Melvin Udall

Dear pretty girl. Before you subconsciously think I’m writing about you, please note, you're wrong. It is possible I’m referencing past experience, but don’t fret. I’m just writing about a girl dressed in a blue raincoat with red hair and blue eyes and mannerisms...I will decide because I’m the writer. Her figment takes up space I think somewhere between the heart and the synapse, and I can’t evict her, as if I don’t have a choice and she will stomp and curtsy where she pleases.  She’s worth poetry and sleepless nights and the periodic Saturday rollick, which I will call a blog. The thing about writing about a girl in your head is that it may or may not mean anything. I will let you decide and only say rollicking is grand and so is writing, so I’ll let fingers do the walking.

I mentioned manner, and while I identify with Melvin Udall in As Good As It Gets, “I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability,” I have never written, per se, a woman. The thought is losing the “rollick”...but the girl in the blue raincoat is worth my brain space sometimes, particularly when she wants to be loved. Otherwise, it is better to think about teaching English and things to do in front of me.

You see, there is a wall. It can arise between anyone. It appears when no one knew it was there and then you can’t feel fingers doing any walking. You can’t hear any familiar voice.  You don’t know if the other is there, and you don’t know...how to write a woman. I’m of the impression everyone can write something about someone. You’ve felt fingers grip yours. You know sarcasm when you hear it. You’ve loved and I think you can write. But you only sense the imperceptible wall that divides and puts the person in the raincoat on the other side, a wall in your head. A wall that’s imaginary and a girl in a blue raincoat that is you talking to you, a memory or muse. Where did that wall come from? Why can’t you hear me on the other side? Why can’t I feel you?

The girl in the blue raincoat maybe lives somewhere, and she may love wit and blue raincoats and a hand to hold her own.  But she’s only a girl in a blue raincoat on the other side of a wall in the mind. I put her there. I wrote her too, and I expect not to hear her voice or feel her fingers...because I made the wall. She’s confined to this derisory attempt at writing a woman. And what if she walked up to me, and what if she wasn’t wearing a blue raincoat and never had? Who is she in front of me?

Am I also a man in a raincoat, with red hair and blue eyes on the other side of a wall in your brain? I watch you and think you’re pretty. Can our fingers to do the walking? Don’t imagine me. Please don’t put up walls.  I can’t take them down.  I can’t reach through. Can you hear me? I don’t want to be a talking raincoat man in your head. I want to be a person in front of you.

He who believes in me will never be thirsty. Jn 6:35

I may, I suppose, regard myself as being a relatively successful man. People occasionally look at me on the street. That's fame. I can fairly easily earn enough to qualify for the highest slopes of inland revenue. That's success. Furnished with money and a little fame, even elderly, if they care to, can partake of trendy diversions. That's pleasure. It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote was sufficiently heeded to persuade myself that it represented a serious impact on our time. That's fulfillment. Yet I say to you, and I beg of you to believe me, multiply these tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing, less than nothing, a positive impediment, measured against one draught of that living water that is offered to the spiritually hungry.

Malcolm Muggeridge

Have you ever spent time in the Bible and regretted it?

You want your life to count. You want to be free. You want to be significant. You want a great marriage and family. You want to make money God's way. You want to see revival of historic magnitude in our generation. Remember this. If you neglect the Bible, you neglect everything you desire. If you devour the Bible, you move toward everything you desire. This is how God works. -Ray Ortland

Enter in! O Enter in!

Lift up your heads, O gates!
And be lifted up, O ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The LORD, strong and mighty,
the LORD, mighty in battle!
Lift up your heads, O gates!
And lift them up, O ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The LORD of hosts,
he is the King of glory! Selah
(Psalm 24:7-10 ESV)

24:7-10 The splendid entry here described, refers to the solemn bringing in of the ark into the tent David pitched for it, or the temple Solomon built for it. We may also apply it to the ascension of Christ into heaven, and the welcome given to him there. Our Redeemer found the gates of heaven shut, but having by his blood made atonement for sin, as one having authority, he demanded entrance. The angels were to worship him, Heb 1:6: they ask with wonder, Who is he? It is answered, that he is strong and mighty; mighty in battle to save his people, and to subdue his and their enemies. We may apply it to Christ's entrance into the souls of men by his word and Spirit, that they may be his temples. Behold, he stands at the door, and knocks, Rev 3:20. The gates and doors of the heart are to be opened to him, as possession is delivered to the rightful owner. We may apply it to his second coming with glorious power. Lord, open the everlasting door of our souls by thy grace, that we may now receive thee, and be wholly thine; and that, at length, we may be numbered with thy saints in glory.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary on the Bible

Jacob

Who was Jacob?
A twin. Heir of God's promise to Abraham. A deceptive cheat, both to his brother and his father, Isaac. Fearful for his life. Timidly obedient. (Gen. 25:19-28:5)

When he was traveling from his home to his uncle Laban, and he lay down under the stars with his head resting on a stone, he had a dream of a ladder extending from earth to heaven. Some people call it Jacob's ladder. The LORD (translated as his personal name) stood above it and said in the dream (paraphrased) "I am the LORD, the God of your fathers. I will give you and your children the land you lie on, and you will spread everywhere and be a  blessing to the families of the earth. Behold, I'm with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I've done what I've promised."

Jacob responded with a startled awakening. He thought somehow he had missed the presence of the Lord in that place, but he felt it - the dream was so intense. And he was afraid. He memorialized that place in the middle of nowhere thinking "This is where God lives, and this is the gate to heaven", and he made a vow. He simply said, "If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear...so that I come back again in peace, then the Lord will be my God. And of all that you give me I will give a full tenth to you."

I have to wonder if Jacob knew who he was speaking to; if he had ever contemplated very long the promise God made to Abraham, passed down to Isaac, and conferred to him. After all, he stole what wasn't his birthright. Had he ever thought about God's blessing people through his family? Was it even talked of or said in remembrance? I have to wonder again when God says, "I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you." Jacob may not have realized Who met him in his dream. He may have correctly been afraid, if he thought of God as dwelling in arid, holy places. But God knew what his plan was in "blessing all the families of the earth", even directly through Jacob. The one who didn't deserve his father's blessing. And so God met with him, his heavenly Father.

I identify with Jacob. I identify in the desire to self-protect and take. I admire his pragmatic assertion that he was very alone, with little to call his own, and he was definitely blameworthy. In true honesty he asked the Lord to be with him and keep him, provide bread and clothing, and restore peace in his home. He didn't ask for any more because he didn't deserve any more. But maybe he didn't know to ask for any more because he didn't know to whom he spoke. I think I have that problem sometimes, too. I wonder if Jacob ever thought back when he was older on God's promise not to leave him until He had done what he had promised him. I wonder how Jacob might have read Paul's words and example "for this reason I bow...from whom every family...is named." Might be he stunned to perceive Christ preeminent in everything (Col. 1:18), and how extensive his church family is?

Why we're here.

I have often puzzled over this verse. Gen. 1:27 "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." When I've heard people talk of it, it often sounds like guessing and it does lend to imagining, and probably more often then not I've heard people begin to reverse engineer what the 'image of God' must be. That is, because God is Spirit and in Genesis he's creating things from nothing, it is hard to imagine similarity with him. By default we seem to begin thinking of him in terms us and self-understanding. But that isn't right. That's not understanding him. "In our image" is...after us...emulating our character...desiring our relationship...where? on Earth. "Having dominion" and "multiplying".
1 Jn 3:2 says, "Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is." We don't know "what we will be" beyond the grave, but we will know the image of the invisible God when he appears, because we'll be like him. We'll see Jesus as he is. We were made in God's image to see Jesus.

John Calvin, "sacramental living".

The sacraments, therefore, are exercises which make us more certain of the trustworthiness of God's Word. And because we are in the flesh, they are shown under things of flesh to instruct us according to our dull capacity, and lead us by the hand as tutors lead children.

Or as a contemporary Catholic author put it, "I don't partake [of the Eucharist] because I'm a good Catholic, holy and pious and sleek. I partake because I'm a bad Catholic, riddled by doubt and anxiety and anger; fainting from severe hypoglycemia of the soul."


Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!
Ps. 34:8