Mandy's Mercurial Monologue

"...having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation. Therefore submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake... For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men...." -- 1 Peter 2:12-15  I walked out during the sermon today. I wasn't doing it to make a point, but the guy torpedoed what was a good sermon by choosing to pass judgement on the hearts and intentions of others.  While Peter's first letter exhorts believers to submit to governing authorities, he does not say that believers should not make use of their rights as citizens. We are not Rome, of course, and ostensibly we the people are the government of this nation; at least that is how it was until 2009. Since then it has become the government who rules and "we the people" who are subjects. T...

Those who know me or who have followed this blog over the last decade know that I was a birth doula for a while. In that capacity I've attended mothers for the births of 8 children; 3 as an apprentice doula and 5 as the primary doula. Because I have no children of my own, this is the extent of my experience with labor. I've recently been thinking about world events in terms of labor pains. Scripture also alludes to the progress of world events toward God's appointed ends in terms of labor and childbirth: After the events of this last week I feel unexpectedly traumatized. I don't use that term lightly. I read a great article "Ask a Counselor: how do we recognize and cope with trauma?"  which spoke about the way we dismiss small trauma and the effect it has on us. As I read it, I became aware of how traumatic the last year has been, and how it's still impacting me now. Today I find myself unable to get comfortable, as I was when I wrote the post No Pla...

The word of the Lord came to me a second time saying,   “What do you see?”   And I said, “I see a boiling pot, facing away from the north.” --Jeremiah 1:3 It is interesting that some of the visions seen by most of the Old Testament prophets were of very ordinary items. The impressions I've been seeing, which seem to be verified by the events around us, have also been very ordinary items of kitchenware. While I hope I am not distressing anyone by sharing these things, I feel compelled to put this out there. If it is of God, the sharing of these 'visions' will serve His purposes, give Him glory, and hopefully comfort His people. Otherwise, it's merely an expression of how a creative person of faith is reacting to these latter days and watching to see her Lord at work. The latest one came within the last 10 days. Again, I said nothing until I felt sure that I should share it. Again, it kept nagging at me. Today I can no longer keep it to myself. Like Jer...

I've recently found myself in two situations where someone was so desperate to prove their point that it didn't matter to them what they did to me so long as they won. These are part of the greater gathering darkness of our culture, the swirling Charybdis of anger which threatens to suck this nation down in its gullet. Why is it so vital to be right? Why dog-pile on someone who dares question the politically correct version of history? Why threaten to kill people who disagree with your politician of choice, or those who point out similarities in the overblown rhetoric of a current candidate and the overblown rhetoric of Adolph Hitler in his rise to power? Why chase someone down to argue with them when they've left the discussion because they have more pressing matters to deal with? Why ruin someone's dream, their business, their livelihood- why take their home and freedom just to prove your point? Why is being right so important to us that we would sacrifice one a...

About a year ago I had a 'vision' of sorts which kept nagging at me. In my mind's eye I saw a meat grinder ready to process the world. Every connection would be sundered: people, groups, nations, ideologies, even communities of faith will find themselves divided and separated and the only thing we can be sure to hold onto is our relationship with God. Since then I have seen the separation beginning and building up steam. Families breaking up, churches losing pastors and losing members and losing vision; faith leaders selling out their faith and the faithful alike for the praise of the world; both the left and right disintegrating; governments around the world turning on their citizens for  profit and power; dictators rising and wanna-be dictators vying for election; markets hanging on at the edge of destruction, then temporarily soaring thanks to government manipulations, which one day must  come to an end. Corruption, collusion, apostasy, ignorance, idolatry, hatr...

Tonight as I am listening to music I used to love, I find myself going from one time in the past to another and feeling that I can't settle anywhere. This brings to mind the last moments our cat Poe spent at home before we rushed him to the vet at the end of his life. He couldn't move his hind legs, but he willed himself from chair to chair under the kitchen table, trying to find a place of comfort. They had all been satisfying before, but now nothing worked. That's how life feels now. Something drastic has happened, a tragic change, and there is no way to get comfortable or if there is, it won't last. I feel I will be torn from it... like Poe trying to grab the final chair and hang on as I picked him up to head to the car. Now I feel sick to my stomach, not about the past so much as the present and the future. In seminary we discussed civilizations under collapse; people try to recapture previous times, idealized and romanticized versions of the past, o...

I am not thinking about the election, nor the embassy staff abandoned to their deaths on 9/11/2011, nor the fact that Mrs. Clinton may well never be held accountable by any earthy authority for what happened there. I am thinking about the correct understanding of Ezekiel 38-39 and the determination of people to equate Russia with Gog and Magog, and that it probably doesn't matter if we get it right or wrong at this point. Somewhere I read a great quote that prophecy is not about knowing the future, but about recognizing the appointed time it when it arrives. World War III seemed right around the corner in 2014, but two years have passed. Assad continues to fight against rebels while giving those of his people under siege very little to live on or hope for. Thus ISIS grows in the instability of Syria and Iraq. Now Russia has entered the fray. They cannot win on the world's stage with their continued aggression against Ukraine and their economy is sinking under the load of ...