You know the old adage, “It’ll probably get worse before it gets better”? Oh, and this one: “It’s always darkest before the dawn” and, meanwhile, that coal-black night seems to go on for eons? Exodus 5 in my morning reading. If you didn’t know God was faithful, you might think

Well, folks, the reason I haven’t been sharing many short clips from my morning readings lately is that, well, I’m in chapters 11-17 of Ezekiel. They involve complicated visions that don’t lend themselves to Twitter threads. But at the end of my reading today in Ezek 17,

God delivered a word to the prophet depicting a theme that may be uncomfortable but it’s not incomprehensible.

“I bring down the tall tree and make the low tree tall. I cause the green tree to wither and make the withered tree thrive. I, the Lord, have spoken and I will do it.”

God’s got this thing about pride. He does not let it go unchecked. When his people continue in arrogance after multiple warnings, he is going to bring them down. He will turn the tables. That which has been high will be brought low. This is why we are told by both James and Peter

in the NT that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. We need his grace so badly. Repentance is our only real way forward. He also views idolatry as spiritual adultery. This was the case in the judgment that was coming to his people through the Babylonians.

We are caught in a cycle. We keep repeating the same offenses and keep excusing them the exact same ways. Study even just the last century. I beg you to. Face how we evangelicals have bedded down with worldly systems for power. See how every time prophetic voices confronted us

“So Moses finished the work.” (Exodus 40:33) I came to the end of my reading in Exodus this morning. To fully appreciate those 5 words, you really need to read the 39 preceding chapters. The whole thing had been such an ordeal, drama from the time God called out to Moses from

the burning bush to the moment he “inspected all the work they had accomplished” in the building of the tabernacle. For starters, Moses wasn’t looking to lead anything but sheep to pasture. He was hiding when God found him. Moses was no volunteer. And even after God called him,

he insisted God find someone else. But the force of the divine call is hard to resist. The people he served nearly drove him nuts. He was supposed to lead a group of worshippers and what he mostly got was whiners. He’d lost his temper over & over. Even thrown the stone tablets

inscribed by the finger of God. Nope. Moses couldn’t say it had gone well. What the whole thing had been was WORK. Unrelenting, frustrating work so detailed that it had to match the divine instructions down to every clasp on endless yards of curtains. There had been some great

moments like the time the people were invited to contribute any personal possessions to the makings of the tabernacle furnishings. They had given so freely, Moses had to tell them to stop. There was that. But overall, what he’d done, what they’d all done, was WORK. Lo & behold,

An Interrupted Dawn

A fresh sadness has cast its cold shadow over me. It caught me by surprise but not because I’m unaccustomed to flickering light. I’m too old to be unaccustomed to such common things. I’m not afraid. Just surprised. Surprised because I thought it was morning.

2020 was such a dark year. Like you, no doubt, the global darkness of the pandemic fell like a lead blanket over a personal season that would also throw a wool shawl over my man & me. Our 2 kids did just what they we’re supposed to do. They grew up. To our great fortune, we still

got to live a lot of family life. The halls of our house rang a constant ruckus. Grandchildren running, skating, cartwheeling, dancing, leaping, hiphopping, dog-ball-throwing, nerf gun launching. Adults eating, discussing, debating, arguing, discoursing and opining as Moores do.

Then the Lord moved one. Then the others. Moved them far away. I blame it entirely on the Lord because that’s how I can accept and embrace it as good. I know it was him because even I can look at it—at what he’s orchestrated for my people—& nod & say, Amen. So be it. It is well.

What he’d given Keith & me in having both our girls & their loves all these years was a gift, not a right. Amen. So be it. It is well. I hesitate to write this part because my girls will see it & I know they will hate it because they love their mother. So I’ll say it quickly like

My reading today was Exodus 32. Moses has been on the mountain with God, hearing the instructions for the tabernacle & receiving the stone tablets. The people below, who’d seen the smoke above & heard the thunder &, that very morning, filled their bellies with bread from heaven,

decided Moses & that God above were taking too long. They needed a god below who would get with it. Get with them. Get them where they wanted to go. So they gathered around Aaron & said, “Come, make gods for us!” The same Aaron of Ex 24 who’d been invited by God to see the very

pavement beneath God’s feet. Aaron & his sons & the 70 elders, “saw Him and they ate and drank.” That Aaron. So he tells them in Ex 32, Bring me your gold & let’s see what I can do. He fashions it into the image of a calf & they present it to Israel in wording shudderingly

blasphemous. “Israel, these are your gods, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.” Over and over God has reminded them not to forget who had brought them out. Perhaps this started making Aaron a little nervous. Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe he just bought in. But his next move

is particularly telling. “When he saw this (the masses reacting to the gold idol he’d fashioned for them), he built an altar in front of it and made an announcement: ‘there will be a festival to the Lord tomorrow.’ Early the next morning they arose, offered burnt offerings &

Oh man, I loved my Bible reading this morning. It was Exodus 28 where God gave Moses the instructions for the priestly apparel Aaron & his sons were to wear. The attention to the minutest detail confirms what we can still count on today: everything God prescribed had purpose.

Whether or not they understood it, whether or not we understand it, God is not haphazard. Nothing is for nothing. For me, one of the most marvelous parts of Bible study is how often he does tie things together for us, connecting the dots, connecting the testaments, the covenants.

I’ll just offer 1 example from Ex 28. V.3 says “You are to instruct all the skilled artisans, whom I’ve filled with a spirit of wisdom (isn’t that fantastic?), to make Aaron’s garments for consecrating him to serve Me as priest.” The turban was an important piece of the apparel.

Something I find particularly fascinating is that the skilled artisans were to make a pure gold nameplate to fasten onto the very front of the priest’s turban. It was to have 4 words engraved on it -all caps in our Bibles- “HOLY TO THE LORD. “It is always to be on his forehead.”

Imagine how a conversation would change if we were talking to a person while staring at those four words on his or her forehead. Ok, fast forward to the New Testament where the Holy Spirit says through Peter that we who are in Christ are part of a “royal priesthood.” (2 Pet 2:9)

I am reading and reviewing books of @SamHarrisOrg this December, with the extra time available after work. First book I read is following.

The book is written by the neo-atheist Sam Harris. I am a passionate sunni Muslim. I would like to learn and review some of his work, and judge them from my personal view based on Islamic theological perspective. It shall be interesting because as you would know, the neo-athiests

want to abolish religions altogether and suggest a world where things are based on science and logic. How is that coherent and how is it relavent? Let's see for ourselves. I would like to thank the local Muslim handles and atheist handles who actively participate in discussions.

I would advice everyone to stick to a more academic discussions and not to deviate the discussion with mockery of Islamic and atheistic beliefs.

This book talks about lying and it's ill effects on the individuals and at large on the society. In a nutshell here are some of the gists of the book. The book basically identified specific ways in which lying is detrimental and why we should avoid lying.

A passage from a book I read in January this year by Megan Watterson: Mary Magdalene Revealed. I was flying to Perth, and it as my birthday (31st January - also her birthday) when I could feel myself activated by the Angels as I read this... given what I experienced on that

flight, so incredible. There was no one to meet me at the other end. I knew no one. I had to make my way to a friend's house where I was staying, and I spent my birthday entirely alone. I finished this book while I was alone with Her that day:

"If I could start over from the

beginning, I would start with the most invisible, the threads in the web of our ecosystem that are rarely named, much less revered. I would start by listing the trees, the flowers, the seeds that carry the light that give us light and that give us life, because its this we have

forgotten This is where our reverence has not yet reached. I would start with Frankincense and Myrrh, the Boswellia and Commiphora trees that made them. I would start with the honeybee and the sweet nectar it feeds on. I would start first with what goes unnoticed and with what we

haven't realised is the the most sacred amongst us. I would start with the names of everyone we have excluded: the street children, the millions slowly starving to death in plain daylight, I would start with the outsiders, the outcasts. I would start with every one of us who

Editor asks me: Will you review That Pandemic Antho?

I say: Maybe. There are a lot of disabled writers in it, right?

Editor: ............

I say: Like, obviously?

Editor: ............

[After a while] Editor: Wouldn't it still be interesting if there were NOT a lot disabled writers in it? Your review could be about that?

Me: No. That's not interesting at all b/c my ideal audience is disabled writers & readers, so that's just like gross.

[I really did say "that's just gross" lol]

Editor: Lemme send you the TOC.

Me: Okay.

Meanwhile, I'm impatient so I just look up the antho b/c it's Big and Famous and Everywhere.

Here's what The Pandemic Anthology published by @AAKnopf looks like. Now remember: disabled people are the most affected by the pandemic, eg we die the most.

How many total poets? Ok I stopped counting at 100.

How many disabled poets? Oh boy. Are you ready.

1 radical disabled activist. Name spelled incorrectly in the TOC

1 not radical at all disabled writer. Most acceptable disabled writer to nondisabled literary establishment b/c this writer "doesn't make a big deal about it," as I have been told

1. Yes, @FareedZakaria's new book, Ten lessons From a Post-Pandemic World argues we don't need a big or small gov- we need a GOOD one.

We don't have that now & that is bc for decades now, the GOP has intentionally hallowed it out. Stripping it of funding under the auspice that

2. the only goal should be small. And as it turns out- that was stupid. And now we have a dysfunctional, as @maddow says, "big, bad" gov. Something that has been "wasted, and rotted and ruined." And its been intentional. Its been murdered, with no thought for how people would

3. suffer for it. COVID just put that suffering in a streamlined spotlight. But as @FareedZakaria points out- its the cherry on top of a 40 year plan that Bannon termed the final "deconstruction of the administrative state." As with the decimation of the economic tools that had

4. allowed the world's 1st middle class to emerge & flourish before The Great Lie ushered in the greatest wealth transfer in history. Not only were Americans bamboozled into voting away their wage increases, their pensions, & their health care (at least till 2010)- they were also

5. tricked into pissing away their country's superiority- its claim to fame, its ability to puff its chest out & say "look over here, we have the best _____. " I had no idea when I was a kid that we were not, in fact, the greatest country on Earth- at least not if you care about

ORT. Final chapter. Atto XXII
It's going to be quite difficult for me to describe my personal experiences regarding the consciousness shift phenomenon. I will continue then by delving into the corpus of my research. Let me introduce you to Robert Lanza and his theory: Biocentrism

Lanza is an expert in regenerative medicine and a scientific director at Advanced Cell Technology Company. He is known for his extensive research on stem cells, he was also famous for several successful experiments on cloning endangered animal species.

He then turned his attention to physics, quantum mechanics and astrophysics. It is from this metaphysical milieu that his controversial theory was created. Biocentrism implies that death simply does not exist. It is an illusion fabricated by the dogmatic pathways in our minds.

It exists because people identify themselves with their bodies and with their Ego. Now a brief interlude. What is our innermost essence? What is our life force? Is the idea of who we are a product of the mind, social conditioning, and the thoughts we have? Or are we spiritual

beings, both material and divine? In psychology and theories arising from the West, the ego plays a crucial role in the psyche( Greek, psukhē, which translates to breath, life, soul) It forms our self-concept and is an essential part of human cognitive function.