“Prayer and fasting will stop war. It will change the material world.” (from The Visions of the Children by Janice T. Connell, pg. 21)
There it is again – this time, a quote through one of the visionaries said by the Virgin Mary: that we can not only change our perception and attitude of and about the world, but actually change the very nature of material reality.
This blog is not specifically about Medjugorje, but that place is important in that natural law is bridged there again and again. It just is, from giant crosses shining without sun or electricity to miraculous healings. We can argue about it all we want, but is has been this way in this town since 1981 and continues to this day – but only here, not in the next town over the mountain. It is a center of prayer and fasting. How easily can we discard Our Lady’s comment?
What I find the essential question to be is: how MUCH can we change material reality?
For the past fifteen or so years, a guy who I considered to be old even at the beginning still comes around a few weekends a month to deliver his Jehovah’s Witness publication, “The Watchtower” and “Awake!” Although his uninvited visits always cause me to curse, once I settle down, I always have an interesting chat. His son has come here a few times to hunt deer, and I have come to know certain aspects of his personal life pretty well.
He was an iron worker and one time fell three stories onto concrete and broke his back. He mostly healed, but of course that ended that career. Since, he has had a real adventure with his heart, at one point clinically dying on the operating table. It was then that he moved from standard Christian belief to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, because, as he said with a trace of anger, he did NOT see the light or go to heaven or see his relatives or anything of the sort. All he experienced was blackness. He does not want blackness; and the Witnesses promise a heaven HERE ON EARTH rather than in some spiritual realm. This has satisfied him, for, in his mind, he did not miss out on heaven at his “death” because it will come to us only at the Second Coming, at the end of ordinary time on Earth.
In the natural world, however, the big fish eat the little fish; here, humanity survives on consumption, and so, to a degree, is subject to the law of limited goods. That means that some get eaten – or must remain poor – while others do the eating and/or get rich. It is, by physical law, a dog-eat-dog world and it seems impossible that it could ever be anything but. The lion lying down with the lamb? How could that be? Does the lion have to eat grass?
But our Jehovah’s Witness believes that the Earth will be transformed when Christ comes again, with our bones raised from the dead into a paradise on Earth. I do not wholly discount his idea, but do not wholly embrace it either. However, if the physical laws of the world can change somewhat here and there – as in Medjugorje - why not a lot, and everywhere? In the end, if the Creator is beyond creation, which “It” has to be, He could make any laws that He wishes, anytime, beyond time, back in time, whatever and whenever.
We have all experienced this, this change of the laws of nature, in that bizarre phenomena called by Carl Jung “synchronicity.” Here is a current example: I have recently been in a church group studying the Gospel of Mathew. Because of the busy-ness of Easter, the last few chapters were left until later, so I finished them on my own. My wife and I are now following the “5 stones of Medjugorje,” which includes reading at least some Bible each day. Not wanting to delve into more of the Gospels – rightly or wrongly, thinking of them as only remakes of the others – I followed them to their end and came to “The Acts of the Apostles,” the next book in the New Testament after the Gospels. I had no idea that they were an account of the Apostles’ work after the death of Jesus written by Luke.
At the same time that I began Acts, give or take a day, I saw the write-up in the paper about the movie titled “Paul.” I did not know until a greater write-up a week later – last week to be exact – that “Paul” was taken from Acts, which we find in the movie was written from the words of Paul by Luke as Paul was languishing in a Roman prison. And so: having never read Acts before, and having never heard of or seen a movie about Luke and Paul, there they were suddenly, together, a one in a million shot at best.
I know no one is singing halleluiah from this little tale, but the truth is, when it comes to doing anything with the spiritual, these “coincidences” happen as a matter of course. They are usually small, but consider: if you believe, as I do, that these little coincidences are providential, then two things must be admitted: one, that God can change the laws of cause and effect on a dime, at will; and that, two, I as an individual matter enough to the Eternal Power for IT to change the laws of nature (at least a little bit) for me. And, as I am no greater than any other human on the planet, this means that the God of Eternity is concerned intimately with ALL of us – enough that God will change anything that is necessary for God’s purpose for us.
I believe this happens whether we pray or are religious or not, but if one does and is, then one can see the miracle of daily life in one’s own life. With that, one comes to believe more, and with that, I believe greater miracles come. And with that, who knows how much the world can change? Who knows whether the lion can truly lay down with the lamb?
There it is again – this time, a quote through one of the visionaries said by the Virgin Mary: that we can not only change our perception and attitude of and about the world, but actually change the very nature of material reality.
This blog is not specifically about Medjugorje, but that place is important in that natural law is bridged there again and again. It just is, from giant crosses shining without sun or electricity to miraculous healings. We can argue about it all we want, but is has been this way in this town since 1981 and continues to this day – but only here, not in the next town over the mountain. It is a center of prayer and fasting. How easily can we discard Our Lady’s comment?
What I find the essential question to be is: how MUCH can we change material reality?
For the past fifteen or so years, a guy who I considered to be old even at the beginning still comes around a few weekends a month to deliver his Jehovah’s Witness publication, “The Watchtower” and “Awake!” Although his uninvited visits always cause me to curse, once I settle down, I always have an interesting chat. His son has come here a few times to hunt deer, and I have come to know certain aspects of his personal life pretty well.
He was an iron worker and one time fell three stories onto concrete and broke his back. He mostly healed, but of course that ended that career. Since, he has had a real adventure with his heart, at one point clinically dying on the operating table. It was then that he moved from standard Christian belief to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, because, as he said with a trace of anger, he did NOT see the light or go to heaven or see his relatives or anything of the sort. All he experienced was blackness. He does not want blackness; and the Witnesses promise a heaven HERE ON EARTH rather than in some spiritual realm. This has satisfied him, for, in his mind, he did not miss out on heaven at his “death” because it will come to us only at the Second Coming, at the end of ordinary time on Earth.
In the natural world, however, the big fish eat the little fish; here, humanity survives on consumption, and so, to a degree, is subject to the law of limited goods. That means that some get eaten – or must remain poor – while others do the eating and/or get rich. It is, by physical law, a dog-eat-dog world and it seems impossible that it could ever be anything but. The lion lying down with the lamb? How could that be? Does the lion have to eat grass?
But our Jehovah’s Witness believes that the Earth will be transformed when Christ comes again, with our bones raised from the dead into a paradise on Earth. I do not wholly discount his idea, but do not wholly embrace it either. However, if the physical laws of the world can change somewhat here and there – as in Medjugorje - why not a lot, and everywhere? In the end, if the Creator is beyond creation, which “It” has to be, He could make any laws that He wishes, anytime, beyond time, back in time, whatever and whenever.
We have all experienced this, this change of the laws of nature, in that bizarre phenomena called by Carl Jung “synchronicity.” Here is a current example: I have recently been in a church group studying the Gospel of Mathew. Because of the busy-ness of Easter, the last few chapters were left until later, so I finished them on my own. My wife and I are now following the “5 stones of Medjugorje,” which includes reading at least some Bible each day. Not wanting to delve into more of the Gospels – rightly or wrongly, thinking of them as only remakes of the others – I followed them to their end and came to “The Acts of the Apostles,” the next book in the New Testament after the Gospels. I had no idea that they were an account of the Apostles’ work after the death of Jesus written by Luke.
At the same time that I began Acts, give or take a day, I saw the write-up in the paper about the movie titled “Paul.” I did not know until a greater write-up a week later – last week to be exact – that “Paul” was taken from Acts, which we find in the movie was written from the words of Paul by Luke as Paul was languishing in a Roman prison. And so: having never read Acts before, and having never heard of or seen a movie about Luke and Paul, there they were suddenly, together, a one in a million shot at best.
I know no one is singing halleluiah from this little tale, but the truth is, when it comes to doing anything with the spiritual, these “coincidences” happen as a matter of course. They are usually small, but consider: if you believe, as I do, that these little coincidences are providential, then two things must be admitted: one, that God can change the laws of cause and effect on a dime, at will; and that, two, I as an individual matter enough to the Eternal Power for IT to change the laws of nature (at least a little bit) for me. And, as I am no greater than any other human on the planet, this means that the God of Eternity is concerned intimately with ALL of us – enough that God will change anything that is necessary for God’s purpose for us.
I believe this happens whether we pray or are religious or not, but if one does and is, then one can see the miracle of daily life in one’s own life. With that, one comes to believe more, and with that, I believe greater miracles come. And with that, who knows how much the world can change? Who knows whether the lion can truly lay down with the lamb?
RSS Feed