A beggar can be expected to share the scraps he has collected. A prince can be expected to treat someone to a full course feast. Each offers supplies in accordance with his realm. When we say that God does or gives something in accordance with his kingdom, grace, or glory, we expect to find unique dimensions defining the activity or supplies.

My God will use his glorious riches to give you everything you need. He will do this through Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:19

This saying from Paul is intended to raise the expectations of his readers. They were to expect God to address their needs in accordance with his significant riches. As such, groceries, precious metals, and real estate are not part of Christ’s glorious inheritance. They are certainly in his control and he gives commands concerning our requests for everything, even when the things are in our power.

Perhaps it would be good to recall that Paul had just finished saying that he has everything he needs. This saying shows Paul’s contentment with God’s gifts and his awareness that God gives in line with extreme generosity and unlinited means and resources. This means that a commensurate gift or a gift from the glorious riches does not need to be 6-figured, made of precious stones or metals. Exact change for $3.65 from an unexpected source just when one needs it is a riches in glory gift.

Say “Terror” and all kinds of pictures spring to mind, many photo-shopped and many unrecognizable. Black men were supposed to be a terror to Caucasian women, but the rape and incest was coming from White men. Hooded Klansmen, nationalist talking heads, any nation teeming with swords and not food, and masked religious people calling for America’s death are all cut from the same cloth. Let me clean up the montage just a little. Suicidal killers seem to be a Jewish invention. There may be other individuals who thought and followed through on the thought “Let me die with my enemies” but Samson, the first real and successful strongman, was a Hebrew. The ability to silence one’s neighbour has been the tool of bad actors from earliest times.

To the guillotine

God did not silence Satan. God locked up – first prison on record – some of the angels in thick darkness, rendering them useless to Satan. God did not execute the leader of rebellion in heaven. He wisely removed him from his court: flung him far away, from heaven to earth. Our modern cosmology allows us to think of heaven and earth as neighbours, but to the ancients they are distant realities. The terrorism of some nations is cleverly hidden behind platitudes and empty gestures: saluting, parading, slogans, maxims, and punchlines. The backstop is always going to be: worship the state or die.

For as the heaven is high above the earth, [so] great is his mercy toward them that fear him. KJV

Ps 103:11

Killing offenders and the innocent in the attempt to be right, both the sacred and the secular worlds have been terrorizing people with loss of liberty and life, the very things both the secular law and sacred conventions guarantee to all.

One nation cage

Our greatest word-worker is Paul, a man who terrorized the church to the n^th degree. If a man like that can tell you that the whole of his heritage, up to being confronted by the Risen Christ, seems like rubbish, do we not need to make a similar leap? People are afraid of being sent to prison: it is supposed to be a good thing to be chastened and corrected, but the state does not guarantee anyone’s safety, even in prison. How deluded can people be in thinking that throwing the book (Bible and law) at someone can be a reliable means of realizing God’s will! We should never alloww ourselves to be trapped in a patriotic maze, especially when the nation is one huge cage for demonic ventutres.

Mobs that call for blood

Forgive me for thinking that the nations teeming with guns and violent mobs are capitalizing on the potential to silence people who ask questions and people they think are undeserving of the common rights and privileges. If you can incite a mob to kill and maim you are in very bad company. When you can no longer incite a mob to follow you blindly you are a toothless terrorist. When people reject the priorities of their only guide (Moses/Jew, Constitution/Americans, Jesus/Christian, etc.) they are in very bad company. This helps us understand why the American death trap persists – scapegoating the unpatriotic and unbaptized by forcing people to fear expressing their opinion even dispassionately. To express ones views passionately is an invitation to the assassins.

No-one can terrorize a worshipper of the true God. One may think that Elijah’s fear of Jezebel points to the contrary, or that the sword wielded by secular power should scare people into doing the right thing. That did not work at Sinai, when the the people said “yeah” and did not follow through. It did not work in Babylon when only three Hebrew individuals refuse to worship a false God. If you were not one of the guilty before God would you be stoning and hanging people? Since we know that God has no interest in condemning anyone – we are all born into – what would appropriate chastening look like, and there is no law to be applied to those who have escaped the terror of sin and death.

We find no-one saying “I love the law” except the songwriter with a fried-conscience in Psalm 119. If you love the law, then you ought to love its consequences. But how can you, knowing that where you are not could not be possible if the law had its way? We can treasure thge glorious freedom in Christ or revel in terrorizing our peers with our denial of our stated treasures, namely, sin, law, and death.

What faith is driving the agendas of the GOP and religious fundamentalism?

Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

Luke 3:7

With a message like Luke 3:7 [“kept saying” is a better translation than “said”] it is a wonder of divine design that no hardline disciple of Moses lifted a stone or raised an allegation against John. Noone could touch John until the appointed time. John was, however, not a one-tune singer. He had several targeted themes in his repertoire.

1. The baptism related to sin remission
2. All flesh shall see God’s salvation
3. Descent from Abraham was irrelevant
4. Sharing with the havenots
5. Public officials must be honest
6. Military discipline demands no violence, no false accusations, and contentment with one’s wages

Immigrant crowd dilemma

Every time, the people of Israel take a stand for decency the State rubs its hands in western dung and plays the whore for applause. Banning people who are different is an Israeli-American pastime. John would definitely recognize them and ask them to be quite since a felled tree without roots will not rise.

It is thought that godly people have no time for humour or recreation while some people think that time is running out and that everyone needs to shift into a kind of super-proselytization mode.  Good fun is part of God’s design and to deny it amounts to dangerous extremism. Hearing God laugh at the people putting distance between themselves and God’s king should wake us up to divine humour.

Fig leaves wardrobe

The attempt to cover the their nakedness with fig leaves has to rank as one of the all time pathetic fixit ventures. In their ignorance of both good and evil God must have at least smiled.  He had the answer to their problem!

Glory vistas

Moses had seen a burning bush, the Passover, the Red Sea Crossing and the fiery pillar and the cloud.  As he was receiving the covenant he determined to see more of God’s person.   “Show me your glory” he requested, only to be told “You’d die in the process”. There was nothing to see: God is invisible and lives in unapproachable light. God decided to humour him. “Catch a glimpse of my backside!”

Baal’s bowel movement

When Elijah cornered the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel he poked fun at their attempts to get an answer from Baal. “Perhaps he’s in the toilet!”, Elijah said.

Communion miracle

The communion is a memory exercise. There is no death-defying, physical healing in the elements, and remembering Christ’s sacrifice delivers nothing beside the building up of faith and the demonstration of our confidence in Christ’s return. It is evident that all some people know about God is that he gives gifts to his loved ones. God must have a wry smile as Catholics and charismatics pervert the communion.