APPLES OF GOLD




"A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver." Proverbs 25:11 NIV

"...when you give a party, invite the poor, the lame, the crippled
and the blind. That way lies real happiness for you." -Luke 14, Phillips

"My word is like the snow and the rain that come down from the sky to water the earth." -Isaiah 55:10, - Good News Bible

"The LORD is my shepherd, I have everything I need." - Psalm 23:1, New Living Translation

"He makes me lie down in green pastures,



He leads me beside quiet waters" - Psalm 23:2, NIV

Have you ever read that book, A Shepherd Looks at the 23rd Psalm? I forget the author's name, Philip somebody... It's been around for years

What an interesting book! He tells why it was so important for the sheep to have green pastures and still waters in their lives.

Philip Keller has written the book "A Shepherd Looks at the Twenty-Third Psalm." His thesis is that the psalm is written from the perspective of a sheep bragging about his shepherd across a fence to another sheep with a different owner.

So, when we read, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," the emphasis could be "the Lord is MY shepherd." Of course, we could have a discussion of each of the words in that opening line. - from a pastor's blog at http://www.fccofcc.com/blogs/day_blogs.cfm?d=10&m=9&y=2006

"LORD, my shepherd!
I don't need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
You find me quiet pools to drink from."
-Psalm 23, Peterson's 'The Message'

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for itself.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything, Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Love never dies.

-I Corinthians 13, Peterson's 'The Message'

The mountains and the hills will burst into singing,
And the trees will shout for joy.

- Isaiah 55:12, Today's English Version

"Above everything else be sure that you have real deep love for one another,
remembering how love can 'cover a multitude of sins.'" First Peter 4:8, Phillips

"This is a book about that most admirable of human virtues - courage. "Grace under pressure," Ernest Hemingway defined it." - John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage, p. 1

Jesus was quick to comfort them: "Courage! It's me. Don't be afraid." As soon as he climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Mark 6 - The Message

We tearme sleepe a death, and yet it is waking that kils us, and destroyes those spirits that are the house of life. Tis indeed a part of life that best expresseth death, for every man truely lives so long as hee acts his nature, or someway makes good the faculties of himselfe: Themistocles therefore that slew his Souldier in his sleepe was a mercifull executioner, 'tis a kinde of punishment the mildnesse of no lawes hath invented;.... It is that death by which we may be literally said to die daily, a death which Adam died before his mortality; a death whereby we live a middle and moderating point betweene life and death; in fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers, and an halfe adiew unto the world, and take my farewell in a Colloquy with God. - Sir Thomas Browne, Religo Medici (1643), Section 13.

But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said:
"Wake up, O sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you." - Ephesians 5:15 (NIV)

And God blesseth them, and God saith to them, `Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over fish of the sea, and over fowl of the heavens, and over every living thing that is creeping upon the earth.' - Genesis 1:28, Young's Literal Translation

"In a shoe box stuffed in an old nylon stocking
Sleeps the baby mouse I found in the meadow,
Where he trembled and shook beneath a stick
Till I caught him up by the tail and brought him in,
Cradled in my hand,
A little quaker, the whole body of him trembling,
His absurd whiskers sticking out like a cartoon-mouse,
His feet like small leaves,
Little lizard-feet,
Whitish and spread wide when he tried to struggle away,
Wriggling like a miniscule puppy.

Now he's eaten his three kinds of cheese and drunk from his bottle-cap watering-trough-
So much he just lies in one corner,
His tail curled under him, his belly big
As his head; his bat-like ears
Twitching, tilting toward the least sound.

Do I imagine he no longer trembles
When I come close to him?
He seems no longer to tremble." - from 'The Meadow Mouse' by Theodore Roethke

... keep your treasure in Heaven where there is neither moth nor rust to spoil it and nobody can break in and steal. For wherever your treasure is, you may be certain that your heart will be there too - Matthew 6:20,21, Phillips New Testament in Modern English

What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage. - Ezra Pound, American expatriate poet (1885 - 1972)

"Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.... Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved expresses the core truth of our existence" - Henri J. M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved, pp. 27, 28

"For we know how dearly God loves us because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love." - Romans 5:5, The New Living Translation

A Psalm of the Sons of Korah

A white-tailed deer drinks from the creek;
I want to drink God,
deep draughts of God.
I'm thirsty for God-alive.
I wonder, "Will I ever make it—
arrive and drink in God's presence?"
I'm on a diet of tears—
tears for breakfast, tears for supper.
All day long
people knock at my door,
Pestering,
"Where is this God of yours?"

These are the things I go over and over,
emptying out the pockets of my life.
I was always at the head of the worshiping crowd,
right out in front,
Leading them all,
eager to arrive and worship,
Shouting praises, singing thanksgiving—
celebrating, all of us, God's feast!
- Psalm 42:1-4, The Message, (MSG)

"A noiseless patient spider,
I marked where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Marked how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be formed, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul." - Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)

"See how much the Father has loved us! His love is so great that we are called God's children - and so, in fact, we are. This is why the world does not know us: it has not known God.... The message you heard from the very beginning is this: we must love one another. We must not be like Cain; he... murdered his own brother Abel.
- I John 3, Today's English Version

"The more I become identified with God, the more will I be identified with all the others who are identified with Him. His Love will live in all of us. His Spirit will be our One Life, the Life of all of us and Life of God. And we shall love one another and God with the same Love with which He loves us and Himself. This love is God Himself." - Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p.65

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Now the earth was formless and empty,
darkness was over the surface of the deep,
and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
God saw that the light was good,
and He separated the light from the darkness.
God called the light "day," and the darkness he called 'night'.
And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water."
So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it.
And it was so.
God called the expanse "sky."
And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear."
And it was so.
God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas."

And God saw that it was good." - Genesis 1:1-10 (NIV)

At first was neither Being nor Nonbeing.
There was not air nor yet sky beyond.
What was its wrapping? Where? In whose protection?
Was Water there, unfathomable and deep?

There was no death then, nor yet deathlessness;
of night or day there was not any sign.
The One breathed without breath, by its own impulse.
Other than that was nothing else at all.

Darkness was there, all wrapped around by darkness,
and all was Water indiscriminate. Then
that which was hidden by the Void, that One, emerging,
stirring, through power of Ardor, came to be.

In the beginning Love arose,
which was the primal germ cell of the mind. -The Hymn of the Origins, Rig Veda X. 129

Ahhh. Another pagan verse... I like these too much..

I best stick to the Bible.

"But I say to all
Of you who will listen to me:
'Love your enemies,'
'Do good to those who hate you,'
'Bless those who curse you,'
'And pray for those who treat you badly.'

As for the man who hits you
On one cheek
Offer him the other one as well!
And if a man is taking away your coat,
Do not stop him from taking your shirt as well.

Give to everyone who asks you,
And when a man has taken what belongs to you,
Don't demand it back.
Treat men exactly as you would
Like them to treat you.

If you love only those who love you,
What credit is that to you?
Even sinners love those who love them!
And if you do good only to those who do good to you,
What credit is that to you?
Even sinners do that.

And if you lend only to those from whom
You hope to get your money back,
What credit is that to you?
Even sinners lend to sinners
And expect to get their money back.

NO, you are to love your enemies
And do good and lend without hope of return.

Your reward will be wonderful
And you will be sons of the most high.
For he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked!" - Luke 6: 27-35, The New Testament in Modern English, J. B. Phillips

"'Love your enemies!' Mark you, not simply those who happen not to be your friends, but your enemies, your positive and active enemies. Either this is a mere Oriental hyperbole, a bit of verbal extravagance, meaning only that we should, as far as we can, abate our animosities, or else it is sincere and literal. Outside of certain cases of intimate individual relation, it seldom has been taken literally. Yet it makes one ask the question: Can there in general be a level of emotion so unifying, so obliterative of differences between man and man, that even enmity may come to be an irrelevant circumstance and fail to inhibit the friendlier interests aroused? If positive well-wishing could attain so supreme a degree of excitement, those who were swayed by it might well seem superhuman beings. Their life would be morally discrete from the life of other men, and there is no saying, in the absence of positive experience of an authentic kind,..., - what the effects might be: they might conceivably transform the world." - William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

Psychologically and in principal, the precept 'Love your enemies is not self-contradictory. It is merely the extreme limit of a kind of magnanimity with which, in the shape of pitying tolerance of our oppressors, we are fairly familiar. Yet if radically followed, it would involve such a breach with our instinctive springs of action as a whole, and with the present world's arrangements, that a critical point would practically be passed, and we should be born into another kingom of being. Religioius emotion makes us feel that other kingdom to be close at hand, within our reach. (emphasis added) - William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

Well, that's what the new birth is supposed to do- actually make it happen

That is right, Gail, and it is why I posted Mr. James' obsevation. It seems possible and then at times it seems sooo impossible. The answer, the solution is found I think in these words of the one who completely identified with God:

"I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without me ye can do nothing." - John 15:5 (KJV)

"... the faith that affected my life, the only real faith I had, was faith in perfection. But I could not have said what perfection consisted of or what its purpose might be. I tried to achieve intellectual perfection; I studied everything I could, everything that life gave me a chance to study. I tried to perfect my will and set up rules for myself that I endeavored to follow. I strove for physical perfection by doing all the exercies that develop strength and agility and by undergoing all the hardships that discipline the self in endurance and perseverance. I took all this to be perfection. The starting point of it all was, of course moral perfection, but this was soon replaced by a belief in overall perfection, that is a desire to be better in the eyes of other people. And this effort to be better in the eyes of other people was very quickly displaced by a longing to be stronger than other people, that is, more renowned, more important, wealthier than others." - Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.
- Saint Paul in a letter to the Galatians 1:9-11 (NIV)

"I have come in order that you might have life - life in all its fullness ." - Jesus of Nazareth, as reported by his disciple : - John 10:10

God made a little Gentian -
It tried - to be a Rose -
And failed - and all the Summer laughed -
But just before the Snows -

There rose a Purple Creature -
That ravished all the Hill -
And Summer hid her Forehead -
And Mockery - was still -

The Frosts were her condition -
The Tyrian* would not come
Until the North - invoke it -
Creator - Shall I - bloom ? - Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), Poem #442

*Tyrian - 1513, from L. Tyrius "of Tyre," island-city in the Levant,.... Especially in ref. to Tyrian purple, a dye made there in ancient times from certain mollusks.
(Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper)

My period had come for Prayer-
No other Art - would do -
My Tactics missed a rudiment -
Creator - Was it you?

God grows above - so those who pray
Horizons - must ascend -
And so I stepped upon the North
To see this Curious Friend -

His house was not - no sign had He -
By Chimney - nor by Door
Could I infer his Residence -
Vast Prairies of Air

Unbroken by a Settler -
Were all that I could see -
Infinitude - Had'st Thou no face
That I might look on Thee?

The Silence condescended -
Creation stopped - for Me -
But awed beyond my errand -
I worshipped - did not "pray" -

- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), poem #564

Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. -- Paul's letter to the Romans 8:26-28, The Message

"When I do something wrong I tend to alibi, to make excuses, blame someone else. Until I can accept whatever it is that I have done, I am only widening the gap between my real and my ontological self, and I am thus excluding myself so that I begin to think that I am unforgiveable.

We need to be forgiven:

To be forgiven in this time when the fish are dying in our rivers; in this time of poison gas dumped on the ocean floor and in the less and less breathable air of our cities, of children starving; being burned to death in wars which stumble on; being attacked by rats in their cribs...

I heard a man of brilliance cry out that God has withdrawn from nations when they have turned from Him, and surely we are stiff-necked people; why should He not withdraw?

But then I remember Jonah accusing God of overlenience, of foolishness, mercy, and compassion.

We desperately need the foolishness of God." - Madeleine L'Engle (1918- ), from her autobiography, A Circle of Quiet

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. .... For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength
Saint Paul's first letter to the church at Corinth 1:18,25

"...Peter went up to the flat roof to pray. It was about noon, and he was hungry. But while lunch was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw the sky open, and something like a large sheet was let down by its four corners. In the sheet were all sorts of animals, reptiles, and birds. Then a voice said to him,
'Get up, Peter; kill and eat them.'
'Never, Lord,' Peter declared. 'I have never in all my life eaten anything forbidden by our Jewish laws.'
The voice spoke again, 'If God says something is acceptable, don't say it isn't.'
The same vision was repeated three times and then the sheet was pulled up to heaven....

....Peter told them. 'You know it is against the Jewish laws for me to come into a Gentile home like this. But God has shown me that I should never think of anyone as impure. So I came as soon as I was sent for....'

.... 'I see very clearly that God doesn't show partiality. In every nation he accepts those who fear him and do what is right.'"
- from Saint Luke's account of the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 10,(NLT)

It was about 1874 that Sri Ramakrishna interested himself actively in Christianity....
One day, while Sri Ramakrishna was seated in the drawing room of another devotee's home, he saw a picture of the Madonna and Child. Absorbed in contemplation of this picture, he saw it suddenly become living and effulgent. An ecstatic love for Christ filled Sri Ramakrishna's heart, and a vision came to him of a Christian church in which devotees were burning incense and lighting candles before Jesus. For three days Sri Ramakrishna lived under the spell of this experience. On the fourth day, while he was walking in a grove at Dakshineswar, he saw a person of serene countenance approaching with his gaze fixed on him. From the inmost recesses of Sri Ramakrishna's heart came the realization, "This is Jesus, who poured out his heart's blood for the redemption of mankind. This is none other than Christ, the embodiment of love." The Son of Man then embraced Sri Ramakrishna.... Thus was Sri Ramakrishna convinced of Christ's divinity.
- - Swami Prabhavananda, The Sermon on the Mount According to Vedanta, (1963)

Jesus said, ...""I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel."
Saint Luke's Gospel 7:9 (NIV)

"What are we to consider the greatest commandment of all?"

"The first and most important one is this," Jesus replied - "'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one: and thou shalt love the Lord thay God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.'"
- The Gospel of Mark, Phillips' The New Testament in Modern English


"Sometimes with the Heart
Seldom with the Soul
Scarcer once with the Might
Few - love at all"
- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), Poem #1680

OF BEING

I know this happiness
is provisional:

.........the looming presences-
.........great suffering, great fear-

.........withdraw only
.........into peripheral vision:

but ineluctable this shimmering
of wind in the blue leaves:

this flood of stillness
widening the lake of sky:

this need to dance,
this need to kneel:

......................this mystery:



PRIMARY WONDER

Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; cap and bells.

once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng's clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.

-Denise Levertov (1923-1997)

"But gray - nuance - is what is going to save the world. Not black or white."

- Sean Scully (1945), American printmaker and renowned abstract painter

The LORD'S lovingkindnesses indeed never cease,
For His compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.

"The LORD is my portion," says my soul,
"Therefore I have hope in Him."

The LORD is good to those who wait for Him,
To the person who seeks Him.
It is good that he waits silently
For the salvation of the LORD.

- Lamentations of Jeremiah (circa 586 B.C.) 3:22-26


Let my first Knowing be of thee
With morning's warming Light -

- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) from poem #1218

"Because of Christ and our faith in him,
we can now come fearlessly into God's presence, assured of his glad welcome."
St. Paul to the Ephesians, 3:12. (NLT)

"Without wavering, let us hold tightly to the hope we say we have,
for God can be trusted to keep his promise....
Do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord, no matter what happens....

We have faith that assures our salvation.
What is Faith?
It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen.
It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see....

So take a new grip with your tired hands and stand firm on your shaky legs. Mark out a straight path for your feet then those who follow you, though they are weak and lame, will not stumble and fall but will beome strong." From chapter 10,11 and 12 of Hebrews, (NLT)

Faith - is the Pierless Bridge
Supporting what We see
Unto the Scene that We do not-
Too slender for the eye

It bears the Soul as bold
As it were rocked in Steel
With Arms of Steel at either side -
It joins - behind the veil

To what, could We presume
The Bridge would cease to be
To Our far, vacillating Feet
A first Necessity.

- Emily Dickinson (1830 -1886)

"Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our sufficiency is from God, who has qualified us to be ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code but in the Spirit; for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life."
- II Corinthians 3:5-6


"If we look beyond ourselves at that which is greater than we, then we can feel called to help others in just the moment when we ourselves need help most urgently - and , astonishingly, we can help. A power works through us which is not of us.... Perhaps we remember other situations when an action of a person, whose life we knew was disrupted, had a priestly, awakening , and healing effect upon us. It did not come from him, but was in him, as it did not come from us, but was in us.... Against both arrogance and despair stands the word that our qualification does not come from us, nor from any man or any institution, not even from the church, but from God. And if it comes from God it is His Spiritual Presence in our spirit."
- Paul Tillich, The Eternal Now, chapter seven, "Spiritual Presence"