Sunday Morning Musings

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Stairway to Heaven

Genesis 28:10 — "And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it."

I've been thinking lately about dimensions — not just the ones physicists sketch on chalkboards, but the ones we live in without noticing. In school, they taught us about a four‑dimensional universe: length, width, height, and time woven together like threads in a cosmic loom. But the more I ponder it, the more I suspect these four dimensions are only the ground floor of a much larger house.

We begin life in something like a one‑dimensional line. As infants, our world is nothing but the next need, the next cry, the next comfort. Forward and backward. Hunger and fullness. Light and dark. A single line of experience with no depth.

"On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame. And I love that old cross where the dearest and best, for a world of lost sinners was slain."

Today, that hill, that cross, that sacrifice seems nearer than ever. Thousands of years and miles have not changed our fallen nature one tiny bit — it has only spread its dominion into every corner of our world.

Regarding the conflict we are engaged in against Iran, I would like to offer some insight into who is on the side of justice and God's will, because it certainly is not the iron-fisted Iranian government or the radical Islamist clerics that control it.

Spiritual judgment is God's alone. Only He sees the heart, knows the whole story, and understands the hidden motives, wounds, temptations, and pressures that shape a soul. Only He can separate the sinner from the sin without destroying the person. This is why Jesus warns us not to judge the soul—we can't see deep enough, know enough, or love enough. But humility doesn't mean doing nothing.

Justice in the physical realm is our responsibility. If it's ignored, if wrongdoing goes unchecked, if cruelty is left to run free, chaos takes over and evil wins. This isn't a contradiction—it's a moral division of labor. God judges the soul. We judge the deed. God holds eternity; we protect the vulnerable. God sees the heart; we uphold the law. We can pray for the souls of tyrants while also resisting them, saying both, "Christ died for these men" and "They must be stopped." That's not a contradiction—it's Christian realism.

Why Both Are Necessary

If we try to take God's role—judging the soul—we become self‑righteous, vindictive, and blind to our own darkness. If we ignore our role—pursuing justice—we become passive, cowardly, and complicit in suffering. But when we hold both together, we live as humans were meant to: resisting evil without becoming it; pursuing justice without losing mercy; fighting darkness without letting it poison the soul. This balance keeps the world from chaos, the heart from pride, and the soul light enough to rise. It's the kind of soul that returns home like rain to the earth—having resisted evil, looked for the good, left judgment to God, and done justice on earth.

What we are doing in Iran is long overdue. Not only for the thousands of Americans and others who have been killed, maimed for life, or had their lives ruined by wars of attrition that never seem to end—it is also justice for the millions of Iranians who have suffered under the despotic rule of an ancient religion that is long overdue for reformation similar to what Europe went through in the 16th century. The hatred that these radicals have for Israel and America must be eradicated, or there will never be peace in the modern world.

This is "Christian realism" in action—resisting evil decisively while leaving the ultimate judgment to God. It's not vengeance; it's containment and potential liberation. The hatred toward Israel, America, and the West's values is baked into the regime's ideology, exported via proxies. Eradicating that requires weakening the structures that sustain it.

Pray for wisdom for leaders, protection for civilians (Iranian, Israeli, American, and others caught in the crossfire), and for hearts to turn—both oppressors and the oppressed. May justice prevail without descending into unchecked wrath, and may the vulnerable find relief. Guard the good, resist the destructive, and trust the deeper story to the One who sees all.

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A Rose is a Rose...

There once was a little bush that sprang up amongst a meadow full of weeds. Now, the weeds were not all noxious or ugly, but they were prolific and spread like wildfire in poor soil. Some had pretty flowers decorating their stems and leaves. However, the fruit of the flowers was often bitter, sour, and sometimes poisonous. Some had no fruit at all.

The little bush continued to grow despite the encroachment of the weeds that threatened to overwhelm it. It thrived not only because it was a hardy plant but also because it had some help.

The bush grew thorns and bark for protection, but even that was not enough to ward off every threat. But amazingly, every time it was crowded by weeds or attacked by parasites and disease, a hand from above came to the rescue.

"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same...Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment."

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The Grand Picture

C. S. Lewis once wrote to a young woman who feared that God's foreknowledge made her prayers meaningless. She imagined God as a distant observer who had "known for millions of years" what she would say. Lewis gently corrected her. God hears us now, he said, as simply and at once as a mother hears her child. The difference is that God's "now" is infinite. Our present moment slips away even as we name it, but His present does not pass. To Him, every moment is fully present. We do not pray into a void or into a timeline already sealed; we pray into the living presence of the One who is eternally here. As the psalmist says, "One day in Your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere" (Psalm 84:10). The comfort is not in understanding God's relation to time, but in knowing that when we step into prayer, we step into His presence.

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Never Cut a Deal with the Devil

From The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C.S. Lewis (paraphrased): "Just as Eustace reached the edge of the pool, two things happened. First, it struck him like a thunderclap that he had been running on all fours—and why on earth had he been doing that? Then, as he leaned toward the water, he thought for a moment that another dragon was staring back at him. But in an instant, he realized the truth. The dragon's face in the water was his own reflection, moving when he moved, opening and closing its mouth in sync with his. He had turned into a dragon while asleep. Resting on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself."

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The Stone Bridge of Grace

There once lived a people who resided on a high, barren mountain, living their whole lives there on the mountain peak. However, they could see that there was a place of infinite beauty far below, stretching to the horizon—a place they called Paradise. It could be seen thousands of feet below—so close, but so hard to reach, because in doing so one had to descend down a slippery slope that passed terrifyingly close to a lake of fire.

Life was hard on the rocky mountain, with only a few oases to relieve the boredom and frequent misery. Their only choice was the barroom or the church.

The church provided fellowship and guidance in the form of a map that traced a long and arduous trail around the mountain to the other side, with a bridge that promised a way over the lake of fire. The church also revealed an infallible guiding star to keep them from wandering off the trail.