Scripture

God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God.

~Matthew 5:8, NLT

Quote

Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.

~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

If you are reading this for pure enjoyment, stop! You will not enjoy this blog. I don’t really like to think about my subject today, but it is a reality that every believer needs to face. There is no greater TEACHER than adversity. Watchman Nee, the Chinese theologian, said, “We do not learn anything a part from adversity.” C.S. Lewis said,“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” David said is Psalm 27, “Here’s the one thing I crave from Yahweh, the one thing I seek above all else:I want to live with Him every moment in His house, beholding the marvelous beauty of Yahweh, filled with awe, delighting in his glory and grace.” The mention of ‘one thing’ reminds me of Mary in Luke 10:42, “There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.” What was Mary beholding? Could it have been the majesty, splendor and glory of Jesus the Son of God? Don’t get me wrong, by type, I am a Martha, a doer, hyper-active, but in this story I desperately want to be Mary. Martha served but Mary worshipped and there is a huge difference. Martha was so engaged in serving the LORD that she missed a golden opportunity to worship HIM. To simply sit at His feet and admire HIM.

I am wondering: why do I not see God more clearly? It could be that I am looking through a dirty lens? Jesus said the PURE IN HEART will see God. So my next question {one I think about a lot} is: how do I become PURE IN HEART? I know the answer; it is revealed in scripture again and again. God purifies the heart through suffering. Did Solzhenitsyn pray to be sent to Siberia? No, he was horrified by the whole ordeal. He was a young idealistic communist. He did not know Christ personally. It was in prison that he meet Jesus through the witness of a messianic Jew named Boris Kornfield. The last thing Kornfield did before being beat to death with a hammer was share his faith with Solzhenitsyn who was in a surgical recovery room. Of course, Solzhenitsyn longed to be released as did all the prisoners but after his liberation; he realized that God had taught and shown him things in his prison experience that he may not have learned otherwise. This is why he spoke of his prison life as blessed. God opened a whole new world to him that he may not have ever seen had he not been locked up.

In freedom we move about; we stay active…busy…busy…busy. Like Martha, we get so busy that we don’t have time to think but that is the way we want it. We feel threatened by solitude and silence. In prison, Solzhenitsyn was forced to spend time alone. When Soviet prisoners where not working, they were in solitary confinement. No communication was allowed among inmates. There were no radios or TV; thus there was tons of silence. Time does not fly in prison: you have plenty of time. All this time, solitude and silence forced Solzhenitsyn to think or to muse. Americans use amusement as an antidote to musing. We had rather watch TV as to think. It was the suffering that purified Solzhenitsyn’s heart and enabled him to see God more clearly.

Extra

Little late today. I have a Martha type schedule today. May the LORD leand and guide me, getting me to the right place at the right time and then not saying the wrong thing.

I do want to thank the LORD for a beautiful Mother’s Day. We went to Decatur after worship to eat lunch and the traffic was horrible. I have never seen so many cars in Decatur in the middle of the day.

I hope you have a good day and thanks for reading the blog.

Extra/Extra

The last three books I have listened to were by Russian authors. I am slowly getting acquainted with Russian History. Trust me, it is a facinating subject. Are the Cossacks Russian? Not really; they are a slavic people who are militarily minded like the Spartans. They lived mostly in the Ukraine. Russian employed them as mercenaries. They were great horsemen and good with the saber. When Hitler invaded Russia, operation Barbarossa in 1941, the Cossacks joined the German army because they hated Stalin and for good cause. When Germany surrendered, the cossack regiment surrendered to the British thinking they would be saved from Stalins fury. They didn’t know that Churchill and Roosevelt had already made a deal {Yalta} with Stalin. The British had them shipped back to Russian. The Cossacks did not know what was going on until they got off the trains in the Soviet Union. Of course, Stalin had the executed or imprisoned. I like Churchill but this was not his finest hour. I am not shocked at Roosevelt.