Our thoughts for today harken back to a Catch last week about pleasing and being pleasing [to] God. Quite often comments from readers can add a new insight or a different twist on things. This one comes, believe it or not, from an “American sister in China.” Yes, that’s right: China.
Remember all those cartoons about digging straight down through the earth and coming out the other end in China? I just checked that out on Chandler’s globe and that was a lie. You’d have to dig at a bit of an angle to come out in China. Straight down brings you out somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean between Australia and Madagascar. But that’s no fun. Who wants to dig that far only to find yourself in the bottom of an ocean!
Interesting how we don’t see or hear much about that joke any more. Maybe it’s because the Internet has shrunk our world to where nothing is more than a click away. Julia is a click away, and here is what she wrote:
You spoke of Father’s acceptance and being versus doing very well and I hope more people read this and start to grasp this. I feel it is one of the easiest ways for the enemy to disable us – to allow us to believe that we are being graded on performance – or to let us think that we are all off the hook of responsibility if the pendulum swings too far to the other side. It is always about balance, isn’t it? The Chinese speak of balance all of the time.
In this dramatically unbalanced world, it is one of the hardest things to comprehend. And yet, I have found, just being in Him brings balance to everything, including me wanting to please Him, because I am extremely thankful that I already am pleasing to Him.
She’s right. Truth always straddles a middle ground. You won’t find Jesus at the extremes.
John Fischer The Catch 
Amen…and as we will be discussing at our church during Lent – It’s all connected…
“…It is always about balance, isn’t it? The Chinese speak of balance all of the time…”
“…She’s right. Truth always straddles a middle ground. You won’t find Jesus at the extremes.”
John, I respectfully disagree with both the comment made, and your statement. It’s not about “balance”, but Truth. The truth is sometimes radically off-center from what most folks consider “balanced”. Where’s the “balance” in the following statement by He who is Truth? “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6
Jesus called himself God!
That Truth IS extreme!
Please see my reply to Kira.
John,
You should check out the Rock Balancing guy at Seaport Village/Embarcadero Park North in San Diego. Interesting guy and his balancing is amazing.
http://blog.seaportvillage.com/index.php?id=203
What happened to my comment? It had merit and you took it off of here?
I beg to differ on the last sentence…Jesus was extremely radical for his time. Why would the pharisees be finding fault with him all the time? He spoke with women, Samaritan women especially, something that in his time was very extreme.
He broke bread on the Sabbath…extreme again. He healed on the Sabbath which was also found to be extreme by the law of the land. He broke bread with tax collectors, again extreme. Even the extreme claim that He was the son of God! He never said “I am the son of God, sort of” in order to maintain the middle ground.
Truth does NOT straddle a middle ground….truth is not relative…truth is binary…either it’s true or its not…up or down, yes or no, truth is NOT relative….moral relativism is creeping in to make us all straddle the middle ground.
We are human and balance is important in structuring our daily existence BUT beware of the middle ground as it relates to the TRUTH.
I really love to read your daily messages but this one…wow…not so good!
Okay. I did not mean this in the way some of you are taking it so my bad for not being clearer. Don’t forget, you’re talking to one of the radical Jesus Freaks of the ’70s who I don’t think has changed his position very much since then! What I meant was “extreme right or left” or more politically based. Jesus does not take sides with our differences and usually “extremists” on one side or the other will find He does not fit entirely into their position. Jesus is not a conservative, nor is he a liberal. That’s what meant.
Yes, that is true…Jesus is not a conservative, nor is he a liberal, agreed…thanks for the clarification. The last two sentences were a bit scary, I had no idea you were talking about politics.
By the way, Kira, your first comment was never posted. First time comments need my approval to be posted and I am just now getting to these. Since your second comment has most of the information from the first I will only post that one. Sorry for the confusion.
“…wanting to please Him….extremely thankful that I am already pleasing to Him…” I thank Julia so much. I do believe that truth, and Truth, occupies middle ground — because Truth in particular always contains paradox and (Holy) contradiction that is beyond the human capacity to “sort out”, so to speak. Julia pointed to a central Christian paradox/contradiction. That’s the “middle” that Truth occupies to me — the middle of paradoxes. We’re reassured in the Bible that here on earth “we see through a glass, darkly”, but that someday we’ll see how all these contadictory mysteries make complete sense, because we will see Him.
I’m a centrist Christian. Long ago I was a reluctant born-to-it conservative Roman Catholic. As a centrist Protestant, I appreciate the paradoxes and contradictions between conservative and (more) liberal Christianity — from evangelicals to so-called progressives, all my Christian brothers and sisters enlighten me, constantly. Maybe some Christians will think me a (bad kind of) relativist, but I greatly appreciate walking a path that lets me learn from the extreme left and the extreme right. Thanks and God’s love to all. To you, John, my gratitude in ample measure!