For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. ― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
The meaning of life. Some say it doesn’t exist and you simply make your own way. Some say it does exist but must be understood and approached through a rigid belief system. Some say it involves achieving and conquering. Others say the meaning of life is to eat, drink, and be merry.
But some, like Victor Frankl, a Jewish survivor of the horrors of the holocaust, believe the meaning of life can only be found in love.
Today’s episode echoes Frankl’s conclusion as we review the stories from sacred Scripture that encompass our last six episodes together. Scene as a whole, they reveal the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of the divine God of the Universe as he relentlessly pursues us. And then, we he finds us and we open ourselves to receive his divine love, he shows us how to let it flow through to everyone else.
This flow of divine love into us, through us, and out of us to others is, as we will see, the meaning of life.
The topics that we covered in the last six episodes include faith, pride, calling, holiness, selflessness, and free will. So, where did we see the love?
Let’s find out.
Source Scripture
Take a Second Look: John 4:46-54
Pride Comes Before a Fall: Luke 4:16-30
Adventure Awaits: Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20; Luke 5:1-11
Wholly Holy: Mark 1:21-28; Luke 4:31-37
And You Give Yourself Away: Matthew 8:14-17; Mark 1:29-34; Luke 4:38-41
Pursuing Free Will: Matthew 4:23-25; Mark 1:35-39; Luke 4:42-44
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. Oscar Wilde
When consciousness first breaks in the morning and you become aware of being, what is the first word that forms in your mind?
Nearly always, it is I. I need my coffee. I am so tired. I wish I could stay in bed. I have to get moving. I have so much to do today. I want my breakfast.
And then as you rise and move through the day, your I-centered posture continues to dominate your thoughts. Your motives. Your actions.
It’s natural for you to do this, of course. It is the way of the world. What other way is there? Surely to be happy you must think of yourself first. After all, happiness by definition is self-centered. Or is it?
This posture of selfishness, though, keeps us bent on acquiring things. On putting things and people and experiences in orbit around us. And in so doing, of course, those around us become aware of our gravitational pull. And more often than not they resist. They pull away. They are repelled with disgust by your selfishness because it is mutually exclusive to their own.
This resistance frustrates us, and so you increase the gravitational pull. And so do they. And so the dance downward through the darkening spiral goes, until you reach with bitter finality the logical conclusion of continuing to maintain this posture. You become a black hole – something to avoid at all costs because everyone knows that nothing escapes your selfish grasp if they get too close. And then life is only darkness and misery and frustration.
It’s time to put this posture to bed and adapt a new posture altogether, one that births in you a shining star that radiates warmth and light to others. One that brings you the depths of fulfillment you seek while, ironically, comes only when you let go of your selfish pursuit of it.
It’s posture bedtime.
Source Scripture
And You Give Yourself Away: Matthew 8:14-17; Mark 1:29-34; Luke 4:38-41
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshiping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound’s worth of pride towards their fellow-men. C.S. Lewis
Well all seek worth and validation – purpose and importance. But all too often we settle for a cheapened version of these things by looking down on others. After all, if they are down there, then we are up here. And up here is where it’s at.
To look down on others, we must first convince ourselves that we are above them. And so we turn to the ego, that master of dualistic thinking, and resort to comparison.
We compare money and possessions. We compare age and appearance and reputation. We compare education and experience. We compare our family line and who we know in the community and beyond. And before realizing it, we’ve built our lives on comparison – on looking down on others. It gives us a smugness and false sense of importance so foundational to who we are that we can’t even see it.
This spurious sense of superiority we superimpose on our insecurities is called pride. It’s the first in the list of seven deadly sins. C.S. Lewis calls it the utmost evil.
It is this utmost evil called pride that we will explore today, from its subtle ability to infiltrate us unnoticed to its overwhelming power to destroy the very thing we thought it would safeguard: ourselves.
And, more importantly, we’ll discover what it takes to expose and eliminate the hidden shadow of pride that lurks within us. And as we will see, the solution to eradicating pride is a real cliff-hanger.
Source Scripture
Pride Comes Before a Fall: Luke 4:16-30
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
What Jesus Read to the People of Nazareth: Isaiah 61:1
Sacred Scripture is like a Sword for the Heart: Hebrews 4:12
Sacred Scripture is Designed to Bring us Joy: John 5:39-40
Jeremiah Sees Sacred Scripture as a Feast: Jeremiah 15:16
Jesus Says Sacred Scripture Brings Joy: John 15:11
In my view, Jesus changed lives because he was able to change the way people imagined their lives. He dared them to imagine the stranger as neighbor, the child as teacher, the enemy as mirror, the deity as loving father. He helped them imagine lepers, women, and Roman centurions as exemplars of faith. He asked them to imagine that the most important person at the table was the waiter, and that the end of the line was the place to be. At the moment I cannot think of a single story he told that was not intended to change the way his listeners imagined the world. I believe the arts can do the same thing. They can break my heart, rekindle my courage, wreck my prejudice, give me second sight. Barbara Brown Taylor
The kingdom of heaven is the name Jesus chose to give to the new way of life to which he invites us to embrace. He refers to his message about the kingdom as good news or the Gospel, and he challenges us that to become part of that kingdom, it requires us to completely alter the way we think.
If you have been following us in our previous episodes, Jesus has just returned to his home country of Galilee to formally share this message of the kingdom and extend his invitation to join. And today we explore the first story that illustrates this foundational new way of thinking required to enter it. It’s called faith.
Now over the centuries, the word faith has unfortunately devolved largely into the idea of creating and adhering to a set of well-defined precepts. This unfortunate appropriation of the word faith is responsible for the denominational divide that still haunts the Christian Church. It is also responsible for keeping us out of the kingdom of God, because it offers a cheaper, easier alternative. Just agree intellectually to what is good and what is bad. Make sure your precepts validate your life and invalidate others, and sign on the dotted line.
This so-called faith does not transform. It attempts to bypass your need for transformation by printing a ticket that claims you are a lifetime member of the club.
But the kingdom is not a club, and faith is not an intellectual exercise.
Today, we will take a second look at faith in an attempt to grasp its original breadth and depth. And, when we do, we’ll begin to see just how foundational authentic faith is for experiencing true transformation and living authentically in the kingdom of heaven.
Source Scripture
Take a Second Look: John 4:46-54
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
Better to illuminate than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate. Thomas Aquinas
The first time we ever hear the divine God of the Universe speak he says, Let there be light. Four words that birth light itself – an agent that behaves as both a wave and a particle, both in continuous motion as they emanate from a central source outward toward everything around it.
The first time we see water flowing on earth, it is in a river that originates in Eden and then divides into four headwaters. One river that births four that then proceed in continuous motion to water everything they touch. In Hebrew, the word for river is the same word as the word for radiating light. A river flows. Light flows.
And then we have Ezekiel’s wheel within a wheel, a mysterious object in motion that flashes light and bears multiple iterations of a creature with four faces: a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. Together, these radiant beings move back and forth, left and right, along the primary compass axes. Together they symbolize that God’s presence continuously radiates in every direction.
And finally, we see the four Gospel writers. Four men who entered orbit around the Gospel story of Jesus and then chose to share that story through the light of their writings. Saint Matthew, the man. Saint Mark, the Lion. Saint Luke, the Ox. And Saint John, the Eagle. The light of the Gospel is in continuous motion, emanating from Jesus to these four and then on to the entire world. Including now you.
This pattern of God’s light emanating from him through a primary four and then onward to everyone else is played out not just in the foundations of Scripture, but also in those of science.
When Galileo Galilei, the father of science, first turned his telescope skyward towards the planet Jupiter, he was stunned to see four tiny stars on either side of it. He watched night after night and finally concluded that Jupiter had four visible moons revolving around it. What convinced him was the motion of the moons. He noted the changes in their position not just over weeks or days – but over hours.
He reported his findings in a publication called Starry Message in March, 1610.
Since then we have discovered no less than 79 moons encircling Jupiter. The light and motion of the first four were only the beginning.
The name Jupiter is comprised of two roots Dyeu and Pater. Dyeui means sky or God, which is where we get the name Zeus or the Latin Deus as in the phrase Deus ex Machina, which translates to God, out of the machine. And pater means father. Jupiter, it seems, means Father God.
The New Testament book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is the radiance of of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being. Jesus doesn’t just radiate the divine – he is the radiance itself. He is light in motion – and that motion is toward us. Jesus seeks us out. He is for us.
The four Gospel writers reflect this divine radiance in sacred Scripture.
Today we will review how all four Gospel writers are doing this by taking a look back at the previous six episodes. There is a pattern in the Gospel stories there that emerges – a radiance that continues to shine. It begins with the four Gospel authors, who each have so far shared different vantage points in the life of Jesus. And for the first time, our most recent episode featured a single Gospel story told by all four writers simultaneously.
Seen as a whole, the last six episodes cover four stories that give us an experience much like Galileo’s first sightings of Jupiter and it’s four satellites – it is something that, when documented and shared, will change the outlook of the entire world.
So let’s get moving.
Source Scripture
This is the Way: John 1:1-18
Genealogies with Geographies: Matthew 1:1-17; Luke 3:23-38
The Woman at the Well – Part 1: John 4:1-26
The Woman at the Well – Part 2: John 4:27-38
The Woman at the Well – Part 3: John 4:39-42
Jesus announces the Kingdom of God:
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
Two Genealogies – Why are they Different?
The Story of Rahab the Prostitute
The Story of Abraham and Isaac
The Story of David and the Threshing Floor of Araunah
The Story of Jehoachin and the Temple’s Destruction
The Chosen: (Woman at the Well Scene: Download the app and Watch Episode 8 beginning at 40:10)
Abraham Builds the First Altar in Israel in Shechem
The divine is in the present and you must be present to experience it. When you vacate the present and recede into your mind, allowing worries or work to remove you from the moment, you leave the plain upon which the divine dwells.
When you are constantly under the anesthetic of digital distraction, you withdraw; you are no longer conscious, and therefore are in no fit state to commune with the sacred.
If you wish to hear the answers you seek, you must be present to hear them. If you wish to partake in the insights there to be known, you must be present to receive them. If you wish to know the divine, you must be present to meet it. L.M. Browning
The present moment. The here and now. The naked now. Can we ever actually get there? Stay there? Be there. When it calls, we are evasive. When we reach for it, it is elusive. When we do attain it, it is intensive. So intensive we may not be able to maintain it.
For the most part, we opt not to live in the present but in those two other, much easier states of attention: past and future. We wallow in the past, contorting our ability to live in the here and now. We hobble in regret, remorse, resentment, or we wish we could go back and relive something that seems better than what is in front of us at the moment.
Or we focus on the future: what could be, should be, what might be, what will be as far as we can tell.
Or – and this is where we really prove ourselves masters of dodging the present moment – we throw ourselves into distraction. We may not be caught up in the past or the future, but we’re not here. We’re checked out, sedating ourselves with screens, substances, and seizing anything and everything but the day.
Today, we’ll look at some practical steps to help you to live in the present. To seize the day. To be here, now.
Source Scripture
The Woman at the Well – Part 3: John 4:39-42
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
The Chosen (Woman at the Well Scene: Watch Episode 8 beginning at 40:10)
The world beneath us spins in circles
And this life makes us twist and turn and sway
But we were made for more than rhythm with no reason
By the one who moves with passion and with grace
As He dances over all that He has made
Stephen Curtis Chapman
We all have a profound longing to experience being – that nearly indescribable essence – that rush – of ecstasy as our soul within aligns and connects with the body and its brain without and all that we are cannot help but erupt in joy. Bliss. Wonder. Awe. We feel worthy. We feel whole. We feel alive. We feel ourselves. And we dance.
But we are impatient. And shallow. And we begin to confuse being with the fleeting pleasures available to us on the surface. We see money as the power that allows us to purchase an endless supply of amusements. We begin to see people not as fellow beings, but as objects that merely provide, assist, or prevent us from obtaining those thrills. We pursue popularity because, in our surface-level thinking, it validates our worth.
And once we make the conscious choice to pursue pleasure through popularity, power, and prosperity – we harness all of the energies within us into seizing the bounty.
Enter a most woeful irony.
In our obsession with procuring these prizes, we give ourselves over willingly into indentured servitude. The daily grind. The treadmill. The rate race. The hamster wheel. We lose ourselves in grueling work in exchange for the someday spoils. But before we realize it, our lives become the grind. And there we sit, wallowing in the two-fold misery of the burden we willingly accepted and the frustration of failing to find euphoria.
A prolonged quest into these fruitless ventures produces an oppressive fatigue. We become restless. Jaded. And so we turn our attention to anything that can bring escape: staring at a screen, ingesting a substance, purchasing a toy, indulging in sensual encounters, fantasizing what could be instead of relishing what is.
And yet, as we toss and turn in our self-inflicted maladies, there are moments when a whisper of being captures our attention and we catch a glimmer of hope. It might be the wet nose of a puppy nuzzling your ear and asking to play or the unexpected kiss of a loved one on the forehead who has just come from far away to see you. Or the sight of a surprise snowfall through the window on Christmas morning.
Is it possible to capture the essence – the being – we experience in such moments? Can we live in bliss instead of hanging onto mere morsels of memories?
Yes. We were designed to live this way. Let’s explore how.
Source Scripture
The Woman at the Well – Part 2: John 4:27-38
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
The Chosen (Woman at the Well Scene: Watch Episode 8 beginning at 40:10)
And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible.…In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. – C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
Our seemingly wholehearted devotion to applying the scientific method to ascertain the nature of reality has produced in us a remarkable blindspot. Science, by definition, aims to discern objective truth through observation and experiment.
But here’s the blindspot. While holding tightly to the belief that nothing can be true apart from scientific proof, we find ourselves in the possession of an inheritance of long-held theoretical truths that are yet to be proven or impossible to prove. And rather than employ the scientific method, we leave the decision to whim.
Enter the ego, whispering if it hasn’t been proven, then it must not be true. Reject it if it suits you.
We do this not because we are firm believers in science, but because our egos now have a loophole in which to exploit the realm of the unproven in order to to mine it for favorable resources.
Rather than seeking to discern universal, objective truth, we proceed with impunity to determine personal, subjective truth.
For example, it has long been held that forgiving your enemy when wronged is the only way to inner peace. But science has yet to prove this. The ego seizes this uncertainty to its advantages and proposes other, personal truths. Anger, hate, bitterness, vengeful fantasies, or outright retaliation.
The ego wants to determine truth in order to get what it wants. The soul longs to discern truth so it can fall into rhythm with it, live by it, and share it.
Today we will take a journey through time and space via sacred Scripture to three wells where we will discover those truths that exist in not in the domain of scientifically proven fact, but in the realm of the Logos, the Tao, the Way, the objective Truth of the Universe that permeates everything and reveals itself in the soul.
Let’s begin with well #1.
Source Scripture
The Woman at the Well: John 4:1-26
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
The Chosen (Woman at the Well Scene: Watch Episode 8 beginning at 40:10)
Abraham Builds the First Altar in Israel in Shechem
Joshua Builds the Altar of Fulfillment in Shechem
Joshua Renews Abraham’s Covenant in Shechem
Levi and Simeon Take Murderous Revenge in Shechem
Joseph’s Bones are Carried from Egypt and Buried in Shechem
Joseph’s Story of Curses to Blessings (Read Genesis 37-50)
All beginnings are delightful; the threshold is the place to pause. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Genealogies have become a recent fascination with our society as science, history, and technology collide, giving us the newfound ability to traverse backwards through time and accurately trace our roots – the names and dates and places and relationships that all somehow worked together to culminate in our birth.
If you look at an unfamiliar genealogy, it may seem dry and uninteresting. But if it is yours and you have spent time in research, those names and places and dates and relationships connect and come to life, evoking your origin stories.
Today, we’re going to take what many would arguably call the dullest two passages of the New Testament – the two genealogies of Jesus – and bring the origin stories to life in a way that will leave you awestruck.
Source Scripture
Genealogies with Geographies: Matthew 1:1-17; Luke 3:23-38
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
Two Genealogies – Why are they Different?
The Story of Rahab the Prostitute
The Story of Abraham and Isaac