Transmillennial 2009 is right around the corner. It is scheduled for June 10-13. We’ll be gathering in Little Rock, Arkansas for the twenty-first annual conference. We intend to explore the next stage of human awakening.

There will be three tracks.

1) Reframing.
2) Creativity.
3) Life Practice.

Reframing will allow you to see there are alternative ways of viewing the stories that we have been telling ourselves for centuries.

Creativity will provide you with tools for expressing your creative impulse in a more conscious manner.

Life Practice will draw from real life transformative experience to model how conscious transformation can take place.

I’m geeked to have the Redding Brothers as our special musical guests again. These guys rock the house.

Registration deadline is May 31. You can read the conference brochure online here. And you can register online when you click here.

Transmillennial 2009 is sponsored by Presence International.

Yesterday, March 22, was World Water Day. If you are reading this (and you obviously are), you most likely have unfettered access to an apparently boundless amount of fresh water. You open the faucet and let the water flow freely. You can drink as much as you like, wash your vehicles, and irrigate your lawn.

Be grateful. Water is a precious commodity as residents in drought-stricken areas know well. As weather patterns change and usage increases, large population centers in societies accustomed to unrestricted water access are discovering firsthand how fragile life is when the rain stops falling, reservoirs dry up, and aquifers become depleted.

People living outside the post-industrial world have experienced harsh uncertainties related to long term drought. According to Worldmapper (a shared project of the University of Sheffield and the University of Michigan), 98% of all drought-related deaths occurring between 1975 and 2000 took place in Ethiopia, Sudan, and Mozambique.

Water issues, though, aren’t limited to drought-related deaths. According to the World Health Organization , over a billion people have nothing but harmful sources of water. About 40% of people in the world have no access to even a simple pit latrine, and this contributes to the spread of diseases like the recent cholera outbreaks in Zimbabwe and Malawi.

Antiquated agricultural practices, wide spread deforestation, and illicit pollution accelerate the dearth of fresh water especially in industrializing regions. As a result, water is becoming a flashpoint that threatens worldwide security. A water war, say, in the Middle East could rush into the rest of the world deluging the entire planet in a torrent of hostilities.

Governments, NGO’s, and private citizen groups are addressing the complex water questions. We’re learning that water is an intricate compound made up of more than two simple molecules of hydrogen and one molecule of oxygen. There are political dimensions, economic considerations, aesthetic elements, and cultural aspects.

Which political entity controls the rights to use certain bodies of water? Villagers wonder what recourse they have when factories deplete ancient groundwater sources to make soft drinks. What are we to do about the melting of glaciers whose fresh water becomes salty as it flows into the oceans? Women and girls in areas like the Rift Valley can’t attend school or train for jobs because they must walk several miles every day just to acquire safe drinking water.

Biology and spirituality drive our need for water. Because your body is more than half water, you need water simply to survive. Water is essential for drinking and agriculture, and water is necessary to hydrating our spiritual development. Moses brought the nation water from the rock as they wandered in the dusty land. David panted for God as the deer longs for a stream. Jesus equated the giving of a cup of cold water with an eternal blessing. John saw a pure river of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God. Water’s creative energy shapes all dimensions of our selves.

Accordingly, water is not designed as a commodity for careless consumption. It belongs to the earth’s ecological systems that we belong to as well. Water crosses all boundaries. It doesn’t care what lines have been arbitrarily drawn on a map. It doesn’t ask about your skin color, political affiliation, or nationality. Water, like the spirit, flows where it wills.

However, our personal and community relationship with water reflects our inner fountainhead. Fearing loss, we try to hoard water. In self-loathing, we poison the waters. Greedy, we bottle water and sell it for profit. Selfishly thoughtless, we waste water. Yet, with generous spontaneity and thoughtful liberality, water rushes freely into parched lands reviving dried hearts.

Because humanity is a water community, water connects us with one another, the world, and God. Deep calls unto deep, and water unites us with things seen and unseen. Our reverence of and for water flows from the wellspring of the spirit, and we’re enlivened physically and renewed spiritually as the water returns back to its source.

The condition of our water reflects our self understanding. Our relationship with others over water illustrates our thoughts about who we are in our world. The way we treat water as a sacred gift or a profane product demonstrates our awareness of the biosphere and our devotion to the divine. In The Dream of the Earth, Thomas Berry observes, “If the water is polluted, it can be neither drunk nor used for baptism.” Look at your interaction with water as a graceful teacher instructing you to the state of your heart, the condition of your relationships, and the universality your integration with all things.
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Originally published in the weekly e-zine Parousia, March 23, 2009. Parousia is a Transmillennial Publication presented by Presence International . Get a free subscription to Parousia when you click here .

“And I set my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is grasping for the wind.”
–Ecclesiastes 1:17

Thirty-two teams enter. Only one stands victorious. Yes. It’s the Super Bowl. The National Football League championship game — which is an unofficial national holiday here in the US — was held yesterday. The Arizona Cardinals went up against the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Steelers away with the Vince Lombardi trophy. The Cardinals left empty handed.

Actually, thirty other teams suffered the same fate as the Cardinals. They failed to achieve their goal of winning a championship. Each year, just one team that reaches the playoffs finishes the year victoriously. The rest hold out hope that next year will be different for them, but they will have to wait until kickoff in September to start the quest anew.

Football season, though, never completely ends. During the off-season veteran players navigate the waters of free agency. The teams go through the rookie draft to restock their rosters. There are mini camps, OTA’s (off-season training activities), and training camp. All of this begins in about a month from now, and it’s very hopeful time for millions of fans like me whose team did not hoist the championship trophy overhead.

Yet, in the recesses of our minds, fans and players alike harbor the dread of knowing that our team has only a one in thirty-two chance of winning the final game. All of the practices, meetings, film sessions, weightlifting, conditioning, and physical therapy bring about the desired result of victory for only one team and its supporters. For the rest of us, we cry out with the wisdom writer, “Vanity of vanities. All is vanity.”

Even so, if you listen carefully to the players and coaches of the winning team, you may detect a similar note in their victory song. “We’ll celebrate this one, but we have to get out there and get ready for next year.” As sweet as victory is, the competitive spirit awaits fresh challenges. This present triumph will mean very little when the next game begins — and there is always a next game.

Football is grasping for the wind.

But it’s not only football. Existential vicissitudes permeate the entirety of life. Hair changes color. Relationships evolve. We gain wisdom, friends, wealth. We lose youth, health, and eventually life. The evolutionary process of “becoming” leaves no possibility for endless possession. Whatever is in your hands at this moment will be gone sometime — no matter how hard you work for it, how desperately you clasp it, or how deeply you crave it.

Everything is grasping for the wind.

Victory lasts for only a moment, and so does defeat. The ancient sage pursued wisdom and foolishness, and he found that neither one brings lasting satisfaction. This truth may feel overwhelmingly depressing. Are all of our pursuits a waste? Is everything just one big illusion, a waterless mirage giving false hope and fueling eternal meaninglessness? Is life nothing more than a solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short cosmic game that we are all destined to lose simply by playing?

Defining a successful life in terms of possession will always bring about a profound dissatisfaction. Wealth, power, prestige, respect, fame, knowledge, and health always wane. Eventually we lost it all. Nevertheless, there a victorious secret that empowers you to embrace and experience an abundant life.

If you try to clutch onto this moment as the next one emerges, you will find both slipping through your fingers. The false promise of possession results in misery, oppression, and futility. Perhaps you felt elation at winning the trophy yesterday, but where are you today? Are you living with the joy of what was, or are you mourning that the bliss of success doesn’t last forever? Are you heartbroken at your loss and exasperated at the prospect of a long time passing before the next opportunity presents itself? Have you abandoned the present and attached yourself to a story about another time?

Living with an open hand instead of a clenched fist enables you to welcome each moment on its own terms. This current time may call for a shout of celebration or tears of defeat, but the next one may not. Being grounded in the ever-unfolding present gives you the flexibility to live without a gnawing sense of vanity nibbling away your heart and mind.

The siren song of dissatisfaction entices us to seek fulfillment through possession, but a small still voice whispers the victorious secret, “Leave the past in behind. Don’t rush to the future. The kingdom of God is here now.” All of life is imbued with tremendous significance in its moment — whatever its moment is. The victorious secret is that the wind we so anxiously and unsuccessfully try to grasp is the divine breath that graciously breathes us all always right now.

–By Kevin A. Beck

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Parousia is a Transmillennial publication published weekly by Presence International. You can get Parousia delivered to your inbox when you sign up for your free subscription.

The website for This Book Will Change Your World: How All Things Become New by Kevin A. Beck (that’s me) is up and running. You can download a copy of the book for free. If you read it, feel free to blog about it.

The book deals with eschatology — you know “end times” stuff. Now don’t be alarmed. This is not your ordinary “Jesus is coming back. Everyone look busy” kind of book. Instead, it addresses the possibility that Jesus, Paul, and the other New Testament authors envisioned the arrival of the kingdom of God in their generation. And that the kingdom arrived as they expected. I call this approach Transmillennial.

More than just an exposition, This Book addresses the question: “So What?” Some of the themes in “so what” are Love, Service, Gracefulness.

We have the God-given power to read the story and to incarnate it in any way we choose. I believe that the time has come for a more creative way of reading the Biblical narrative and living it out. I think a lot of people agree. This Book is an attempt to help frame what that kind of life can look like.

Thanks for reading it. And I’d love to hear from you about it.

As a child, I looked forward to the broadcasting each December of Charles Schultz’s classic tale, A Charlie Brown Christmas. This was before the days of VCR, DVD, Blu-Ray, On-Demand, and file sharing. Back then, if you missed the annual showing of the holiday episode, you had to wait twelve months until you could catch it again.

You know the story’s plot. Charlie Brown is feeling the holiday blues. Everyone, including his dog Snoopy, seems preoccupied with crass materialism. Even as the neighborhood children attend Christmas play rehearsal, they dance mindlessly, scheme greedily, and decorate ostentatiously. To get the gloomy boy out of their way, the children commission Charlie Brown to acquire a Christmas tree. But not any plain old tree will do. He should find a big, shiny, pink, aluminum one.

Charlie Brown heads to the tree lot. Bypassing the flamboyant artificial trees, Charlie Brown notices a small, lonely one. Perhaps, he saw himself in the tree. Immediately, he senses a connection to the insignificant, unappealing, and less-than-ideal pine.

He brings the tree back to Christmas play practice. As the shabby sapling’s needles plummet to the ground, the gang of friends ridicules Charlie Brown for his abysmal tree-acquisition decision.

Hoping beyond hope, Charlie Brown cries out rhetorically, “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?”

Linus calmly steps forward and assures his friend that he understands the true meaning of Christmas. The lights dim, and a spotlight shines on Linus — like the star of Bethlehem — as the thumb-sucking sage recites Luke 2:8-14.

With his courage renewed, Charlie Brown takes the feeble tree to Snoopy’s doghouse. Upon hanging an ornament on one of the boughs, the entire tree bends to the ground. Charlie Brown despairs, “I’ve killed it. AUGH! Everything I touch gets ruined!”

Moved by Linus’ monologue and Charlie Brown’s devotion, the children follow their forlorn friend. They discover the crippled tree, tend to its wounds, and adorn it in holiday apparel. Even Lucy — Charlie Brown’s habitual nemesis — is stirred by the moment. “Charlie Brown is a blockhead, but he did get a nice tree.”

Upon that pronouncement, the children begin humming Charles Wesley’s hymn, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. Charlie Brown returns, and his friends who are all filled with Christmas spirit shout, “Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!” The story ends with everyone caroling together as they stand in a circle around the tree.

I’ve always felt sympathy for Charlie Brown. Here is a little guy trying to do the best he could to avoid shallow avarice and make the holiday season more meaningful. I unabashedly confess that A Charlie Brown Christmas remains my favorite Christmas story. It’s filled with gripping tension, existential angst, astute societal critique, profound sadness, memorable music, and exuberant joy.

Biblical motifs pervade the parable. Linus reads directly from Luke’s birth narrative of Christ. The symbolism of an unlikely and unwanted tree evokes the theme of Jesus as an unexpected type of king. Born to poor parents, “He has no form or comeliness; and when we see him there is no beauty that we should desire him.” The climax of the story portrays universal reconciliation with everyone singing together as the symbolic tree of life stands in their midst.

A hopeful tale reminding us that life consists of more than the abundance of our possessions, A Charlie Brown Christmas reaffirms my hope that humanity can experience peace on earth. As we lay down the weapons of judging our neighbor for their decisions we consider to be foolish, we fill our hearts with understanding.

When we realize that life is composed of more than outward appearances, we see beyond crafted veneers and distinguish the divine presence in all.

When we set aside our anxious striving for more, we compassionately embrace our neighbors beset with loneliness, defeat, and depression.

When we care for the least, we create a sacred space for love, cooperation, and community to emerge.

When we reach beyond our selfishly egoic cravings, we break free from self-loathing and join in the happy chorus.

I invite you to join me in incarnating the moral of the story. Together we can practice peace on earth and mercy mild. When we do, our eyes will open and behold! “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see.”

As much as I loved the story as a child, I cherish it even more now that I’m and adult. I’m dreaming of a Brown Christmas — a Charlie Brown Christmas.
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Parousia is the free weekly e-zine published by Presence International. You can get a free subscription when you click here

This Book Will Change Your World: How All Things Become New is now available in trade paperback and as an e-book. In short order you’ll be able to get the book from Amazon, but for the moment is is available exclusively through Presence.

It’s a fairly concise book — 130 pages — but it covers a lot of ground. The main thrust of the book is to provide an alternative way of reading the Bible — one that is creative rather than catastrophic; one that is guided by love rather than fear; one that respects the varieties of language uses rather than reduces everything to a crass literalism.

This is intended to be an introduction into the Transmillennial view. Here’s how it is organized:

* Introduction: The Beginning of the End. By reframing the classic movie The Wizard of Oz, you will see that you have the power to tell and retell any story. When we realize that there can be a creative option to the old, worn out ways of reading the Bible, we can experience a new appreciation of the story and our place in the world.

* Chapter 1: Crystal Ball Theology. I’m tired of the Bible being used as a crystal ball that supposedly predicts the future. Appreciating the Biblical narratives in their original settings changes the way we see what’s happening in the Bible. When we change the way we read the story, everything changes.

* Chapter 2: Colorful Language. The Bible is filled with symbolic speech, metaphors, and parables like: the sun will be darkened, the moon turned to blood, and the stars falling from the sky. To reduce these rich symbols to literal predictions saps all meaning from them. A Transmillennial reading of the texts adds more cowbell to the Bible and to our lives.

* Chapter 3: Time After Time. For over a century, scholars have recognized that Jesus and his earliest followers were expecting a major transformation in their lifetime. This chapter explores several time indicators in key Biblical texts.

* Chapter 4: The End of The World As We Know It. The Bible talks about the end of the world. Most folks have taken this to mean the end of the planet. But what if the original writers were looking for the end of another world-not the end of the planet, but the end of one world-order and the beginning of a new one?

* Chapter 5: What About…? If the end of the world envisioned by the New Testament writers is behind us and not in front of us, then how does that affect our understanding of the Millennium, the Second Coming of Christ, the Resurrection, the Last Judgment, and the Church?

* Chapter 6: So What? A fresh reading of the Biblical story has the potential to move us from fear to confidence. We can see God in a new light, discover the peace of Comprehensive Grace, experience creative Societal Engagement, find the God who is love, and discover the breadth of Agapetheism.

In short order, we’ll be launching a new website associate with the book. It will give you the opportunity to get a free e-book, invite your friends to get a free copy, and connect with other folks through a social networking feature.

If you’re willing to read the book and blog about it, I’ll be glad to send you a free copy. No strings. You don’t have to promise to say nice things. Just give your honest opinion. Email me and I’ll send you the book. Also, if I don’t already have your url, please send that in your email to “connect [at] presence [dot] tv”

Economic collapse. Wars. Elections. The price of gasoline. Family strife. In-laws. Job stress. Health concerns. Paying tuition. Paying the utilities. Paying credit card bills. Taking the dog to the vet. Cleaning up the house. Grocery shopping. Preparing dinner. A losing sports team. A clean, close shave. The laundry. The leaky roof. New tires. Taxes. Church services. Small group meeting. Prayer. Study. Quiet time. Culture wars. Yellowing teeth. Piracy. Slavery. Pollution. Tainted milk. Climate change. Male pattern baldness.

Life at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century comes fraught with tensions that elicit constant anxiety. Our ability to effectively address existential unease may seem pallid when compared to the people from a century or millennium ago. After all, if you are reading this, you likely belong to the top twenty-five percent of the wealthiest people ever living on earth. You probably don’t forage for food, exist on subsistence agriculture, or worry about raiding parties of the Huns.

Even so, our ancestors never imagined possessing the power to destroy life on the planet with a single command. Fears about global warming, HIV, destabilization of world credit markets, nuclear waste, and peak oil are possible only today. Consider torture. Not long ago, forcing someone to undergo trial by ordeal in order to elicit their confession to a variety of offenses ranging from treason against the crown to witchcraft would have been understood as part of the natural order. Today our consciences have been sensitized to human rights, and most people shudder at the prospect of our fellow humans broken on the rack, drawn and quartered, or tar and feathered.

Meanwhile, we might react to torture with the same outrage as we would to a dropped cell phone call. Nearly every inconvenience rises beyond the level of simple nuisance and morphs into a veritable crisis. Because everything from a prolonged stoplight to genocide appears to be a crisis, we might be wise to pause and consider why we’re so anxious.

One possible explanation relates to our sense of self. Maybe we’ve been attempting to derive our identity from living with a crisis mentality. If there is an emergency that needs my attention, I am important. Moreover, I’m so important that this crisis defining who I am threatens me as the universe conspires to extinguish my existence through this crisis.

The only calamity more fearsome than the present crisis is no crisis. Without a crisis, do we really exist? Do our lives have meaning? Is there any reason to go on? With so much invested in crisis, we’ll see a crisis where there is none and we may even create a crisis to validate ourselves.

Baptized in the waters of crisis, we begin to interpret every event as a catastrophe that endangers our very being. With crisis ensconced in our hearts, we partake of the unholy sacraments of constant anger, intense annoyance, and regular offense.

Regardless of the specific crisis or the sense of proportion, our postmodern worries bring about a surfeit of mental and emotional angst. Our pervasive unease deprives us of restful sleep, harms our health, causes disputes with our friends and family, unnecessarily creates enemies, and may even lead us to despair of life itself. However through the din of our roaring disquiet we might hear the soft whisper of the divine voice, “You are worried and troubled about many things.”

Not a callous scolding, but a gentle caution expressed by the Galilean to his friend Martha, we’re reminded that our lives do not consist in the abundance of our possessions. We don’t have to worry about losing our place in the cosmic order because all things are in, of, to, and through God. “Is not the life more than food, and the body than clothes?”

David — who as a king possessed all things and as a fugitive possessed nothing — mused rhetorically, “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?” Because he met the oscillating challenges of life and death, of abundance and poverty, of passion and depression David discovered that nothing can cut off any of us from the love of God.

Defusing all of our perceived crises involves coming to peace with the suchness of the present. Why do you find yourself bothered by many things? Are you battling the reality of what is? The miracle of this current moment — whatever this moment holds — is infused with God. Always emerging, unfolding, and evolving, the fullness of now saturated with the unfathomable mystery of being provides refuge sheltering us from our vexing reliance upon crises thereby dissipating our readiness to suffer the bother of many things.

From his youth, Jesus had a clear sense of self-identity. At the age of twelve, he conversed with the teachers in the temple. Astonished, his mother asked him what he had been doing. Jesus famously replied, “Do you not know that I must be about my father’s business?” The story illustrates his attentiveness to his unique time, place, and character.

As a child he might have seemed precocious, prodigious, and promising. But as an adult many of the teachers he dialogued with as a youth perceived him as insolent, threatening, and deceptive. In the same temple years later, Jesus once again expressed his self-understanding. “You both know me, and you know where I am from; and I have not come of myself, but he who sent me is true, whom you do not know. But I know him, for I am from him, and he sent me” (John 7:28-29).

I can see how his contemporaries might have assumed that Jesus harbored an inflated ego. After all, he was only an uneducated manual laborer hailing from the backwater region of Galilee. Can anything good come from there? Yet Jesus remained steadfast in his self-awareness. “I am from above” (John 8:23). Someone making such claims might be considered more than a bit arrogant. Nevertheless Jesus shows us the difference between humbly secure self-knowledge and haughty ego inflation.

Ego can be a confusing idea because of the countless connotations it carries. One popular and significant understanding of ego describes it as the tendency of identifying with an item, person, emotion, or concept outside of oneself in order to derive individual meaning and purpose. When we equate our reason for being with money, power, relationships, vocation, or religion, we’ve cast an egoic image.

Trendy understandings of ego invite us to battle our ego to the death. Supposedly the only way we can experience true happiness and mental health is through extinguishing the ego. As logical as this might sound, it presents us with an intractable predicament. Any attempt to extinguish the ego (in this sense) through violence is purely egoic. It sets us up for in internal war as it reinforces the egoic utility of self-importance by feeding the egoic longing for affirmation. If we believe that the ego is so powerful and autocratic that it must be eliminated in order for us to embrace, realize, and actualize our true Self, the attempts to purge the ego only strengthen its grip.

What we loosely call ego might be more properly described as hubris. Overbearing pride and pompous assumption demands constant fueling. Hubris brings fits of violence, rage, and depression as it expresses itself in wanton destruction, insolence, and outrage. To the ancient Greeks, the concept of hubris meant presumption toward the gods, and today its impertinent disregard for anything but its own cravings brings harm to individuals, relationships, and nations.

Hubristically identifying with the constantly fluctuating variances of existence certainly brings nothing but grief, frustration, and dissatisfaction. In our hubris, we can’t find deep and lasting contentment because we’re seeing ourselves as something other than who and what we truly are. The apostle Paul warned against the deceptions of hubris. “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned” (Romans 12:3). We might translate this admonition into false humility, berating ourselves for being lowly creatures, wallowing in the slop of self-loathing. However, self-flagellation is nothing more hubris in camouflage.

While fighting ourselves and fostering pseudo-humility only cultivates hubris, we can dispel hubris by healing the inner-wounds that allow it to fester. Paul’s advice gives us the proper prescription. Don’t presume that you’re something that you’re not; deem yourself accurately. Paul is not directing you to view yourself as a meager, pitiable urchin. Instead he invites you to think of yourself as a bearer of the divine likeness interconnected with all humanity. “For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another” (Romans 12:4-5).

Jesus’ self-awareness emerged not from hubris, but from his recognition of his connection with his heavenly source. “In truth I came from you” (John 17:8). Moreover, Jesus humbly understood the deep connection all humanity shares with one another through God. Hubris would have prompted him to selfishly cling to his relationship while pushing others away, yet Jesus “did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself.” In this way we can come to a similar self-perception. “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5-7).

Jesus’ confidence in his divine connection — his faith in God — allowed him to pray that we’d all awaken to and experience our shared divine source. “They are yours. They may be one, as we are one. They may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one” (John 17:9, 11, 21-23)

Acknowledging our mutual divine identity in union with one another elicits profound humility. Attempting to separate from others and live in a cocoon of self-imposed isolation only reinforces hubris and educes a false-god complex. Love — mindful integration with others — woos us out of the dungeon of hubris as it dissipates the fog clouding our vision of who we actually are. Once we see clearly, we humbly confess our identity: human, God’s likeness, and love incarnate.
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Originally published on October 6, 2008. (c) Presence International. Parousia is a free Transmillennial publication of Presence. To receive Parousia in your inbox each week click here.

In Genesis 15 Abraham speaks with God, questioning him about a vow that God had made years earlier. God had promised the Aramean a child through whom all families of the earth would be blessed. After wandering through the desert, enduring a famine, drawing the ire of Pharaoh, splitting from his nephew, and battling Canaanite warlords, the aged patriarch remained without progeny. Now in a vision Abraham points out the obvious, “Look, You have given me no offspring.”

The conversation may have occurred in a dream, but I’m impressed with Abraham’s chutzpah. He couldn’t take it any longer. So he opened his mouth and spoke his mind. No hedging. No couching. No equivocating. In a moment of passion, Abraham simply blurts out the truth of his heart.

Both Abraham and his wife Sarah were growing old, and their chances of becoming parents were ready to pass away. For a long time, Abraham had kept his disappointment quietly to himself. Through his travels and adventures, he shoved his frustration aside, placidly accepting his discontentment with the ostensible failure of God. Perhaps this explains why this exchange comes in the form of a vision.

Unthreatened by Abraham’s integrity, God responds candidly. “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them. So shall your descendants be.” God’s poetic answer evoking the innumerable heavenly host assures Abraham that the totality of his descendants shall be infinite.

God’s guarantee runs contrary to customary ways of understanding the magnitude of the blessing. We’ve tended to believe that a super-majority of humanity will be cursed while only a small elite cadre will obtain blessedness. This conventional approach makes God’s pledge a wretched failure.

To understand the vastness of God’s promise, you can perform the deed God invited Abraham to do. Go outside tonight, look up, and count the stars. Take in the enormity of the universe and the immeasurable scale of the astronomical entities. Count and see how far you get before an overwhelming sense of the immensity of the galaxies and the scope of the firmament washes over you.

Of course we could count for eternity and never reach a final sum, but John Tarrant author of Bring Me the Rhinoceros encourages us to let our count “go on like a prayer.” As you count, notice your emotions. What thoughts arise? Can you feel your heart expand? Can you discern your connection with celestial objects even if they are light years away?

When you count, your first impulse may steer you to count the stars against the dark backdrop of night sky, yet there is another simpler way to tally them. Go outside during the daytime and gaze upward toward the singular radiant ball. Count it. The one daystar, our Sun, creates so much light that it outshines every other luminary. God’s promise to make the descendants of Abraham star-like speaks not only of incalculability but also of the unity of all things.

The apostle Paul describes the seed of Abraham in singular terms. “Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as of many, but as of one, ‘And to your Seed,’who is Christ” (Galatians 3:16). Through Abraham’s one descendant of promise, the Sun of Righteousness has dawned and beams the blessing to all nations. The star has arisen out of Jacob to shine as the light of the world. The bright and morning star has brought healing, and the entire cosmos is constituted in and through the illumination of the One. “In him all things consist” (Colossians 1:17).

Counting the stars of the sky — whether at night or in the day — becomes a transformative spiritual practice as you translate it into counting the stars of your life. Count the people in your family, workplace, and spiritual fellowship. They are all stars. Reckon your fellow drivers on the highway as stars. Consider your friends, neighbors, and enemies; discover how many of these stars you can number. Each star has already been counted and created by God to be a blessing. “He tells the number of the stars; he calls them all by their names” (Psalm 147:4)

Don’t limit your star counting to people. Expand your count to include the circumstances of your life and world. Look at all of the situations you are facing — joyful, sad, pleasurable, and painful — as stars. The sacred promise fills the entirety of the human experience.

Counting everyone and everything as a star causes you to witness the divine in every corner of the universe. The inestimable multitude of stars will awaken your appreciation for the unbounded extent of God’s presence, and perceiving the universal nearness of the one star will enlighten you to the deep unity and wondrous singularity connecting us all.
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Originally published on September 22, 2008. (c) Presence International. Parousia is a free Transmillennial publication of Presence. To receive Parousia in your inbox each week click here.

Listen. Stop what you’re doing for just a moment and listen carefully to the sounds surrounding you. What do you hear? The wind passing through the trees. The refrigerator running. The hum of your computer. Children playing. An airplane. Crickets chirping. The phone ringing. We cannot escape sound waves. Whether or not we possess the physical auditory capacity, we all swim in the din and clamor of life.

You’re aware of the ancient philosophical conundrum. If a tree falls in the forest but no one is there to hear it, does it make a noise? This puzzle points out the essentiality of intersubjectivity to a meaningful life. We learn, discover, and develop as we interact and engage with others. Through dialogue — speaking and listening — we make the sonorous music of life.

Often we’re more intent on talking — making sound — than listening. We prefer to be heard than to hear. Certainly, making oneself known is vital for a healthy psyche and for thriving relationships. But meaningful communication includes more than just talking. Deep listening involves more than reveling in the sound of your own voice. By deafening ourselves to our friends, family, and world we shut out the very voice of God.

During his life in Galilee, Jesus spoke to many deaf people and they heard. The physical healings are amazing, yet the ability to hear with the ear of the spirit is even more so. By opening our heart, we may notice the voice of God in the chirping of a bird, the shout of a neighbor, or the whisper of a lover. God may speak in a small still voice. Or, as the prophet Amos learned, God may roar from Zion.

Yet if we’re not listening to the sounds around us in this present moment, we’re likely to hear nothing. Perhaps the saddest incident in the life of Jesus occurred following one of his prayers. He called to the Father, “Glorify your name.” The heavenly voice responded, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” As unmistakably majestic as God’s voice must have been on this occasion, not everyone noticed. “The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder” (John 12:27-29).

Thunder. The multitude heard the physical vibration, but they missed the message.

The sounds you notice are proof of your being here in this place and this time — in relationship with a broader world, in relationship with God. Don’t limit God’s voice to a rumbling male sound that utters language only on one day a week. The old hymn reminds us, “In the rustling grass I hear him pass. He speaks to me everywhere.”

Be mindful to the cadence, rhythm, and melody of the daily sounds. Like a symphony conducted by a maestro, this is the music of your life. Listen closely and you may hear every sound and the daily racket transform into the holiest and most joyful noise of all.
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Originally published on September 15, 2008. (c) Presence International. Parousia is a free Transmillennial publication of Presence. To receive Parousia in your inbox each week click here.