This morning on the front porch I sat with my dog, Sami, coffee in hand, energized, contemplating the day and thinking about yesterday. The morning rush had begun and the cars swished by every few moments. The air was still and cleansed by the morning dew. The morning sunlight reflected off everything and everywhere, even those places that seem too remote to ever see the bright morning star.
These past few months I have lacked inspiration, that is an inspiration to write when I was unobstructed by the daily grind. This morning that inspiration and timing collided so I have taken the time to share. These are the thoughts that swelled up and needed a place to settle.
I drifted into yesterday and I was amazed at what settled out. I had seen this youtube video of Jonathan Romain vs. Michael Brown, Was Jesus the Jewish Messiah?
Rabbi Romain sternly presented his case that he couldn’t understand why God would choose to send his son to die and then raise him. He dismissed most of scripture even as inspired word and as Dr. Brown asked probing questions, it came to light that he didn’t even believe that the scriptures had enough merit to confirm that Moses existed. To me this wasn’t a debate between a Liberal Jew vs. a Messianic Jew, but rather one between a Humanist and a Messianic Jew.
Rabbi Romain asserted that all people of all religions may have a different path to God through good works. He dismissed the Messiah because peace has not come on earth, but I suspect that until he stands before the Messiah, he would not change his position.
The reason became painfully apparent to me this morning as I sipped my coffee and listened to the periodic swish. That is when the inspiration hit me. Call it a spiritual drop kick if you want. It was a moment when I saw just a glimpse of the fullness and completeness of God. I began to see a fractal, but not a picture. It was a fractal made of all the concepts I was perceiving in my mind. I zoomed out and I saw the pattern again, then more and more as I continued to zoom. All of the repeating concepts pointed back to God, a creator, a master designer with infinite knowledge and profound understanding of all that is.
The first fractal was simple. It was a contrast. There was one man with a choice. Either believe in me or not. A man may have pride in himself or pride in God, but not in both.
What I saw at that moment was Rabbi Romain, in arrogance saying that his knowledge was greater than God and that he could not understand why God would send Jesus while at the same time rejecting all of the knowledge that God had given him. That picture was a picture of man who was proud of his mind and intellect, but in his arrogance he has rejected truth found his folly.
At the same time, I saw Dr. Brown, a man who had submitted himself to God and acknowledged that he didn’t know everything, but had taken the scriptures, studied them and tested them with reason. In doing so, he submitted himself to a higher authority in effect placing pride in God and God’s intellect instead of himself.
But this alone isn’t my insight, it’s just the contrast of the parts of the fractal. As you zoom out the issues become more complex, but are all based on that same mathematical truth, the formula for all of this world.
That next level exposed groups of people, those in the liberal camp who had pride in themselves and those in the conservative camp who who had pride in God. Even when you zoom into the conservative camp, there are various prides that divide the camp even further. Zooming out into the political groups, groups of people in business, etc, all revealed this same dipole.
My heart drifted again back to the scriptures and I began to see them as a fractal. There is a message so simple that even a child can understand it. It is the message of sin, sacrifice and grace. This same message can be expounded and one can see reflections of this message deep within the scriptures foreshadowed over and over. That message points back to the Messiah. It is found repeated over and over in this way and that. Zoom in, zoom out and there is one variant upon the other until the information contained in the Bible cannot even be contained in the human mind because it is so vast.
And so, just as John said about the Messiah, his works were so numerous that they could not be written about because there could not be enough books to contain them. For the works of God fit together like that fractal, zoom in or zoom out and you will find over and over again the same message in a different form.
That message is, “Know that I am God and there is no other. I love you even though you have abandoned me. I have provided a way back for you, but only one way. Put aside your pride and selfishness and come back to me because I am your God.”
All of the fractal goes down into the human heart. To choose God or not to choose him. To be God, or to be God’s.
So to Rabbi Romain, I say this: You are loved more than you may ever be able to comprehend by the God who created you. He daily reaches out his hand to you and asks you to believe in him and him alone, to honor not a tradition, but to set aside yourself for him. Become holy in him. Become his possession. Seek HIM with all your heart. Then you will know and understand his grace. Then you will see his son, your Messiah. You will know his love. You will know the peace that you work so hard to obtain, and you will know his purpose for you. Shalom.
Proverbs 3:7
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