Christmas is Champagne

The closest thing to man in the world is not the ape, it is the grape.

Grapes, like humans, come in many varieties, shades of red and green, sweet and sour, seeded or seedless. Like people, the grape can be used in a myriad of ways. It can be a juicy fruit, or a dry raisin, or squeezed to drink.

It is fun to think of one’s self as a grape. I wonder what kind of a grape I am. Am I a big sweet white grape or a shriveled rotten one? Or, in my old age, am I a dried up raisin? Did my sister turn to vinegar? I wonder if the girls waving their batons in the parade are grape juice.

The royal role for grape is wine. Wine is the only living beverage. Unlike spirits (e.g. whiskey) or fruit juice, wine improves over time. It is alive! Like people, wine is influenced by environment. The quality of the wine depends on the type of grape and the soil and weather conditions.

When Jesus Christ raised a glass of red wine and said, “Drink of this you all, for this is My Blood of the New Covenant” He was deliberately lifting up the grape. It was not because there was no water, or lemonade nearby that Christ used the glass of red wine to be His blood. It was because red wine promotes health of the blood-processing and nutrient-distributing heart, the core of our embodied life.

According to Saint John the Evangelist, when Jesus was on the Cross, after several hours of suffering He cried that He was thirsty, so they sent up a sponge dipped in vinegar. "When Jesus had received the vinegar, He said, 'It is finished.' Then He bowed His head and gave up His Spirit." (John 19:28-30)

Sour wine, vinegar, is the end of the line, it has finished living. Perhaps the instant the vinegar quenched Christ’s thirst it hit His bloodstream and turned His blood to wine. Perhaps Jesus Christ reversed the death of the grape, just as He restored immortality to humanity.

That is one imaginative theory for why when the Church claims that wine-flavored Eucharist really is Christ’s blood; we are 100% right! Christ’s blood when infused by the vinegar became wine! It is holy chemistry!

It should not be surprising to note that the grapevine lives for an average of 33 years, the number of years Christ walked on earth. It is all so perfect!. If Saints were grapes, they would be fine wine.

Baby Jesus, in grape form, is Champagne! Champagne bubbles are produced during a second fermentation in a strong bottle that can withstand great pressure. Christ's dual nature can be compared to this second step. As God with us His human nature is formed by the pressure of His condescension from divine to human! Therefore, I say it is most fitting to celebrate Christmas with champagne! Partake of the symbol of baby Jesus,

Baby Jesus is the break-through of sunrise after a very long dark night. Celebrate His arrival with the royal champagne grape!

Merry Christmas!

Evangeline


Summary:
People are grapes.
Saints are wine.
Jesus is Champagne.

Epiphany and The Flood

How does Noah and his family's adventure, their baptism by flood in which they were drenched and surrounded by water that killed everything around them relate to Epiphany?

Water kills and water cleanses.

To be immersed is to die, to ascend from the immersion is to be reborn. To be reborn as a bonafide Child of God.

Noah and his family experienced the first and model baptism. Surrounded by the drowned dead, and then by nothing but water for weeks on end they were transformed, reborn into Children of the Most High God. This experience gave God the opportunity to recreate humanity and the world.

Yet, when it was over God pledged that He would never again destroy the world and humankind by flood.

Instead, baptism was instituted as a symbol of the ark's purification and rebirth process. (This is why exploring life in the ark is so valuable to understanding the depth of baptism.) We can do in a few moments what took over nine months to accomplish with the rebirth of humankind and this world.

When Jesus emerged from the waters of His baptism, the Holy Spirit alighted on Him in the form of a dove, and God the Father was heard proclaiming Jesus as His Son with Whom He was pleased. Could this be likened to the dove that returned with the olive branch in his beak to announce that the beginning of the new world was at hand?

Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, began a new world comprised of 'as many as received Him, to whom He gives the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.*' These enjoy the kingdom of God within, and life everlasting. Jesus ushered-in the third and last beginning of this world, a watershed event in human history.

The annihilation of evil and wickedness by water, and the emergence of new life as reborn children of God happens with every baptism because it occurred during the forty days of rain, and was confirmed at Epiphany.

Let's each of us be baptized in our souls with Christ today that we may hear our Father who art in heaven say that He is well pleased with us too.

Evangeline

* John1:12,13

Extract from The Queen and Me

And now for something completely different: an extract from my story 'My Vacation in Heaven' about visiting the Virgin Mary while in heaven:

 

 

Over the next hill I saw in the distance a large lake with a beach on one side and majestic hemlock trees surrounding two thirds of the lake. As we approached the shore I spotted a lovely young woman among a group of children. She looked up and started walking toward us until she was close enough to reach out her hand to me, "Welcome, my name is Mary. We have a lot to talk about. Come."

"Holy Mary, Mother of God!" I blurted out. Instinctively I knew that she was THE Mary, the original after whom billions of ladies, including my own mother, were named. "I am deeply honored to meet you in person!" Seeing the Virgin Mary was like meeting an old pen pal.

"Come, let us sit together." She gently took my hand and together we walked to her cabana facing the lake. When I sat down, she said, "Ask me whatever you’d like."

"How can you do all that people expect of you? You are the head of the Greek Navy and the queen of Mt. Athos; you intercede to your Son for billions of souls. You must not get a moment’s rest." And without stopping to hear her reply, lest I forget my questions I added, "How did you communicate with me on earth, are you an angel? Did you really never die? Tell me about that? Did you know Jesus would rise after the crucifixion? What you must have gone through!"

"Is that all?" she asked with the patience and conviviality I would expect from a queen. "God trained me well to trust Him. Like you, from my first childhood thoughts, I knew He was alive and with me, guiding me, comforting me and encouraging me. The trip to Egypt, the pregnancy, those events, like the hard times in your life taught me how to walk through dark tunnels. I eventually learned to see without eyes. "Do you remember where Scripture says, ‘Awake you who sleep. Arise from the dead. And Christ will give you light?’ When my Son tells you to wake His sleeping sheep, He wants you to shine light on them. Bring them out of the darkness."

"That sounds important." I said, "What is darkness?"

She smiled as if to remember how stupid I could be, and then replied patiently, "Darkness is anything that distorts or hides truth or causes separation from God such as pride, pornography, and drunkenness."

"You think my job is hard. Not so." She added, "By avoiding darkness I am able to give people guidance. This awakens them. By seeking my help they are reminded of why I have such influence. I would never entertain darkness, not the darkness of the gossipers when I was pregnant, nor the darkness of the flight to Egypt. Nor even the darkness of His trial and crucifixion. Darkness lies.

To wake the sheep shine the light on the darkness that is around them and within them. Remember you only need a little light to eradicate darkness."

Then remembering my other questions, she said, "Dormition, was I sleeping? They called it sleeping because that’s what it looked like to them, but I only shut my eyes so I could see the light inside me that lead me here. It was a gift for me to be able to bring my own body with me here. The joy of living here is infinitely greater than what the sleeping people think they will gain from darkness. We can only feel sorrow for them, never anger. Enough lessons. It’s time for my Dormition feast. Come, let’s dance together! We will continue to speak often when you go back, especially now that you know the sound of my voice.

Would you like to borrow a dress for my party?"

 

 

Pentecost - Queen of Days

Every year we squeeze ourselves into that upper room and wait. We imagine how wonderful it will be to instantly speak another language; this year I hope it is Italian. Every year we wonder what it really looked liked to see tongues of fire hovering over men's heads. Every year we are amazed and grateful.

This year let's fly to the throne room in heaven, behind the curtain of this firmament and visit God as He prepares to penetrate men's souls.

On the wings of this wish and prayer our hearts soar. Hold my hand, let us dare to approach the conference room where the Holy Trinity has gathered. Sh..., listen to that mighty wind about to descend to earth. It reminds me of the wind of God that swept over the waters on the first day of creation. Can you hear God speak?

"Today I will baptize My people with My Spirit and with fire. We will undo the separation among men that I caused at the tower of Babel. They will be reunited with each other in understanding even as they are reunited with Me.  I will bring together men of all nations Africans and Asians, Arabs and Greeks, Jews and Romans; no man shall be overlooked.  To commemorate the day in which I handed my Laws to Moses I distribute My Spirit to all people. Correctly is it written that from this day forth men will no longer need books because I will write My precepts on their hearts."

As I listened, I thought, "Who can hear these words and not be shaken to the core?" then I heard God speak again.

"From this day forth, everyone who calls on My name shall be saved from destruction at the end of the age. To them I will make known the ways of life and make them full of gladness with My presence. Look below and see the peoples gather to repent and be baptized one by one.  Now let each man receive that which You Jesus promised when You said that it is to mankind's advantage that You go away so that the Advocate could be sent.  Spirit of truth the hour has come for You to go forth upon the earth to guide men in all truth and to help them unto the ages of the ages."

Suddenly I was blinded by a great light and I felt myself falling through the skies. The mighty wind was carrying me back to earth. Time was going by, but it was a pure empty kind of time. A kind of time that I never before experienced. I felt peaceful in its emptiness. Then sound entered our space. Just as I felt the earth approaching, I heard God's say, "On this day I give birth to my Bride, the Church."

Ascension to Pentecost - Our Turn

Last Thursday, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, ascended to God His Father after His great mission on earth to reverse the separation between humanity and its Creator caused by our friend Eve, and her husband Adam. Jesus went back home to heaven from where He came. Apostle John told us this in his Gospel when he wrote, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.”

The time between Easter and the Ascension, when Jesus walked on earth in His new body is spectacular. There are only 11 sightings of Him. We know He ate food and walked through walls: two very fun things to do. It is said that He was showing us what our immortals bodies will be like. I’m so glad we will still be able to eat! “Thanks God!”

Finally one Thursday, because the powerful 40 day time period had passed, as it did when He was in the wilderness being tempted, as it did when Moses visited God on Mt. Sinai, as it did when Noah was in the ark, and the 40 year Exodus, and the 40 years of David’s reign; when the 40 days had passed, Jesus was ready, willing, and able to go Home.

It was no longer useful to God to have Jesus walking around His beloved planet Earth because His mission was accomplished. Besides, one man, as divine as He was, could only do so much. God, the Father, would replace Jesus with His own Holy Spirit.

Miracles are not enough, and never were, to restore the relationship between God and those whom He made in His image and likeness: that’s us aspiring immortals, His children, and His creation called mankind. Miracles are a good start, but only a start.

So that we could follow Jesus’ ascension to heaven, to God the Father in the presence of the host of angels, we need the Holy Spirit to guide us, and teach us, and heal, and comfort us.

In these days between Ascension and Pentecost, we experience in our souls, those receptors of God’s communication with us, the mysterious period of time when neither Jesus is here, nor has the Holy Spirit been sent. It is an empty time of loss and anticipation. Stop, think, and feel.

To experience through the imagination, is no less an experience. It is replete with sensory information that can be quite valuable to our formation as true children of God. In this ten-day period between the ascension and Pentecost, let us take some time to look around at a world with only the memory of Jesus and His amazing mission and His spectacular ascension. Let us anticipate something we could never imagine in our wildest dreams. God, the Holy Spirit will come to dwell within our bodies and minds one person at a time. If we can imagine what it is like to live without that aid, then perhaps when the time comes, we will be able to perceive the presence of the Spirit within and be in a perfect position to have our own ascension to the Father. Follow the Leader.

Ascension-The Homecoming

“Oh the Son is coming back, the Son is coming back. How glad the Father will be. How joyous the Son. Lets us prepare for His return,” exclaimed Angel Sebastian.

The angels and archangels in heaven were elated when Gabriel told them that the time had come for Jesus to return. You never saw such merriment. The expedition into humanity and onto earth had been a kind of death to them who missed the Son the most. Some of the angels had gone down to participate in the Grand Mission, but most were only given reports of Christ’s activities.

It wasn’t enough to watch Him and to minister to Him in His most difficult hours. They wanted Him back so heaven could be “normal” again.

The Holy Spirit heard that sentiment and corrected Sebastian saying, “It will never again be as it was. Oh, of course We are happy to receive the Son into Our arms, there is much to discuss about the Mission. However, now I must leave to travel the face of the earth, and soon our heavenly realm will be populated with human souls. You must help them to adjust to life here. No, it will never be the same again.”

At that the bellowing sound of French horns, tubas, and trumpets invaded the air heralding the coming of the King of Kings. All the angels quickly fell into formation in rows and rows of Powers flanking the last miles of the pathway to the golden entrance of the heavenly kingdom. Once past the entrance into the kingdom, the Powers were replaced by rows of Principalities who for this occasion were permitted to leave their guard over the nations and leaders of the world.  Behind the Principalities were three rows of Archangels lead by Michael and Gabriel.

Flanking the entrance of the Throne Room for this holiest of occasions hovered the cherubim in disciplined stillness but not in silence. Stringed instruments played Beethoven’s 6th Symphony, the Pastoral. Beyond the entrance on pedestals stood two majestic thrones with bright red sapphires and sparkling emeralds, amethysts and topaz jewels embedded into the purest gold frame the eye of man has ever beheld.

Hugging these two thrones, except for the wide isle in front of it, were rows of Seraphim to greet the Lord of Hosts, the Chief Commander of all angelic beings. The Throne usually stand around the throne of God, those four winged and four faced charioteers with their fat cheeked faces, who sparkle like the color of burnished brass. Not today. The thrones will return to their posts after the festivities.

Of all the ranks of angels only the guardian angels had to stay back on earth; who could not be involved in the home coming.

“Here they come; here they come!”  Indeed, the brilliant shining Virtues were seen escorting the ascending Christ to the throne of God the Father.

As the Christ approached the throne room, sections of angels followed sections of angels chanting Hosanna in the highest, alternately with long melodious chants of Alleluia.

Only the Seraphim could actually see the face of God when His eyes first beheld the return of His Son, and the holy hug that followed the Son’s deep lunge to His knee.

Following the blessed greeting the Son took His place on His own throne nestled in the sound of all the angels cheering together, and all the instruments sounding, and all the wings fluttering, and all the trumpets trumpeting. This was no cacophony but a rather a symphony of activity so strong and so beautiful that it was hard to believe how quickly the silence returned at the sound of a bell.

God spoke. “There is work to be done. The earth phase of My Son’s mission was only the beginning of the My purpose to immortalize humanity. For now, we celebrate.”

The Son never looked so radiant, so peaceful and so at home. 

I God You my Valentine

 

When a child I was told that God is love. That information made me feel all warm and fuzzy. I imagined that it meant He was like my Teddy Bear who always smiled and let me hug him all night without squirming away.

When Jesus said to love my enemies, to be good to them because God is kind to the ungrateful and wicked I had to think just a little bit harder about what love is. I wondered if God is kind to me when I am ungrateful and wicked; if He patiently waits for me to be kind too. God’s love is not as void as my Teddy Bear’s.

Love has to overcome some pretty powerful resistance to be itself. Being impatient and angry is like sledding down a snowy hill, when really love is walking back up. I suppose I would much rather be loved then to love others.

If I can be loved by God and anyone else who is foolish enough to try hard to become like God who loves His enemies, the wicked and ungrateful, then I don’t have to do anything at all.  I can even be unkind and wicked. I can lie and cheat and steal and hate my sister and God will still love me because He can’t help Himself. He is love and the only way He relates to anyone is via the love channel.

God’s love for each person is a compulsive love which sometimes is appreciated and reciprocated and sometimes it is ignored. Poor God.

I think God tries very hard to be loved and I feel sorry for Him because He doesn’t have anyone above Him, like His own God who must love Him no matter what He does. The way I see it, God works hard for our love.  He teaches, and gives amazing gifts and He heals. These are some of the reasons I love Him so much. I know I can trust Him because He is honest, He never ever lies to me.

I am so happy to know that I don’t have to work as hard to be loveable as God does. I suppose one of the reasons that God wants people to follow Him, to be exactly like Him is for the relief He experiences of being loved no matter what happens in their lives, even bad things that aren’t fixed right away like sickness and poverty or even loneliness.

Okay, I won’t be silly anymore because those thoughts make me feel too sad; it is all so unfair.

God is love. I want to be like Him, just like Him in every way, even when it means climbing up a snowy hill, and loving people who are mean to me or ignore me just as He does. This way God will know He found someone in me that loves Him too, no matter what.

My dear Valentine, you don’t have to be a Teddy Bear for me to love you because of what God taught me. But it would help. :-)    

Glory Be to the Father

 

Crystal clear cut diamonds that scatter rainbows when her hand reaches or talks; musical tones with perfect pitch, symphonies penetrating to fill the core with delights; laughing out loud together till tears roll out of our eyes; the presence and being of men who are good fathers.   

He is the originator of a new life. He is the authority over the obedient. He is the guardian and protector who opens wide the door to exploration and magical discoveries. He is the teacher of the learned and the nurturer of the healthy. He is their provider. When he is tangible, he can hug and be hugged with strong arms that envelope his child with warmth and perfect peace.

The most blessed among us has four fathers, all sublime figures of perfect personhood. One, the father- half who bore us, in whose body, then heart we lived and who lives in our hearts, the man who first took our tiny hands and watched them grow into tools. Two grandfathers, a step behind but not less fatherly for it, and their Model, God, our Father who art in heaven, are the four-fathers of the happiest and strongest of immortals.

Glory be to good fathers today. You make your world glow. You men outlive your bodies for generations in the hearts and memories of your beloved children. Glory to you and thanksgiving to you and to the women who bestowed fatherhood upon you. May the Lord bless you and keep you, may He make His Countenance to shine upon you and in you. May He give you the desires of your heart, peace, and a place of leadership beside Him in Kingdom Come. Joy.  

The Slow Birth of the Bride

It is written that God made man on the sixth day, and that it was a terrible disappointment how he turned out because man disobeyed God’s warning not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so the man and his woman died of distrust and disobedience. God does not make mistakes. He knew that was only the first step in the creation of His most glorious opus—self replication for the purpose of creating His Bride.

After many thousands of years when the creation had time to settle in, God’s magnificent endeavor was ready for the next phase. During Passover, the miraculous escape from the tyranny of slavery of the children of Abraham-Isaac-n-Jacob extracted from humankind a chosen body.

Fifty days after Passover Moses brought down from the mountain Sinai the Tablets of Law. Shavuot is marked by the harvest of winter wheat, the Festival of Reaping. From His place on high God sent wheat and words to live by. The Lord provides. The chosen were to replicate God by being Law abiding people. Heppy Shavout or as the Greek-Jews would say, ‘Heppy Pentecost.’

After many thousands of years when the chosen of God had time to settle in, His magnificent endeavor was ready for the next phase. Just as the first step of the sixth day birth of mankind was not a failure; the second step of replication by Law was not a failure either. They were the slow deliberate steps-necessary for the formation of the immortal Bride of God, a single golden thread of light glimmering in the woof and weave of earthly life. Birth takes time.

The third trimester began at Pascha/Easter after the miraculous escape of the natural body from the tyranny of death by the archetypal Golden One among the chosen ones, the immortal Christ Jesus.

Fifty days later, from a mountaintop light-years higher than Sinai, the gift of the Law was supplemented by the gift of the Holy Spirit. God’s opus to create His Bride, His helpmeet, His counterpart was complete. She was born in a room filled with men of the Law of Likeness. She spoke in words everyone could understand. She was crowned with tongues of fire. This Bride of God gives birth to children of God, filled with His Holy Spirit to replicate Him throughout the world and unto the ages of the ages!

This, my aspiring immortal friend is why and how it took so very long for God’s Bride to be born. The Pentecost of the Law and the Pentecost of the Spirit mark release from slavery into freedom, from darkness into light, and release from mortality to immortality with one purpose, to replicate God in His Bride.  In English Her name is Church, Ecclesia in Greek. She is Jewish and she is gentile. E pluribus Unum, ‘Out of many, One.’ She is One, Holy, Universal, and Apostolic, a genuine beauty!

Heppy Birthday Bride of God. Let’s get our white gown ready! I hear the Bride Groom coming!

Motheringlyness

Does every country make its people stop to remember mothers? I don’t know, probably not all of them because there are so many and they are so different from each other, these hundreds of countries on our planet.

Countries like mine which do want its people to remember mama are being like good mothers.

My good friend Cole and I like trains a lot. We like the way the wheels fit right on the tracks and make going so sure of itself and so secure. That train knows just where it’s going. All it has to do is regulate its speed. Trains hardly ever care about cross traffic to stop for, or wrong turns, or pushy intruders butting into their paths. Trains and train tracks make good examples of mothers and their children. Mothers make us feel secure when they form the tracks under our little feet that guide us to adulthood and through it for as long as we live and as much as we want them to.

The Church, even though some people only think of it as a building to go to on certain days of obligation, is actually the mother of aspiring immortals. She forms the tracks under our feet to the path of nothing-but-life, and goodness and peace-undisturbed, and God-light that will replace our dependence on sunlight some day and forever.

Not everyone has a mother to bless today and to thank here and now for all of the self sacrifice and love and the goodies she brings into our lives. Not every woman is a mother who plays out the role in her unique way. But every aspiring immortal has the Bride of Christ to guide him or her, to strengthen and feed and form the tracks under our feet to Kingdom Come.

Today on our path through life, this little train of me sees a great big red STOP sign. It is time to stop and see the beauty of mothering and be grateful and show gratefulness and any way our hearts lead us. I think that makes our Father who art in heaven very happy. 

The Wonderful Baptasion!

Today is my very favorite holy day in the whole wide world and it’s not just because August 6th was the holy day my old grandfather, Emmanuel, went to be with the Lord which I always thought was very cool! It is because God told me once a long time ago that Transfiguration Day is the culmination of the most spectacular baptism that ever did and ever will happen, of course I mean Jesus’ baptism.

 

Think about it. On January 6th Jesus Christ walked into the Jordan River with John the Baptist, no sooner did he descend into the depths of the watery grave than God the Father bellowed for everyone to hear, “This is My Son in whom I am well pleased!” No greater introduction has human flesh known than that.”

 

But Jesus’ baptism did not end there because on August 6th, nine months later...enough time for a baby to go from seed to ripe fruit, God lifted his Son Jesus from the holy font of the Jordan River way up high in the sky. High as the tippy top of a mountain and said it again! “This is My Son, whom I love, listen to Him.” And Jesus’ face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light.

 

So, the next time you see a cute baby go into the baptismal font, naked and slippery and then lifted up out of the waters and as high as the priest’s hands can lift it, be very quiet. Maybe you too will be able to hear God say, “This is my child whom I love.”

 

God told me, and now I am telling you that the spectacular transfiguration of Jesus was actually the finale of His amazing baptism! May this Transfiguration Day find you full of light too. Shine on!

My Epiphany

As the Son of Man I have had to learn patience. I must wait for signs from my Father to act. These last years have travelled slowly through my soul. Day after hour-filled day of observing human life form stacks of multicolored lumens, bright pink joys, purple prayers, green labors, red sorrows. How difficult is has been to look upon the ill and not to cure them. Time forbid; slow ripening grievous cruel Time. The gymnasium of life strengthened me and taught me what I must know for this day of my theophany.

 

Brother John, servant of my Father, how well you have gathered the flock. How did you attract sinners like moths to a flame who shunned the synagogue with their hearts if not their bodies but rushed to your deadly life-renewing waters*?

 

Today I too will surrender my body to the deadly water of life that these years of waiting and maturing may disappear into the Past.

 

Receive me deadly water. Freely do I give you my impatience, my anonymity. Let This Body fall into your grip, that My Spirit may catapult me into the life for which I was born. I am ready.

 

Look at the crowds. No longer do they argue; no longer does the one seek power or prestige over the other. Glorious day that my eyes see such widespread humility-acceptance of their inability to trust the Father, to let Him invoke good in their lives, to relinquish vanity. Certainly fear delivered them to these waters; Brother Fear, guide My People home.

 

Father, keep them in your care when they emerge from the waters of death- to-self. Let them forever be mindful of this moment of new birth.

 

Give them to Me. I will teach them and heal them and cover them with my wings like a hen gathers her chicks.

 

John, receive Me as one of the people; don’t forbid this body. Did they hear my Father speak? Of course this holy herd, this humble repentant heard of lambs heard my Father introduce Me. Oh Lord, am I ready for this moment for which I have so long prepared? I must speak with you. Wait for me in the desert.

 

*Note: Water is an agent of cleaning because it ‘kills’ the filth and delivers purity. Water is an agent of death in drowning, water is a life giver and life sustainer.

The First Transfiguration

The story goes that one day Jesus, the son of Mary and Joseph, climbed a nearby mountain called Tabor and he took three men from his troop with him. When they reached the top of the mountain they saw their friend Jesus lit up as if he had just eaten the sun. If that wasn’t alarming enough, suddenly ancient Moses and ancient Elijah appeared, and before the terrified friends could pinch themselves a loud voice came from a cloud that bellowed, “This is my Son in Whom I am well pleased, listen to Him.” So they fell flat on their faces until their hearts stopped racing.

Mortals don’t believe this story and aspiring immortals just love the idea that immortality visited old planet earth at least once a couple of thousand years ago. For a split second we can imagine what real life will be like when time doesn’t matter anymore. Moses and Elijah appeared to remind Jesus that he too was immortal. And then the never-visible God came to also remind Jesus that he was immortal and beloved. So when in the near future he would have to leave his body behind, it wouldn’t really kill him.

You don’t have to believe this story because it didn’t happen to you. But it helps to know that just maybe one day a long time ago a few immortals got together on this old earth. It makes you wonder how often it has happened without being written for all the world to read. Time and blood are not as essential as some people think, are they? As one aspiring immortal to another, my wish for you today is that your transfiguration is less spectacular and more lasting. And that in your heart you too can hear God say that you are his child and He loves you.

Have a wonderful day!

Waiting for Epiphany

The first few days after the birth of anyone are magical. The baby jerks and coos; wincing eyes seek knowledge and soak up information. Wise men, women, and children come to visit with gifts of earthly necessities, mostly clothing. Soon after the baby arrives the threats begin. For little Emily or Jason it is scarcity, ear infections and milk supply; for the Christmas baby, Jesus, it is assassination.

The years go by fast for Emily and Jason, but even faster for Jesus who turns thirty in twelve calendar days.

Each of us is born with a mission. For some, the mission is clear and being pursued; for others God only knows the mission and we can only hope it is achieved. By the time we are thirty most of us are in full mission mode. When he was thirty, Jesus was ready to turn his world upside down, talk to foreign women, heal on the Sabbath and destroy death. He knew the spirit of the Law better than anyone and aimed to demonstrate it. But first He needed a nod from God. Without it, Jesus may have been crucified a lot sooner.

On January 6th, Jesus went to the Jordan River to be baptized by John. No sooner did he emerge from the sea than the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove and landed on his shoulders. Then a voice came from heaven which said, “You are my beloved son, in you I am well pleased.” That was when the special connection between Creator and Son first went public.

On the day when God lets the people around you know how special you are to Him, hopefully you won’t have to be half naked in the middle of a river. Hopefully, you will be able to proceed with the power to make your world a much saner and compassionate place where the spirit of the Law reigns supreme.

Most businesses have mission statements that define who they are and what they aim to achieve. A personal mission statement is a good idea. Describe your mission in a paragraph and then aim to live it one day at a time. Start it with the epiphany that you are God’s own creation and that you want to please Him.