Truth, Beauty, and Goodness in God’s Answer to Prayer
You may know a person who is struggling to discern whether an impressive answer to prayer has come from the human mind. This post offers an answer that I think will make you smile.
Beauty
Feeling: Mozart, Jesus, and evolution
Imagine a school of feeling that cultivates sensitive responses to the full spectrum of varieties of beauty–actual and potential. Imagine courses in the arts, studies of Jesus, and experiential education in living the ups and downs of evolution.
The supreme desire and the supreme joy
Evan: I came across a definition of the gospel that puzzles me because it’s different, but it really attracts me. The gospel—the supreme desire to do the Father’s will coupled with the supreme joy of the faith realization of sonship with God.
Who am I? Let’s corral the craziness.
What answer to the question “Who am I?” establishes truth in your core identity, makes any remaining craziness peripheral and much easier to deal with, and opens up enhanced beauty and goodness for your contribution to sanity in this world?
Anger and the Beautiful Wholeness of Righteousness
Jesus reply to the dilemma of whether or not to pay taxes to Caesar is examined through history, psychology, neuroscience, and truth . . . beginning with Psalm 96: “Worship the Lord in holy splendor. . . . He will judge the peoples with equity. Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice . . . The Lord will judge the world with righteousness; and the peoples with his truth.”
Chauffeuring the spirit
Like a chauffeur who drives a dignitary around here and there, so that the dignitary may function and manifest, our first duty and privilege is to facilitate the entry of the beautiful, indwelling spirit into action.
The Easy Version
Too busy to read the book? Here are one-page summaries of the three parts and the seven chapters, which enable you to participate with pleasure and progress.
Why Laugh?
Laughter? Reasons? Causes? Occasions? A child securely strapped to the back of his mother on a wonderful hike; the awareness of being with you–whom I love!–at the beginning of each podcast episode; the complete security that follows total commitment to the will of God; good news; a good joke; the call to rejoice.
Walking in beauty of heaven and earth
Walking in beauty integrates person and community with land, cosmos, and Deity. The heavenly pattern of that integration is truth that we can taste, “on earth as it is in heaven.” The goodness of beauty assures us that we can share this taste with others. Trusting the promise of our personal and planetary destiny, we relax and enjoy the unfolding. Not that life is easy, but the meaning and value of our struggles make the yoke light.