A Christmas Thought

A Christmas Thought

At Christmas time, we celebrate that Christ came into our time and our space, fully God and fully Man, to take on the ultimate darkness of all time.  He came to demonstrate sacrificial, redemptive love for us, hopeless humankind.

For all the glory he did for us, we, all of us, still fight with darkness in our lives.   Many of us during this holiday season will find ourselves singing or say joy to the world or other song or statements of joy and happiness.  But, underneath this we are dealing with one of the two darkness’s that Hemen, an author of Psalms 39 and 88 speaks to: outward darkness due to difficult circumstances in out life or inward darkness, due to having no sense of God’s presence. 

Hemen was not the typical Psalm writers of the laments.  It appears to me all the rest ended their Laments end in hope.  Hemen’s are the exception.  He takes off the gloves so to speak and giving God his honest unfiltered thoughts and feelings in these psalms.   He even ends Psalm 88 with the last word “darkness” This is a man that is God fearing, God loving and devout.   But he had a cry of darkness he had to express.

There is a lining to these Psalms’.  They give us four points of hope in times of darkness.  They are in there, you just have to look, you will find them.

1.        Darkness can last a long time. It will not matter what you do to end it;

2.       These are often the places to uniquely learn about God’s grace;

3.       These are times that sometimes can be the best situation for you to grow into your greatness

4.       They can be framed or reframed to lead us into a deeper and more spiritual self

Least we not forget, even Christ had his own cry in darkness: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Matthew 27:45-46

Have a great holiday, and Merry Christmas and remember out of the darkness good things can come.

Mark Schmidt, Th.D

A conversation to remember

So, I had this conversation with God in what I can only called a forced vision.  For me it was really weird as I expected bright white and a voice that was deity like.   It was a soft blueish aura with a human like figure that I can best describe as an energy type figure.  So, I asked why me, and he said, you have a question and said you wanted to hear from me. I asked him why so many peoples life is so fucked up.  Yes, that is how I asked it.   His response was:

"I gave humanity free will. You get to make any choice you want on anything you want.  I gave you my son to absolve you of the sins of you fathers and yourself.   (Then I swear the energy glowing figure shrug what should have been shoulders) So it seems to me that humanity is making choices that bring about their own suffering and as you said fucking things up.  If mankind would even follow half of the guidance, I have given them and left for them to find, these fucked up things would be reduced to nothing.   Mankind chose to follow other guidance and other rules made by man as they are easier and quicker rewards."

I laughed and responded yeah you have kinda describe life in my world.  Each for themselves to enrich themselves as much and as fast as they can.  But we do have the priest and ministers that are worse than the common person and don't get me started on politicians.

His voice softens to barely a whisper: "All those that have abandon me and my core guidance will pay when they pass over to me.  I will welcome the atheist that lived a good life and was an honest person over the pious man whose piety was only to serve themselves.   I have answered your questions."

At this point I felt like I was in a counter clockwise spiral as the aura vanished and the voice disappeared.   My head throbbed and I was wide awake already.    I hurried wrote this down.

Not sure whether this was real or all in my head, well yeah that is where it happened, but I meant imaged all in my head.  It was way to real not to believe it was a real conversation.  I felt blessed and honored afterwards.