I found out today I have gallstones. Praying I pass them without meds.

There is no strong consensus for the sequence of some events during Passion Week. But it was sometime during these very busy days when Jesus was teaching and performing miracles in the Temple Plaza that He reminded His disciples yet again that He was going to die.

The occasion was when some Gentile believers managed to get hold of one of the Twelve, Philip, and asked him how they could meet Jesus. Whether or not the bazaar returned to the Court of Gentiles is not known, but Jesus typically taught in the Court of Women where Gentiles were not permitted. So Philip went to find his brother Andrew and mentioned this request. The two of them came together to let Jesus know some Gentiles were asking to meet Him.

Jesus had already said that He did not come to minister to those outside the Covenant of Moses until after His resurrection. However, He also said that the Covenant was to make Israel able to be that witness to the Gentiles, and His clearing the Court of Gentiles was a pointed reminder of that mission. Did anyone notice how His ministry was already drawing them? Whether or not Jesus acceded to this particular request, it reminded Him of bigger things.

Did His disciples understand? He said it was almost time for Him to be glorified. This carried connotations far beyond the mere words. It's most literal meaning is that He would return to Heaven. But that wouldn't happen before certain critical events came first. He had to die a grisly death and be buried for a few days, and then He would rise again in a glorified body. Having said that several times, His disciples still could not absorb it. They were stuck on the notion that Jesus was about to declare Himself the Messiah and King, and by miraculous powers remove all resistance and take an earthly throne. This image was so deeply ingrained in their minds that talk of dying just passed right in one ear and out the other.

So He offered a parable about how grain cannot produce fruit without dying in the soil. Then He spoke that enigmatic epigram about loving your life and losing it, versus detesting this life and living eternally. Thus, serving in His royal court meant walking the same path of not caring about this life, so that His servants could always be near Him, including when He came into the Presence of His Father, where His servants would be honored in Heaven, not on this earth.

If their fleshly minds could not grasp this, His fleshly nature was deeply agitated, clearly knowing that death was near. Still, this was why He came to have a fleshly body in the first place. Wouldn't it be crazy to ask the Father to deliver Him from this awful fate, if that's why He came? No, instead He would simply ask His Father to glorify His own Name, knowing what that meant for Him as the Son.

To which the Father audibly replied that everyone could count on Him for that very thing. Those who were spiritually sensitive heard that Voice for what it was, but those less perceptive said it was just thunder. Jesus noted that He had no particular need to hear that Voice in His flesh, but that it was the Father doing precisely what He promised, making sure His people received His Word.

Then Jesus used a Hebrew phrase indicating that Satan would lose his lien against the human race arising from that awful choice back in Eden. It was no longer obligatory to fear death and cling to this world. People would be granted an awareness of Eternity on a scale previously unimaginable. So, when Jesus was glorified, these believing Gentiles seeking an audience with Him would be among a whole world of people who would have open access to Him in their spirits.

As was typical of the Hebrew language, Jesus used an ambiguous phrase about being elevated. The meaning His disciples were thinking about was glorification on a throne, but it also referred to crucifixion. The Cross would be His throne on this earth. Everyone who came to Him as Messiah would have to own that Cross as their just penalty for the Fall.

Some of His audience caught onto that second connotation, and asked how the Eternal Messiah was going to be crucified. Was this "Son of Man" the title of some other fellow Jesus referred to? No, He had explained it over and over again. They should look to the light of His teaching, to memorize it and cling to it. They needed to absorb it and live it until it became their nature. Thus, they would be Children of the Light.

The whole conversation reminded Him of just how frustrating this was, and He went off to be alone, actually hiding from His entourage for a while. Despite the miracles, the majority of the crowds did not believe His claims. John reminds us that Isaiah prophesied it would be like this. In his prophetic visions, Isaiah saw how it would be, that everything God does comes with plausible deniability for the majority who simply cannot see spiritual truth.

Still, a significant number of senior Jewish leaders believed, but kept it to themselves, lest they face harassment at the hands of the Pharisees. They were just fleshly enough to fear that kind of social pressure.

When Jesus could no longer contain Himself, He stood in a very public place and shouted to the crowd around Him. Anyone who embraced His teaching was embracing the Father. Those who could discern what He was saying were the kind of people who could discern the Father, too. Jesus was the light, calling people out of moral darkness. He wasn't going to bother forcing people to accept His word as law; His mission was to pay the penalty for their sins, not punish them. Rejecting His message would mean standing before the Judge of mankind, and that judgment would be according to that same message.

Then Jesus reiterated that His message was only what the Father sent Him to say.

Today Veloyce and I celebrate 44 years as husband and wife. Marrying her was the smartest thing I ever did.

Today is the anniversary of the Watergate Scandal. I was a teenager when this happened, and I never understood it until much later. I'm not sorry to have seen Nixon pushed out of the White House, but Watergate was not his doing.

For the record: Evidence shows that Nixon's WH Counsel, John Dean, was the real crook. Dean was married to a woman who was a close associate (long term roommates) with prostitutes, pimped by the Mafia. The Mafia was providing the girls for a prostitution ring that was working through the Democratic National Convention HQ at the Watergate Hotel.

20 days before they were arrested, the burglars had managed to successfully bug one phone at the DNC offices. It was on the desk of a woman who apparently was coordinating this prostitution ring. Clients would look at a photo catalog and pick a girl, and she would meet the client either in the building or across the street in another hotel. Evidence indicates these prostitutes were spying on behalf of John Dean and his Mafia associates. This was the only bugging that happened in the DNC HQ.

10 days after that first burglary, the prostitution ring was caught by local cops, quite by accident, who had no idea what this operation was really for. So, John Dean ordered the burglars to go back and grab the evidence from the DNC to keep him from being implicated. He lied to G. Gordon Liddy what it was all about, and secretly countermanded Liddy's instructions to the burglary team. Liddy thought it was all about bugging the office of the leader of the DNC, and he provided all the necessities for that mission. However, the burglars were there to clean out that desk to keep anyone from finding out that John Dean was involved in the prostitution and the Mafia.

During the initial investigation, John Dean took advantage of his position to stay one step ahead of the FBI, essentially covering up his part in the scandal. When that failed to serve his purpose, and the investigation turned to the White House staff, he turned State's Evidence. In his testimony, he lied and turned the whole thing into a matter of what Nixon knew. Nixon only found out a small portion of this story afterward. There's no evidence he was even aware of the burglaries, much less ordered them. The investigation never went after Dean's Mafia connections, because he had already hidden that part. Thus, he sacrificed Nixon for his own hide.

To this day, most Americans have no idea what it was all about.

I had a kidney stone overnight last night. I woke up with extreme pain in the back left side that didn't let up. It was probably worse than when I had appendicitis a few decades ago...maybe an 8 or 9 out of 10. Also had nausea, the sweats, etc. The wife took me to the hospital since it wasn't going away, passed me through the donut machine for a CT scan, and it was diagnosed as a kidney stone. They kept me there until the pain passed and let me rest, and sent us on our way maybe 3 or 4 hours since we arrived.

Taking the day off from work to rest, but back at it tomorrow. I feel fine, other than being a bit tired. Drinking plenty of water and taking a prescribed med to make me pee more. The stone should pass completely (can't wait) in a few days, according to the doctor.

Don't really need a prayer request for any of this, but it definitely did a number on me. I'm just hoping when the stone finally leaves, it doesn't hurt too bad, but I'm no counting on it.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

It requires that we reference all three sources of that first day to get the full picture.

The event we call the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem was late in the day. Bethany was below the crest of the Olivet ridge, on the slope running off toward the east. Bethphage, out on the northwestern side of Bethany, was right near the top. Beyond that, at the actual crest, the road swung sharply to the right, mostly northward as it dropped down the side facing Jerusalem on the west.

Somewhere along this path, when the ancient capital came into full view, Jesus stopped and cried out in sadness over the city that held the source of resistance to His mission.

This should have been a day of celebration, when the Jewish leadership could have been out in front of the crowd, welcoming Him as the Messiah. Indeed, had it not been for the crowd of ordinary people raising a ruckus, the rocks and stones of the city would have been singing and crying out. The leadership didn't comprehend the nature of shalom, peace with God. They were blind.

Because of this blindness, they would not have what little peace they did understand. Instead, the city was doomed to face a siege that would see the inhabitants slaughtered without mercy, and the glorious Herod's Temple would be rubble scattered around the plaza, no stone atop another. The rulers had rejected God's truth, and had no clue that He was coming to visit, nor would have noticed if He had. Those leaders confronted Jesus repeatedly during His visit, demanding to know who had given Him the authority to act as He did, because it was clearly not man's authority, the only authority they understood.

The noise from the crowd was picking up in volume as they approached the gate. At some point, once He was inside the city proper, the whole thing began to break up. It was almost sundown now. Jesus looked around a bit, then led His disciples back the way they had come. They stayed the night in Bethany, most likely at the home of Lazarus.

The next day they came back for another visit. It was for sure people spotted them and raised a little noise, but it wasn't like the day before.

At the point where the road crossed a viaduct for the Kidron Wadi, Jesus reached out to a fig tree. He was hungry and couldn't find any fruit. Of course, the natural explanation is that, this being late March, fig trees had not produced any fruit yet. Still, it was a symbolic act based on the prophecy He had just pronounced yesterday over the city. The Lord of the Harvest came to see if the Fig Tree, one of the ancient symbols for the Nation of Israel, was bearing the expected fruit of God's revelation.

No, there were only the tender leaves of spring. Still, it was clear to anyone with a prophetic grasp that there was no excuse. The tree of Israel had not been fruitful for a very long time. So He spoke a curse: No one would ever eat fruit from this tree again, whatever fruit that could have been. His disciples were probably the only ones close enough to overhear this, and were perplexed, completely missing the whole point of this exercise.

Jesus made His way to the Temple Plaza. As usual, the Bazaars of the Sons of Annas were packed into the Court of Gentiles. Jesus grabbed a bundle of cords and fashioned a whip by knotting it tightly. In that culture, the snake-like leather lash common in America was unknown. More likely, it resembled the cat-o-nine-tails, with knots tied along the length of each cord.

With this, Jesus lashed out at the vendors who were ripping off the visitors from out of town. This notorious racket was very unpopular, forcing the people to exchange their various home currencies for the Temple shekel at a steep loss. They had to make this exchange in order to purchase pre-approved animals for sacrifice and for the Passover meal, also at a higher than normal prices. It was about the only way to get an animal through the priestly inspection process.

What Jesus did was therefore quite popular with the crowd. And as a bonus, He yelled loudly, quoting Isaiah and Jeremiah, how the Temple was a house of prayer for all nations -- referring to the Court of Gentiles that had no room for Gentiles -- and how the Jewish leadership had turned it into a den of robbery. The presence of the approving crowd prevented the Temple Guard from arresting Jesus.

The next day, they made the same trip again. Again, they passed the low spot over the Kidron and noted that the fig tree had completely withered all the way down to the roots. The disciples exclaimed at what a mighty miracle this was. Jesus turned it into a lesson faith. If you know God's purpose and are determined to serve Him, then He would naturally grant such authority. You could even demand that a mountain that hinders your mission to move itself into the sea, it would fly straight there.

Upon entering the Temple Plaza to teach and heal, the officials came at Him again, demanding to know on whose authority He did all these things. He was ready for them. Assuming a very serious tone, He answered with a question of His own. Was the prophecy and ritual washing done by John down in the Jordan River from God, or was it from some human authority?

They were trapped. They realized that if they had said John came on God's authority, then why did they reject his message? But if they said he came on human authority, the crowd would be furious enough to attack them where they stood. So they waffled and suggested they weren't sure either way.

Jesus responded with razor clarity: If they were unable to recognize the difference between divine and human authority, they had no business asking Him whence His authority came. It was the same authority that drove His cousin, John the Baptist. They might have some vestigial legal authority, but no moral authority to claim they enforced the Word of God.

Plainly, they were all about human authority, and completely blind to the divine.

No, I'm promoting neither "woke" nor an uprising. It's just that I'm awake in the wee hours of the morning and I'm passing the time.

This article caught my eye this morning. It's the (in)famous Kim Dotcom citing numbers to explain the US bankruptcy. Whether his numbers are accurate isn't much of an issue; it's the scale of things that matters here. All US assets are worth far less than US debt. The only thing holding the system together is that everyone would rather keep the lie rolling than let the system collapse. But it will collapse, sooner or later. At some point, events will expose the magnitude of the deception.

He's right about why this is going to result in chaos and slaughter. He's right about how this is the "Great Reset" plan in a nutshell. The lockdowns and plagues are all a lie to cover-up the bigger lies about the economy. They are trying to disarm the people to prevent the inevitable violence in response to elitist oppression. And he's right about how there is really nothing we can do.

This is going to hurt. We need to make sure we know how to trust God and bear with Him, enduring the apocalypse for His glory.

That fancy word "propinquity" means nearness of time and place; it's roughly equivalent to "proximity" in some ways. However, propinquity takes on significance in faith teaching. It has implications for faith that other words don't carry.

For example, if you are around someone all the time, your passion for that person will grow. You will either hate them or love them, but their significance will tend to grow one way or another. You'll become sensitive to them. Sometimes you need to discern how this will carry huge problems if that person is not a godly influence in your life. If you aren't in a position to move away physically, then you'll need to construct barriers internally to avoid defiling attachments.

Another example is how God uses proximate goals to move us somewhere. We often stand before the Lord completely befuddled about some parts of His divine moral character. In order to give us guidance, He often has to move us to another perspective, a place in our hearts where we can see something that is currently out of view. So He gets our attention to one thing on the way to another thing far more important.

Our problem is that we get confused. We get all enthusiastic about the that proximate goal, locking in on how that thing is God's will. And it is, but it's not the end of the process. We get mistaken in thinking that it is, and it keeps us from moving on to the real goal.

I run into this a lot. It's a feature of my faith life. I've passed through a great many proximate goals along the way to much greater things, but was hindered for a while because of my confusion about where God was taking me. So, I'll try a lot of things that aren't the real end, just a proximate goal that changes my perspective. Once I figure it out, I'll drop something for which my initial enthusiasm had been high.

You have to learn not to be embarrassed about that. People who don't understand spiritual growth will think we are flighty and given to impulse. That's what they see, because they don't have a heart vision at all.

Time is short. Jesus is about to die, and it seems almost nobody understands, so there's no one to give Him comfort. Everyone seems too intent on what they can have, but nobody seems interested in hearing what Jesus is actually saying. Nobody seems to care that He is just a few days from execution.

We pick up the narrative in John's Gospel, six days before the Passover. After the long, arduous climb up from Jericho, Jesus stopped in Bethany at the home of Lazarus and his sisters, Martha and Mary. Again, Martha was serving, but no fussing this time; her brother had been raised from the dead not so long ago. He reclined next to Jesus in the typical Hebrew style, dining at a low table surrounded by cushions.

Mary did the one thing that made the most sense. She brought out from somewhere a Roman pound (litra -- 12 ounces for Americans) of spikenard (Nardostachys jatamansi), just about the most expensive ointment anyone knew about in those days. The fragrance was unique and easily recognized, and when poured on the skin or hair, would continue exuding its aroma for several days.

Mary poured it on His feet, then spread it with her hair (Matthew 26 mentions some of it went on His head, too). It didn't conflict with the food at all; wealthy people put in their wine. But for a good while the smell of that large quantity would have swamped everything else in the house. When Judas Iscariot complained that the money would have been better put into their treasury for distribution to the poor, it was a lie. As the group's treasurer, he would have pilfered from it along with all the other money in their common fund. He suggested it was worth more than 300 days' wages for a common laborer.

Jesus rebuked him and noted that, at last, someone understand what He had been saying about His coming death. It wasn't specifically used for burial, but the scent would still be on Him (and in her hair) when He died to remind Him that she understood. Then He said something few grasp even to this day. There will always be poor, and they are a bottomless pit. Giving to the poor has its place, but so does giving comfort to a Messiah about to sacrifice His life.

All during that day, a great many Jews from around Jerusalem came just to see, not only Jesus the famous rabbi, but the man He raised from the dead. Lazarus was well known, and his funeral was heavily attended, but now he was downright famous. And because of this noteworthy miracle, a significant portion of those who came to see him were now turning to follow Jesus as the Messiah. Meanwhile, the Sanhedrin were trying to come up with a way to put Lazarus back in the grave.

Some English translations miss the point of what John says next: There was a vast herd of Diaspora Jews arriving in Jerusalem before the Passover, wave after wave coming in from out of town over the week leading up to the celebration of the Exodus. It was the day following the celebratory feast where Mary anointed His feet. When the Jews from out of town got the news about Jesus, His claims to be the Messiah, and the man He raised from the dead, they gathered around the eastern gate of the city, because they heard that Jesus was coming down from Bethany.

This is late march and date palm trees were far more abundant in those days than now, one of the few trees still green year round. They would have been easy to climb and the palm fronds were huge. Just a few branches would have made quite a green carpet on the road. This was a royal welcome, and the people shouted glory to the Lord that the King of Israel had finally come.

We are told in Matthew 21 that Jesus had arranged for a young donkey, sending two of His disciples to fetch it from a small village on the way from Bethany. We also learn that some people laid their outer garments on the road with the palm fronds, all of which signifies their welcome and allegiance to a new king. Both Matthew and John quote from Zechariah 9:9 which prophesied of this very thing, that the Messiah would ride on a donkey colt into Jerusalem.

John reminds us that the disciples didn't understand in the flesh, but after the Resurrection, their hearts brought it all back to them. Meanwhile, folks who had witnessed the resuscitation of Lazarus were fanning out among the confused onlookers on both sides of the crowd, boldly describing what they had witnessed. This only increased the number of folks trying to press in and welcome Jesus as king.

This left the Pharisees grumbling among themselves at how their efforts were wasted on these people. For them, it seemed as if the whole world had chosen to follow this ignorant rabbi. All the while, and even up through the day He was crucified, Jesus was giving off this sweet smell of spikenard.