Il Nostro Meraviglioso Dio

Il Nostro Meraviglioso Dio

Jer 23:24
Potrebbe uno nascondersi nei nascondigli senza che io lo veda?», dice l'Eterno. «Non riempio io il cielo e la terra?», dice l'Eterno.

Can anyone hide in secret places
so that I cannot see him?"
declares the LORD.
"Do not I fill heaven and earth?"
declares the LORD.

Our God is big!!
Il Nostro Dio e` grande!

I was reminded of this while reading Wired Magazine this week. They feature some images from the Hubble Telescope! Have a look at the other images too!

Our Creator God fills the universe. His splendor is everywhere…and He loves and know even me!

Il Nostro Dio mi conosce !

Reason, Faith and Revolution

In today’s New York Times there is a review by Stanley Fish of Terry Eagleton’s book Reason, Faith and Revolution. It is worthwhile reading the whole article as it is part of the ongoing global debate initiated by the likes of atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens (from whom Eagleton derived contemptuously the fictional character ‘Ditchkins’.)

The interesting thing is that Eagleton does not profess to be a Christian; however he attacks the poor arguments of Ditchkins in their war against religion and in particular Christianity.

In the opening sentence of the last chapter of his new book, “Reason, Faith and Revolution,” the British critic Terry Eagleton asks, “Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God?” His answer, elaborated in prose that is alternately witty, scabrous and angry, is that the other candidates for guidance — science, reason, liberalism, capitalism — just don’t deliver what is ultimately needed. “What other symbolic form,” he queries, “has managed to forge such direct links between the most universal and absolute of truths and the everyday practices of countless millions of men and women?”

Progress, liberalism and enlightenment — these are the watchwords of those, like Hitchens, who believe that in a modern world, religion has nothing to offer us. Don’t we discover cures for diseases every day? Doesn’t technology continually extend our powers and offer the promise of mastering nature? Who needs an outmoded, left-over medieval superstition?

And as for the vaunted triumph of liberalism, what about “the misery wreaked by racism and sexism, the sordid history of colonialism and imperialism, the generation of poverty and famine”? Only by ignoring all this and much more can the claim of human progress at the end of history be maintained: “If ever there was a pious myth and a piece of credulous superstition, it is the liberal-rationalist belief that, a few hiccups apart, we are all steadily en route to a finer world.”

“Self-sufficient” gets to the heart of what Eagleton sees as wrong with the “brittle triumphalism” of liberal rationalism and its ideology of science. From the perspective of a theistic religion, the cardinal error is the claim of the creature to be “self-originating”: “Self-authorship,” Eagleton proclaims, “is the bourgeois fantasy par excellence,”


The book starts out witty and then gets angrier and angrier. (There is the possibility, of course, that the later chapters were written first; I’m just talking about the temporal experience of reading it.) I spent some time trying to figure out why the anger was there and I came up with two explanations.

One is given by Eagleton, and it is personal. Christianity may or may not be the faith he holds to (he doesn’t tell us), but he speaks, he says, “partly in defense of my own forbearers, against the charge that the creed to which they dedicated their lives is worthless and void.”

The other source of his anger is implied but never quite made explicit. He is angry, I think, at having to expend so much mental and emotional energy refuting the shallow arguments of school-yard atheists like Hitchens and Dawkins. I know just how he feels.

Consumerism 3

Did it ever notice that Jesus talked a lot about money; in fact, He talked about money more than He talked about heaven and hell—combined? Ever wonder why the subject of His parables concerned finances more than any other topic?

Here are a few basic principles about dealing with God’s money.

1. Every cent we have belongs to God, not to us. If every part of us is surrendered to Christ and His will then so are our wallets. God has entrusted to us to be good stewards, not owners. The goal of being good stewards of God’s money is ultimately to bring Him glory.

2. God looks at our attitude toward money, not our quantity. Some people think that having a great amount of wealth is sinful and wrong. However, nowhere in Scripture will you find God condemning those who have a large amount of money or possessions. He condemns those whose attitudes about money are wrong. It’s always a matter of the heart with God. Our finances are no exception.

3. How we use our money will reflect the true intentions of our heart. Take a look at your chequebook or your next bank statement. Notice where you have spent your money in the last month or two? That’s where your heart is. (Where you treasure, there your heart will be also.)


How I handle my money is not a financial matter as much as it is a spiritual matter. Bringing tithes and offerings before the Lord is a form of worship. How I handle my money has eternal consequences (ie my use of it can effect others). And I grasped that the Lord was pleased with me when I handled my finances wisely and discerningly.

I just watched Into the Wild, a 2007 film based on the life of Christopher McCandless. Chris is a top student, but in an act of rebellion agaisnt everythibg he sees as wrong with society, including his parents, whom he perceives as materialistic, manipulative, and domineering, McCandless destroys all of his credit cards and identification documents, donates $24,000 (nearly his entire savings) to Oxfam, and sets out on a off to travel alone to Alaska and experience its nature firsthand.

Along the way, he abandons his automobile in the course of a flash flood, to hitchhike after burning the remainder of his dwindling cash supply. He acquires a Perception Sundance 12 open-water kayak and goes down the Colorado River, into Mexico, and later returns to America via freight train to Los Angeles.
He encounters many unconventional individuals along the way, such as a group of hippies, a farm owner and a lonely leather worker who offers to adopt and be a grandfather to McCandless. McCandless purposefully trudges onward to his final destination, arriving in the wilds of Alaska nearly two years after his initial departure.

The thing that I found so tragic about this story was that McCandless’ quest for meaning was to be found all around him, yet he persisted to go to Alaska in search of it. He met great people whose lives he influenced – he seemed to be a really nice guy. His thoughts at the time can be summarized in one of his statements to one of the people he meets: “I will miss you too, but you are wrong if you think that the joy of life comes principally from the joy of human relationships. God's place is all around us, it is in everything and in anything we can experience. People just need to change the way they look at things.”

He seems driven to through off what he perceives as a straightjacket of materialism and people.

He starts living in a Bus, used as a shelter for moose hunters. McCandless finds joy in living off the land and begins to write a book of his adventures. As the spring thaw arrives and he seeks to return from the wild, McCandless is cut off from civilization by the torrents of a swelled river. As his food supply of small game dwindles, he resorts to eating indigenous plants. Although he consults a book that he brought along in order to identify edible plants in the wild, he confuses an edible and a poisonous variety, which shuts down his digestive system and causes him to starve to death.

It is not until he is dying that he realises that it is all about the relationships you form along the way. His dying words written in his journal are: Happiness is only real when shared.

In other words, what he was searching for, he ignored in his quest to find it.
How often do we do the same thing though? We are so determined to get to the goal, but the life God is wanting us to live is around us waiting for us to engage with it. More specifically, we should not relentlessly pursue any goal, no matter how noble, at the expense of our relationships – with God and with others.

Perhaps just a little reminder that the time and energy we invest into relationships, even it is across the world, are worth it.

Consumerism 2

Consider these facts:

1. Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two U.S. dollars a day.
2. Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
3. Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn't happen.
4. According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”
That is about 210,000 children each week, or just under 11 million children under five years of age, each year.
5.Consider the global priorities in spending in 1998

Global Priority/$U.S. Billions
Cosmetics in the United States?/8
Ice cream in Europe/11
Perfumes in Europe and the United States/12
Pet foods in Europe and the United States/17
Business entertainment in Japan/35
Cigarettes in Europe/50
Alcoholic drinks in Europe/105
Narcotics drugs in the world/400
Military spending in the world/780

And compare that to what was estimated as additional costs to achieve universal access to basic social services in all developing countries:

Global Priority/$U.S. Billions
Basic education for all /6
Water and sanitation for all /9
Reproductive health for all women /12
Basic health and nutrition /13

Consumerism

I have been prompted by a friends blog to dig out some thoughts on consumerism. Joseph McAuley has a great blog which is worth a look.

This has been very relevant to Andrea and myself while we are in Italy. We are on a reduced income which is in $NZ and spending Euro. We attempting to live frugally - at least in a different dimension to what we were in New Zealand.

Relevant magazine had a great article on consumerism some time ago. I have summarised some of it below or you can read the full article here.


In our society, we're surrounded by the push to consume. We're constantly bombarded with the newest gadget or trinket we supposedly cannot live without. How do we combat the pull toward materialism, and what does simplicity look like in the 21st Century?

Brian McLaren: This is a major theme I’ve been exploring in recent years, because I believe these days it’s the economy, not the nation-state, that is driving the world. It would be good for people to consider the ways capitalism can become a form of idolatry.

One of the most powerful things the next generation of emerging Christians can do is be at the heart of a new global movement for ethical buying and fair trade. We can use the power of markets for good, just as they have been used for evil in so many ways—environmentally, socially and politically. It’s a question of the Kingdom of God—how would we expect economics to work in the Kingdom of God, as opposed to the systems of this world?

Steve Brown:How should we then live? With simplicity, compassion and a realization that our hearts are where our treasure is.


N.T. Wright: Money becomes a god very, very easily. So giving it away cheerfully and wisely is a step toward really saying money is not the ruling force in our lives. Money is not the thing that makes you a genuine human being. Saying that is so counterintuitive in Western culture.

Nancy Ortberg: I think every Christian should take very seriously what they do with their finances. A starting place is tithing, to give 10 percent joyfully every time you get paid, and give it back to the Church, to help the Church be the force that it should be in the world. After you’ve got the habit of tithing down, start figuring out how much is enough. I used to tell my kids, “The lower the ceiling is on enough, the happier you’re going to be.”

When you can wake up in the morning or spend your day free from needing to run to the mall or look online and buy all this stuff, you’re going to have a freedom in your spirit that’s going to be a great way to live.

Beyond yourself, figure out how much is enough, and then start thinking of serious ways in which to give away boatloads of money. Find organizations you care about that are making a difference. How do you release your money back into the world to do good when you have enough clothes in your closet and enough cars in your garage? The freedom that comes from that really teaches us a lot about God. It also teaches us there’s no end to His resources. And I’m not advocating just giving away all of your money, but when you have enough, it really becomes incumbent on us as Christians to use our money for a strong force in the world.

Cindy Jacobs: God has worked in this generation a desire to make the world a better place for all. This means grappling with issues of eliminating systemic poverty, taking care of the environment and living with each other in a kinder, more relational way.

For this reason, I believe the question is, How much is enough? We need to make wealth to steward it to create jobs, help single moms, the elderly and find ways to deal with the AIDS crisis. Our lifestyle should not be “me” centric, but “Kingdom of God” centric.

When you lose 'it'

Here are some final thoughts from Craig Groeschel's Book.

Maybe its time for you to ask him for it. For him to become the true center of your life.
- First, I had to admit that I had lost it. I’ve lost it. Ive taken my eyes off the prize. I’ve been distracted from a wholehearted pursuit of Christ.
- Second, decide to get it back. My role as a pastor was interfering with my passion for God. Slowly I started to fall in love with God again – not with his bride, the church.

I’ve made three prayers a part of my daily prayer life. These heartfelt and dangerous prayers have helped me to keep it.

Stretch Me
God wants to stretch you. He wants you to live by faith, to believe him. It will mean putting yourself in new environments. Experiencing something new. Something different. Ask God to stretch you. Then follow his direction. He might direct you to change your leadership style or the way you preach. He might challenge you to go to a third world country and leave behind part of your heart. He might ask you to give like you’ve never given before. He might lead you to do something your closest friends believe is foolish and impossible. Attempt what others say can’t be done. You have more in you than you realize. God has put more in you than anyone else sees.

Ruin Me
Whenever I meet someone who has it – a heart abandoned for Christ – I’m meeting ruined people. I’m not talking about a destructive ruin. I’m referring to the work of a loving God who breaks us and ruins us for his glory. Maybe its time to let God ruin you. Let God crush you with a burden.

Heal Me
Allow the Spirit of God to make things new within you!