Best way to start the day...

With a Nutty Buddy, and some hot Coffee! Oh Yeah!!

Finding Artifacts.

Recently I found an old Sketch book of mine, from my high school days.

One of my favorite things to draw was faces, I loved drawing portraits. Each face is so interesting, and unique. This one, in particular I was fairly happy with when I drew it. From a picture of an old man on the cover of a National Geographic magazine! I just loved his face! He just looks like he had a million amazing stories! I think I drew this around 1988, or 1989.

Every day is a Sacred gift!

Lord I thank you that you are “the lifter of my head”, that every day I have the glorious opportunity to look up, to lift up my heart towards you, because of what you have accomplished!

³ But you, O Lord, are a shield about me,
    my glory, and the lifter of my head.  – Psalms 3:3

In that Holy act of lifting up our hearts (Sursum Corda) is the thing you told us we ought to do, to “look up” when we see the Day approaching.

²⁸ And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. – Luke 21:28

I thank you Father for this peace that is mine! Given to me by You, and You alone!

Every day is Sacred! Let me be ever aware of your presence, and your power.

Regardless of my estate, you have empowered me, through your indwelling Holy Spirit, so that I can look towards you, my Savior, and be renewed. Strengthened. Remade! Truly your resurrection from the dead making me alive in You, in the Kingdom of God which is ever present in this eternity.

Be Thou my vision, oh Lord of my heart

Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art

Thou my best thought, by day or by night

Waking or sleeping, thy presence, my light.

Be Thou my wisdom, be Thou my true word

I ever with Thee, and Thou with me Lord

Thou my great Father, and I Thy true son,

Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee, one.

"He led captivity captive." 

James S. Stewart 1941 from “The Strong Name” Page 55

“It is a glorious phrase of the New Testament, that ‘he led captivity captive.' The very triumphs of His foes, it means, he used for their defeat. He compelled their dark achievements to subserve his end, not theirs. They nailed him to the tree, not knowing that by that very act they were bringing the world to his feet. They gave him a cross, not guessing that he would make it a throne. They flung him outside the gates to die, not knowing that in that very moment they were lifting up all the gates of the universe, to let the King of Glory come in. They thought to root out his doctrines, not understanding that they were implanting imperishably in the hearts of men the very name they intended to destroy. They thought they had defeated God with His back to the wall, pinned and helpless and defeated: they did not know that it was God Himself who had tracked them down. He did not conquer in spite of the dark mystery of evil. He conquered through it.”

Dimensions of light: Seeing things. 

"...The inconceivable nature of nature" 

Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize winner. He was an American theoretical physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, among other important work in the scientific community. 

Truly Fascinating! 

The Hound of Heaven

Readers of English poetry will recall the turbulent life of Francis Thompson. His father wanted him to study at Oxford, but Francis lost his way in drugs and failed to make the grade time and again. This was a slumbering genius, if only his life could be rescued. When Francis finally succumbed to the pursuing Christ, he penned his immortal “Hound of Heaven”:

I fled Him down the nights and down the days.
I fled Him down the arches of the years.
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind:
And in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
Down titanic glooms of chasmed fears
From those strong feet that followed, that followed after.
For though I knew His love that followed
Yet I was sore adread
Lest having Him I have naught else beside.

And he ends:

Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest me.

I am utterly convinced that neither walls nor unfortunate mishaps nor poor decisions can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. Perhaps you have noticed footprints of one following closely across your own life. Will you follow them?

-Ravi Zacharias 

Hound of Heaven: A Modern Adaptation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXlgz4aBKt8

A modern skeptic:

“But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. . . . As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. . . . The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything." 

-G.K. Chesterton.