Love is infectious, but is it real? Feelings, passions, and desires create affections, but are they enduring or fleeting? The intensity of love creates bonds quickly. Wrapped together, loves tentacles slide around our bodies, into our hearts, penetrating our minds, and embracing our feelings. It feels so right.
Infirmities create calamities. Diseases destroy and death comes. Unclean spirits cause fiendish afflictions. Even the slightest of fevers causes misery. Life is sheer drudgery, as Job declares. Our lives are no better than hireling, a slave imprisoned and chained. Misery dawns day after day, nothing seems to change.
Evil is a lack. It subtracts from our goodness. It distorts the truth. It deforms our beauty. It diminishes us leaving a void and emptiness that nothing fills. As St. Paul remarks among those enslaved in evil, are “among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death” (2 Cor 2:15).
A world filled with noise, chaos, and confusion creates complexity. “It’s complicated” expresses perfectly how bewildered we have become. Lost even dazed, because of the many and varied possibilities and activities enticing us to explore and expand our potential; yet, which one satisfies?
Temples, sacred places, inspire prayer. Temples set apart—consecrate—people for worship. Worship not only lifts our hearts to give glory and praise to our God, but by worship, God Himself comes down honoring us for our prayer. Temples then are not just places to offer, but temples are places to receive.
Enslaved in sin, separation from God, we perish (Is 59:2). Sinfulness, hidden within our minds, darkens our wills, weakens our resolves, and we easily succumb to the test—temptations—for we lack restraint. We become submissive, obeying every craving. Desperate though empty, others use and abuse us.
This beautiful melody, Turn to Me, bespeaks deeply, even desperately. God wants us to turn to Him, “Turn and be saved, says the Lord, there is no other.” Turning towards our God destroys any guilt, shame, or regret for, as Isaiah reveals, “You, O LORD, are our Father, our Redeemer” (Is 63:16).
The destructive forces creating the chaos and confusion cause the greatest fears. Fear that abyss where we become senseless, even mindless and mad, for we have lost all meaning, purpose, and hope. This, of course, is hell, total despair. In fear we regret the past knowing it could have been different.
The most frightening words come from the book of Revelation. The letters to the seven churches expose the indifference of the believers. The message to the Church of Philadelphia declares they are the synagogue Satan. To the Church of La-odicea, the message reproves and chastises them because they are neither hot nor cold. Lukewarm, that is they are indifferent to the knock of love at the door of their hearts.
It is not science; it is not smartness; it is not cleverness. Wisdom, according to Scripture, is a person. “I, Wisdom, dwell with experience, and judicious knowledge I attain” (Ws 8:1). She is known as Lady Wisdom, portrayed as a bride, bedecked with jewels (Ps 45), covered in the gold of Ophir, a woman of valor and honor (Prov 31:10). Beloved by her King Who seeks to make her his own, not by force, but by self-sacrifice.
We are expressions of God’s Glory, created with beauty, goodness, and fullness. His glory embraces us, and we who acknowledge God as the source and spring of our own goodness, are filled with this truth and beauty as St. Paul proclaims: We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness…
Listening to another, hearts connect, and intimacy happens. I see the other as a person of inestimable value. I hear them and accept them as a person who has value, feelings, and emotions. They are a person whom I esteem. Though I may disagree with their values, ideas, and feelings, I accept and affirm the other. I enter a dialogue.
Iconography, a unique art form, paints—writes—a person into being. Though it is a painting, the painter prays the icon into being. Icons, then, are precious for they are the thought and love of the person expressing their deepest, mystical thoughts. If this is true of a human artist how much more so with the Divine Artist.
Fantasies and fairytales create dreams. These powerful images emotionally impact our imagination, creating visions and images, enticing our desires. Our memories solidify such imaginations urging us to recreate anew such fantasies and fairytales told down through the ages.
