During morning prayers, I feel your presence on me. Lord. I cannot even describe the feelings, the emotions when you are that close, that intimate with me!
I know that You know everything about me, know everything I have done or said, but Lord! I don’t want to go to the untouchable, tender place, the unspoken place.
Yet that is where you touch me in these moments of intimate connection. What do I have left except to give you, this day and forever after, my secrets, my shame, my embarrassment, and in the act of giving them to you, I pray for your mercy and grace that I remember them no longer.
Father God, I know you see me clean, washed by the blood of Jesus. Lord Jesus, how can I even speak my thanks? I know what you tell me: to let your salvation, your redemption, your sacrifice – for me! – shine out of me, and that is speaking enough.
There is ongoing furious warfighting in Israel. I was moved to re-read an essay (from 2002) entitled “When Devils Walk the Earth”[1]. Section Three has a list entitled “Fighting Terror: Do’s and Don’ts for a Superpower.”
It came to me that the savage war we find ourselves in, spiritual and kinetic, is being driven by Satan, the ultimate terrorist. Our God, however, is the Ultimate Superpower, Ultimate Warrior, the Ultimate Warfighter, and Ultimate Protector. HE will totally defeat and destroy terrorists. Here are a few rules of this conflict, and victory decrees:
Be Feared – Lord! You are!
Never Compromise, do not negotiate with terrorists, do not debate with them – Lord! You never do!
This is war, not a police action; terrorists have long ago refused God and refused reason. Therefore, they will be destroyed. Lord! You will!
[1] “WHEN DEVILS WALK THE EARTH ;The Mentality and Roots of Terrorism, and How to Respond”, Ralph Peters, The Center For Emerging Threats and Opportunities, 2002
This from August 7th, because the Lord has had me considering carefully before posting.
Monday 7 August 2023
The Lord reminds me, presses into me something further about “J919” (from 21 June).
Consider it from a signal perspective, child.
Here’s what I discover: In the International system of Maritime Signal Flags, the letter “J” is this flag:
and means: “I am going to send a message by semaphore.”
“J919” in Morse code is: .— —-. .—- —-.
In Hebrew, a ‘dot’ is dagesh, a ‘dash’ is dri•shat shalom (regards, greetings, salutation)
Strong’s Concordance 919 is beḏeq, in maritime context, the cracks between the planks of a ship, filled with caulk to keep it watertight; implied to repair a crack or gap.
Later, I hear this message of encouragement:
I hear your cry, I know your every prayer, and your every word of praise.
And even later into the evening – at night, really, while walking Luke in the dark, He asks me to consider this additional insight into “The Parable of the Wounded Feet”, from March 15th, 2022. He is asking me to re-write some words at the end.
In the original parable, I wrote that for the badly wounded “… it is clear – they can’t go on, they will have to stay behind, and they now are very afraid of being left alone when everyone else moves on. No one will be able to stay with them.”
Yet the Lord gently corrects me now.
… that even though the deeply wounded would not go on with the main group, neither would they be abandoned. They would be cared for by other healers who would stay with them, and that those most deeply wounded would be tended by the Master Healer.
As part of the Paint Your State effort (see: https://www.givehim15.com/groups), I’m posting this mural from Hanson, Massachusetts. May God bless us and unite us again as one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
It is cold in the early morning while walking Luke, cold enough to make my bare hands tingle. The sun is just beginning to shine through the trees, and I know warmth is coming.
What is this thing in the sky we call the “Sun?” Scientifically we know it as some giant burning ball of hydrogen and helium. Astronomically, it is categorized as an “ordinary star”, the center of our little solar system, around which orbit the “known” planets. We know, with all our God-given abilities to measure and understand, that the sun is massive compared to us, as in this image of comparative size (not distance):
Despite how big our problems and circumstances are to each of us, we are each very small at the scale of our solar system. Yet our earth is so large compared to each of us that we cannot even sense our own rotation, our own orbit through time and space. Instead, our earth, our footing, feels ‘fixed’ to us, so the sun appears to rise, traverse the sky, and set.
Our God-given abilities to measure also inform us that our little earth is about 93 million miles from the sun. That’s so far away that light itself, at the speed which we think it has, takes over 8 minutes to reach us from the sun. The light and heat, the energy we receive from the sun is already in its past.
It is so bright that we can’t look at it directly, yet we are perfectly positioned by God to receive everything the sun has for us without burning up or freezing. The power of the sun drives our ocean currents, tides, weather, and every bit of the food we consume.
First written Monday Evening, 26 December 2022 – updated 9 May 2023
For months, the Lord has been instructing me – gently but firmly uplifting my vision – to carefully consider concepts of size, speed, power, precision, scale, and more. He continues to turn all my science and engineering education into equations of the Spirit, and I am more grateful than I can express.
We are visual creatures, by his great and wonderful design. Our unaided optical observation (with any reasonable resolution) ranges from small details at the scale of our skin to identifying aircraft at 30,000 feet. Yet beyond that are infinitesimal and infinite, and concepts like forever and always. If we could gently blink over from the optical to another range or spectrum, what wonders appear: the immensity of molecules in a single drop of water, which rival the stars in the night sky.
In November and December, I heard the word “tsunami” used more and more, particularly describing God’s judgement, rescue and restoration. As Christmas approached with bitter cold and fierce winds, ice forming in the bay, some memories of working in Alaskan waters came to my forefront. I wasn’t (totally) surprised when the Lord pressed on me the story of the Scotch Cap lighthouse. Lighthouses and warning beacons are powerful metaphors for God’s protection and guidance, shining through the darkness and storms, ringing out warnings for safe passage.
The original lighthouse on the very southwest corner of Unimak Island, Alaska, was built in 1903, a wooden structure with a light 45 feet high. It guarded the entrance to Unimak Pass (pictured below), the easternmost open water passage in the Alaskan island chain. It is an extremely remote place, accessible only by sea, fierce, rugged and forbidding.
After many years of service, the wooden structure was replaced in 1940 with a steel-reinforced concrete structure, its light some 90 feet above the sea. Another 100 feet higher on the mountainside the Coast Guard built a radio-direction-finding beacon, along with power generators and crews housing.
During the midnight watch of April 1st, 1946, there was a massive underwater earthquake – at least 8.1 on the scale – 90 miles south of Unimak Island. The earthquake triggered a tsunami, moving 350 miles per hour, which was at least 120 feet high when it struck the rocky coast. The lighthouse was completely destroyed, and four Coastguardsmen were killed instantly.
An artist’s conception of the last moments of the lighthouse, with the tsunami bearing down upon it.
Eternal Father, strong to save, Whose arm hath bound the restless wave, Who bid’st the mighty ocean deep Its own appointed limits keep; O hear us when we cry to Thee, For those in peril on the sea.
The hymn ‘Eternal Father, Strong to Save’ was written in 1860 by William Whiting, who was inspired by Psalm 107 and its reference to ships and the sea.
Lord, help us understand what we cannot even imagine: your power and might which calms the oceans and makes them rise up, making waves that roar along at hundreds of miles an hour. Your power which stills the air or makes tornadoes or hurricanes. Your power which shakes the solid earth into trembling rubble.
Lord, in awe we ask: what will a tsunami of your Spirit look like or feel like?
Help us stand in faith through your tsunami Spirit, unimaginably fast, high and wide, spreading outward from your command like the ringing of a bell. In the peace that will follow, direct us to build again. Holy Spirit, make us each to be lighthouses, guiding and protecting through darkness and storms, our lights powered by your love.
The Lord asked for this report earlier, and then allowed it to fully steep; now I am required to release it.
Thursday 9 February 2023
There is a dark power which is generating in God’s people a yearning for, a demand for more of everything digital, and as an intended consequence, less seeking the Lord our God. We have built and are operating – and being controlled by – technologies of which we have not asked the Lord:
“Abba, Father, what is your will for these many digital technologies we are creating? What things should we be doing or making, and what things should we not? We seek your will as David did when he would ask you “Should I go up against them?” You have given us phenomenal capabilities which we have used to create electronics which mimic our own human selves. We have even called it “intelligence,” even when we use the word “artificial” in front of it.”
Tell us, God, we call out to you: “What would you have us do with these technologies? Have they been built according to your plumbline, to the standards of your weights and measures? What things, what systems must we rebuild, or repair, or restore?”
If we are to gather corporately to pray about technology, then we must in completeness pray that we understand it, with all its complexity and interconnectedness, in its full context and meaning to our lives. We are called to ask “Why are technologies being developed and worked on? What part of God’s Kingdom do they serve? Do the technologies serve us, serve Kingdom attributes? Do they bring justice and freedom? Do they feed the hungry, make shelter and clothing? Do they strengthen and nourish and grow our families and communities? Do they bring healing, clean food and water, fruitful gardens? Do they honor him?”
Or have we succumbed to the numbing and dumbing effects of the deception of the digital? The mind-numbing convenience of asking some non-human collection of electronics and software to write our next prayers, or give us a prophesy from God?
Carefully consider the relationship between the words artifice and artificial. The Hebrew word for artifice, chârash means figuratively to devise (in a bad way), (hence from the idea of secrecy) to be silent, to let alone, hence (by implication) to be deaf (as an accompaniment of dumbness).
As builders, made in the image of God, we are called to the responsibility of godly purpose and safety in the things we build. We design and build and enforce safety – and control – into transportation, as just one example. No one of us would get in a vehicle, start it and set it in motion knowing that we couldn’t really control it, that at any moment it might do something on its own. We much more readily know of and honestly assess the risks and consequences of electro-mechanical technologies. We get in airplanes and travel – knowing the risk and accepting it.
Rightly, then, we must demand the same safety and control from electronic, cyber-physical systems. At the same time, we are under full assault from a digital industrial complex, operating at full throttle, at a pace which is in full defiance of our God-given sense and intuition to keep asking “Lord, are we doing the right things?” When we hear his answers, then we may ask “Are we making things right?”
I am in a place of deep complexity, all about technology, the intended and unintended consequences. I go over and over all that the Lord has spoken to me and so many others. These two items come to my forefront:
I don’t need a login and password to make a secure and safe connection with God
When Jesus takes my hand to lift me up, I don’t need to authenticate myself.
