THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS...NOT FINISHED
Learning to See
Finding Grace and Peace
Song - How He Loves
Meditation - while the song plays, ponder the three questions
There will be days on this ship that will be so smooth you won't even know you are in the middle of the ocean unless you look out the window. There will probably be a few days when the seas will be rough and you might even question why you came on this trip. Never fear though, this is just how real life goes isn't it?
Life is up and then it is down; things are going just the way you want one moment, then the next it seems as if everything falls apart. All of us that are old have experienced life just this way, the ebb and flow of good times and bad times. Teenagers, you may have experienced some of this...if you haven't, hang on, you will.
This is the way it has been for all of human history. All civilizations have wondered why one season there is rain and abundant food and the next is drought and famine. Why is there blessing one moment and a curse the next? And this journey through prosperity and difficulty made people realize that there is something beyond what they can see, something that controlled the seasons of life. All civilizations began to ask these questions:
- Who are we?
- Where do we come from?
- What is our purpose?
Man started to practice superstition, religion and ritual to help answer these questions. What is out there that we can't see? How can we interact with this unseen force in a way that ensures blessing rather than curse?
In Old Testament scriptures we read about the religions of Ba'al, Ashteroth, Molech...which required sacrifice of animals and sometimes humans. By the time of the first century A.D. and the powerful Roman Empire it is reported that there are over 30,000 gods and goddesses that were part of religious life in the time of Jesus and the Apostle Paul. I've been reading the Colossian letter a lot lately, in the city of Colosse they worshiped AT LEAST 13 different gods and goddesses.
And the three basic questions of humans become convoluted and unanswered. Day to day life was still filled with the inexplicable, the ups and the downs.
On the other side of the world from the Roman empire a civilization was developing that would be called one of the most advanced in the hemisphere, if not the whole world at the time. The land of this civilization developed in the places we will be this week, the southern part of the civilization was in Honduras, filled up Guatemala and Belize, and came to its full self in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, including the island of Cozumel.
Despite their brilliant advances in mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, farming, and the arts, they struggled with the questions that are common to all men.
- Who are we?
- Where do we come from?
- What is our purpose?
The Maya developed a system of religion that tried to answer these questions. There were 166 gods and goddesses that were a part of this religion. Their rituals included:
- a strange baptism where the celebrant was whacked on the head a few times then immersed
- steam baths to cleanse the spirit
- seeking answers in the stars
- incense burning
Everything they did had spiritual significance and their whole lives, from king to peasant were consumed with serving these gods.
Diego de Landa
Communion - Colossians 1.19-22
Finding Grace and Peace - Colossians 1.2
