rosie was saying fundamental Christianity was just as bad as fundamental Islam. And I was just stressing out. I was shouting to the hubby: "Turn the channel! Turn the channel! You know I HATE being hated."
But God reminds us that if the world hated him, it would hate us.
I can only pray that God will strengthen me that I no longer fear the hatred of the world. That's the only way to conquer in Christ...be loyal to him.
This morning I was listening to a Christian program which showed a tape of what had happened on the View where poor Elizabeth -- the bornagainer-- was being slammed by Rosie O'Donnell. Rosie was saying fundamental Christianity was just as bad as fundamental Islam. And I was just stressing out. I was shouting to the hubby: "Turn the channel! Turn the channel! You know I HATE being hated."
But God reminds us that if the world hated him, it would hate us.
I can only pray that God will strengthen me that I no longer fear the hatred of the world. That's the only way to conquer in Christ...be loyal to him.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Possible Christian sub-genres
Okay, I was pondering all the various kinds of fiction genres and sub-genres out there in the secular world. Am thinking it's a shame that we Christian writers don't have more types of writing. Basically it's romance, scifi, fantasy, historical, and I know of someone who writes Christian Asian chick-lit. . Found myself creating some Christian sub-genres.
Christian ecofiction
Christian business fiction
Christian cyber-punk
Christian urban fiction
Christian erotic fiction
Christian ethnic fiction
Christian feminist fiction
Christian outcast-fiction.
Christian lad-lit
Christian missionary-fiction (I think my novel Windfollower might fall into this category.)
Ah we could go on. I think I just want the Christian publishing world to really challenge the secular world.
-C
Christian ecofiction
Christian business fiction
Christian cyber-punk
Christian urban fiction
Christian erotic fiction
Christian ethnic fiction
Christian feminist fiction
Christian outcast-fiction.
Christian lad-lit
Christian missionary-fiction (I think my novel Windfollower might fall into this category.)
Ah we could go on. I think I just want the Christian publishing world to really challenge the secular world.
-C
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Well,
I spent Saturday at the annual NY state right to life convention. Things really are way worse than I would ever have guessed. Way worse. And downright scary.
In addition to the usual stuff -- post abortion healing, resources for children who were created by rape and incest, the big thing being discussed was involutary euthanasi and brain death. What I came away with was the terrible knowledge that greed, scientific racism, and medical arrogance are totally out of hand and dwindling away at our rights. I also got my cynicism about the media renewed.
I always knew the media was pretty jaded. After all, Margaret Sanger and her Negro Project and anti-semitism and anti-hispanic mentality are all well-known but one never sees the media mentioning it. One of her most famous lines, (other than the one in which she told in her letters how much the KKK loved her for her eugenics plans) was the one where she stated, "We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population...and we don't want this idea to get out to its more rebellious members." Or her comments in her book Women and the New Race where she talks about the need to sterilize the genetically inferior races" and even called for coercive sterilization, mandatory segregation and rehabilitative concentration camps for inferior Blacks, Hispanics, poor Whites, and Catholics. A couple years ago when Martin Luther King's daughter spoke at the convention, against Sanger's Planned Parenthood, she gave such statistics that I just thought..."oh my God!!! At this rate of abortion (and incarceration, and black-on-black crime) no wonder the black percentage of the population is dwindled to zip.
BUT the way the media totally ignores the fact that planned parenthood is a genocidal tool against blacks just annoys the heck out of me. They keep statistics hidden. And it really makes one wonder about how racist our society really is.
But what really got to me was the lack of rights and the manipulation of semantics when it comes to the notion of life. One guy http://www.wesleyjsmith.com/ talked about futile-care law. That's a law that says that even if the sick person and her relatives have declared that she wants to live no matter what, that the hospital bio-ethics committee has the right to overturn the family's request. This law is in several states, and was first signed by George Bush (a pro-lifer?) in Texas. Do I even have to say that this law has been used more on minorities, the poor, the disabled?
Then there is a law that is due to come into action in NY. This law concerns the organ donor check box on one's driving license. At present the law pretty much states that your family has the last word as to whether your plug can be pulled or you can be declared brain dead. In November, that right is taken out of your family's hand. If you end up in a hospital and the doctors think you should be declared brain dead or that your quality of life will be futile, they can take your organs without asking you.'
And this is where the creepy science fiction stuff comes in. Oh sure, we know that the medical world has always kinda aligned itself with arrogance, racism and cruelty. After all, there was the Tuskegee Airmen experiments where they didn't treat black men for syphillis just to see what happened with folks dying from the disease in the last stages. And there was Hitler's experiments. But now!!! We keep thinking we're enlightened.
I spent Saturday at the annual NY state right to life convention. Things really are way worse than I would ever have guessed. Way worse. And downright scary.
In addition to the usual stuff -- post abortion healing, resources for children who were created by rape and incest, the big thing being discussed was involutary euthanasi and brain death. What I came away with was the terrible knowledge that greed, scientific racism, and medical arrogance are totally out of hand and dwindling away at our rights. I also got my cynicism about the media renewed.
I always knew the media was pretty jaded. After all, Margaret Sanger and her Negro Project and anti-semitism and anti-hispanic mentality are all well-known but one never sees the media mentioning it. One of her most famous lines, (other than the one in which she told in her letters how much the KKK loved her for her eugenics plans) was the one where she stated, "We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population...and we don't want this idea to get out to its more rebellious members." Or her comments in her book Women and the New Race where she talks about the need to sterilize the genetically inferior races" and even called for coercive sterilization, mandatory segregation and rehabilitative concentration camps for inferior Blacks, Hispanics, poor Whites, and Catholics. A couple years ago when Martin Luther King's daughter spoke at the convention, against Sanger's Planned Parenthood, she gave such statistics that I just thought..."oh my God!!! At this rate of abortion (and incarceration, and black-on-black crime) no wonder the black percentage of the population is dwindled to zip.
BUT the way the media totally ignores the fact that planned parenthood is a genocidal tool against blacks just annoys the heck out of me. They keep statistics hidden. And it really makes one wonder about how racist our society really is.
But what really got to me was the lack of rights and the manipulation of semantics when it comes to the notion of life. One guy http://www.wesleyjsmith.com/ talked about futile-care law. That's a law that says that even if the sick person and her relatives have declared that she wants to live no matter what, that the hospital bio-ethics committee has the right to overturn the family's request. This law is in several states, and was first signed by George Bush (a pro-lifer?) in Texas. Do I even have to say that this law has been used more on minorities, the poor, the disabled?
Then there is a law that is due to come into action in NY. This law concerns the organ donor check box on one's driving license. At present the law pretty much states that your family has the last word as to whether your plug can be pulled or you can be declared brain dead. In November, that right is taken out of your family's hand. If you end up in a hospital and the doctors think you should be declared brain dead or that your quality of life will be futile, they can take your organs without asking you.'
And this is where the creepy science fiction stuff comes in. Oh sure, we know that the medical world has always kinda aligned itself with arrogance, racism and cruelty. After all, there was the Tuskegee Airmen experiments where they didn't treat black men for syphillis just to see what happened with folks dying from the disease in the last stages. And there was Hitler's experiments. But now!!! We keep thinking we're enlightened.
Since certain organs can only be harvested by a living person, we need to have ways to have the person be still living yet still conveniently be called dead. There are 30 criterias for deciding if a person is brain-dead. (or heart-beating donors or neo-morts.) But the games tht are played. For instance, there is something called the non-heart-beating donor. That's a brain-dead person who has been taken off the monitor and whose heart is not "beating" And if the heart doesn't start beating on its own in the amount of time the hospital (and hospitals make about $1 million on each transplant) then the hospital can start taking the organs. But of course the definition of a beating heart, the amount of time it takes a heart to actually start beating after its been hibernating and healing, and the Apnea Test which is supposed to test if someone is brain dead actually damages the heart even more...are all administered by the hospital. Not to mention that the UDDA (Uniform Determination of Death Act) allows that a body can still be healing, still be breathing, still feel pain while the organ is being removed (that's why they give pain killers and paralyzing medicines to brain dead people when they operate on them so the brain-dead person doesn't flinch or wince or jerk from pain.)
And what really got me was the bio-ethical definition of "person." A human nonperson can be a comatose person, a disabled person who doesn't understand what it is to will to be alive therefore has no power to will to be alive, an unborn life, a normal young baby who cannot understand the nature of life. They passed out the latest journal fro, the Kennedy Institute of Healthcare Ethics -- the biggest most important bio-ethical institute in America-- and to say that my mouth opened when I saw words that could easily have been used by Hitler or slave-owners, and the greed and the desire to treat humans as a natural resource. We also had a disabilities advocate. The disabilities advocate were for Terri Schiavo but of course the media made it look like only nutty right-to-lifers were. And looking at the statistics of disabled, minority, severely disabled children, disabled or mentally-impaired old people, and the poor that have been subjected to the greed of medical science...well, it just made me want to weep.
I began to suspect at this rate in the next twenty years we will have a country where senile parents, disabled children, and poor blacks will become rarer and rarer. And when i thought of that, I said to myself..."I'm gonna work on my Daughters of Men book!" That's the book that had eugenics, racism, and a world with no weak people in it. I got my passion about that book back.
Anyway, the first thing I did when i got home was tell my son he's gotta get his name off that organ donor registry. Young Poor Black young men have good organs and fit into the genocidal plans really well. The statistics are staggering. -C
If you wish look around at the following sites you can get a better view than my ravings.
http://www.wesleyjsmith.com/blog/
http://www.all.org/
http://www.stemcellresearch.org/
http://www.cloninginformation.org/
http://www.frc.org/
http://www.biotechpolicy.org/
www.usccb.org/prolife
http://www.fotf.org/ (See Citizenlink)
bioethics.gov
http://www.nysrighttolife.org/
www.nrlc.org/federal/CCPA/DemsBlockProgress.html
newyork.democratsforlife.org
http://www.thechristophers.org/
http://www.hh76.com/
http://www.prolifeli.org/
http://www.nycf.info/
Carole McDonnell Wind Follower June 2007 Juno Bookswww.geocities.com/scifiwritir/Publications.htmlcarole.mcdonnell (at) gmail (dot)com
Monday, September 04, 2006
Long journey to publication
I've got to say, that God has been very good to me and people --friends, strangers, etc-- have always been kind to me. A sweet grace and favor, that. So I was always getting helpful letters from editors and agents.
I started with a YA novel called The Herring Run which almost was picked up by Walker Books except that they said it was too episodic. The editorial assistant actually sent me a copy of the notes the editorial board had taken in deciding on the book. It was sooooo close. That was about ten years ago and I didn't really know much about writing.
That novel because Black Girls have always loved cowboys. Long story. But I tried to turn Herring Run into an adult novel. A collection of stories. I sent it to an agent I met at a conference. She said it was very melodramatic and boring and that I should really understand cause and effect and feel the emotions of the characters.
I began working on Treasures of Darkness. I sent it to an agent I met at a conference. He loved the beginning but said it went nowhere and that he wouldn't make enough money to feed his cat. Met a former editor at an art show and he said the story was drawn out. About 100 pages for the first night kinda thing.
I wrote Daughters of Men for Paul Witcover when he was editing for Harpercollins. HE liked it a lot and was really pondering buying it but then he left harper. He emailed me to say I should join some online writing and critting groups such as oww-sff and to show him DOM whenever I finished it.
I sent DOM to Rachel Vater at Don Maass but she said I was being redundant. I had to learn to show tension. I had to stop repeating myself. And my characters were always sitting down. She said to try to improve it.
I had to write a short story for an antho Brandon Massey was doing on black horror. Brian Jacobs was also doing an antho called Genre Noir. I figured I'd write a story called Father Gorgeous about a gorgeous semi-atheist priest who doesn't believe in the supernatural but who meets a demon. It missed out on the anthology because -- my usual problem-- my short stories never know when to quit. IT had two "beats" so I decided to make it a novel. I began fiddling around with it. It's about 66 pages but Lord knows what'll happen to it.
In the meantime I started writing Windfollower. It started out as a short story which I was writing for a contest. I like ballads so it was based on the Elizabethan ballad, "the trees they grow tall." But the contest came and went and I realized it was trying to be a novel. The flow of the story came so quickly that I said to myself, "this'll be my quick little shallow piece. I'll just toss it off. It'll be meaningless and just romance. Not as complicated or full of worldbuilding as DOM." Little did I know!!!! It became a story about a shamanistic culture meeting a monotheistic imperialistic racist country....with the Lost Book. Battles with demons and gods.
I sent it to Rachel. She said she had to turn it down because I still had that redundancy problem. I'm ebuddies with Cindy Ward who is the market maven for Speculations. NOTE: It is a weird thing in life that one cannot give without receiving, and all the folks who give tend to receive wonderful stuff...especially if they weren't expecting anything. There was an antho that Juno was doing -- best spec romance-- so I sent it to Cindy. She said thanks then emailed me to say that Paula Guran at Juno Books was really really really looking for good stories. She said I should send the story to Paula. So I sent DOM -- I sent mega synopsis and plot points and character studies and glossaries of DOM and just the synop and first 40 pages of windfollower. I told her however that I had been published in about 7 anthologies -- four or five fiction-- and I told her that with me "one word to the wise is sufficient." If she told me something, she could trust me to understand what she said...if she gave me a day or two to figure out what she meant. She figured she'd trust that I could write.
Because I had sent so much of DOM, she assumed DOM was the better written piece. I told her that DOM was written about five years ago and I really hadn't touched it in about two years. I said that actually Windfollower would be more finished of the two. But I sent her the first 200 pages of a 545 page octopus (Times New Roman no less) and Windfollower. I told her Windfollower was waaaay religious and she said the Juno guidelines said "No Christian fantasy...but Windfollower didn't seem religious like that...more spiritual."
She looked at both books and said she'd definitely go with Windfollower and she wants to do DOM except that DOM needs "a lot of work."
So that's about it. I tend to think it's just one of those grace of God things. Because she's been pretty cool about me fixing and repairing. I think it was because Wind follower is so odd and Cindy had said a good word for me and God had just given me grace and Paula was so desperate. All combined together.
As for what I want to do now, a part of me wants to work with DOM cause it's already finished and it's such a flaky world. But another part of me feels like I like Father Gorgeous and it's centered in this world. Like Windfollower, it's about the "real world" By this I mean, it has demons, humans, spiritual choices and both stories are things that have happened to missionaries or to people who have encountered the demonic. Unlike Dom which is truly creative....and deals with really far off fictive stuff that hasn't really happened.
Carole McDonnell Wind Follower June 2007 Juno Bookswww.geocities.com/scifiwritir/Publications.htmlcarole.mcdonnell (at) gmail (dot)com
I started with a YA novel called The Herring Run which almost was picked up by Walker Books except that they said it was too episodic. The editorial assistant actually sent me a copy of the notes the editorial board had taken in deciding on the book. It was sooooo close. That was about ten years ago and I didn't really know much about writing.
That novel because Black Girls have always loved cowboys. Long story. But I tried to turn Herring Run into an adult novel. A collection of stories. I sent it to an agent I met at a conference. She said it was very melodramatic and boring and that I should really understand cause and effect and feel the emotions of the characters.
I began working on Treasures of Darkness. I sent it to an agent I met at a conference. He loved the beginning but said it went nowhere and that he wouldn't make enough money to feed his cat. Met a former editor at an art show and he said the story was drawn out. About 100 pages for the first night kinda thing.
I wrote Daughters of Men for Paul Witcover when he was editing for Harpercollins. HE liked it a lot and was really pondering buying it but then he left harper. He emailed me to say I should join some online writing and critting groups such as oww-sff and to show him DOM whenever I finished it.
I sent DOM to Rachel Vater at Don Maass but she said I was being redundant. I had to learn to show tension. I had to stop repeating myself. And my characters were always sitting down. She said to try to improve it.
I had to write a short story for an antho Brandon Massey was doing on black horror. Brian Jacobs was also doing an antho called Genre Noir. I figured I'd write a story called Father Gorgeous about a gorgeous semi-atheist priest who doesn't believe in the supernatural but who meets a demon. It missed out on the anthology because -- my usual problem-- my short stories never know when to quit. IT had two "beats" so I decided to make it a novel. I began fiddling around with it. It's about 66 pages but Lord knows what'll happen to it.
In the meantime I started writing Windfollower. It started out as a short story which I was writing for a contest. I like ballads so it was based on the Elizabethan ballad, "the trees they grow tall." But the contest came and went and I realized it was trying to be a novel. The flow of the story came so quickly that I said to myself, "this'll be my quick little shallow piece. I'll just toss it off. It'll be meaningless and just romance. Not as complicated or full of worldbuilding as DOM." Little did I know!!!! It became a story about a shamanistic culture meeting a monotheistic imperialistic racist country....with the Lost Book. Battles with demons and gods.
I sent it to Rachel. She said she had to turn it down because I still had that redundancy problem. I'm ebuddies with Cindy Ward who is the market maven for Speculations. NOTE: It is a weird thing in life that one cannot give without receiving, and all the folks who give tend to receive wonderful stuff...especially if they weren't expecting anything. There was an antho that Juno was doing -- best spec romance-- so I sent it to Cindy. She said thanks then emailed me to say that Paula Guran at Juno Books was really really really looking for good stories. She said I should send the story to Paula. So I sent DOM -- I sent mega synopsis and plot points and character studies and glossaries of DOM and just the synop and first 40 pages of windfollower. I told her however that I had been published in about 7 anthologies -- four or five fiction-- and I told her that with me "one word to the wise is sufficient." If she told me something, she could trust me to understand what she said...if she gave me a day or two to figure out what she meant. She figured she'd trust that I could write.
Because I had sent so much of DOM, she assumed DOM was the better written piece. I told her that DOM was written about five years ago and I really hadn't touched it in about two years. I said that actually Windfollower would be more finished of the two. But I sent her the first 200 pages of a 545 page octopus (Times New Roman no less) and Windfollower. I told her Windfollower was waaaay religious and she said the Juno guidelines said "No Christian fantasy...but Windfollower didn't seem religious like that...more spiritual."
She looked at both books and said she'd definitely go with Windfollower and she wants to do DOM except that DOM needs "a lot of work."
So that's about it. I tend to think it's just one of those grace of God things. Because she's been pretty cool about me fixing and repairing. I think it was because Wind follower is so odd and Cindy had said a good word for me and God had just given me grace and Paula was so desperate. All combined together.
As for what I want to do now, a part of me wants to work with DOM cause it's already finished and it's such a flaky world. But another part of me feels like I like Father Gorgeous and it's centered in this world. Like Windfollower, it's about the "real world" By this I mean, it has demons, humans, spiritual choices and both stories are things that have happened to missionaries or to people who have encountered the demonic. Unlike Dom which is truly creative....and deals with really far off fictive stuff that hasn't really happened.
Carole McDonnell Wind Follower June 2007 Juno Bookswww.geocities.com/scifiwritir/Publications.htmlcarole.mcdonnell (at) gmail (dot)com
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Discovery, not attainment
Jesus told His disciples: "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, then you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."
Fallen human nature cannot help but strive. And Christians, who should know so much more and so much better because our Lord told us not to strive in this way, seem always to be striving.
We are to "die daily." 1 Cor 15:31
We are to "stand still and see the glory of the Lord."
In our weakness, God’s strength and power is made perfect because His grace is sufficient to do wonders and is made perfect in our weakness.
Jeremiah tells us in 10:23 "O Lord, it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps."
Paul tells us, "When we are strong, then we are weak."
When we strive, and attempt to do things in our own will and strength, the power of God cannot flow.
Psalm 127 states, "Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman wakes but in vain."
Jesus tells us often in the Scriptures to "repent and believe." He wants us to repent from the lesser sins, yes, but the GREAT sin he wants us to repent of – the Sin the Holy Spirit will convict the world of– is the Sin of unbelief. This is the father of all sins: we do not believe a word God says to us. It is the same sin Adam and Eve encountered when Satan said to them, "Has God said?" Deep in our hearts we are at enmity with God and we don’t trust Him or believe His promises and His good will toward us.
The gospel is God’s good news to humanity, and the gospel is primarily about what God has done for us. The Bible is full of God’s precious promises, and these promises are about God’s perfect will for us. We are to strive in faith, not by doing our own strength, and not in our will. We are to strive to rest and stand in the truth we have discovered in His words.
The Bible is full of God’s promises waiting to be discovered. The theme of discovering the truth is everywhere in the Bible:
Thy words were found and I ate them.
O taste and see that the Lord is good
"Precious Promises."
"A treasure found in a field."
But because fallen human nature cannot help but strive, we forget that it is the discovery of truth that sets us free. We can work and work to our heart’s content, but if we do not discover a truth, and rest in that truth, the truth cannot work in us.
St Paul tells us, "Not I, but Christ."
God tells us that "without me, you can do nothing."
He tells us to "take no thought for our life."
He tell us to "trust in the Lord with all our hearts and to lean not unto our own understanding.
God tells us "Come unto me all who are heavy-laden and I will give you rest...ye shall find rest for your souls."
He tells us to "Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him."
He tells us that "God watches over His word to perform it."
The promises of God, therefore are discovered and believed in. All the blessings of God – health, prosperity, spiritual growth– are to be discovered and accepted. They are not to be accepted by faith, and attained through reliance on God’s spirit working within us.
God has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness.
God has blessed us
God has given us favor
God has set us free.
We shall not want.
God supplies all our needs.
God gives seed to the sower.
If we "know the truth" the truth sets us free. Consider electricity and gravity. These truths existed since the beginning of time but could not be applied to our lives until they were discovered. One of the great truths of the Bible is that "All things are yours." These things – healing, prosperity, blessings– are ours already. Just as Jesus has already saved all men, but in order for people to accept that salvation, they must hear about it and accept it.
We are told to
"bring every thought captive to the knowledge of Christ." 2 Corinthians
"not be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds."
"fight the good fight of faith."
that "the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but are spiritual and pull down mental strongholds."
We know that we must work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. But, at the same time, we don’t understand that this work consists in "only believing." We work by reading the Bible and discovering a promise or truth and setting our hearts to believe in it and to storm heaven with our trust. The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. The violent are those who with a trusting heart decide they will rest in the promise and in no other truth. The striving work we must do is to be careful what we hear. We must trust God’s spirit within us and within His work to make us holy. And we must meditate on and live in God’s word in order that we will not be pulled into the worldly way of thinking. God’s ways are not our ways. And the more we listen to the world, the more unconvinced we become about God’s ways. When this happens, we allow ourselves to become enslaved to sin, sickness and death. We stop believing that the blood of Jesus, the word of God, and the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed us from sin, sickness, poverty, and death.
So then, let us strive to enter into God’s rest. In the day when we hear God’s voice, we are not to harden our hearts as the Israelites did when they saw God’s works and disbelieved. We are not to harden our hearts as Pharoah hardened his. We are not to harden our hearts as the disciples did when Jesus performed the miracles of the loaves. (Mark 6) We are to trust God, open our hearts to his power and love, and rest in His truth. We are to enter into God’s rest and to cease from our own works.
God tells us, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my strength."
The Word tells us, "The flesh profits nothing."
He tells us that all the wonders of salvation are the gift of God lest anyone should boast.
This means that just as we accept salvation of our souls by faith, so we accept the salvation of our bodies, emotions, and all aspects of our lives by the same faith. When we first accept Christ, we trust that He will sanctify us wholly. Indeed, the Bible states that Jesus was wounded for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him and by His stripes we WERE healed. God calls those things that are not, as though they were. And even when our godparents accept salvation for us as children, they are believing by faith that we are already saved adults.
Jeremiah 9:24: Thus saith the Lord, "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth, glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exerciseth lovingkindness, judgement, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight."
All this is summed up in these words from our Lord: "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, then you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."
If you abide in me
Blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord...and in God’s law he meditates day and night.
This one thing I do forgetting what’s behind I press toward the high calling of Jesus Christ.
I am the true vine...abide in me
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength
We love him because he first loved us
and my words abide in you
Take heed how you hear
For they considered not...
He who has little, the little he has shall be taken away
The Seed is the word of God...the sower comes to take the seed
then you shall know the truth
My people perish for lack of knowledge
Where there is no vision the people perish
the word did not profit them because of their unbelief
Your father knows what you need before you ask him.
My word is truth
I am truth
and the truth shall set you free.
If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.
The promises of God are yea, and Amen.
The Word of God is alive and active and sharper than a two-edged sword
The words of God are health to all your flesh
Whom the son sets free is free indeed.
That we might serve Him without fear all the days of our lives.
Jesus, who has freed us from the law of sin and death
Perfect love casts out fear
If he gave us his son freely, how will not freely give us all things?
Godliness profits in this life as well as the next
Moral: Read your Bible and be blessed by meditating on the Scriptures and the Promises of God.
Lord, let me trust in your love, care and power in my life and rest in them. Amen.
Carole McDonnell’s fiction, devotionals, poetry and essays have appeared in many publishing venues, in print and online. She lives with her husband, their two sons, and their ferocious tabby Ralphina in upstate New York. Her novel, Wind Follower, will be published in June 2007 by Juno books.
Fallen human nature cannot help but strive. And Christians, who should know so much more and so much better because our Lord told us not to strive in this way, seem always to be striving.
We are to "die daily." 1 Cor 15:31
We are to "stand still and see the glory of the Lord."
In our weakness, God’s strength and power is made perfect because His grace is sufficient to do wonders and is made perfect in our weakness.
Jeremiah tells us in 10:23 "O Lord, it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps."
Paul tells us, "When we are strong, then we are weak."
When we strive, and attempt to do things in our own will and strength, the power of God cannot flow.
Psalm 127 states, "Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman wakes but in vain."
Jesus tells us often in the Scriptures to "repent and believe." He wants us to repent from the lesser sins, yes, but the GREAT sin he wants us to repent of – the Sin the Holy Spirit will convict the world of– is the Sin of unbelief. This is the father of all sins: we do not believe a word God says to us. It is the same sin Adam and Eve encountered when Satan said to them, "Has God said?" Deep in our hearts we are at enmity with God and we don’t trust Him or believe His promises and His good will toward us.
The gospel is God’s good news to humanity, and the gospel is primarily about what God has done for us. The Bible is full of God’s precious promises, and these promises are about God’s perfect will for us. We are to strive in faith, not by doing our own strength, and not in our will. We are to strive to rest and stand in the truth we have discovered in His words.
The Bible is full of God’s promises waiting to be discovered. The theme of discovering the truth is everywhere in the Bible:
Thy words were found and I ate them.
O taste and see that the Lord is good
"Precious Promises."
"A treasure found in a field."
But because fallen human nature cannot help but strive, we forget that it is the discovery of truth that sets us free. We can work and work to our heart’s content, but if we do not discover a truth, and rest in that truth, the truth cannot work in us.
St Paul tells us, "Not I, but Christ."
God tells us that "without me, you can do nothing."
He tells us to "take no thought for our life."
He tell us to "trust in the Lord with all our hearts and to lean not unto our own understanding.
God tells us "Come unto me all who are heavy-laden and I will give you rest...ye shall find rest for your souls."
He tells us to "Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him."
He tells us that "God watches over His word to perform it."
The promises of God, therefore are discovered and believed in. All the blessings of God – health, prosperity, spiritual growth– are to be discovered and accepted. They are not to be accepted by faith, and attained through reliance on God’s spirit working within us.
God has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness.
God has blessed us
God has given us favor
God has set us free.
We shall not want.
God supplies all our needs.
God gives seed to the sower.
If we "know the truth" the truth sets us free. Consider electricity and gravity. These truths existed since the beginning of time but could not be applied to our lives until they were discovered. One of the great truths of the Bible is that "All things are yours." These things – healing, prosperity, blessings– are ours already. Just as Jesus has already saved all men, but in order for people to accept that salvation, they must hear about it and accept it.
We are told to
"bring every thought captive to the knowledge of Christ." 2 Corinthians
"not be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds."
"fight the good fight of faith."
that "the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but are spiritual and pull down mental strongholds."
We know that we must work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. But, at the same time, we don’t understand that this work consists in "only believing." We work by reading the Bible and discovering a promise or truth and setting our hearts to believe in it and to storm heaven with our trust. The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. The violent are those who with a trusting heart decide they will rest in the promise and in no other truth. The striving work we must do is to be careful what we hear. We must trust God’s spirit within us and within His work to make us holy. And we must meditate on and live in God’s word in order that we will not be pulled into the worldly way of thinking. God’s ways are not our ways. And the more we listen to the world, the more unconvinced we become about God’s ways. When this happens, we allow ourselves to become enslaved to sin, sickness and death. We stop believing that the blood of Jesus, the word of God, and the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed us from sin, sickness, poverty, and death.
So then, let us strive to enter into God’s rest. In the day when we hear God’s voice, we are not to harden our hearts as the Israelites did when they saw God’s works and disbelieved. We are not to harden our hearts as Pharoah hardened his. We are not to harden our hearts as the disciples did when Jesus performed the miracles of the loaves. (Mark 6) We are to trust God, open our hearts to his power and love, and rest in His truth. We are to enter into God’s rest and to cease from our own works.
God tells us, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my strength."
The Word tells us, "The flesh profits nothing."
He tells us that all the wonders of salvation are the gift of God lest anyone should boast.
This means that just as we accept salvation of our souls by faith, so we accept the salvation of our bodies, emotions, and all aspects of our lives by the same faith. When we first accept Christ, we trust that He will sanctify us wholly. Indeed, the Bible states that Jesus was wounded for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him and by His stripes we WERE healed. God calls those things that are not, as though they were. And even when our godparents accept salvation for us as children, they are believing by faith that we are already saved adults.
Jeremiah 9:24: Thus saith the Lord, "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth, glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exerciseth lovingkindness, judgement, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight."
All this is summed up in these words from our Lord: "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, then you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."
If you abide in me
Blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord...and in God’s law he meditates day and night.
This one thing I do forgetting what’s behind I press toward the high calling of Jesus Christ.
I am the true vine...abide in me
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength
We love him because he first loved us
and my words abide in you
Take heed how you hear
For they considered not...
He who has little, the little he has shall be taken away
The Seed is the word of God...the sower comes to take the seed
then you shall know the truth
My people perish for lack of knowledge
Where there is no vision the people perish
the word did not profit them because of their unbelief
Your father knows what you need before you ask him.
My word is truth
I am truth
and the truth shall set you free.
If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.
The promises of God are yea, and Amen.
The Word of God is alive and active and sharper than a two-edged sword
The words of God are health to all your flesh
Whom the son sets free is free indeed.
That we might serve Him without fear all the days of our lives.
Jesus, who has freed us from the law of sin and death
Perfect love casts out fear
If he gave us his son freely, how will not freely give us all things?
Godliness profits in this life as well as the next
Moral: Read your Bible and be blessed by meditating on the Scriptures and the Promises of God.
Lord, let me trust in your love, care and power in my life and rest in them. Amen.
Carole McDonnell’s fiction, devotionals, poetry and essays have appeared in many publishing venues, in print and online. She lives with her husband, their two sons, and their ferocious tabby Ralphina in upstate New York. Her novel, Wind Follower, will be published in June 2007 by Juno books.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Every Bible story is unique
Every Bible miracle is unique. Often we feel that the main point of the story is to show us that we must have faith. But if we study each miracle carefully, we will see that while faith is present, other occurrences in the story also teach us about how to receive miracles in our lives.
Yes, there is more besides faith.
Here are a few examples of other lessons we can learn from these miracles. I’ll only deal with the miracles done by Jesus.
The raising of the widow’s son
Here is a case where God healed simply because he was compassionate and his heart grieved for someone. The widow didn’t even ask for her son to be healed. Perhaps she was wondering in her heart about how she would live without a son in her old age, but she didn’t expect such a divine appointment. If we understood God’s love, and how faith works by love, what miracles we would have!
The woman with the issue of blood
She had heard that Jesus was healing people and she knew that some considered him to be the Messiah. She searched the Scriptures to see if what she heard about him was true and decided to touch the fringes of his garments – which symbolized the Malachi promise of the Son of Righteousness rising with healing in his wings. Continue confessing the word: She believed what she heard about Jesus and from that moment she kept saying "If I touch him, I will be healed." We don’t know how long she said this, but she didn’t only think this, she spoke this over and over. The law of healing works for all who fall in line with it. She was healed without Jesus being aware of her. This reminds me of the keys to the kingdom can be used by any who understand it. Such laws such as tithing, speaking positively, etc have been used by those outside the kingdom. The gospel is preached to the poor and if one has neither money nor medical help, there is still a savior. Don’t care about other’s people’s opinion of your faith.– She could have been killed because she was unclean because of the issue of blood, but she didn’t have the fear of man that brings a snare.
The friends of the crippled man
This teaches the power of intercession. This paralyzed man doesn’t say anything. His healing comes because of his friends. This certainly teaches that in some cases, a sick person doesn’t have to speak to God about his illness. The prayer of a loving and interceding church can do wonders. What a challenge it is to most modern churches! When someone is sick among us, we should show our love and our faith by going all out to intercede for the person. This doesn’t mean judging the person or exhorting them or trying to get the person to acknowledge his sin. Just simply being obsessed with getting our brothers and sisters well. This story also teaches that sometimes a sin is behind a disease. Jesus told the man to go and sin no more. We assume the man didn’t sin again.
The man beside the pool of Bethesda
This is a miracle about a man who was waiting for one kind of miracle and received a higher form of miracle. This man was always looking for an intercessor to help him, and for a supernatural agency to bring about his healing. This man was in a rut and could only see one way out of his healing. I have no doubt there are supernatural ways of being healed that has nothing to do with Jesus, but some of these are so far-fetched and the person is so alone we must look to Jesus. Jesus wanted him to look to the source of healing. Jesus. Perhaps this would heal the man and make him feel less forgotten and rejected. He was also among other sick folks and in his own mind, there were other folks as sick or sicker than he was. The ones who were sicker had family to help them. The ones who weren’t so sick could help themselves. There is nothing worse than thinking healing has a time or quantity limit and one has to fight with other sick people for the universe’s attention. When Jesus called to him, he must have been surprised to see that God had not forgotten him. This miracle also challenges us to ask ourselves if we really do want to be healed. Some people have gotten used to their sickness because the illness has been with them long. Some people can’t be healed because in their heart they really want to die. This man had been in such a state for so long that he needed to know that God saw him. Like the woman with the issue of blood, and like Lazarus, we understand that it is never too late to have a miracle.
The man born blind (without eyes)
This man was born with a disability and from childhood had been told all the supposed reasons why God made him sick. In many countries even now people think some people are born sick because of something they did in the womb or in a past life or because of family generational sins. Whatever the reason, Jesus told the man that the man was not born to be disabled all his life; the man was born to be healed.
The blind man outside Bethsaida
This is the only healing where Jesus actually asked the sick person if it worked, and where Jesus had to pray twice. Bethsaida is one of the cities Jesus cursed because of their hardened hearts. This shows that sometimes a sick person must be taken away from an atmosphere of unbelief in order to be healed, and after they’ve been healed they must be careful about returning to unbelievers lest they lose their healing.
The raising of Lazarus
This healing shows that Jesus often delays most when helping those whom he loves most. It shows also that delay doesn’t mean denial. It is never too late for Jesus to help. Like the raising of the widow’s son, this healing would seem to be unnecessary. After all, we are taught to believe that if someone dies we simply bury them, but the early church didn’t think so. When someone died, they often prayed for them to become alive again. How wonderful it would be if whenever we hear that someone has died, the first thing we would do as Christians is to pray for them to be returned to us!
The few sick folk in Jesus hometown
This is another case of unbelief. But this is the unbelief of people who think they "know" Jesus. They are like people who have "grown up knowing all about Jesus" and so they don’t want to be enlightened or to see him in a new way.
Carole McDonnell is the author of a How to Write and Teach Bible Studies which is available for free download from ebooks-and-authors.com See her other articles at http://www.isnare.com/?s=author&a=Carole+McDonnell
Yes, there is more besides faith.
Here are a few examples of other lessons we can learn from these miracles. I’ll only deal with the miracles done by Jesus.
The raising of the widow’s son
Here is a case where God healed simply because he was compassionate and his heart grieved for someone. The widow didn’t even ask for her son to be healed. Perhaps she was wondering in her heart about how she would live without a son in her old age, but she didn’t expect such a divine appointment. If we understood God’s love, and how faith works by love, what miracles we would have!
The woman with the issue of blood
She had heard that Jesus was healing people and she knew that some considered him to be the Messiah. She searched the Scriptures to see if what she heard about him was true and decided to touch the fringes of his garments – which symbolized the Malachi promise of the Son of Righteousness rising with healing in his wings. Continue confessing the word: She believed what she heard about Jesus and from that moment she kept saying "If I touch him, I will be healed." We don’t know how long she said this, but she didn’t only think this, she spoke this over and over. The law of healing works for all who fall in line with it. She was healed without Jesus being aware of her. This reminds me of the keys to the kingdom can be used by any who understand it. Such laws such as tithing, speaking positively, etc have been used by those outside the kingdom. The gospel is preached to the poor and if one has neither money nor medical help, there is still a savior. Don’t care about other’s people’s opinion of your faith.– She could have been killed because she was unclean because of the issue of blood, but she didn’t have the fear of man that brings a snare.
The friends of the crippled man
This teaches the power of intercession. This paralyzed man doesn’t say anything. His healing comes because of his friends. This certainly teaches that in some cases, a sick person doesn’t have to speak to God about his illness. The prayer of a loving and interceding church can do wonders. What a challenge it is to most modern churches! When someone is sick among us, we should show our love and our faith by going all out to intercede for the person. This doesn’t mean judging the person or exhorting them or trying to get the person to acknowledge his sin. Just simply being obsessed with getting our brothers and sisters well. This story also teaches that sometimes a sin is behind a disease. Jesus told the man to go and sin no more. We assume the man didn’t sin again.
The man beside the pool of Bethesda
This is a miracle about a man who was waiting for one kind of miracle and received a higher form of miracle. This man was always looking for an intercessor to help him, and for a supernatural agency to bring about his healing. This man was in a rut and could only see one way out of his healing. I have no doubt there are supernatural ways of being healed that has nothing to do with Jesus, but some of these are so far-fetched and the person is so alone we must look to Jesus. Jesus wanted him to look to the source of healing. Jesus. Perhaps this would heal the man and make him feel less forgotten and rejected. He was also among other sick folks and in his own mind, there were other folks as sick or sicker than he was. The ones who were sicker had family to help them. The ones who weren’t so sick could help themselves. There is nothing worse than thinking healing has a time or quantity limit and one has to fight with other sick people for the universe’s attention. When Jesus called to him, he must have been surprised to see that God had not forgotten him. This miracle also challenges us to ask ourselves if we really do want to be healed. Some people have gotten used to their sickness because the illness has been with them long. Some people can’t be healed because in their heart they really want to die. This man had been in such a state for so long that he needed to know that God saw him. Like the woman with the issue of blood, and like Lazarus, we understand that it is never too late to have a miracle.
The man born blind (without eyes)
This man was born with a disability and from childhood had been told all the supposed reasons why God made him sick. In many countries even now people think some people are born sick because of something they did in the womb or in a past life or because of family generational sins. Whatever the reason, Jesus told the man that the man was not born to be disabled all his life; the man was born to be healed.
The blind man outside Bethsaida
This is the only healing where Jesus actually asked the sick person if it worked, and where Jesus had to pray twice. Bethsaida is one of the cities Jesus cursed because of their hardened hearts. This shows that sometimes a sick person must be taken away from an atmosphere of unbelief in order to be healed, and after they’ve been healed they must be careful about returning to unbelievers lest they lose their healing.
The raising of Lazarus
This healing shows that Jesus often delays most when helping those whom he loves most. It shows also that delay doesn’t mean denial. It is never too late for Jesus to help. Like the raising of the widow’s son, this healing would seem to be unnecessary. After all, we are taught to believe that if someone dies we simply bury them, but the early church didn’t think so. When someone died, they often prayed for them to become alive again. How wonderful it would be if whenever we hear that someone has died, the first thing we would do as Christians is to pray for them to be returned to us!
The few sick folk in Jesus hometown
This is another case of unbelief. But this is the unbelief of people who think they "know" Jesus. They are like people who have "grown up knowing all about Jesus" and so they don’t want to be enlightened or to see him in a new way.
Carole McDonnell is the author of a How to Write and Teach Bible Studies which is available for free download from ebooks-and-authors.com See her other articles at http://www.isnare.com/?s=author&a=Carole+McDonnell
Saturday, December 17, 2005
I love you just the way you are
Remember Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood? I do. I really liked him. Not the show, though. A bit too slow for me. And I just never clicked with the denizens of the Land of Make Believe. But, as I said, I liked him a lot. My friend, Yvonne, never liked him though. She says that as a kid she’d watch him and when he said, “I like you just the way you are!,” she’d think, “How can you like me just the way I am? You don’t even know me.”
That’s Yvonne. Very keen and dedicated to truth. Yvonne is Jewish. And an agnostic. Her dad was killed in Auschwitz. She is one of the most honest agnostics I have ever met. There are remarkably few of those. She will say things such as, “I know there is something...someone...but I just can’t get past this business of God having a personality or desires.”
But back to her assessment of Mr Rogers. You know...she really does have a point there about that saying of his. I suspect we all somewhat feel that way about folks who say they love us. After all, they don’t know us. And the Christian answer – that God loves everyone because He is so loving– well that doesn’t quite sit well with most of us either. We don’t want to be loved by someone who loves everyone. We want to be loved by someone who sees what little goodness or virtue we have.
My question then, today is: “Have you ever accepted God’s love for you? Have you accepted his praise of you? Have you accepted his thankfulness for you?”
Carole, I hear you thinking, are you saying that God praises us? I thought we were supposed to praise Him???!!!!
Well, of course God praises you and loves you...because He is loving to all His creatures. But also because of Who you are.
Didn’t He praise Job? (Yes, I know...look where that got poor Job.) Didn’t Jesus see the young rich ruler’s heart and love him?Wasn’t Abraham called a Friend of God?Wasn’t Enoch saved because he pleased God?Wasn’t David called “a man after God’s own heart?”Didn’t Jesus pick about 400 people who followed him, then established closer bonds with seventy, then of that seventy chose twelve. And of those twelve, didn’t he have three best friends – Peter James and John? And of those three close friends, didn’t he choose John as his best friend?Aren’t there 144, 000 people who are called Companions of the Lamb who will remain at Jesus’ side forever?Aren’t there two thrones especially appointed for two people who will sit one at his right hand and one at his left?
Okay, so now someone else might say that like Mary we are all “full of grace” and “acceptable in the Beloved.” And someone else might say that this kind of thing smacks of favortism. I don’t think so. In favortism, the favored and unfavored ones have no choice. A loving and good child will be loved. No, one does not have to earn one’s love. As has been said over and over, God loves everyone and he knows how frail we are. But – scary thought– the Bible declares over and over that the Lord laughs at the wicked. Yes, I know...we are constantly being told God loves the sinner but hates the sin. Probably...but do you really want to play that game? Do you really want to fall into presumptuous sin and say “I know God hates this sin, but since he loves the sinner...well, I’ll just risk that?
I think – given my druthers– I’d druther shine a little brighter than the rest of my beloved brothers. No skin of the teeth salvation for me, no mere normal regular Godly love for me.
When I look at my husband I think, what a sweet-souled person! I know God sees that. Some of my friends simply amaze me by their sweetness, goodness, and piety. Some aren’t so sweet, but they’ve got such strength of character and such a capacity for suffering for God that well I know God stares at them everyday amazed. Yes, I could name them all. My friend, Rain, who picketed the local Walmart – the only picketer mind you– with a “Don’t sell guns!” sign in her baby carriage. My friend, Milvia, who is battling lymphoma and who helps so many others in addition to picketing the abortion clinic every Saturday. My friend, Yvonne, who is way more saintly in her behavior than many of the Christians I know. Yes, I cannot see the goodness of everyone so I’m not saying that I know whom God loves and doesn’t love. But I do think there are folks out there whom God loves very deeply, and in ways that are more profound than the love he has for the child molester, or the nominal churchgoer. Just as Jesus saw the heart of the rich young ruler and loved him, so He sees the heart of many a Christian and loves them in a uniquely special way. Somehow they become one of the inner circle.
Yes, God loves us just the way we are. But we don't have to stay that way. And our friends love us just the way we are. But why not make our friends' hearts swell with love when they ponder our great souls and noble deeds?
Prayer: Lord, let me live a life where my character and personality make you love me very much.
Easy Way to Write Bible Studies -- www.easywaytowrite.com/bible_studies.html
Carole McDonnell’s fiction, devotionals, poetry and essays have appeared in many publishing venues, in print and online including www.compulsivereader.com, www.thejoyofmovies.com and www.curledup.com. Her website is www.geocities.com/scifiwritir/OreoBlues.html She lives with her husband, their two sons, and their ferocious tabby Ralphina in upstate New York.
That’s Yvonne. Very keen and dedicated to truth. Yvonne is Jewish. And an agnostic. Her dad was killed in Auschwitz. She is one of the most honest agnostics I have ever met. There are remarkably few of those. She will say things such as, “I know there is something...someone...but I just can’t get past this business of God having a personality or desires.”
But back to her assessment of Mr Rogers. You know...she really does have a point there about that saying of his. I suspect we all somewhat feel that way about folks who say they love us. After all, they don’t know us. And the Christian answer – that God loves everyone because He is so loving– well that doesn’t quite sit well with most of us either. We don’t want to be loved by someone who loves everyone. We want to be loved by someone who sees what little goodness or virtue we have.
My question then, today is: “Have you ever accepted God’s love for you? Have you accepted his praise of you? Have you accepted his thankfulness for you?”
Carole, I hear you thinking, are you saying that God praises us? I thought we were supposed to praise Him???!!!!
Well, of course God praises you and loves you...because He is loving to all His creatures. But also because of Who you are.
Didn’t He praise Job? (Yes, I know...look where that got poor Job.) Didn’t Jesus see the young rich ruler’s heart and love him?Wasn’t Abraham called a Friend of God?Wasn’t Enoch saved because he pleased God?Wasn’t David called “a man after God’s own heart?”Didn’t Jesus pick about 400 people who followed him, then established closer bonds with seventy, then of that seventy chose twelve. And of those twelve, didn’t he have three best friends – Peter James and John? And of those three close friends, didn’t he choose John as his best friend?Aren’t there 144, 000 people who are called Companions of the Lamb who will remain at Jesus’ side forever?Aren’t there two thrones especially appointed for two people who will sit one at his right hand and one at his left?
Okay, so now someone else might say that like Mary we are all “full of grace” and “acceptable in the Beloved.” And someone else might say that this kind of thing smacks of favortism. I don’t think so. In favortism, the favored and unfavored ones have no choice. A loving and good child will be loved. No, one does not have to earn one’s love. As has been said over and over, God loves everyone and he knows how frail we are. But – scary thought– the Bible declares over and over that the Lord laughs at the wicked. Yes, I know...we are constantly being told God loves the sinner but hates the sin. Probably...but do you really want to play that game? Do you really want to fall into presumptuous sin and say “I know God hates this sin, but since he loves the sinner...well, I’ll just risk that?
I think – given my druthers– I’d druther shine a little brighter than the rest of my beloved brothers. No skin of the teeth salvation for me, no mere normal regular Godly love for me.
When I look at my husband I think, what a sweet-souled person! I know God sees that. Some of my friends simply amaze me by their sweetness, goodness, and piety. Some aren’t so sweet, but they’ve got such strength of character and such a capacity for suffering for God that well I know God stares at them everyday amazed. Yes, I could name them all. My friend, Rain, who picketed the local Walmart – the only picketer mind you– with a “Don’t sell guns!” sign in her baby carriage. My friend, Milvia, who is battling lymphoma and who helps so many others in addition to picketing the abortion clinic every Saturday. My friend, Yvonne, who is way more saintly in her behavior than many of the Christians I know. Yes, I cannot see the goodness of everyone so I’m not saying that I know whom God loves and doesn’t love. But I do think there are folks out there whom God loves very deeply, and in ways that are more profound than the love he has for the child molester, or the nominal churchgoer. Just as Jesus saw the heart of the rich young ruler and loved him, so He sees the heart of many a Christian and loves them in a uniquely special way. Somehow they become one of the inner circle.
Yes, God loves us just the way we are. But we don't have to stay that way. And our friends love us just the way we are. But why not make our friends' hearts swell with love when they ponder our great souls and noble deeds?
Prayer: Lord, let me live a life where my character and personality make you love me very much.
Easy Way to Write Bible Studies -- www.easywaytowrite.com/bible_studies.html
Carole McDonnell’s fiction, devotionals, poetry and essays have appeared in many publishing venues, in print and online including www.compulsivereader.com, www.thejoyofmovies.com and www.curledup.com. Her website is www.geocities.com/scifiwritir/OreoBlues.html She lives with her husband, their two sons, and their ferocious tabby Ralphina in upstate New York.
Friday, December 16, 2005
Unwanted Bedfellows
I was watching the lastest chapter of VH1's The Surreal Life, the Omarosa vs Janice version and ... well, let's just say that Omarosa was downright evil and mean. Hey, Janice Dickinson is not the sanest person, but she didn't seem cruel to me.
Interestingly enough both were religious in their own way. But what amazed me was that at the end of the episodes, after being downright nasty to Janice, self-righteous Omarosa (speaking to her mom on the phone) declares, "She needs Jesus, Mama." Yep, I coulda cringed. Why, oh why, do some Christian people say that in such a self-righteous way? Hey, we all need Jesus.
That kind of situation just makes the rest of us Christians look like cruel pious self-involved folks. It didn't help matters that she was black. Gosh, I cringed.
So that's one bedfellow I have to deal with. Since Ms Omarosa is a Christian and all.
But then there was President Bush. I neither like nor dislike him. He's human with vices and virtues like the rest of us. Although....truth to tell the way many Bible-believers act, one would think he was a prophet sent by God. Call me cynical but I am very suspicious of every human being. Especially ones who use my religion. And it annoys me no end that a mere person could cause so much divisiveness among Christians. I mean, I suspect only the anti-christ would get Bible-believing Christians arguing with each other. It seems as if only the truly elect would know that Bush is saintly or otherwise.
Over the past three years I have lost my liberal friends because I defended the president, and lost Bible-believing friends because I criticized him. Okay, I'm against abortion, against capital punishment, against the Iraqi War, pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian homeland. This is what kinda happens when you're a Christian who is a minority in the United States. But Christianity in America has sooo many political definitions, well....let's just say that we are living in dangerous times when have to totally praise or totally reject politicians, and when we define our faith by what we think about politicians. WWJD?
I am sure there are folks out there who cringe that I am their bedfellow. They want Christians to be seen as nice, kind, nonjudgemental. Hey, I'm nice, kind, non-judgemental. But there are certain things I say -- certain Biblical things-- which will definitely annoy a few folks. "Why does she say that? Doesn't Carole know that talking about Jesus being God's son kinda annoy folks? Doesn't Carole know that talking about Christianity just makes her look like some unenlightened uneducated Black person? We Blacks have outgrown that." That kinda stuff. Well, I believe what I believe. And while many modern folks have given up their faith in Christianity (not other religions mind you, because it seems that only Christians are treated like idiotic unenlightened persecuters) I will not be shamed into tossing away my religion.
So ... as it is, I -- like many Christians-- have strange bedfellows. And if I want to be accepted by many American Christians, it appears I must follow a particular political line. Everything is so darn cut and dried now. In my story, Homecoming at the Borderlands Cafe, which will be published in the Jigsaw Nation anthology in March 2006, I manage to pick on both the red states and the blue states. Alas, why don't I learn to ALWAYS praise one group ONLY and to ALWAYS pick on the other.
Interestingly enough both were religious in their own way. But what amazed me was that at the end of the episodes, after being downright nasty to Janice, self-righteous Omarosa (speaking to her mom on the phone) declares, "She needs Jesus, Mama." Yep, I coulda cringed. Why, oh why, do some Christian people say that in such a self-righteous way? Hey, we all need Jesus.
That kind of situation just makes the rest of us Christians look like cruel pious self-involved folks. It didn't help matters that she was black. Gosh, I cringed.
So that's one bedfellow I have to deal with. Since Ms Omarosa is a Christian and all.
But then there was President Bush. I neither like nor dislike him. He's human with vices and virtues like the rest of us. Although....truth to tell the way many Bible-believers act, one would think he was a prophet sent by God. Call me cynical but I am very suspicious of every human being. Especially ones who use my religion. And it annoys me no end that a mere person could cause so much divisiveness among Christians. I mean, I suspect only the anti-christ would get Bible-believing Christians arguing with each other. It seems as if only the truly elect would know that Bush is saintly or otherwise.
Over the past three years I have lost my liberal friends because I defended the president, and lost Bible-believing friends because I criticized him. Okay, I'm against abortion, against capital punishment, against the Iraqi War, pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian homeland. This is what kinda happens when you're a Christian who is a minority in the United States. But Christianity in America has sooo many political definitions, well....let's just say that we are living in dangerous times when have to totally praise or totally reject politicians, and when we define our faith by what we think about politicians. WWJD?
I am sure there are folks out there who cringe that I am their bedfellow. They want Christians to be seen as nice, kind, nonjudgemental. Hey, I'm nice, kind, non-judgemental. But there are certain things I say -- certain Biblical things-- which will definitely annoy a few folks. "Why does she say that? Doesn't Carole know that talking about Jesus being God's son kinda annoy folks? Doesn't Carole know that talking about Christianity just makes her look like some unenlightened uneducated Black person? We Blacks have outgrown that." That kinda stuff. Well, I believe what I believe. And while many modern folks have given up their faith in Christianity (not other religions mind you, because it seems that only Christians are treated like idiotic unenlightened persecuters) I will not be shamed into tossing away my religion.
So ... as it is, I -- like many Christians-- have strange bedfellows. And if I want to be accepted by many American Christians, it appears I must follow a particular political line. Everything is so darn cut and dried now. In my story, Homecoming at the Borderlands Cafe, which will be published in the Jigsaw Nation anthology in March 2006, I manage to pick on both the red states and the blue states. Alas, why don't I learn to ALWAYS praise one group ONLY and to ALWAYS pick on the other.
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Lovely and Amazing
| Lovely and Amazing |  |
| |
Well, keep your fingers crossed. I’ve sent off one of my stories to the editors of the “Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror stories of 2005" or something like that. It’s the biggie that Ellen Datlow of Scifi.com edits. It’s a reprint anthology, of course. The story I sent was published this year in Fantastic Visions III, an anthology of fantasy stories published by Fantasist Enterprises. If I do say so myself, it’s one of the best stories I’ve ever written....probably one of the best stories ever written in this universe or the next. I say this with all humility because Heaven knows I kept reading the published story wondering how the heck such a wonderful feat of imagination came from this addled brain. Writing a good short story is very hard and some of my published stories are workmanlike, competent, but not great. I kinda cringe when I see them, knowing they could be much, much better. Imagine my amazement, then, when I found I had written a perfect story. It’s about a knight crusader returning from fighting evil in the Holy Land who realizes that Christendom is also full of human evil. The knight is noble and yet approachable. He has a worldweariness that is not mere tiredness, but is a yearning to see the good in his fellow man, especially Christians. The story picks on Christendom yet Christianity and the love of Christ is all through the story. I would go on praising myself but you probably won’t believe me so I’ll let all this self-praise rest for the nonce. Now, am hoping the Year’s Best editors think the story a good one. As a former lit major, I would like my story to make it into posterity, and getting into this anthology would be one of the neat ways to go about that. Whether they think it’s a great story or not – and I hear they really like cutting edge stories and maybe this story isn’t cutting edge– it’s now in their inbox. So while pondering the story’s possible fate, I ended up talking with my beloved about story characters. There are two basic school of thoughts about art. One school says “art lifts a mirror to life and shows us the world, warts and all.” The other says “art should show the greatness of the human soul.” I tend to fall squarely in both categories. I like lifting a mirror to life but I also like showing extremely noble characters. I really think that Christian Art should definitely be hopeful, loving, or faith-filled. Yes, it must show the world’s evil. But it should show the evilness of evil, the goodliness of goodness, and the loveliness of love. It’s good to see a movie where human nature is examined and where evil is not excused (or shown as hip) and where goodness is shown as real and brave and not mocked. I’m sitting here wondering if there are any stories out there that has these elements. I tend to avoid Christian fiction because there is often something preachy or patently false and unreal about them. But strangely some of the most wonderful Christian stories or film have come from secular writers who are either hidden Christians or who have inhaled enough of popular Christianity to come up with a great spiritual story. For instance, if you ever get around to seeing the Danish film “Festen” (or Celebration) try to see it. It’s about a son who confronts his father for sexually abusing him and his twin sister. The main character’s name is Christian. And his battle with bravery and with his patriarch-loving relatives is near Biblical. Another great film is “A prayer for the dying” starring Mickey Rourke. That’s rated R, I think. A really great Christian film that would never cross any Christian’s door because it has so much sex, perversity, etc, is “The Bad Lieutenant.” Raunchy yet full of redemption. But you have to be able to wade through all that filth to get to the spirit. Some great G-rated lovely films that show the greatness of the human spirit are Endurance – an Ethiopian autobiography about an Olympic runner. It’s a real lesson in faith as a race. There is also Chariots of Fire, and the Hindu Indian film Lagaan, although all those prayers to Krishna might turn many Christians off. Well, I must finish writing today’s entry. I’ve got mega-work to do and writing this blog seems to be yet another one of my ways of avoiding finishing the great American Novel. I’m still wondering if I should go see “A history of violence” – just to see if I can find anything of spirit in it (while I lust over Viggo). And I’ll definitely go see Narnia. Because well...it’s beautiful and gore-free. And because it is lovely and because Aslan is such a wonderful Christ figure. And because the book is altogether lovely and amazing. |
Reality TV and the ritual of judgement
| |
| |
Reality TV and the ritual of judgement. The current TV season is winding down. The last episode of America’s Next Top Model will soon be here and gone. After the winning would-be Top Model is crowned and I am proven right (or wrong) I shall have a few days of withdrawal before, mercifully, the new season of American Idol arrives. In the meantime, I shall have to tide myself over with Wife Swap, Trading Spouses, The Apprentice: Martha Stewart, Iron Chef America, Surreal Life, Judge Judy, and Judge Joe Brown. Yes, I admit it: I love reality shows. I like them because the best ones are unpredictable, unlike the average Lifetime movie --or the average Indie film which is predictable in its own indie way. In reality tv, one sees real people – not stereotypes created by Hollywood writers. I especially like reality TV shows because they remind me of the Great White Throne Judgment of God. The Great Throne Judgement? Oh, yes! Definitely! The greatest fun of Reality TV is the ritual of judgment. This is when the truth is declared, the hidden evil or goodness revealed, the sufferer rewarded, the hard work and heartache justified. As Christians we have been taught that the actual world in which we live is not the real -- or final-- world. St Paul tells us in the sixth chapter of the letter to the Hebrews that this world was formed by the Spirit of God and what appears to our senses was born from what is invisible: God''s Word. We walk by faith, not by sight. On a totally secular level, this means that Christians – especially poor Christians, powerless Christians, minority Christians– are taught to understand that true power is not something the world understands. Here the rich and the arrogant seem to have power, but in reality (spiritual reality) it is the poor in spirit who have true power -- God-- on their side. The power the world respects, however, is often on the side of those who have a gift of appearing better, wiser, more intellectual than their less worldly counterparts. But what does this have to do with Reality TV shows? Remember how good you feel when the truth --as you see it-- is finally apparent for all to see? Remember that wonderful feeling when the judge is on your side? This is especially wonderful when you were poor, tired, powerless. Remember the O J Simpson trial? Whether O J was guilty or not, the “Judgment” for his acquittal was seen as a vindication by those minorities who have learned never to trust the police. The Jury “proved” the blind justice system blind. Or, on a personal level, remember your worst enemy, the one who slickly got you fired although you kept to the high road? Remember the day – through no fault or sneakiness of your own– she slipped up really badly and all her hidden evil side was finally revealed? The last judgment at the end of these episodes is very much like the last judgement the righteous and the oppressed look forward to. They may not see the deliberations, but they see the unveiling of reality and the ceremony when the victor''s crown is given. It is also the judgment the unrighteous fear. As Christians, many of us have been made poor because we do not boast. We have made ourselves powerless because we do not engage in tit-for-tat vindictive vendettas. The poor, powerless, and oppressed long for the day when a righteous judge will hear their cause, or declare the rightness of their cause. And we want this from a judge we can trust. The judgment of TV judges hold the highest place of honor in my reality-show-loving mind. Schadenfreude aside, we love watching Judge Judy or Judge Joe enlighten the self-righteous plaintiff or unrepentant defendant. I suspect this is why so many people prefer to air their dirty laundry with TV judges rather than in the local county courthouse. We know Judge Judy. She’s tough but she’s fair. The same for Judge Joe Brown. We don’t trust the local judge...who is either too white, too black, too rich, too poor, too religious, too non-religious to give us a fair hearing. And so, yes! I LOVE reality tv. And I love God. Yes, as a Christian, I know my sins are wiped away by Jesus’s wounds, and I will not have to face the judgement. And I know I probably am as deluded and self-righteous as some of the folks Judge Judy enlightened this week, but I can’t help it. I still want to be justified even a little bit. Just to hear the words from my Lord: “Well done, good and faithful servant.” |
One Night with the King
You might not have heard this but another religious movie has been in the works for the past year. This one is being made by a Christian production company and will be called “One night with the king” and it’s based on the story of Esther. Already I dislike the title. I shouldn’t, of course, but the title is so dang romantic. And Esther, which is a great story of God’s protection and timing, is not romantic.
Somewhere along the way, though, we Christians have begun thinking of it as a great love story, and of Esther herself as the perfect symbol of submissive wifeliness. Perhaps the story has been in the hands of too many male ministers. We need to hear a woman minister tackle the story.
Let’s start with the king: Xerxes or (as the name is transliterated into Hebrew/English) Ahauserus. Xerxes was a braggart. Sure he had conquered more than his fair share of kingdoms and certainly had a right to brag. We Christians accept this because arrogance is perfectly normal for a king and certainly an arrogant male needing to be enlightened is considered a fairly popular romantic theme. After all, the woman who tames such a guy...well, it’s the old good girl/bad guy thing. This kind of pairing happens so often in Christian romances that one wonders why Christian women would want to read stories about women taming workaholic braggarts. We should be a bit more enlightened than to be attracted to guys like that, I think.
As the story goes, Xerxes gives a great dinner party, lasting 180 days, in order to show off. And in the middle of all his showing off, he suddenly gets the very drunken idea that he wants to show off his wife. Basically, he wants a veiled Arabian woman from whatever century that was to put herself on display for all his drunk friends. Vashti, his wife, (rightly, I think) refuses, giving him a snide answer. The men in the palace become quite upset about this and convince the king that if the women in the kingdom hear about how uppity Vashti has been to the king, the women will all start back-talking their husbands. And in that neck of the world (then as now) women’s equality with men is a major offense!
Christians have written tomes about how horribly unsubmissive Vashti was to do this. I think they’re wrong. I understand that when Esther enters the story we all want to be on her side, but does this mean we have to demonize Vashti. After all, maybe Vashti wasn’t so proud as all that. Maybe God used her integrity to get her to lose her place as queen. Yes, let’s think about that one for a moment. And for another moment.
Enter Esther. Raised by her uncle Mordechai, she is already shown to be a wounded soul who owes a male authority figure very much. Raise the stakes: she is beautiful. Is this not the perfect trophy wife for a king such as Xerxes? She will never question him, and she is perfect for a king who regards the external. So, she is perfect for him...but is this the perfect guy for her?
Of course not! Esther probably wanted a husband and a house in her neighborhood. instead of all that palace intrigue. Who wants to live among foreigners and away from one’s people? Who wants a husband who has five hundred concubines and secondary wives? Who wants a husband whom one can only see when it please him...or else? And remember, Vashti, the former queen is still in the harem. She’s demoted, mind you. She’s not out of the picture. What gets me is that many Christians seem to think that this story is a love story and that Esther actually falls in love with the king. Where does it say this in the Bible? Alas, nowhere. But films are replete with it. Needless to say, I’m not going to waste my time seeing the film...should it arrive at a theater near me.
Easy Way to Write Bible Studies -- www.easywaytowrite.com/bible_studies.html
Carole McDonnell’s fiction, devotionals, poetry and essays have appeared in many publishing venues, in print and online including www.compulsivereader.com, www.thejoyofmovies.com and www.curledup.com. Her works appear in various anthologies including “So Long Been Dreaming: Post-colonialism in science fiction,” edited by Nalo Hopkinson and published by Arsenal Pulp Press; “Fantastic Visions III,” published by Fantasist Enterprises; “Then an angel came along,” edited by Julie Bonn Heath and published by WinePress Publishing, “Jigsaw Nation” published by Wildside Press and “Seasoned Sistahs: writings by mature women of color.” She is currently working on two Bible studies: “Hagar, Vashti and other Scapegoats of Bible study” and “The Easy Way to Write Bible Studies" and two SF/F novels based on the Bible, "The Daughters of Men" and "The Windfollower.” Her website is www.geocities.com/scifiwritir/OreoBlues.html She lives with her husband, their two sons, and their ferocious tabby Ralphina in upstate New York.
Somewhere along the way, though, we Christians have begun thinking of it as a great love story, and of Esther herself as the perfect symbol of submissive wifeliness. Perhaps the story has been in the hands of too many male ministers. We need to hear a woman minister tackle the story.
Let’s start with the king: Xerxes or (as the name is transliterated into Hebrew/English) Ahauserus. Xerxes was a braggart. Sure he had conquered more than his fair share of kingdoms and certainly had a right to brag. We Christians accept this because arrogance is perfectly normal for a king and certainly an arrogant male needing to be enlightened is considered a fairly popular romantic theme. After all, the woman who tames such a guy...well, it’s the old good girl/bad guy thing. This kind of pairing happens so often in Christian romances that one wonders why Christian women would want to read stories about women taming workaholic braggarts. We should be a bit more enlightened than to be attracted to guys like that, I think.
As the story goes, Xerxes gives a great dinner party, lasting 180 days, in order to show off. And in the middle of all his showing off, he suddenly gets the very drunken idea that he wants to show off his wife. Basically, he wants a veiled Arabian woman from whatever century that was to put herself on display for all his drunk friends. Vashti, his wife, (rightly, I think) refuses, giving him a snide answer. The men in the palace become quite upset about this and convince the king that if the women in the kingdom hear about how uppity Vashti has been to the king, the women will all start back-talking their husbands. And in that neck of the world (then as now) women’s equality with men is a major offense!
Christians have written tomes about how horribly unsubmissive Vashti was to do this. I think they’re wrong. I understand that when Esther enters the story we all want to be on her side, but does this mean we have to demonize Vashti. After all, maybe Vashti wasn’t so proud as all that. Maybe God used her integrity to get her to lose her place as queen. Yes, let’s think about that one for a moment. And for another moment.
Enter Esther. Raised by her uncle Mordechai, she is already shown to be a wounded soul who owes a male authority figure very much. Raise the stakes: she is beautiful. Is this not the perfect trophy wife for a king such as Xerxes? She will never question him, and she is perfect for a king who regards the external. So, she is perfect for him...but is this the perfect guy for her?
Of course not! Esther probably wanted a husband and a house in her neighborhood. instead of all that palace intrigue. Who wants to live among foreigners and away from one’s people? Who wants a husband who has five hundred concubines and secondary wives? Who wants a husband whom one can only see when it please him...or else? And remember, Vashti, the former queen is still in the harem. She’s demoted, mind you. She’s not out of the picture. What gets me is that many Christians seem to think that this story is a love story and that Esther actually falls in love with the king. Where does it say this in the Bible? Alas, nowhere. But films are replete with it. Needless to say, I’m not going to waste my time seeing the film...should it arrive at a theater near me.
Easy Way to Write Bible Studies -- www.easywaytowrite.com/bible_studies.html
Carole McDonnell’s fiction, devotionals, poetry and essays have appeared in many publishing venues, in print and online including www.compulsivereader.com, www.thejoyofmovies.com and www.curledup.com. Her works appear in various anthologies including “So Long Been Dreaming: Post-colonialism in science fiction,” edited by Nalo Hopkinson and published by Arsenal Pulp Press; “Fantastic Visions III,” published by Fantasist Enterprises; “Then an angel came along,” edited by Julie Bonn Heath and published by WinePress Publishing, “Jigsaw Nation” published by Wildside Press and “Seasoned Sistahs: writings by mature women of color.” She is currently working on two Bible studies: “Hagar, Vashti and other Scapegoats of Bible study” and “The Easy Way to Write Bible Studies" and two SF/F novels based on the Bible, "The Daughters of Men" and "The Windfollower.” Her website is www.geocities.com/scifiwritir/OreoBlues.html She lives with her husband, their two sons, and their ferocious tabby Ralphina in upstate New York.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Easy Way to Write Bible Studies
My new ebook, Easy Way to Write Bible Studies is out. Check it out at:
The main study book contains 234 pages packed with information and comment on all aspects of the Old and New Testaments. Including in depth analysis of the Gospels - on how and why their stories differ and coincide, as well as scholarly and fair assessment of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nephilim, the role of the media, racism, slavery, even sex.
There's also a Bible reading plan - a complete beginners' guide to the Good Book.
Check it out at www.easywaytowrite.com
The Easy Way to Write Bible Studies
is not only a book on how to write Bible studies, but it's a Bible study in and of itself because I use Bible studies to illustrate certain interpretation and writing concepts.
is not only a book on how to write Bible studies, but it's a Bible study in and of itself because I use Bible studies to illustrate certain interpretation and writing concepts.
Here's a taster of what's in the package:
The six basic rules of Bible interpretation:
* Learn how to read the Bible in a modern context using your common sense and intelligence to produce highly saleable articles, discussion papers and even virtual 'sermons'.
* Learn how to approach bible language and depictions - clearing the fog and discovering meaning in seeming contradictions.
* How to use humor to get your point across.
* How to bring the Bible to life, to make it fresh and relevant with each new article.
* Learn how to put aside your own 'prejudices' on sex, morality, and personal agendas.
* Discover the difference between symbolic and literal interpretation Learn the little known meanings of Bible names and references.
* Come to know the Bible as a rich source of reference and spiritual enlightenment.
* Get to know some of the specific historical perspectives and how our own culture has distorted or oversimplified the Bible's words
The six basic rules of Bible interpretation:
* Learn how to read the Bible in a modern context using your common sense and intelligence to produce highly saleable articles, discussion papers and even virtual 'sermons'.
* Learn how to approach bible language and depictions - clearing the fog and discovering meaning in seeming contradictions.
* How to use humor to get your point across.
* How to bring the Bible to life, to make it fresh and relevant with each new article.
* Learn how to put aside your own 'prejudices' on sex, morality, and personal agendas.
* Discover the difference between symbolic and literal interpretation Learn the little known meanings of Bible names and references.
* Come to know the Bible as a rich source of reference and spiritual enlightenment.
* Get to know some of the specific historical perspectives and how our own culture has distorted or oversimplified the Bible's words
The main study book contains 234 pages packed with information and comment on all aspects of the Old and New Testaments. Including in depth analysis of the Gospels - on how and why their stories differ and coincide, as well as scholarly and fair assessment of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nephilim, the role of the media, racism, slavery, even sex.
There's also a Bible reading plan - a complete beginners' guide to the Good Book.
Check it out at www.easywaytowrite.com
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
My interview at Today's Fantasy Fiction
I was recently interviewed by Stephen Bargdill for his TodaysFantasyFiction Blogspot. Here is the interview. His website is listed at the bottom of this interview.
TFF: Tell me about Black is the Color of my True Love's Hair.
CM: About two years ago I was walking downtown and the old Elizabethan ballad kept coming to me. I kept thinking of the lyrics. Such longing, such adoration. The Iraqi war was going on. I was so against that stupid war and lost a few Christian friends because of it. But, it's the Jamaican in me. I can be a real curmudgeon. Anyway, the image of a crusader came to mind as I thought about this ballad. An Irish knight named Colgan. In my mind he was returning home to Christendom. But he was weary and burned out, with nothing left to him but his own honor. I wanted to show that people in Christendom lacked some of the virtues they claimed. It's written very like Boccaccio or Chaucer, very high language. It's a very theological piece with people tempting him. I don't want to make it sound as if it isn't fun. It's quite fun, and it follows the required stylization of a fairytale. The editor said he liked it because of its theological questions. Very life and death, and about love and purpose. It's a great story. I don't usually think all my stories are great. But this one most definitely is.
TFF: Why don’t you think all of your stories are great? How self-conscious are you about your writing?
CM: I was a literature major when I attended college at Purchase, NY. "Greatness" is not a word we Lit. Majors throw around lightly. For me to even think one of my stories has a quality of greatness to it—in its own genre—sounds pretty arrogant. But if I didn't know Black is the color of my true love's hair to be as good as it is, I wouldn't say it is great. Will see if I can get into the "year's best fantasy antho" that Ms Datlow edits. That would prove if it's great or not, I suspect. The rest of my stories are a mixed bag. Most have very original situations, but my skill in telling the story...well some stories are workmanlike, some are very graceful, some smooth and sweet as molasses, some are plain clunky. When I got my author's copy of "So Long Been Dreaming" I went through the book underlining, crossing out and making notations in the margin. The story, Lingua Franca, is wonderful and fun SF and Nalo and Uppinder helped me improve it. It's a very good story, but is it great? It's gotten some good mention in the reviews but I don't know. It could be improved. Black is the color of my true love's hair is 99% perfect.
TFF: What is your revision process like?
CM: I get crits from writer-friends. Tons of crits. I try to do the basic revision stuff: tighten, get rid of filtering, check for typos. I do a lot of global searches for authorly tics. I try to put tension where tension is needed. One of my biggest problems is that I tend to be episodic so I re-write my stories with the intention of making each scene either be a goal, motivation, reaction, etc. But more importantly, I try to feel my way through. If you know your stuff and have an educated intuition, that's all you can really do—trust yourself. And of course, trust God.
TFF: You mainly write reviews and Christian themed pieces. You seem to have a wide range of interest. Why fantasy?
CM: I believe in magic, love, great themes. I like to think I have a wide range of interests but I suppose religion, spirituality and existential questions glue all these interests together.
TFF: How does being Christian affect your writing? Do you find there is a conflict between writing Christian themed pieces and fantasy?
CM: (giggling) I guess I can't do some of the raunchier love scenes I'd love to write. Some writer once said that a novel is a conversation between the soul and the spirit. When I write, the more carnal aspect of my mind wants a story to end a particular way. The more spiritual part of me knows it should end another way. That's the struggle. To come to a conclusion that's worked through and doesn't seem like rigid cookie-cutter answers. Christians are used to "dark parables" But don't get me wrong: In the Christian world some folks think you're writing for the devil if you even mention writing fantasy. But back in the day—medieval and renaissance times—the "kingdoms" of art, literature, music, medicine, theater and science all belonged to God. Musicians wrote music for the glory of God. DaVinci painted for the glory of God. Herbalists for instance studied plants because they thought God had created a world that could be searched out. I am hoping that one day God will also have the kingdom of speculative fiction, so to speak. Right now so much of Christian publishing is icky inspirational romance. And Christian fantasy is so often limited to apocalyptical stuff like the Left Behind series which was just a horribly-written series and allegorical rewritings of Bible stories. Many writers of fantasy and SF are very hateful and mocking towards Christians. Many Christians get offended if a fellow Christian challenges them on politics, race, etc. I sometimes wish I was bred to be squarely in one group or the other. But God gave me my own mind. I'm neither a cookie-cutter Conservative, nor a cookie-cutter Liberal. I'm not pro Black politics or pro white politics. I'm not a feminist and I'm not "not a feminist." There is no real difference for me. Christianity has a lot of fantastical elements.
TFF: What are some of the fantastical aspects within Christianity that you find fascinating?
CM: Well most religions read like a kid's fairytale, don't they? Compare Buddhism and Christianity for instance. Think of two kings. Both kings have sons. One king raises his son in a sumptuous palace. The other takes his son and puts him in a poor family. The poor prince grows up having knowledge of his parents’ flight as refuges of his birth in a stable, sees death and suffering among the poor everyday, has to deal with Roman oppressors. He is a Man of Sorrows. The sheltered pampered prince who is unaware of sorrows, one day leaves the palace and sees how terrible the world really is. Shocked and traumatized, he returns home depressed and can't get the sorrows out of his mind. At last, he learns to deal with the situation by not thinking about it and by conquering sorrows and joys by rising above need and emotions. Of course this is all well and good for him, he's got food. But he has attained Peace and grows to symbolize mental peace and Acceptance/Submission to life. The other prince who has grown up among the poor, the sick and the needy, however, actively hates the sorrows he sees around him. He goes about taking care of the poor, healing the poor miraculously. He has such a disdain for the rich and the folks in the upper echelon that the religious people and the state join together to kill him even though the regular people love him. He dies between two thieves with a prostitute being one of the only friends at his death. Then he dies. But in dying, he kills death. In dying he kills the power of sin. In apparently "losing" to the devil, he has conquered the great enemy of man. Three days later he rises again, after harrowing hell. Fifty days after that, he returns in spiritual form and his spirit enters into all those who love him, giving them power to heal the sick, raise the dead, etc. There's a lot of fantastical stuff in that.
The two stories are about differing Gods. And human pain. The Christian idea is to conquer evil by love, by active involvement. We Christians have a lord who identifies with our sorrows, who was in fact poor and needy and rejected. The other prince is loved by the world. Ours -- the Christian's God-- wasn't; in fact, he tells us that we should be careful not to be too loved by the world, and we should not identify with it. As a writer I try not to pick on anyone's religion, but as a poor sickly needy human I like a God who identifies with my pain so much that he ran towards it instead of being overwhelmed by it. This is just me. I like a God who is "acquainted with grief" and who gives us power to actually conquer it...as opposed to simply learning to submit to it. The Christian idea of evil is that it is a malevolence...a knowledgeable mindful malevolence that is at war with good. Not just something in the world. Not just something that is an absence of good. Not just something we can conquer by learning to control our emotions. For Christians, good emotions such as love and joy ARE the things to aim for.
In addition, Christianity is essentially all the great folklore, myth and primitive religions rolled into one. All folklore, primitive religion and myth point towards it for their fulfillment. That's to say: it has all of the motifs one finds in those religions. From the sacrifice of virgins, the myth of God's lost book, the dying God-Man, even the ideas of cannibals eating flesh to incorporate the life of the dying warrior. But it's myth and history meeting...myth made life. True myth, as C S Lewis would say. And then there are all those prophecies, all that talk about the Active Malevolence of the devil, all the challenge to our ideas of our "goodness" and the giving of his own Godly life and spiritual power. Kierkegaard wrote in his book Training in Christianity that the great offense of Christianity is that it says that if humanity could get its hand on God, they would kill him. We say we like goodness but we really like to destroy it. It's insulting and fantastical, but in my opinion, it's true. Goodness gets destroyed a lot in my stories as you could guess. Lots of Christ figures floating around.
TFF: I’m familiar with the story-telling tradition within the Christian culture, but what about the Jamaican culture? What kind of stories in the Jamaican culture do you think have really affected your own personal writing style?
CM: Jamaicans have a dark, very black, sense of humor, a joyous cynicism about people and situations. Christians also have a certain divine cynicism where they just don't trust much earthly "facts" or opinions. Jamaicans also tell folklore, ghost stories, and of course their dreams. At the breakfast table, everyone has some dream to tell. Uncles were always telling ghost stories and aunts were telling stories about spiritual encounters with angels or demons or whatever. There is a Jamaican word called "labrish" which means a good gossipy story. When Jamaicans meet, they always ask each other if they have any labrish. So let's say that a mutual acquaintance -- a very greedy person-- has died. The teller of this bit of labrish will probably add something like, "It was tough though getting her body out of the house. When she found out she was dying she decided to take all her money out of the bank. She was stuffing a ten dollar bill down her throat when I last saw her. Woman gained at least fifty pounds stuffing herself with them dollars, but it's understandable...better than her husband's next wife getting it" To which the other labrisher would elaborate, "I hear dead people pass a lot of gas. Maybe we ought to go dig her up and wait for her to fart. I have an old tub in the back-- could hold a lot of money." You see: just the right touch of cynicism, fun and exaggeration. This pops up in a little children's story I'm presently writing called "Miles and the Layaway hair." The kid's mother is so poor she has to put a wig she sees at the 99 cent store on layaway, but because she is sooo poor, time passes and all the black hair styles keep changing. Meanwhile the hair is disintegrating in the box at the basement of the 99 cent store and a nest of mice are making a home of it. The owners of the store --who are quite greedy-- have to call in exterminators who shake the wig every month. Quite a dilemma: do we want the mice to have a home, the exterminators to give up shaking the wig or the main character's mom to get her hair? Jamaicans also tell riddles. When I was growing up, every little Jamaican kid knew the basic intro to a riddle. "Riddle me this, riddle me that. Guess me this riddle and perhaps not." Then of course the riddle would pop up, something like: "Roomful, eyeful, can't catch a spoonful." Then all the kids would sit there wracking their brains and finally someone might guess that the answer is smoke.
TFF: The best writing advice you’ve heard?
CM: From Jasper Johns. "Take something and do something to it. Then do something to it again." Something like that. Am not sure of the real phrasing. But it's definitely important. I mean this in connection with revising. So many people think they have finished a story when they finish the ending sentence. But that's just the beginning. If they want the story to be deeper and more cohesive, they should go over it again and again. To build layers but also to perfect the story.
TFF: Do you have any novels in the works?
CM: Yes, I'm presently working on a SF/Fantasy cross-genre story based on Genesis chapter 6 called The Daughters of Men. Very sociological. It involves four types of humans—the clones, the bio-genetically engineered chimeras, the semi-demonic Nephilim, and “normal” humans. Then there are the three lovers – Woden, a Nephilim Prince; Siddhart, Woden’s captain and rebellious best friend; and Ellie, the human Black woman they both love who may be fated to bring disaster or salvation to the Nephilim. Okay, so I'm a romantic—and slightly piggy too, having two guys in love with the woman. But it's also religious. I have all these prophecies—basically two—the prophecy of the stubborn Scarred Woman fated to bring Disruption, and the prophecy of the Beautiful One who will bring peace and salvation to the Nephililm. And of course the big question: Should Ellie marry Woden, especially if she's in love with Siddhart? Could it be that she is indeed the prophesied one? Of course, you bet she is! So the book has a lot of world-building. And it examines the nature of prophecy, community and memory. Am in the throes of revising it for—I hope—the last time. I'm also working on a fantasy version of the story of Hagar called The Windfollower. I'm always on the underdog's side. What can I say?
Monday, April 18, 2005
So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy
This is from the publishing company's website:
So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy is an anthology of original new stories by leading African, Asian, South Asian, and Aboriginal authors, as well as North American and British writers of colour.
Some authors included in this anthology are:
Opal Palmer Adisa
Tobias Buckell
Wayde Compton
Hiromi Goto
Andrea Hairston
Tamai Kobayashi
Karin Lowachee
devorah major
Carole McDonnell
Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
Eden Robinson
Nisi Shawl
Vandana Singh
Sheree Renee Thomas
and Greg Van Eekhout.
So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy is an anthology of original new stories by leading African, Asian, South Asian, and Aboriginal authors, as well as North American and British writers of colour.
Some authors included in this anthology are:
Opal Palmer Adisa
Tobias Buckell
Wayde Compton
Hiromi Goto
Andrea Hairston
Tamai Kobayashi
Karin Lowachee
devorah major
Carole McDonnell
Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
Eden Robinson
Nisi Shawl
Vandana Singh
Sheree Renee Thomas
and Greg Van Eekhout.
Life Spices from Seasoned Sistahs
An exciting collection of real stories from mature women, the seasoned Sistahs will keep you reading.....stories of women of minority groups who have gone through life changing and woman affirming events. They are told by women who have lived, struggled, loved and triumphed!
website is www.nubianimagespublishing.com
website is www.nubianimagespublishing.com
JIGSAW NATION
Have just been accepted to this anthology, edited by Edward J. McFadden and E. Sedia, is a themed anthology which deals with the question: What if the United States consisted of two separate nations (Red and Blue states as in the 2004 election. The stories are alternate history, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, mystery). The stories explore the consequences of the secession, be they political, economical, psychological, or social.
Table of Contents
ESCAPE FROM NEW AUSTIN Paul Di Filippo
THE IDAHO ZEPHYR Douglas Lain
WAKING WACO Cody Goodfellow
RETURN TO NOWHERE Ruth Nestvold and Jay Lake
THE MAN FROM MISSOURI Patrick Thomas
THE SWITCH Darby Harn
DOWN IN THE CORRIDOR Robert Lopresti
HOMECOMING IN THE BORDERLANDS CAFE Carole McDonnell
PLACES OF COLOR David Bartell
JUNETEENTH K.M. Praschak
THE PATRIOT Erin Fitzgerald
SECONDS Seth Lindberg
MISSION CONTROL Tara Kolden
THE STATE OF BLUES Gene Stewart
FIELDWORK J. Stern
THIS DIVIDED LAND Michael Jasper
RHYMES WITH JEW Paul G. Tremblay
Below are links to Kathy's sites:
Home Shorts Novel Links
Table of Contents
ESCAPE FROM NEW AUSTIN Paul Di Filippo
THE IDAHO ZEPHYR Douglas Lain
WAKING WACO Cody Goodfellow
RETURN TO NOWHERE Ruth Nestvold and Jay Lake
THE MAN FROM MISSOURI Patrick Thomas
THE SWITCH Darby Harn
DOWN IN THE CORRIDOR Robert Lopresti
HOMECOMING IN THE BORDERLANDS CAFE Carole McDonnell
PLACES OF COLOR David Bartell
JUNETEENTH K.M. Praschak
THE PATRIOT Erin Fitzgerald
SECONDS Seth Lindberg
MISSION CONTROL Tara Kolden
THE STATE OF BLUES Gene Stewart
FIELDWORK J. Stern
THIS DIVIDED LAND Michael Jasper
RHYMES WITH JEW Paul G. Tremblay
Below are links to Kathy's sites:
Home Shorts Novel Links
Friday, April 15, 2005
Publications updates can be found at http://geocities.com/scifiwritir/Updates.html
And check out my interview on Today's Fantasty Fiction, a blog edited by Stephen Bargdill
Carole McDonnell Interview
My fiction and non-fiction writings:
My SF story, Lingua Franca, appears in the So Long Been Dreaming anthology, edited by Nalo Hopkinson and published by Arsenal Pulp Press Site
My Fantasy story, Black is the color of my true love's hair, appears in Fantastic Visions III , edited by William Horner and published by Fantasist Enterprises
My alternate history story Homecoming at the Borderlands Cafe appears in Jigsaw Nation: Tales of An alternate America, edited by Edward F McFadden and E Sedia
My true angel story, That Smile, appears in Then an angel came along, edited by Julie Bonn Heath and published March 2005 by WinePress Publishing.
You can read my nonfiction angel story at http://geocities.com/scifiwritir/angelstory.html
More details about this book can be found online at: Julie Bonn Heath Website
My nonfiction essay, My Son, The Australians, Mrs Spain and Me appears in Life's Spices From Seasoned Sistahs: A collection of life stories from mature women of color, edited by Vicki Ward published March 2005 by Nubian Images Publishing
You can read my entry in the anthology at http://geocities.com/scifiwritir/TheAustralians.html
Works in Progress
I am currently working on a Bible study entitled, Hagar, Job's wife, Vashti and other scapegoats of Bible study.
Some of my writings
Information on how to purchase these stories can be found by clicking on the appropriate link.
Check out this interview on Today's Fantasty Fiction, a blog edited by Stephen Bargdill
My fiction and non-fiction writings:
SF story, Lingua Franca, appears in the So Long Been Dreaming anthology, edited by Nalo Hopkinson and published by
Fantasy story, Black is the color of my true love's hair, appears in Fantastic Visions III , edited by William Horner and published by
Jigsaw Nation: Tales of An alternate America, edited by Edward F McFadden and E Sedia
Then an angel came along, edited by Julie Bonn Heath and published March 2005 by WinePress Publishing.
You can read my angel story here:
More details about this book can be found online at: Julie Bonn Heath Website Nubian Images Publishing You can read my entry in the anthology here: Hagar, Job's wife, Vashti and other scapegoats of Bible study.
Life's Spices From Seasoned Sistahs: A collection of life stories from mature women of color, edited by Vicki Ward published March 2005
Great article on UFO's and christian worldview
A really great overview. Check it out. The author of the piece is a Christian writer of speculative liaterature.
http://www.jeffersonscott.com/UFOs.htm
http://www.jeffersonscott.com/UFOs.htm
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Popular Posts
-
Here is a Bible study I wrote once. Instead of simply writing a long article, I simply listed some of the many questions God asks in the Bi...
-
Once Jesus was praying in a certain place. After he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John ta...
-
William Lau of the Elijah Challenge does a rally great job talking about the priestly authority, the kingdom authority, and the prophetic au...
-
This prayer was written by Rich Keltner: Right now, In the Name of the Lord Jesus and by the power of His Blood, I ask the blood o... -
2 Peter 3:15-17 14Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spo...
-
Is there a right way to read it? Should the books be read in any particular order? Most Churches have printed guides which help parishioner...
-
I used to watch a lot of paranormal stories on TV. To be expected, I had a childhood filled with annoying demons, ghosts, and the lot. The w...
-
Am getting back into The Constant Tower. WOW!!! It's so good to be back into a fantastical world. The nobility, the beauty, the angst --...
-
I once had a white friend in my writer’s critique group ask me, “Why do you always write about mixed couples? That’s a very bad habit of you...
-
Two really great sermons sent to me by my friend Rose-Marie of http://pen-of-the-wayfarer.blogspot.com Jackie Pullinger is the lady who min...
