Sunday, October 27, 2024 — Exodus: Salvation in the Desert — Food

Total need requires total help.
~ Karl Barth

Reflect, Resonate, Reevaluate, Respond

Guidance, like all God’s acts of blessing under the covenant of grace, is a sovereign act. Not merely does God will to guide us in the sense of showing us his way, that we may tread it; he wills also to guide us in the more fundamental sense of ensuring that, whatever happens, whatever mistakes we may make, we shall come safely home. Slippings and strayings there will be, no doubt, but the everlasting arms are beneath us; we shall be caught, rescued, restored. This is God’s promise; this is how good he is.
~ James I. Packer, Knowing God, Hachette UK, 2011, p.212.

Exodus 16

It’s not denial. I’m just selective about the reality I accept.
~ Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

If I am in denial about my own weaknesses and sin, there will be a concomitant blindness to the greatness and glory of God.
~ Timothy Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God

The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists.
~ Isaac Asimov, 1920-1992, writer/professor of bio-chemistry

They say that love is blind, but it’s trauma that’s blind. Love sees what is.
~ Neil Strauss, 1969- , American writer

Trauma fractures comprehension as a pebble shatters a windshield. The wound at the site of impact spreads across the field of vision, obscuring reality and challenging belief.
~ Jane Leavy, 1951- , sports writer, biographer, author

Sunday, October 20, 2024 — Exodus: Salvation in the Desert — Escape

Total need requires total help
~ Karl Barth

Reflect, Resonate, Reevaluate, Respond

Taste and see that the Lord is sweet. He was made sweet to you because he liberated you. You had been bitter to yourself when you were occupied only with yourself. Drink the sweetness.
~ Augustine of Hippo, Sermon on the 33rd Psalm

“I said, ‘The truth is whatever you can get away with.’ ‘No, that’s journalism. The truth is whatever you can’t escape.'”
~ Greg Egan, 1961- , Australian Sci-fi writer

Exodus 14:10-22

Our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.
~ M. Scott Peck, 1936-2005, Psychiatrist & Author, People of the Lie

When people long for some kind of escape, it’s worth asking: What would “back to the land” mean if we understood the land to be where we are right now? Could “augmented reality” simply mean putting your phone down? And what (or who) is that sitting in front of you when you finally do?
~ Jenny Odell, 1986- , American Artist and writer

While the truth that we cannot escape God’s all-seeing eye may weigh us down at times, it is finally the only remedy for our uneasiness. If we wish to hide from the penetrating gaze of holy love, it is because we know it falls on what is unholy and unloving within us. Only under God’s steady gaze of love are we able to find the healing and restoration we so desperately need.
~ Marjorie Thompson, Author & Minister, Soul Feast

When we begin to talk about hope, it isn’t just some kind of mild-mannered, “I hope things get better” whim, a mere fleeting desire. It’s really the depths of what our hearts most deeply, deeply long for—and that is the very presence of God… This is what we’re being invited by God to: hope in him requires our imagination, our eagerness, our suffering. […] If we’re actually being called by God to hope in him, then it has to be a full-bodied hope.
~ Dan Allender, Psychologist & Author