Meditate | Scripture Surprise

Meditate is a monthly column in which insights gained from meditating on the Word are shared. We welcome your insights, too, in the form of comments or even your own article. Contact us if you'd like to write a submission for this column. -Editor

The following may be obvious to many of you, but I just heard an old favorite in a new way. It's the 23rd Psalm. It all began with that first verse, “The Lord is my shepherd—I shall not want.” I always took this as just the first of several stand-alone sayings throughout the psalm, but as such I’ve never got much meaning from it. More recently I’ve lingered over the word “want,” understanding it as a somewhat old-fashioned way of saying “lack”; as in, “The Lord is my shepherd, [and therefore I won’t lack anything].” Taken by itself, this has really helped me. But it gets better.

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Thunder and Lightning

Judah invokes images of thunder and lightening to vivify the Lord's power to enlighten our minds when dark clouds surround us. Spiritual storms are inevitable. Can we use them to our advantage? -Editor.

How do you survive when you're in the grip of resentment or mired in gloomy doubts that your life will ever be worthwhile? What if you could experience a new reality crashing over you—not a cold, dark reality of things falling apart, but a vibrant realization of goodness, hope and love? I'd like to offer a metaphor for those sudden, profound insights that wake us up mentally and keep us going even in the darkest times: lightning and thunder. Experienced by everyone, these startling phenomena of nature also show up as stirring symbols in the Word, where they embody the dramatic entry of the Lord's influence into our daily thoughts. In explaining thunder and lightning as they appear in Revelation, Swedenborg writes,

Because of the flash of light that strikes the eyes, lightnings symbolize enlightenment, and because of the crash that strikes the ears, thunderings symbolize perception. And since these two together symbolize enlightenment and perception, voices then symbolize instruction. (Apocalypse Revealed §236)

Enlightenment—that glimpse of heavenly life that goes far beyond mere factoids about religion. Perception—that almost tangible grasp of spiritual things, a mental imprint of an objective reality out there beyond your own four walls of your mind.

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What can we hate?

Do you spend time critiquing the people around you? Do they just keep looking worse and worse to you? Judah exposes this attitude for the narrow, self-centered posturing that it is. Look on the world with love! -Editor.

I can’t stand those blind idiots who rant about the self-satisfied fools who condemn judgmental morons for categorically hating bigots (and just between you and me, although I believe that bigots are people too, you know what I think about people…) So I was reading Secrets of Heaven no. 1,079. It’s about Noah, after the flood. The water has gone down, and Noah and his clan have disembarked and thanked God for their deliverance. Life returns to normal. Noah even plants a vineyard and makes some wine, but he overdoes it. Drunk and naked, he is sprawled out in his tent, asleep, when in walks his son, Ham. Ham goes and brings his two brothers, presumably to let them in on the joke. But it’s no laughing matter, as Shem and Japheth are savvy enough to know, and they walk backwards until they’ve draped some clothing over their father’s bare form.

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Do You Think the World Will End in Your Lifetime? Part 2

In part two (part one may be found here) Judah looks at the bible for evidence of the resurrection being either an absolutely material event, as Millennialists would have it, or a spiritual reality apart from time and space. Judah finds confirmation of the latter, supported by Swedenborg's vision of a concrete spiritual world. -Editor

Why celebrate New Church Day? What makes the New Church different from any other Christian group? I could compare New Church ideas and practices with a variety of other faith traditions in an effort to explain why it is unique, but you’re probably familiar with the results of such a comparison: the New Church believes in a one-person rather than a three-person God; it teaches a life of repentance; it proclaims that heaven’s gates are open to all good people everywhere, whatever their race, their culture, or their religion. But instead of broadly pointing out the teachings that set apart (or at least define) the New Church, I would like to follow up my previous article on the end of the world by contrasting a New Church view of human resurrection with that of Dispensational Premillennialism. I hope this little study gives you a small but specific sense of how an approach shaped by New Church teachings can revitalize Biblical study—and transform the prospect of death into a balanced hope for an afterlife that is at once concrete and spiritual, at once present and future, and entirely grounded in a personal approach to Jesus Christ in sacred scripture.

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Do You Think the World Will End in Your Lifetime? Part 1

As we approach the New Church Day celebrations on June 19th, we are publishing this two part essay in which Judah asks what the New Church can offer to the discussion of 'end times.' This subject was most recently invigorated by Harold Camping's May 21st prediction of judgement day. -Editor.

Do you think the world will end in your lifetime? According to a poll on livecitizen.com, there are three possible answers to this question: a.Yes, May 21, maybe in 2012 b.No, it’s all religious garbage c.I don’t know Well? What do you think? You’ve got three options, friend: Doomsday draws nigh! Or maybe the only judgment is that Harold Camping has just hammered the last nail into the coffin of religion. Or maybe we don’t have a clue.

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Possible Married Partners: One or Many?

Judah examines choosing a partner to marry from two different perspectives, the Lord's omniscience and the individual's limited viewpoint. Humans desire certainty but paradoxically would resist directives from an authoritarian god. Judah arrives at consent as the bridge between these two perspectives. - Editor

I need to find my soul mate

Have you ever said, heard, or felt something like this before? Everlasting love is a theme in cultures around the world and one that’s especially prevalent in the New Church, where it’s often called conjugial or married love. Needing to find a soul mate implies that there is one out there—and that we need to be certain he or she is the right one; which leads us to a question: is there only one possible married partner for each of us or are there many? (I use the term “married partner” for what in broader culture might be called a “soul mate”.) So is there one or many? There are two very different answers to this question, depending upon whether we’re dealing with the Lord’s perspective or ours.

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