We live in a world that wants healthy bodies with clear minds but we eat junk food and deny the nutritional difference.
“For to set the mind on the flesh [the things of the world, only what we can see] is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace” (Rom 8:6 ESV).
In The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard writes,
As we increasingly integrate our life into the spiritual world of God, our life increasingly takes on the substance of the eternal. We are destined for a time when our life will be entirely sustained from spiritual realities and no longer dependent in any way upon the physical. Out dying, or “mortal” condition, will have been exchanged for an undying one and death absorbed in victory.
Of course that destiny flatly contradicts the usual human outlook, or what “everyone knows” to be the case. . . . We find our world to be one where we hardly count at all, where what we do makes little difference, and where what we really love is unattainable, or certainly is not secure.
He notes that Aldous Huxley thought it natural to yearn for moments of escape from the pain or monotony of living and that perhaps a new drug would be developed to help us out. He says Tolstoy became overwhelmed by the seeming futility of everything, “until he finally came to faith in a world of God where all that is good is preserved.”
We will not find peace until we acknowledge the fount from which it springs.
New Book: Poet and Author Marly Youmans has released a new narrative poem, Seren of the Wildwood. She shares a couple reactions in this post. “Marly is a gifted visionary, her many published works reflect her unique talents, in Seren she presents a tale of no particular time or place, magical yet not absurdist, familiar yet surprising.”
Ordinary Life: “If we are concerned with what’s practical, the day will come when we will look back and it will be clear to us that there was nothing more practical than prayer, nothing more practical than perseverance, and nothing more practical than praising the triune God even when evil was pressing in on us.”
Ordinary Gratitude: A mom buys her kid a yellow raincoat, tweets about the reaction, and goes viral.
Poetry: Take a moment to consider Seamus Heaney’s “The Railway Children” from the book Station Island. Just a snippet here:
We were small and thought we knew nothing
Worth knowing.
Reading: “Much of mankind’s boredom derives from its inability to find satisfaction in a shelf of books.”
Photo: A painted 1969 Volkswagen, Yuma, Arizona. 2003. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.