god – The Merton Prayer

Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do, Or Do Without

I cannot imagine my life without a small group of Christian brothers/sisters who meet together to pray, study the Bible, and just to “do life” together! As a kid I was always in some kind of small group – a cub and boy scout troop, a sports team, or a Sunday School Class (taught amazingly by my mother in elementary school and my father in high school).

As an adult my small “accountability” groups have always grown out of the church. At LaSalle Street Church in Chicago we called them “cell groups” and we met at one another’s house regularly. At Christ Church of Oak Brook I was part of a five-man group which also met regularly for over 10 years. Currently, and for the past five years, I have been part of a group made up of five couples – we call ourselves “Parents Anonymous (PA).”

Last night our PA group met and as usual I was blessed beyond words by the connection, the honesty, and the encouragement which are always present every time we meet. One of our group, Mark, shared a 12-word poem/proverb which he called his “pioneer saying” that he learned in high school: Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do, or Do Without. The rest of our group sat quietly in awe as we focused on the meaning of this poem for our own lives, and I asked him to send it to each of us. And he did.

Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do, or Do Without. Our 30^th president, Calvin Coolidge, is credited by many with creating this proverb to help people create in their lives frugality and resourcefulness, especially needed during the Great Depression. But others claim the proverb goes back to the 1700’s – we just don’t know and likely never will know who first said Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do, Or Do Without!

I cannot get this poem/proverb out of my mind. Each of the four phrases has grabbed my mind, my heart, and my soul at a very deep level. Beyond the obvious meaning that Pres. Coolidge wanted Americans to heed, to me the poem/proverb can apply to our spiritual lives in a most profound way. One simple example: Jesus told us, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” [John 13:34].

Our response to Jesus’ “new command” takes us through Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do, Or Do Without. “Loving others” is to be a hallmark of my life, I must show love at such a constant level that I may feel I am “using it up” and “wearing it out” – but the goal is always to “make it do” since “doing without” is NOT an option for Christ-followers. May my friend Mark’s “pioneer saying” and Pres. Coolidge’s “proverb to the nation” bring you deeper insights as you chew on God’s written word! Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do, or Do Without!

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you discovered The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.

You will find The Merton Prayer and more at https://themertonprayer.com/

[NOTE: If your organization, church, or school would like a workshop/presentation on The Merton Prayer please email me at TheMertonPrayer@gmail.com. I can Zoom all over the world and have done 90-minute, 3-hour, 5-hour, weekend, or five-day workshops/retreats.]

The Man On The Middle Cross Invited Me!

Imagine this: when the thief crucified with Jesus got to the pearly gates of Heaven and was asked, “How did you come to be here?” I wonder what he might have said. Did he have a clue about justification by faith? Baptism for the remission of his sins? Regular church attendance? Inspiration of holy scriptures? Prophecy confirmations from the Hebrew Scriptures? No, to all of those.

Here is the only thing he could have said: The Man on the Middle Cross Invited Me! And clearly that answer was all he had to say! Jesus had turned to him during the torture of crucifixion when both were near death in shear physical agony, and he said, “I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43 NLT).

But there is a little more to this story which bears looking at for our own edification as we Christ-followers hope for a similar invitation from Jesus. Did you remember that the other criminal dying on the other side of Jesus had taunted Jesus with these words, borne, I am sure, as much out of fear of impending death as a genuine hope of a miracle rescue: “So you’re the Messiah, are you? Prove it by saving yourself—and us, too, while you’re at it” (Luke 23:39 NLT).

To me the most powerful of all conversion sermons comes next. The soon-to-be-pardoned thief said, “Don’t you fear God even when you have been sentenced to die? We deserve to die for our crimes, but this man hasn’t done anything wrong” (Luke 23:40-41 NLT). Give the word “fear” its proper meaning of “respect” and the first point of this sermon is clear: This convicted criminal knew enough to respect his newly met neighbor, also condemned to death, as the incarnate presence of God.

His second sermon point is also powerful: His belief that both he and his fellow criminal “deserved to die” is always a precursor to salvation. His words constitute a true confession of sin.

In my opinion, the third point of this sermon is a true highpoint of all human encounters with Jesus recorded in scriptures: “But this man has not done anything wrong.” Whereas all we human beings have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, Jesus of Nazereth, born of Mary, fully human and fully divine, is the only person ever to walk on the face of this earth without having sinned.

So, there you have it: a really convincing three-point sermon for the ages! How did you get here to heaven sir? The Man on the Middle Cross Invited Me! The coolest part of this sermon is that Jesus’ words to the believing thief on the cross are the same words He offers to us today! Do we actually believe that the same invitation is open to us, or do we water down His invitation to include all of the “works” which we need to do to earn entry into heaven? Lord, may it be so that we, with the thief on the cross, can shout with joy at heaven’s gates when asked how we got there: The Man on The Middle Cross Invited Me!

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you discovered The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.

You will find The Merton Prayer and more at https://themertonprayer.com/

[NOTE: If your organization, church, or school would like a workshop/presentation on The Merton Prayer please email me at TheMertonPrayer@gmail.com. I can Zoom all over the world and have done 90-minute, 3-hour, 5-hour, weekend, or five-day workshops/retreats.]

Imma-Nu-El

Today, as we celebrate the birth of Christ. Yesterday. 2,000+ years ago. Tomorrow. 5,000 years from now. Three little Hebrew words give us meaning and purpose to our existence. I am sure everyone reading this blog has long heard and used the word Immanuel with the understanding it refers to Jesus, the Son of God. But most of you have not studied Biblical Hebrew, so you may not know that Immanuel is NOT one word. It is three small Hebrew words which when put together create this amazing appellation for the Son of God.

Im is the Hebrew preposition which means “with.” It looks like this – עִם.

Nu is the Hebrew pronoun which means “us.” It looks like this – נוּ.

El is the Hebrew proper noun for the name of God, often meaning power, strength, mighty God. It looks like this – אֵל.

You put these three little words together – adding a double “m” is required before the pronoun “us” may be added to “with,” which also requires an extra vowel – hence, im plus nu becomes “immanu” instead of just “imnu”. Probably way too much information, but for any who were questioning – now you know how we got this amazing word Immanuel.

Isaiah 7:14 [NIV] says, “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”

The New Testament writer Matthew tells us this – “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God with us’) Matthew 1:23 [NIV].

Chew on this for a few moments in the last hours of this Advent day known as December 25th – how often do I really, I mean really, feel that the almighty powerful God who created the universe is actually, really, “with me”? How often do I even consider that as I go through my daily activities, Imma-Nu-El is indeed with me.

This promise – made by God through the prophet Isaiah and then repeated centuries later by one of Jesus’ disciples the Gospel writer Matthew – is not just a Christmas Day nice thing to say and sing about.

This promise from God gives us purpose and meaning to our existence on this planet. May each of us think on this promise repeatedly every day of our lives. I hope to always connect this promise of Imma-Nu-El with the ending words of the Merton Prayer: “I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you discovered The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.

You will find The Merton Prayer and more at https://themertonprayer.com/

How Could That Happen?

“Mr. Denny, I am calling to get your verbal consent for the surgery tomorrow for your left knee replacement?” My answer was one word: “No.” Awkward silence followed. “I don’t understand, are you not coming for surgery tomorrow?” “Yes, I am coming but my left knee was replaced in 2022! I consent to surgery on my right knee!” Apologies followed. I was not surprised but the question lingered: How Could That Happen?

Many of you will recall that after my 10-year career as parish pastor I spent 4 years working in Risk Management at a major Chicago hospital. Informed consents were regularly messed up. Fortunately, all of the mistakes were caught pre-surgery and we never had the wrong limb operated on. (Now that would be a lawsuit which I would LOVE to handle!)

The simple answer to How Could That Happen? is this: It could and does happen because we are humans and not machines! Our natural nature is to sin! Even the best human among us is a sinner who makes mistakes! Listen to how the Apostle Paul spoke about this: “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23 NIV).

“All” leaves no room for me to be the exception! Every single one of us is a sinner. How often, if ever, do we “mature Christians” admit that we are “sinners”? Sure, we list our sins in our prayers when we ask God to forgive us, knowing full well that He always forgives us! We even admit to being a sinner in the ‘’Lord’s Prayer”. But such admission, as honest as it can be, hardly convinces us that we have an internal quality called “sin.”

The part of this famous verse that pastors rarely focus on is “and fallen short of the glory of God.” We are human sinners and we do not contain within us “the glory of God”. Is this a big announcement? Did we not know this before we read Paul’s letter to the Romans? Because we are all sinners, we must realize that we are not God, and we can never become God.

Today’s blog is not a total bummer! The surgery on the RIGHT leg was very successful and post-op I am walking pain free now with use of a walker. And Paul’s very next words totally take the sting out of “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

Listen to Romans 3:24 — “And all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ” (NIV). Hear the same verse from the NLT: “Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins” (Romans 3:24 NLT). And this, my friends, is very good news for all of us sinners!

We are “freed from the penalty of sin” is just about the best news a sinner can ever hear. So How Could That Happen? is completely, totally, and properly, answered for us. Thank you, Lord!

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you discovered The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.

You will find The Merton Prayer and more at https://themertonprayer.com/

It’s All There!

In the 1990’s I was totally “pro-choice”. What happened to change my mind? (1) A conversation with a doctor; (2) Jeremiah 1:5. This is not a “political” attack on pro-choice folks; it is my story of how I changed directions on this issue.

I was in San Diego to present my OB/Gyn expert in a medical malpractice case – my client’s baby was permanently deformed and would never be able to use her left arm due to the negligence of the doctor. My expert was the head of his hospital’s OB/Gyn department with incredible credentials. He was also a strong Christian who was not shy about sharing his faith.

As we chatted at dinner after his deposition, he knocked my socks off by telling me, “I used to do abortions. At least one per week for over 20 years.” I did the math – he had done over 1,000 abortions. “Why did you stop?” said I. His response changed my life forever: “I realized that at conception It’s All There! Nothing is ever added except food/nutrition!”

My brain grabbed this and I could not let it go. Probably within a week I realized the absolute undeniable truth in It’s All There! From the moment of conception absolutely NOTHING is added to that zygote, nothing except nutrition, nothing except food! It’s All There!

And then there was that verse in Jeremiah where God talks directly to the famous prophet and preachers ever since have grabbed that sentence to preach powerful pro-life sermons. “Now the word of the LORD came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you’” (Jeremiah 1:4-5. NASB1995). So, God knew me in the womb, and nothing but food was added after I was conceived!

I was hooked by my own brain into a total life-changing position. Nothing was added except food! And every other human being on this planet was also “known by God in the womb.” My wife Miran and I have stood in front of Chicago abortion clinics, praying that the women coming to have their babies sucked out of their wombs would change their minds!

The Lord and the Holy Spirit moved in the hearts of a few women who saw 30+ of us praying in front of the abortion clinic. They slowly turned around and walked back to their car. Our prayer was that they would never return to that or another clinic for an abortion.

“Reproductive health care” – can we really/logically say ripping a baby apart by a vacuum which got every piece of the baby’s body out of the woman’s womb is health care? Seems like “death care” to me! And modern science for decades has known that the DNA of the baby is NOT the same as the mother’s DNA, which makes the mantra “My body my choice” illogical non-sense. Mom’s left arm is her body and she can indeed cut that off with impunity. The baby inside her is NOT her body, it is the body of another human being who is already known by God!

It’s All There! and God’s message to Jeremiah – that’s how I made a 180 degree turn in my life and I have never looked back with regret. May the God of Jeremiah bless you today as you chew on these thoughts! And don’t forget –at conception It’s All There! Leave a comment please!

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you discovered The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.

You will find The Merton Prayer and more at https://themertonprayer.com/

[NOTE: If your organization, church, or school would like a workshop/presentation on The Merton Prayer please use the contact tab and let me know! I can Zoom all over the world and have done 90-minute, 3-hour, 5-hour, weekend, or five-day workshops/retreats.]

Amen!

All Catholics reading this blog will surely get a kick out of my ignorance. For years when I approached the priest for Eucharist, after he placed the wafer in my hand and spoke the words “The body of Christ, given for you,” I always looked him square in the eyes and said, “Thank you.” Then I moved on, consumed the host, and felt very close to the Lord and filled with the Holy Spirit.

One day at mass with my wife Miran, who is a “cradle Catholic” having been born into the faith as a child, she overheard me say, “Thank you” to the priest. She quickly informed me that the proper response to the priest’s words “The body of Christ given for you” was to simply say Amen!

I thought my “Thank you” had been polite and appropriate. But instead, it had caused a ripple of discomfort in the ears of any who heard.

Got me to thinking about the word Amen! Did you know that every time you conclude a prayer with the word Amen! you are speaking both Hebrew and Greek! The Greek word Amen! is a transliteration (letter for letter) of the Hebrew word Amen! which literally means, “Verily so, this is the truth, so it is, without a doubt” and other words/phrases connoting the assuredness and veracity of what went before the Amen!

All of which led me to chew on (pardon the pun) the phrase “This is my body given for you.” Some priests/pastors change the words Jesus used and instead say, “This is my body broken for you.” If you ever hear those words spoken at a Eucharist Service, I encourage you to speak privately with that person and point them to Psalm 22, the Messianic Psalm of King David, which is referred to very often by Jesus.

Was Jesus’ body “broken” on the cross? His side was pierced, his hands and feet were pierced, a crown of thorns cut into his scalp; but when the soldiers came to fracture his femurs as they had just done to the criminals on either side of Jesus to hasten their death, they stopped and did not fracture his femurs, since Jesus had already died.

Psalm 22 has so many amazing references to the life of Jesus as the promised Messiah (“anointed one”) I encourage you to read it very slowly. Verse 14 says “all my bones are out of joint” – not fractured or broken, just out of joint! And then the most amazing fact is in verse 17 which says, “I can count all my bones!” We can assume that since God created human beings, He knew perfectly well what modern medical science has since discovered and confirmed – there are 206 bones in the human body; not 208 which would have happened if Jesus’ femurs had each been broken in half!

When the Psalmist says, in speaking of the Messiah, “I can count all my bones”) we can read into these words “I still have only 206 bones, none of my bones were broken like the two guys on either side of me!” So, when I am told, “this is the body of Christ which was given for you” I rejoice and say Amen!

Verily, it is so, this is the truth! Not a single bone in my Savior’s body was broken and His entire body was given for me. Amen! indeed!

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you discovered The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.

You will find The Merton Prayer and more at https://themertonprayer.com/

Keep Moving!

One of my favorite actors is Dick Van Dyke. I can use the verb “is” since he will turn 99 years old this coming December. At age 95 he was asked by an interviewer “What is your secret to such a long and healthy life?” to which he replied with his world-famous smile, “Keep Moving.”

Indeed, those two words come to me often now when I so easily can talk myself out of exercising. His career is amazing, and I encourage you to check him out on Wikipedia because you just won’t believe all he has done and continues to do! He read his memoir on Audible books in 2011 at age 86!

Something he said in his memoir has stuck with me: “Ok, we need three things in life: something to do; someone to love; and something to hope for!” I absolutely love that mandate for purpose! I also am confident that those three “things in life” correspond truly with the life of a Christian. Could this be any easier?

“Something to do” are the marching orders which Jesus gave the disciples just before he ascended back to heaven. His words are for us over 2,000 years later: go, teach, baptize! Spread his gospel so that all the world will know God and turn from evil. Keep Moving gets us off the couch, using our gifts and knowledge to teach, and being thrilled when a new believer is baptized into the newness of the Christian life.

“Someone to love” points us to our relationship with the Lord, every day of our life! If we stop and really think about who the Lord is, there is only and always love in our heart. God first loved us, we don’t even have to think about it: we have someone to love, every minute of every hour of every day! And the true joy about love is that God has given us human beings whom we get to love here on hearth! Keep Moving to that person God has called us to love! And then find another! And another!

“Something to hope for” is surely the easiest of VanDyke’s threefold life purpose for we Christians. Our hope is focused on spending eternity with the God who created the universe and flung the stars into the sky! We cannot begin to really understand what eternity will be like, but knowing it is there for us gives us undying hope! Keep Moving in hope which motivates us every single day!

But what if we Keep Moving and we sometimes, somehow, lose our way? That’s when the powerful words of The Merton Prayer keep us on track, focused on God and not ourselves. “Therefore, I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” Maybe the words of my favorite “Mary Poppins” actor just might help me stay focused, get up off the couch, and Keep Moving!

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you discovered The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.

You will find The Merton Prayer and more at https://themertonprayer.com/

I Chose Forgiveness and It Kept Me Alive!

Have you heard the “Wild Bill” story from the German concentration camps in WW2? This was new to me, and it blew my “theological socks” right off! I heard this story from a very credible source, Dr. Robert Sears, S.J., who has been my and my wife Miran’s spiritual director for over 20 years, and he claims it is absolutely true.

A Polish family of five were imprisoned by the Nazis in a concentration camp. The father evidently appeared healthy and so the Nazis pulled him aside for work detail while he had to stand and watch all four of his beloved family members shot to death and dumped into a mass grave!

Sit with that horrific scene for a moment and see how your spirit is dealing with it.

When the American troops liberated all Nazi concentration camps in 1945, they spent weeks working in each camp. At first the emaciated prisoners were scared of these “new soldiers” whose language they did not recognize and whose uniforms were different than their captors. If you have never seen any archival footage of the liberation work you might want to google it, the historical footage abounds on the internet and is easy to find. Here is just one link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyGQGEgTkLI

Back to “Wild Bill” who got this nickname from the American soldiers since he had a mustache and looked like Wild Bill Hickok, the famous American folk hero who lived from 1837-1876 and who had a very distinctive mustache. Also, his Polish name had five vowels and was unpronounceable by the Americans. Wild Bill spoke several languages, including English, so when he was asked if he was okay with being called “Wild Bill” instead of his real name, he agreed.

Wild Bill worked tirelessly with the American soldiers to help the sick and dying receive care with dignity, often putting in 16-hour days. Unlike his fellow prisoners he was not emaciated. He stood strong and looked as healthy as the American soldiers who quickly questioned him, “Sir, how is it that you are so healthy, and your fellow prisoners are skeletons near death?” His answer grabs my heart.

He said that after his entire family was killed, he had a choice. He could forgive or he could hate and seek revenge. He said repeatedly to any soldiers who asked him how he was so healthy, I Chose Forgiveness and It Kept Me Alive! He had endured the exact same starvation diet as others, yet he did not deteriorate into a weak skeleton. I imagine this conversation with Wild Bill:

Me: Why did you choose forgiveness sir?

He: Because anger and hate would eat me up inside, and because God loves all human beings, so how can I not love everyone?

Me: How are you so healthy when you had a starvation diet for six years?

He: A miracle, is the only way I can answer that question.

Me: Did you ever want to just give up and die?

He: Never. If I did that, then the Nazis have triumphed over me.

Me: What message do you have for us in 2024 sir?

He: Love everyone and forgive quickly, lest it eat you alive!

So, there you have it! Wild Bill’s story totally confirms what Victor Frankel said in “Man’s Search for Meaning” [Beacon Press, 2006] and which I referred to on page 74 in “The Merton Prayer: An Exercise in Authenticity” [ACTA Press, 2022]. The prisoners who asked, “why has God allowed this to happen to me” often did not survive, whereas those who asked, “what does God wish for me to learn in this awful situation” more often did survive.

So, what will it be for me and for you? Forgiveness or vengeance? May this day mark my constant connection with Wild Bill’s I Chose Forgiveness and It Kept Me Alive!

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you discovered The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.

You will find The Merton Prayer and more at https://www.themertonprayer.com/

Then We Fly Away

A birthday is always a time for celebration, right? Maybe yes, maybe no. When I was in my 30’s, my birthday was usually celebrated by finding a 10-K race to enter and run, even if there was snow on the ground (February 21^st in Chicago, don’t you know)!! Wow, those days are so long gone. (And all of that running on concrete is what my ortho docs said led to my left knee replacement!)

Many of the biblical characters lived well into their 100’s with some like Noah living to the ripe old age of 950!! (Genesis 9:29), while others like Abraham were just a kid when he died at 175 years of age (Genesis 25:7). Seriously, God? If someone lived to be 175 today it would be plastered all over world newspapers! Did you know that we actually are told in the bible that our lifespan blessed by God is somewhere between 70-80! Listen to this Psalm which is called “A Prayer of Moses” – “Seventy years are given to us! Some even live to eighty. But even the best years are filled with pain and trouble; and soon they disappear, and Then We Fly Away.” (Psalm 90:10, NLT).

God has blessed me with seven years of life beyond my 2017 cancer scare, surgery, and radiation. “Pain and trouble” – most of us can testify to that in our lives. I am sure readers of this blog and my book, The Merton Prayer, will not be surprised to hear me say that “my miracle kidney stone” saved my life. If I had passed that stone in three days in December 2016, which is the normal time span, instead of taking 8 weeks to pass it, I would not be around now. My cancer was so aggressive that my doctor told me after my 2/13/2017 surgery that if my cancer had not been caught due to that stubborn kidney stone, I had ONLY 3-6 months to live!

The Merton prayer has been with me every day of my life for decades and it took away the fear which came when I first heard my aggressive diagnosis and that I should have surgery very soon. You will not be surprised that I put off the surgery for three weeks so I could go to Kentucky and attend a UK basketball game with my brother and sister! Priorities must prevail, right?

So, as I think more and more about life in heaven with God, seeing my mother and father, the four grandparents whom I never met, my Brother-in-Law Dean, and many others, it is sort of a blessing to encounter Psalm 90:10 and to start thinking about “Then We Fly Away”. I look at birds in the air differently now post-Psalm 90. And when I hear that one sentence in The Merton Prayer – “I have no idea where I am going” – now I hear it differently! I do indeed know where I am ultimately going, maybe not today or tomorrow, but at some point. And I now am filled with joy by these words – Then We Fly Away!!!

How does this grab you? Can I get a witness?

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you found The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.

You will find The Merton Prayer and more at https://www.themertonprayer.com

Advent — To Come To

Being in Southern California on Christmas day is quite an experience weather-wise for this Chicagoan! Wearing shorts and a tee-shirt in the middle of winter is just not what I am used to. Maybe I think clearer in such great weather, you can determine, but the word Advent is on my mind today in a whole new way.

Rarely do we even hear, much less use, the word Advent; instead, it is replaced with “The Christmas Season” or “Christmas Day.” How surprised I was, and disappointed, to read this definition in a dictionary of the word advent: “arrival of something – e.g., advent of spring” with absolutely NO reference to the use of Advent referring to the coming of Christ as a baby in the manger at Bethlehem!

It seems that these days the only place we hear the word Advent used is in a church, and that’s not bad at all, since in church we hopefully can trust that we hear truth! Advent – To Come To refers to the Creator of the universe coming into the universe in human flesh and blood, a crying baby lying on straw in a Bethlehem animal shelter.

Advent leads to interesting questions, does it not? Advent – To Come To only to the planet earth? Other planets out there where God saw fit to incarnate as a baby? How does incarnation work anyway? Assuming that the Creator God does not have flesh on bones like we do, just how does God change into flesh and blood? An interstellar magic show of sorts?

And this one just knocks my intellectual socks off every time I put energy into trying to answer it: why would a non-human Creator God even want to become flesh and blood like humans? To “save us from our sins” is the theological answer to my question but that leads to “why did we need to be saved from our sins?”

And finally, this question may strike some as sacrilegious at best, heretical at worst: Is it possible that God already does have flesh and blood? Genesis does say, “God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them“ [Genesis 1:27 NLT]. So, if we humans were created “in his own image” and we have flesh and blood, then maybe, just maybe, God has flesh and blood too? Sort of like the famous math formula: if A=B, and B=C, then A=C too!

And then Advent – To Come To raises a whole other set of questions for me. Since I have been taught, and believed my entire life, that God is omnipresent – which simply means everywhere – is it not logical to wonder “why did God even need to come to earth as a baby if God was already here?” Maybe this question is easy to answer: God was always here on earth, we just couldn’t see God. But wait, there’s more! If God was already like humans (i.e., with flesh and blood) then why could we not see God here on earth before Jesus was born in Bethlehem?

Advent – To Come To is not as easy and simple as “away in a manger” and “oh holy night” seem to make it. I will leave this to the professional theologians, but invite my blog readers to hit the comment button and leave your thoughts on these questions. Worth pondering, right? Especially when it’s 76 degrees out and sunny!

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