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Showing posts from September, 2014

Margaret’s Song

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  There was a king in Thule,  True even to the grave;  To whom his dying mistress  A golden beaker gave.  At every feast he drained it,  Naught was to him so dear,  And often as he drained it,  Gush’d from his eyes the tear.  When death came, unrepining  His cities o’er he told;  All to his heir resigning,  Except his cup of gold.  With many a knightly vassal  At a royal feast sat he,  In yon proud hall ancestral,  In his castle o’er the sea.  Up stood the jovial monarch,  And quaff’d his last life’s glow,  Then hurled the hallow’d goblet  Into the flood below.  He saw it splashing, drinking,  And plunging in the sea;  His eyes meanwhile were sinking,  And never again drank he. “Margaret’s Song” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) in “Faust. Part I.”
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Shut Up Because Of Unbelief

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Luke opens his letter to Theophilus (which we know as “the Gospel of Luke”) with a peculiar account of the herald of Jesus, John the Baptist. John’s role in the life and ministry of Jesus was part of God’s plan, but there may be one other element about his story that we might miss.  Here’s the situation: Zacharias was chosen to perform a once-in-a-lifetime service in the Temple when The Angel of The Lord appeared to him with a peculiar message, a message not intended for the devout who waited for Zacharias to emerge, nor for the nation of Israel, nor for the Romans. The Angel brought a personal message from God to Zacharias--that he would father a child. Understand that both Zacharias and his wife were well beyond childbearing years, so “naturally,” Zacharias doubts the message. A child? Impossible! The Angel tells Zacharias that God already sees the not-yet-conceived child as “great”, but what makes him great? The Angel says that John will be recognized by what he eats and...
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