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Thursday, November 23, 2017

Your Dying Spouse 409 - The Necessity {FMF}

There are things we can justifiably hate, and we're enjoined to love but can do so in excess...and thus we find a necessity of balance. This is the final part of a three-part series beginning with The Hate and The Love.

I can hate what's happening to my body, and to my life...if the premise that illness entered Creation through the Fall of Man, and original Sin, it's certainly justifiable. God hates it too. I'm in good company.

And I can love the parts of my life that make life bearable...my wife and dogs, the many friends whom I will never meet, and the fragments of my old life that remain intact. nothing wrong with this, except for one thing...I have noticed, in my heart, that they can tie me, rather desperately, to the world.

Case in point: I am writing these words a coupe of hours after watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and found the experience...well, depressing. For one thing, I felt very out of step with the reflection of popular culture, being, in a way, let on shore while the River of Life flows on...but perhaps more profoundly, the transience of ife really came through to me, that what's an object of love and joy today will tomorrow be cast aside. Not just consumer products, but beloved animals, and even people.

That's the world, and its loves.

So we need something more, I think, to keep from spinning off the rails, and the only more that we can have is a grounding in the transcendent.

The things we hate with justification can only be contained withing a framework of justice, and that's something we can't find within ourselves; it has to come from without, else it simply becomes personal preference or worse, something that slyly caters to our advantage.

Likewise, the object of love has to have something innate, something to make it worth loving beyond personal affection. There are thousands of people that claim to ';love' movies or television programmes, for instance, that hold nihilism as their object. The affection and fascination are real, but the object's not worthy. (As an example, take a show I like, Star Trek: Voyager. It's well-acted, well-made, and has an unfortunate undercurrent of hostility to religion, if not to the transcendent. It's a bit inconsistent; sometimes I wonder if there might not have been a deist among the writers, but I digress.)

So we need more.

And that more is God.

We're forever subordinate to a Creator; it's very true (and can be, for the 'freethinker', uncomfortable) that in Him we live and move and have your being.

Nowhere else.

If we hate alongside Him, and love within His pastured fields, we are fulfilling our purpose...but if we stray from these, we can become lost indeed. He can't go off on our own; we have to stay with the familiar, HIS familiar. (Familiar is the Five Minute Friday prompt this week.)

We can wander far astray, left to our own devices, and there may be no way back.

Musical accompaniment is from AJ Michalka, with All I've Ever Needed, from the film Grace Unplugged.


lease pardon my slow response to comments. I'm doing my best, and your comments are really precious to me.

Still hoping to get the new and improved version of Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart up and running in the near future. Just haven't had the energy to do it yet...but if you would like to read it, please say so in your comment and I'd be glad to send you a PDF (which should fit your Kindle).

I have another blog, "Starting The Day With Grace". The focus is a grace quote from someone you might not expect (like, say Mick Jagger) and a short commentary. I hope you'll join me.




Marley update... been moved to a sanctuary, and Bay County will revise their 'dangerous dog' codes.

WE MADE A DIFFERENCE!

And marley has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.


If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.








47 comments:

  1. This is a lovely reflection, Andrew, and one I need to toss around in my head a bit. I love the song too --- I recognize AJ from the show Aly & AJ --- I didn't watch it but still had kids watching Disney stuff at the time (a little bit). Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Praying for you, Barb, and the pups.

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    1. Paula, I'm so glad you like the song! I only new Aly and AJ from a Christmas song the did, "My Favourite Time Of Year". Never knew they were on Disney. A talented pair.

      Thank you so much for your prayers, and I LOVED your FMF post this week!

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  2. Beautiful reflection! It is amazing to me that we can even stray from the familiar and loving voice of our Father at all. But we do... Praying that we would be more attentive and obedient to His voice in the days ahead. Praying for you & Barb this morning.

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    1. Joanne, please forgive my log delay in replying, and thank you so much for your gracious words. We truly appreciate your prayers; things continue to run downhill, and prayers are really needed.

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  3. Andrew,
    I have seen Marley and his page. Nice to meet you. Beautiful thoughts on what is important. Certainly not the secular. It's not easy to live the life of God in this world but if we do it together we will stay strong.
    Blessings
    Janis
    Number 8 at FMF

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    1. Janis, please excuse my very tardy reply. I'm so glad you've met Marley! it was a hard fight, to make him safe.

      I truly appreciate your kind words...blessings back!

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  4. The more is indeed God! All of your talk of justice...I can't help but think of one of my fave verses Micah 6:8. Grateful for you brother. I'm in the 14 spot this week.

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    1. Tara, Micah 6:8 is perfect...thank you! And please, please forgive my late reply.

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  5. Great reflections, Andrew! So true, we need God. When everything else fades away, he is the one thing that remains.

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    1. Lesley, yes! And when all else fades away...we find that He is and always was everything.

      Please pardon my tardy response. It's been a hard few days.

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  6. This is very thought-provoking, Andrew: one big thing I take from what you've said is that if we hate what God hates and love what God loves, we will be OK. I was thinking about the hymn "Be Thou My Vision" earlier today -- we want to be able to see everything as God does and we need to stay close to Him (abide in Him) to do that. Thanks for this; it really spoke to me.

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    1. Jeannie, please forgive my very late reply...and thank you for the reference to "Be Thou My Vision". It's perfect!

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  7. You will be blessed because this, and many of your other posts, show you are pure in heart.

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    1. Jan, thank you so much for this, and please forgive my very late response. It's been a horrid week.

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  8. Yes! We definitely need the More that only God can give us. :)

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    1. Carol, yes indeed! Thank you so much for being here, and please pardon my tardy reply.

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  9. Hi Andrew, I caught bits of the Macy's Day Parade while I finished preparations for our dinner. Like you, I felt out of step with our culture--but I did enjoy the bands.Thank-you for pointing to our need for God.

    I will have time for reading in the next couple weeks and I am looking forward to reading Angela: A New Mexico Christmas.

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    1. Carol, thank you for this...I enjoyed the bands, too, but it's so hard to try to understand the culture.

      I truly hope you'll enjoy 'Angela', even more than I enjoyed writing about her.

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  10. Very good words here, Andrew. I look at Thanksgiving one day, and then immediately after, the consumer pinch hits most of the world who was thankful for what they had the day before. What changed overnight? It's really a paradox.

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    1. Erendira, you're so right...the juxtaposition between a day of Thanksgiving and the next (even sometimes the SAME day) of "I want it!" is really, really hard to deal with.

      Thank you so much for being here, and please pardon my delay in replying.

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  11. I couldn't agree more. We need more than artificial things in our lives, otherwise there's no real deep meaning and that's what we need. And God is the provider of all the good things in life. Thankfully, all that God is ours and we can experience him and his true love when we're ready to do so. Thanks for your profound thoughts. Blessings & prayers to you.

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    1. mari-Anna, thank you so much for this, and please forgive my long-delayed reply. God is indeed the provider of all that is good, and He is more than we could ever need!

      Thank you so much for the prayers. These are very hard days.

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  12. Very challenging thoughts, Andrew! Are the things we LOVE worthy of it? As a German I sometimes wonder at the word choice of especially Americans who use love very often. Over here, we tend to use the word only for a few things and people. Maybe we could do a bit more, but maybe we also choose to use it scarcely on purpose.
    Thanks for the challenge.
    Sorry to hear that the holiday season is overshadowed with pain. May you still find bits and pieces to enjoy!

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    1. Katha, first, please forgive the tardiness of my response.

      I completely agree that Americans overuse the word 'love' (English is not my original language). Scarcity and care confer value,and I'm afraid that the US has savagely devalued the word...one for which there is no substitute.

      The pain's really bad as I write this, but it's the first Sunday of Advent, a cause for joy...no matter what.

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  13. We definitely need to stay tethered to God. Familiar with his ways and trusting in his purposes. Not always easy, but thanks for the good reminder!

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    1. Mindy, I love the image of staying tethered to God! I used to ride horses, and an untethered (or unhobbled) horse would soon be a speck in the distance, chased fruitlessly (but vocally) by an upset horseman.

      Thank you so much for being here, and please excuse the late reply. It's been a bad week.

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  14. Another dose of reality my friend.

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    1. Thank you so much, Nomad...and please forgive my late reply.

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  15. "If we hate alongside Him, and love within His pastured fields, we are fulfilling our purpose...but if we stray from these, we can become lost indeed."Such true words, Andrew. Thanks for the reminder. Beautiful song offering, too. I had never heard it. Blessings and love and comfort to you and Barb!

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    1. Thank you so much for this, Gayl, and I am delighted that you enjoyed the song!

      Please forgive my tardy response. Blessings and love back, from both of us.

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  16. Good to see the recognition of God's hatred of sin and its results. Needed in my life currently

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    1. Annette, please forgive my long-delayed reply...and now that you are in my prayers.

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  17. “His familiar” - that is a great way to put it! Never thought of it like that before. I liked your phrase “grounding in the transcendent.” I’ll raise my teacup to that!

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    1. Pearl, my teacup is raised to you! Green tea with just a hint of raspberry?

      Please pardon my late reply. It was a very hard week.

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  18. We were disappointed in the Macy's Day Parade as well. In fact, we turned it off. But God always satisfies, even when we don't understand the whats or whys. Today I'm thankful you're still writing through the immense suffering, offering your best to God.

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    1. Debbie, I'm glad I'm not alone in my disappointment over the macy's parade. I did enjoy the dog show that followed it, though.

      I'm so grateful for your kind thoughts, and ask your forgiveness or my late reply.

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  19. Amen, brother! The older I get and the closer I get to Jesus, the less I care about the world and its concerns.

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    1. Anita, exactly! The closer we come to the end of the race Paul describes, the more we see Who is waiting for us.

      Thank you so much for being here, and please excuse my late reply.

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  20. The necessity of God in our lives! Amen, amen!

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    1. Carol, He is what we need, and ALL we need!

      Thanks so much for being here, and please pardon my tardiness in replying.

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  21. Being aware that we need GOD...great awareness! sadly, it often takes suffering for most of us to get to that point.

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    1. Martha, you're so right. We need to suffer to see. But it's worth it.

      Thanks so much for being here, and please excuse my tardy response.

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  22. Andrew, we haven't heard from you for several days. I'm praying extra hard for you.

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    1. Jan, I truly appreciate and need the prayers. I keep thinking it can't get worse (with me alive, that is)...but it does.

      It's been a long fall. I wonder where the bottom is?

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  23. Coincidentally, my quiet time was in Hebrews 12:27-29. It's an odd piece of Scripture to study, but is part of my ongoing effort to study the entire book and it just happened to be where I landed today. But the idea there is how God will remove what can be shaken--created things--so that what cannot be shaken remains. You have been shaken in this life, Andrew. But an unshakable kingdom awaits you, my friend. I'm praying that your days here linger, but understand that's not likely. You are in my thoughts and prayers, my friend!

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    1. Beth, thank you so much for this (and please excuse my late reply). Hebrews 12:29-29 is a good piece of Scripture, and it gives me comfort.

      Thank you so much for the prayers. They are really needed.

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  24. Thank you all so much for your comments; they are a treasure. I will try to respond to you individually, but I ask your patience. It's been a truly awful week, and my strength is failing.

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