Month: September 2024

No Greater Love…

djpasternak

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you. how many times I yearned to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings, but you were unwilling.” (Matthew 23:37 NIV)

In editing my novel, Daybreak From On High, I came to the chapter about when Jonathan (the protagonist) went to consult with the Pharisee, Nicodemus. Jon heard him speaking about his visit to Jesus (Yeshua) secretly at night. The Pharisee related what Jesus said to him. The last thing was the quote from Matthew, comparing how He and a mother hen are alike, to convey His love for the children of Israel. This simile is one of the many found in scripture. One might say the Bible is the best ‘writers’ guide’ to simile and metaphor.

The way God and His Son Jesus, love Jerusalem as His Chosen People includes all who believe in Jesus and His teaching. We are Jerusalem, the people of God. It is awesome ! However Matthew 23:38-39 is a warning : Look, your house will be abandoned and desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say. ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. There is so much to unpack here. Its far, far above my understanding.

What did come to mind in writing this post, was a simile: Writing Daybreak for seven years is like the Israelites spending forty years in the desert. On the other hand, probably not a real simile, but I now know how imperfect the novel really was. Perhaps, like those Israelites, it humbled me. We both needed time.

Each of us is a work in progress. To God a day is like a thousand years: His love far above our love.

‘You can Quote Me’: Reagan Continued

djpasternak

(Reading over some of my past blogs, I came upon one that requires a second look. Busy editing my novel begun seven years ago, I’ve not written anything new lately, including a blog post. Yes, I did say I’ve been writing, rewriting. editing, researching “Daybreak” for seven years. So if you are seriously considering writing a novel, be prepared. Perhaps you might consider blogging instead.)

Here it is Sunday morning again; how the weeks of summer fly by. I did not want another week to go by without continuing the blog about Pres. Reagan’s speech to Evangelical Christian in 1983. It is even more crucial today and this is my way of conveying his message now through Quotes he used then:

Pres. Reagan: …a commitment to freedom and personal liberty, that freedom prospers only where the blessings of God are avidly sought and humbly accepted

C. S. Lewis: The greatest evil is not done now…in those sordid dens of crime that Dickens loved to paint. It is…not even done in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result; but it is conceived and ordered, moved seconded, carried and minuted in clear, carpeted, warmed and well lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.

Whittaker Chambers: The crises of the western world exists to the degree in which the west is indifferent to God, the degree to which it stands alone in communism’s attempt to make man stand alone without God.

Pres. Reagan: I believe we shall rise to the challenge. I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages–last pages even now are being written.

William Penn: If we will not be governed by God, we must be governed by tyrants.

Alexis de Toqueville: Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness, did I understand the greatness and genius of America, America is good. And if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

Perhaps this last quote is the source of another we have heard in most recent time, by a most unlikely messenger, not exactly angelic: Make American great again! Four words that require four more: Make America good again! Who knows if, how, or when? Who was it that said? No one is good but God alone.

Time to go to Church!!