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Every human being is a mystic.  Too borrow a phrase from a Clint Eastwood movie, we mystics all, include the good, the bad and the ugly.  There is not one of us that has not, for at least a brief moment, received a message from eternity.  Much like the meteors of varying sizes, God is bombarding all of us for as the Apostle Paul said in Romans 2:11, “God has no favorites”. Some messages are burned up in our Godless atmosphere while others make contact with the people indiscriminately.  Inside of religion or among the religion less, we all are targets for God’s appointed messages.

Some of those contacted deny even the possibility of a message from the spirit world, fearing being outed as a freak.  Some of us hide in the bushes with the messages from God, hiding with an overwhelming sense of unworthiness.  Some of us take the messages from God as proof of our own personal specialness, much like the Pharisees that hounded Jesus.  Some of us take and accept the messages from God to build an orthodoxy around which they expect other people to gather and bow.   Some of us take our God gifting to impress this ugly world through writing, poetry and art.

If I were God, which I am not, I would say, why should I even bother?  Why bother to share the blessings of eternity by sending messages to these self-involved, dunderhead humans?  Are not you rejoicing that I am not God?  Despite all our receiving delays, his messages continue to fall upon we undeserving.  God says, we are in this together, there is a planned future for you, trust and work the plan.

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA

 

 

 

Safety

 A mystic is one of us who makes or is reputed to have made a connection with the spirit world.  Our secular Godless culture laughs at such claims and calls these people fools.  The Bible says much about who are the fools.  Proverbs 18:6 says, “Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions (TNIV).”  Is this not an apt description of secular culture?  

Jesus contrasted the wise man and the foolish man in Matthew 7: 24 to 27.  The fool builds his or her life on the sand of popular culture refusing to understand spiritual matters as outlined by Jesus to his disciples.  The winds and rains of life will eventually blow and scatter the sand dwellers.  The wise man will hold steady on the rock, the very words of Jesus, in every tempest.  There is safety on the rock.   

G, Goslaw

Landers, CA 

 

Panic or Panacea

As much as we try to avoid or redefine our reality, we cannot avoid the angst resulting from our aliveness.  We sometimes weather this angst by grabbing hold of a panacea that avoids the terror in the short term.  A panacea can be anything, family, friends, money and all religions.  Kierkegaard, the father of existentialist philosophy and a theologian named the “why are we here” angst, dread.  One of his translators preferred to name this unavoidable emotional state, anxiety.  We are all talking about the same thing but let’s call it what it is, a life-long panic attach.

What are we to do with this universal human panic reality?  Historically, we have devised religions of every sort and in every culture to relieve the panic to give us a short-term feeling of pseudo security.  The opposite reaction to avoid panic is to kill the other guy and build a humanly devised sense of pseudo security.  This security will eventually fail us as religions fail because they are a temporary fix only for the minority.  All of human history can be condensed into our human search for security, both now and into eternity. 

Is there not then another alternative that is proactive?  The Jesus way is the only way.  That way is to live with faith in our eternal Father God and thereby to trust this reality as our present and future hope in the face of our anxiety.  The living angst will always be with us every day on this earth.  The only alternative is the forward vision of the very short Jesus prayer given as an example to his disciples.  They were just like us, regular powerless folk.  They were filled with life anxiety as we are and justifiably so.  Please check it out, Matthew 6: 9 thru 13.

“This then is how you should pray.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”

 

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA   

      

   

 

 

Simple

Leave Jesus with his message about the faithfulness of our Father God on the cross. 

Take down from the cross the unnecessary, superstitious and ancient God hyperbole. 

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA  

Leapers All

 

I once heard an educated Bible theologian say that to understand the Bible, we must either believe that Jesus was God or that he was only a crazy deluded man.  This was probably the excuse he used for not dealing with the contradictions in the Bible.  Does the reader have to take one or the other of these extreme mindsets?  Is there no middle ground?

Sure, there is a lot to talk about between the two polar extremes, the question is, will we?  For sure, the Church trained and financially supported Biblical theologian could not even hint for a second that Jesus was slightly less than God.  The heretic label would have devastating consequences within the hierarchy of the Church, both to one’s career and income.  He or she would achieve, in an instant, leaper status to be shunned.

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA.

     

   

Eternity

Why have you and your Facebook friends taken such offense at my words, Suzanne?  I thought that we were at least acquaintances.  Heaven as a reward is one of those biblical words that has been corrupted by the Christian religion.  When Jesus used the word heaven he did not mean to agree with your heaven and hell scenario.  Yes, he also used the word hell but, in most instances, he was playing mind games with the hell raisers.  There were hell raisers then as there are hell raisers now.

This is why I prefer to us the word eternity which foretells of a positive or good or redemptive future for all of humanity.  Case in point, let us return to our prior discussion of Matthew 10, 32 & 33.  According to the text, those who “acknowledge” Jesus and those who are disowned by Jesus are all before the Father in eternity.  No where is it said that those who are disowned are to be sent to hell, that is an assumption that you are making. 

Who can say for sure?  Maybe, eternity is like a building with many floors and we will have the opportunity to move on upward to full understanding.  Having something to work on in eternity should be a positive, right?  If you think life can get boring at times here on earth, just wait. 

For now, let us be open to a myriad of possibilities.

Respectfully,

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA

 

 

Pain

If I were a preacher, which I am not, what message would I share on Father’s Day 2023?  I would begin by sharing about my earthly father, that seems reasonable.  There’s the rub.  We all lived in the same house, sat together at the same dinner table but we three boys, were never a part of or a reflection of the adult world of my parents.  That world was the church.  We were just the kids.  If asked, my parents would say, we love our children but that love, if it existed, was not expressed or shared.  Nothing about life and family was ever shared.  I grew up believing that was normal, not understanding what I was missing.  Normal, it is not.

Which is worse, never knowing your birth parents or living in the same house and never knowing your birth parents?  Go figure!  Because this question is so intimately involved with my story, I would choose the latter but there is pain enough in life to go all around.

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA