Valentine's Day is always interesting in our house. My wife, the romantic between the two of us, hardly has to labor to out do my hurried card and occasional flowers, though she always does. Note the snacks, the card and the handwritten, "Thought you would love this scientific card, Mr.Wizard!"
She is the holiday queen, in fact I just heard her speaking with our only daughter, now grown with two kids of her own. Mimi and daughter were busy planning surprises for the grands!
Meanwhile my head this morning seems again mesmerized by the "Sun of righteousness, risen with healing in his wings." Pardon my crossover of Malachi's expression of love!
Each morning as I open the blinds of our eastern facing breakfast room, the sunrise never grows old, kind've like Valentines Day is for my wife.
I truly love my family, but I'm equally captivated by creation, God's Valentine, which appears new every morning.
Designed it seems for our enjoyment and benefit, though the means is equally awesome. Intense heat and pressure in the Sun's core cause protons to fuse together to form helium atoms, a process that releases large amounts of energy. This nuclear reaction—the same process that takes place in a hydrogen bomb—has powered the Sun for more than 4 billion years.
Then even more astounding is the reality that our planet spins on its axis at a speed of approximately 1000 mph, which we would hardly notice but for the Sun's "rising and setting," affording us a break in our day sufficient for our rest and body's recovery.
Meanwhile, we are zooming around this great star at 67,000 mph, itself always in the same relative position within our galaxy! All the time embedded among millions of other galaxies, placed at just just the right distance from others so as to protect us from unhealthy radiation and massive meteorites. The only planet to our knowledge that will support "higher life forms!"
These wondrous realities are always playing out in the backdrop of my mind as I daily pursue my romance with God.
This morning as I pondered all this, my disciplined read had me at Matthew 22. Here we find the God of the Galaxies, standing robed in the flesh, conversing with mortals who most professed a knowledge of Him!
As Matthew has it, Jesus is standing among both Pharisees and Sadducees, (religion always divides) speaking in a language quite harsh, but words they would have used had they been discussing "sinners!"
Jesus' message seems always strategically contained within parables that require Spirit guided wisdom if to be fully mined. In this particular setting, the message seemed to go right over these religious heads.
They were there that "they might entangle him in his talk." Meanwhile, Jesus lays the groundwork that centuries and even science will soon play out as truth.
His invitation to a wedding speaks to the Bride of Christ, a community soon to unite in spirit, but one the religious as well as unbelievers will later scoff at.
As to politics and taxation, give to Ceasar what is Ceasar's!"
Pertaining to marriage, a temporary thing, though we will all eventually be together, transformed into the likeness of the angels.
He had demonstrated this "transfiguration" somewhat earlier to three of his disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration, even inviting Moses and Elijah along side of him as evidence of such realities.
Peter, as I too would have been, found himself mesmerized that morning as the Son shined with a "radiance so bright that his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light."
Later, he would relieve all further doubts of this promised afterlife, resurrecting himself from a brutal death by those same uber-religious ones who had earlier questioned him.
The Bible records at least eight appearances of the resurrected Jesus to different people at various times and locations over a 40-day period before He ascended into heaven. These records written by those willing to stake their life on such testimony.
My guess, given today's knowledge
is that His ascension into a "cloud with power and great glory" was more likely a full disassembling of himself, unlike the partial prelude on Mount Tabor.
The energy that had previously held the very atoms together in which his spirit was contained, releashed as light while matter vaporized in cloud-like fashion. That would seem plausible today.
Could His Spirit still be among us, as was described millennia before in II Chronicles 7 as a Shekinah glory, when the "brilliance of the Lord filled the house".
Upon this "ascension", His disciples were left grieving, longing for his promised return, explaining his ascent as a necessary positioning of himself upon a throne, "at the right hand of God," as Stephen invisioned at his stoning. He too, likely influenced by their previous desire that Jesus become their new King.
His Spirit at times can still be felt among us, at work preparing his Bride, much like the Song of Solomon implies.
The Apostle John writes, "Beloved, now we are the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is."
Those open to this reality can daily share in the great joy his love, a love shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
Happy Valentines Day!
Happy Valentines Day