A Beacon of Hope

This blog is designed to give people an inner look at a devotional life. Taking time each day to spend time with the Lord. The hope is if you travel on this journey with Rev. Jacob Shaw, you may be more inclined to spend time with the Lord as well. I encourage the use of a devotional, a scripture reading and prayer, then finally some form of artistic mark to tie it all together. 

Today's devotional is taken from: Zacharias, Ravi. The Logic of God: 52 Christian Essentials for the Heart and Mind. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2019. [E-Book] Chapter 36: A Beacon of Hope

Opening Thought: When you dive into conversations about God, you are bound to come up against terms we use to describe God, but often people do not understand what it means when these terms are applied to God. Let’s use goodness for example, people who believe in God will often describe God as good, but we also use good to describe other things or ideas as well. Myself, I will often say to my dog, “good boy” when he listens, which is rare. Is the goodness of God and the goodness of my dog one and the same or is there a difference? The difference is in the context of transcendence, thinking about God is like an inanimate object trying to think (if it could hypothetically think) about animation or animated being. One must realize that the thought, to which we are trying to grasp, transcends the capacity in which we can think. Luckily for us as humans, we live in two realities, one which transcends the other. We have our physical reality, our bodies, and three-dimensional world we move through. We also have our minds, which are spaceless and immaterial – existing in a universe created by energy dancing upon our brains. The energy and brain are in the material realm, but the reality in which is creates transcends what the material outputs. Since our minds seems to be able to transcend the material, we can encounter transcendent experiences, i.e., love, goodness and moral law. It is like our brains were created to link our embodied reality with the spiritual transcendence. So the difference of goodness between our worldly experience compared to God’s goodness, can be explained by a quote from Zacharias’ book, ‘God is not merely good. God is holy. He is the transcendent Source of goodness: not merely “better” in a hierarchy of choices [for most good] but rather the very basis from which all differences are made. He dwells in ineffable light.    

The devotional begins with: Isaiah 6:1-5

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above his were seraphim… calling to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. “Woe to me! I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips… and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

Second Thought: I often try to imagine this scene from the bible, to be looking upon the throne room of God. The experience would be humbling, terrifying, glorifying, wonderful, and ecstatic. We can barely think about God in terms that are true to the honor and glory to which God deserves, so just imagine being given a glimpse at a manifestation of God presence. I have had some miraculous experiences in my life, some that I would literally call miracles, but nothing would compare to being in the presence of the Source of All. Often when I have had conversations with atheists, I have noticed that there is not as much wonder in their daily lives. This isn’t a statement that would cover all atheists, I know this because often atheistic scientists have a call to wonder, thus they study the material world to fulfill that calling. What I refer to is anecdotal, just merely the ones I have encountered personally, and I have noticed that if you position them to think about transcendence, it is like there is a switch missing, like approaching the unknown wonders of the mystery of God is just not an option. I have always struggled to understand how they could develop this way. I may never know, but what I know for myself is that when I sit and wonder about God, goodness, love, and the majesty of the transcendent elements of life, it brings me peace.

Continual Work: Close your eyes and try to envision the throne-room of God. What does it look like, what does it feel like, and if you stood before God today, what do you think God might say to you, and you to Him?  

What Rev. Jacob is Working On: One of the things I have been working on lately is guided prayerful meditation, I plan a prayerful imagined journey which ends with me talking or praying with Christ. I want to switch the ending of my guided prayer to standing in the throne room and see how it may alter my experience.

Prayer for your day: Lord, welcome us to see You, in ways that will inspire our hearts to wonder and marvel in thought and imagination. If we can learn to dance in our minds, we may be more willing to dance in our hearts. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Artistic Close: In the Harry Potter movie series, where the hero of the story dies and during his time in the afterlife, he encounters Dumbledore, his recently deceased mentor. When Harry asks him if their encounter was real or just in Harry’s mind, Dumbledore replies, “Of course this is happening inside your head, Harry, buy why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

When critics of the biblical account say that Isaiah couldn’t have seen God, it was likely just a dream, or something concocted by his head. This is the line I often think about because it seems our minds can do things that the rest of our material being cannot. So maybe when the transcendent God reaches out, He reaches through our minds and hearts.

Image from: https://suzan1995.wordpress.com/2015/05/06/harry-potter-quote-of-dumbledore/