Secrete Place

Psalms 31: 20 The songster David describes his God.

You (God) hide them in the secret place of your presence from the conspiracies of man; You (God) keep them secretly in a shelter from the strife of tongues. NASB

We humans are social animals. Does this offend you? It shouldn’t. The Rufus monkeys are social animals. Their language is not our language but among Rufus monkeys, they relate to one another as a group, socially. So it is with we humans, verbal language or body language, we are a specific group in the animal world who are necessarily socially related. I wonder if monkeys have secrets, maybe, maybe not?

We humans do have our secrets but more importantly we have a secret God place. This place will not show up on a map or an X ray, it can be denied, laughed at and ignored but this place always has the lights on. The secrete place is possibly the only place for us in this world with total privacy. Do you secretly desire such a place with total privacy, to be totally alone? Such a place is free from all the social gamesmanship of this world. That avoided desire for such freedom is a seeking after the unavoidable God secrete place we find in our aloneness. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

 

 

 

 

Fair Play

A message for the soon to be new Secret Service, detail all the recent Woke hires to protect Joe Biden and friends! 

Need we ask the opinion of those were burned alive and the thousands of recent homeless in the LA fires? Without competence in government, we all are doomed as a nation.  Where are the celebrities now?  

Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Many

The reality of God is not mental high jinks or accepted tradition. The reality of God is only experience, one person at a time being touched by the eternal.  If so, why so few? Are the many mere spoiled goods to be trashed or recycled? What our world has always and most needed is not a theology of the few but a God understanding of the many.  All of us, arrived with nothing and leave this world with everything.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Going Dark

Yup!

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Betrayal

The nameless writer of the Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes was a thinker that today we would consider to be an existentialist. Such a thinker believes that the individual person is responsible for creating purpose and meaning in their own lives. Gods, governments, parents, teachers and all secondary authorities are only advisory. Like Friedrich Nietzsche, the God is dead philosopher, most of these thinkers do not believe in a God or Gods.

The writer of Ecclesiastes was an everyday existentialist but a God believer in the long-term. To him, in the short term, all of life is meaningless and beyond our understanding.  All of life is “a chasing after the wind". (1:14; 1:17; 2:11; 2:17, 2:26; 4:4; 4:6;4:16, 6:9 TNIV) This was the short-term conclusion he arrived at after observing and experiencing all the goings on here on earth. 

“All this I tested by wisdom and I said, I am determined to be wise but this is beyond me. Whatever exists is far off and most profound-who can discover it? " (7:23,24 TNIV)

The writer tested with wisdom, today we would say we are testing the evidence. No evidence was readily available to prove the existence of God, then or now.  He looked around, concluding: 

" The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; BUT TIME AND CHANCE HAPPEN TO THEM ALL." (My Capitals: 9: 11, TNIV)

Where did the cosmic disciplinarian God go?  Surly God would be handing out benefits and bonuses to the good guys.   

"There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked how get what the righteous deserve." (8:14, TNIV) 

God did not and does not make sense in the short term. Our Gods can betray us, religion can betray us, governments can betray us, family can betray us, teachers can betray us, in whom can we trust? The only possible answer is the long-term God hiding in our midst. 

That God, the God that snuggled up to the nobody Jesus, snuggling up so close that Jesus called this God Father. That God who promised us in the words of Jesus another reality in our world and beyond death. Jesus named that reality the Kingdom of God. We arrived with nothing and leave with everything (gg). 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

 

 

 

Fire!

The front porch is habitable again. My porch faces east and the house is a natural shelter from the breezes that come off the ocean.  The Santa Anna winds, however, are another story. Without the sun and the winds blowing fiercely, the only shelter is indoors. My morning smoke on the porch stops when these miserable winds blow as they have the last few days.

How miserable can they get?  Just ask the folk in the Los Angeles inferno who lost their homes the last few days. I hesitate to make the winds political but there it is, Los Angeles has reaped the reward of voting for the liberal environmentalists who would rather budget social wokism than available water and fire safety. Elections do have consequences, sometimes firry consequences.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.    

 

Unity

The One hidden God living among us is the God we humans have consistently turned into a variety of religions, each of which serves only to separate we humans. No religion works to our good and they are all dead ends. Thank God, the One hidden God living among us is bigger than our petty pipe dreams. Just wait, unity will be had by all, someday soon.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

 

Welcome

Are there any adults among the 2025 political gathering in Washington? Just one politician is willing to say out loud what everyone knows to be the truth. Therefore, there is only one adult. Senator Rand Paul says, there can be no successful long-term money reform in Washington unless entitlements, welfare spending, Medicare and Social Security are a part of the discussion.  This is the ugly truth.

Maybe, President-elect Trump should welcome Senator Paul to the soon to happen, national cost cutting party.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

 

Hope

Are we as Americans in 2025 children or adults?  Are we participants in our democracy or are we merely feeding at the trough of government?    It would seem that in our time, the adults among us are few. No matter the income level, social status or education, all of us are intent on chomping down at the welfare office and the stock market. Our cries for more and more are baby talk and our politicians in Washington earn their mansions by dishing out the baby food. This is the now America.

Blame it on the politicians if you must but we every day Americans have to change or we die. We have to grow up. We must become givers who want the greater good, the elusive national good. The ancient Roman empire faced a decision point as monumental as ours and failed. Two hundred and fifty years of growth and then two hundred and fifty years of fractured dreams that ended in national suicide. Are we so special that we can somehow buck the trend of history?  2026 will be our 250^th year anniversary as a nation.

Let’s get practical. Most of America welcomes all the MAGA optimism about the future of we the people and deservedly so. Optimism has the power to influence history in the short term but optimism is not enough, optimism is not hope. Hope is long-term, hope is adult stuff. Hope says we are about paying the price now for a better future. Hope says we will feed the kids first and be content with the leftovers. We adults must join together and be better American participants.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.     

 

  

 

 

Sparrows

St. Matthew 10: 29 -31.

29. “Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.  30. “But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  31. “So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.       (New American Standard Bible, 1995.)

29. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?  Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. 30. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.        (New International Version, 1978)

29. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them will not fall to the ground without your Father.  30. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.    (King James Version, 1611.)

My new (old) Bible came in the mail yesterday, New American Standard Bible 1995, Giant Print, indexed, red letter, brown that looks red, in genuine leather, $35. Love it for all these reasons but mostly my affection is based on sentiment. I discovered the Bible when I bought a NASB paperback edition in the seminary bookstore, 1977, or so. I was not a good student nor a good fit for the job but the NASB and I have been partners ever since those days. Little did I understand that the search for authenticity would take so long.

The description of God as expressed in these three verses are, in my humble opinion, the most authentic Jesus words in the Bible.  Jesus words are simple, primitive and earthy. We are like sparrows whom God cares for even in death yet we are more valuable than the sparrow to God.  Much of the remainder of Chapter 10 can best be described as what others said about what Jesus said, therefore, in my book, verses 29 to 31 stand alone.

G. Goslaw 

Landers, Ca.

 

 

Again

Woke FBI: The message in New Orleans, again, don’t believe your lying eyes! Not until President Trump is in charge of the FBI, will we be informed or given the truth about what motivated the new Orleans terrorist.  Was he an illegal alien, a mad liberal Democrat, an Iranian doing Jehad, an angry sex charge person who believed the lie that happiness is about sex or just a hate filled degenerate?  

The act itself was and will ever be intentional terrorism. Bravo Ms. Mayor. All this dying over the last four years is the Biden, Democrat legacy that they will carry for many years. Who says elections don't have consequences?    

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.