080825

 
Last day of mom's vacation
I CANNOT WAIT to get back to days centered around PRAYER

EARLY EBT DEPOSIT so we got all our groceries already!
Also quarters for laundry

THEY TOOK LIKE 9 VIALS OF BLOOD?????
We didn't pass out thank God. Just very tingly. Our blood pressure is chronically low anyway

Laurie keeps getting "functions shoved onto her" because she's closest to the Cores. This is messing her up bad
We think Purple's function CHANGED post-CNC??? That would explain a lot of why she's so unstable there

Deeply disappointed and disillusioned with the movies
Angry tears of frustration with the unChristian behavior & injustice & secular humanism in the films

Scalpel & Mimic being attacked in headspace??
Chaos 0 showed up & saved them

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https://biblehub.com/commentaries/hosea/12-4.htm continues

⭐⭐⭐‼️ "Moses [the author of Genesis] relates [Jacob's] words of earnest supplication; yet the tone is that of one, by force of earnest energy, wresting, as it were, the blessing from God, not of one weeping. Yet Hosea adds this, in harmony with Moses. For "vehement desires and earnest petitions frequently issue in tears." "To implore means to ask with tears"."
(This means so much to me. This is 100% TRUE for me. When my prayers are truly earnest, they WILL bring me to equally earnest tears. It's often the only time I CAN cry, especially in my recent past when I struggled daily with numbing addictive sin. Prayers alone could make me feel again.)
(You cannot "wrest"  blessing from God with anything BUT tears. Force of physical energy is of no avail for God is Spirit. Even for Jacob, that energy alone wouldn't have won him any sort of victory. God GAVE him that strength, remember, and our Omnipotent God isn't impressed by our mortal muscles or vigor or stamina in a fight. God is only amazed by our FAITH– or lack thereof– as Jesus was in the Gospels. Jacob HAD faith, but faith is PROVED by WORKS. What sort of works? Well, his prayers do count! And so does his wrestling, as it was done IN faith, not as a mere brawl or display of proud power. Jacob wrestled for a purpose: he wanted to be blessed. And THAT'S where the tears come from. He was DESPERATE. He was ABOUT TO DIE. He was SCARED. And he was SORRY. The weight of his situation, and the weight of his past, had combined in the heavy blackness of night and were crushing him. Jacob had no hope but God. Of course he wept. YOU CANNOT CRY UNLESS YOU ARE HUMBLED. And he was, pushed right down into the dusty riverbed with the burden he carried. He felt his ultimate helplessness, the utter futility of his previous scheming strategies. He had nowhere to turn except to the LORD. His entire life– AND the life of the Jewish nation – hung in the balance. How could this incredible need not move him to shed vehement tears in prayer, even as prayer? He wasn't just "asking" or "requesting." He was BEGGING, effectively. And guess what? The etymology of "implore" is from "plorare", meaning "to weep, cry out"– to implore is literally to "plead tearfully, invoke with weeping"; to "call on for help" even through sobs. God listens closely to such tearful prayers because they come from the very depths of our hearts, and are naturally guileless. How could God's Own Heart not feel as if its blessings were being "wrested" from It, by such a wrenching sight and sound? How could He not be conquered by His Own compassion, in rushing to respond to that pitiful petition? God's Love resonates in harmony with our faithful lamentations; our prayers offered in bitter mourning move Him to soothe our souls with His quiet sweetness. God gives hope and joy and so many graces in the most mysterious and powerful ways when we steadfastly trust Him and cling to Him in our dark and blue and heavy emotions. You know how much of a "fight" it is in your own psyche, just to stay afloat in those tumultuous waters of the soul. Jacob experienced the same. This was the inner wrestling to which the outer wrestling botj signaled and was empowered by. He could not have striven so earnestly for the blessing, without that driving force of imperative and anguished hope spilling over from within, filling both his words and his eyes.)

⭐⭐⭐‼️‼️""Jacob, learning, that God Himself thus deigned to deal [so shockingly personally] with him [even now, just as He had in making His Promises to Jacob], might well out of amazement and wonder [at the Real Nearness of Divinity], out of awful respect to Him [for both His Power, and His Mercy in coming to him], and in earnest desire of a blessing [remembering God's constant gracious faithfulness], pour out his supplication with tears."
(The first shocking thing we learn of God's grace in our prayer is that God Himself "deigns to deal with us" personally and even intimately. He "stoops down to hear us." He "reaches out" to us. He speaks to us as "OUR God." He is never distant, He is never disconnected from us; He yearns to draw (and to "be drawn") ever closer to us. For Jacob to suddenly realize God was right next to him there at the river, must have been just as shocking from a proximity standpoint as it was from instinctive "holy fear". No other "god" EVER "came near" to humanity like this! God's Covenant Promises alone were revolutionary enough from a religious standpoint of that time; but now God was practically incarnate (foreshadowing fully intended)— He was "WITH" Jacob, in a unique and immediate way, just as He had been with Abraham! This is the MOST amazing and wonderful thing, even now, for us. God's gracious condescension alone should touch the heart with trembling tears, not in terror, but in ineffable wonder, at the magnificent mercy of God Who DOES this sort of thing, because of WHO HE IS. That's where our "awe-ful respect" is rooted as well: GOD IS GOD. THIS IS DIVINE MAJESTY WE'RE DEALING WITH. The very same Deity Who speaks such sweet blessings to us is also the One Who can incinerate us sinners in an instant, should He so choose. Our God made the whole universe and He can annihilate it just as well. He knows everything, controls everything, sustains everything, loves everything, judges everything. And here He is, wearing an angelic facade, wrestling with a mortal man, and all for that man's benefit– because his benefit is part of God's Plan. God's Plan is to BLESS THE WHOLE WORLD IN CHRIST, remember. He has Promised the seeds and growth and protection of that blessing to Abraham’s lineage. He is there with Jacob now to confirm that truth. Jacob did not know the ultimate intention or outcome, for sure– but I think he did realize that God wanted to help him, and was actually literally right there TO do so, somehow. Put yourself in his place: facing death, powerless but for prayer, with no hope but a Promise... and THEN God ACTUALLY SHOWS UP, to test your sincerity of faith, to give you the opportunity to merit the blessing, when you had previously only stolen such things. How good and terrible and merciful and just a God Jacob had! How could he NOT cry? All that glory, all that mystery, all that grace, had listened and answered and CARED. Jacob fully felt the numinous gravity of this encounter, I'm sure, and a soul so keenly aware of its precious and precarious position before the LORD will absolutely weep from the weight of it, in any case. But even moreso, Jacob wept IN PRAYER. His tears and his faith were fused. THAT is where he had true power with God: in prayers charged with his wonder & respect & hope, which kept his heart from closing. God's very Presence enabled Jacob to weep, I'm sure. No heart can remain unmoved before Him Who shatters the mountains. This too is a grace.)

⭐⭐⭐‼️‼️ "Herein Jacob became an image of Christ, "Who, in the days of His flesh, offered up [specific & urgent] prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears [loud and fervent pleading], unto the One Who was [always] able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His reverent submission [godly fear]." (Hebrews 5:7)"
("JESUS WEPT" A LOT MORE THAN ONCE IN THE GOSPELS, but it's always overlooked. Why? Because His tears are sacred and private, shed intimately with His God and Father alone. Tears are offerings, really. Our godly sorrow is a sacrifice He is very pleased to accept.)
(Jesus was heard because He was completely humble and entirely submitted to God's Will. Jesus trusted His Father unconditionally and unwaveringly. Jesus had a true and pious "fear of God" that honored and adored Deity, and that crushed all human ego and self-will. His prayers were pure and sincere, childlike and unpretentious, and apparently often accompanied by sobbing aloud. This is strongly noteworthy. This is our Savior, described here! His personal prayers weren't in the manner of the quietly kind blessings He offered over meals, or the composed corporate worship at Synagogue. When Jesus "went off alone to pray," He apparently poured out His entire Heart with weeping. )


⭐⭐‼️‼️‼️ "[Saying], 'he prevailed,' subjoining, 'he wept and made supplication,' describes the strength of penitents, for in truth they are strong BY weeping earnestly and praying perseveringly for the forgiveness of sins, according to that, "From the days of John the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." Whosoever so imitates the patriarch Jacob... he, of whatever nation he be, is truly Jacob, and deserveth to be called Israel." "Yea, herein is the unconquerable might of the righteous... herein his glorious victories, in glowing longings, assiduous prayers, joyous weeping..."


⭐⭐❤ "He found him in Bethel - This may mean either that "God found Jacob," or that "Jacob found God;" which are indeed one and the same thing, since we find God, when He has first found us."


‼️‼️‼️ "In Bethel, where God found Jacob, Israel deserted ["lost"] Him, setting up the worship of the calves; yea, he deserted God the more there, because of God's mercy to his forefather, desecrating to false worship the place which had been consecrated by the revelation of the true God; and choosing it the rather, because it had been so consecrated!"


⭐⭐⭐‼️‼️‼️ ""And there He spake with US" - For what God said to Jacob, He said not to Jacob only, nor for Jacob's sake alone, but, IN him, He spake to all his posterity, both the children of his body AND the children of his faith."
(THIS IS WHY PEOPLE SAY WE CAN "APPROPRIATE" GOD'S ANCIENT PROMISES TO OUR OWN PERSONAL LIVES???? IT'S BECAUSE GOD HIMSELF ALREADY INCLUDED US IN THE INITIAL GIVING, AS "SPIRITUAL ISRAEL"??? God speaks BEYOND TIME and BEYOND LIMITS of individual existence? God doesn't see ANY humans as separate from one another?? To Him, right in that very moment, JACOB WAS ALREADY ISRAEL– God speaks the "prophetic present tense"; whatever God Promises "will be", even now "IS" in ultimate Truth, even if it hasn't "been manifested in linear time" yet. But in our sempiternal God, that Promise HAS "already happened," in His Invincible Will. SO when He promised things to our ancestors, WE WERE INCLUDED by virtue OF our ancestry. That's immense. That's a life altering perspective shift. We don't have that sort of mindset in America and I think we NEED it, for the sake of our souls, and for the wholeness & truth of our faith at large. We are more connected in God, to God, to each other, IN each other, than we've ever dared to dream before. Suddenly the "Golden Rule" makes a staggering amount of sense!)

⭐⭐‼️‼️ "Thus it is said, "There did WE rejoice in Him" (Psalm 66) i. e., we, their posterity, rejoiced in God THERE, where He so delivered our forefathers; and, "Levi also, who receiveth tithes, paid tithes in Abraham, for he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchizedek met him" (Hebrews 7:9-10). And Paul saith, that what was said to Abraham, ""therefore [his faith] was imputed to him for righteousness,"" was not written for his sake alone, but for us also, to whom [righteousness] shall be imputed, if we believe on Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead" (Romans 4:23-24)... What God there spoke to Jacob appertains to us. God's Promises to him belong to all his posterity who follow in the steps of his prayerful faith."
(Anyone who denies the power of the Eucharist to "make the Last Supper & Atonement PRESENT NOW" needs to read this. Apparently that is just how God ALWAYS works. He transcends time, while embracing it. He IS the "eternal now," for He exists always and at all times, and when we encounter Him in His Sacraments we inevitably "encounter" all of the "past" that He brings with and fulfills in Himself? That's the Divine side of this connection beyond historical limitations. The human side is the result of "spiritual lineage"? Again, this ties right in to the "past as present" power of the Eucharist, as well as with how the Jewish people celebrate Passover even now = "Each of these actions not only adds a different flavor to the holiday, but provides a different way to put ourselves in the shoes of our ancestors. Indeed, the directive to retell and relive the Passover story is one of the central commandments of the holiday. This mandate not only calls us to experience the Exodus as individuals, but to recognize that all Jews, no matter where they are, share a stake in the Jewish story. We can’t see ourselves as having gone out from Egypt without seeing our fellow Jews walking next to us." (https://rac.org/blog/reliving-exodus-wherever-you-are) The original Exodus not only "happened TO" today's Israel "in spirit," in the "ancestral womb" as it were, but all of Israel today also consciously re-enters that timespace through ritual and Sacrament and prayer and FAITH. The reality of "Then" is our reality of "NOW" both directly by choice (like how Paul speaks of it), and indirectly by birth (as in the Psalm). It's amazingly beautiful.)
(BUT BOTH of these are founded on FAITH!! God's Promises and Wonders of old obviously cannot be "shared in" if one doesn't share the belief of Israel in the God Who made them His Own. Without that trust in Him, without belonging to the God of our Fathers in faith, a person disowns their truest Family, and isolates themselves from the spiritual nation. You cannot relive the story of deliverance if you run back to Egypt.)

⭐⭐⭐❓❓❓"There God spake with US, how, in our needs, we should seek and find Him... God is sought and found= in loneliness, apart from distractions, in faith, rising in proportion to our tears, in persevering prayer, in earnestness, which "clings so fast to God, that if God would cast us into Hell, He should, as one said Himself, "go with us, so should Hell not be Hell to us."""
(I NEED TO HEAVILY MEDITATE ON THIS. The punctuation is very confusing but STILL, the message is MASSIVE.)


UNEXPECTED MIND-BLOWING COMMENTARY ON HEBREWS 7:9=
⭐⭐⭐‼️‼️‼️ ""...through Abraham even Levi, he who receives tithes, has paid tithes,” the explanation being… “for he [Levi] was yet in the loins of his father [Abraham] when Melchizedek met him,” Isaac not yet having been begotten. There was a tendency in Jewish theology to view heredity in this realistic manner. Thus [says] Ramban on Genesis 5:2= “God calls the first human pair Adam [man] because all men were in them, potentially or virtually”. And so some of the Rabbis argued, "By the same sin that the first man sinned, the whole world sinned, because this [first man] WAS the whole world.” Hence Augustine’s formula “sinned in Adam’s loins,” and his explanation= “For we all were IN that one man, since we all WERE that one man, who fell into sin by the woman who was made from him before the sin. For not yet was the particular form created and distributed to us, in which we as individuals were to live, but already the seminal nature was there from which we were to be propagated; and THIS being vitiated by sin, and bound by the chain of death, and justly condemned, man could not be born of man in any other state."


THIS EXPLAINS SO MUCH OF BIBLICAL THOUGHT =

"As traducianism began to dominate thought in the Western church, St. Thomas Aquinas reaffirmed the Catholic church’s position on creationism [at that time]: at conception the sperm, which contains sensitive and and intellectual matter (a soul) into the ovum, which was the nutritive matter that makes up the fetus. Intellectual souls then, as Aquinas states, are created simultaneously with the body. Tertullian, on the other hand, promoted traducianism. Traducianism, is the [ultimately heretical] belief that all humans stem from Adam, and as such, all humans inherit not only the flesh of the original man, but the soul and sin of the original man as well. Traducianism affirms that when God created everything, God also created souls and the ability of man to procreate and thus insert souls at conception. Martin Luther follows in the 1500’s and falls on the side of traducianism, affirming that the soul comes from one’s father."

⭐⭐⭐ "The process of spiritual generation is impossible; since the soul is immaterial and indivisible, no spiritual germ can be detached from the Parental soul."


https://digitalcommons.denison.edu/religion/vol13/iss1/2/
https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15014a.htm

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https://mailchi.mp/97c2af69b583/2024-8602014?e=fae62674c2

"Think of the things God needed to make Saint Mary Mackillop a blessing to the world: her grit, her patience, her perseverance, her compassion for people in challenging circumstances; it all came from the struggles she had as a kid. When we remember our hard times, we often feel abandoned, as if those times fell outside of the providence of God. Maybe those are precisely the times God was forming you into the blessing you are in this world. Romans 8:28 tells us that “God works all things together for the good of those who love Him.” Even…and…dare I say…especially…the tough times."