Adventures in the Word

One morning a couple of years ago, while sitting in Starbucks, I met Bill Newman. I was writing in my journal as normal, and he – over time – had noticed that I had done this frequently. He was obviously curious because he walked right over to me and introduced himself and asked me about it. Now this has never happened to me before or since, so it was sort of odd, but as I look back on it I’m sure that God was in it.

So I told him that I had been journaling for about 25 years. This impressed him and he right away suggested that I write an article on my experience for a ministry in Arkansas that he was familiar with called Christview Ministries.

This provoked me to start pondering why I journal. I had never really put into words why I did it. But journaling is one of the few things in my life that has sustained me over the years. I’ve not stuck to too many things, but journaling is certainly one of them. Clearly I’ve needed this thing in my life and so it was good to spend some time just considering why it’s so important to me.

Christview Ministries were nice enough to publish the article on their website and they’ve kept it there since 2005.

On a related note, some have described blogging as ‘public journaling.’ That’s an oxymoron to me since I’ve always considered my journals private. I keep all twelve of mine in our safe! I don’t even let my wife read my journals! And you’ll notice that I don’t go into a lot of personal angst here on this blog, BUT YOU BET I DO IN MY JOURNAL! But maybe I’ll return the favor one day and start opening up more here since I do enjoy reading the angst of others. I hope my enjoyment is not just overactive voyeurism.

I guess if comments on my blog were more active (that is, if I got more than ‘zero comments’), maybe I’d consider it more, but there’s something that sounds really creepy about opening my life up to . . . the effluvia? Where’s the catharsis in that? Hmmm.

But check out my article and let me know what you think. While you’re there check out Cristview Ministries too. I’ve not been there, but it looks really beautiful, and John and Judy Turner, the proprietors, seem to be very caring, wise people who love our Lord.

I continue to slog through N.T. Wright’s The New Testament and the People of God and ran across this statement that I thought was concisely perceptive. In the context he’s talking about “types of dualities” and how the Jews thought of God and themselves at the most fundamental level.

How we see heaven and earth and our place in them – or is it, it? – makes a huge difference in how we live.

Here’s the quote:

. . . most [first-century] Jews would have [been] in favour of a more integrated cosmology and anthropology. Most Jews would have held that humans, though thoroughly at home in the space-time universe, are also open to the world of heaven, to the presence and influence of the divine. Worship and prayer are not attempts to reach across the void, but the conscious opening of human life to the god-dimension which is ever-present.
– N T Wright
Emphasis mine.

The footnote is also instuctive. It says,

A good example of this belief in the immediate presence of the god-dimension of reality is 2 Kgs. 6.17.

Which I will quote here with the verse before it also:

16 “Don’t be afraid,” the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”
17 And Elisha prayed, “O LORD, open his eyes so he may see.” Then the LORD opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

God is closer than we think.