Wayfaring Stranger

This is another bluegrass spiritual I'd love to hear at church. The song is centuries old:

lyrics:

I am a poor wayfaring stranger
Travelling through this world alone
There is no sickness, toil nor danger
In that fair land to which I go

I'm going home
To see my mother
I'm going home
No more to roam
I am just going over Jordan
I am just going over home

I know dark clouds will hover o'er me,
I know my pathway is rough and steep
But golden fields lie right before me
Where weary eyes no more will weep
I'm going home to see my father
I'm going home no more to roam
I am just going over Jordan
I am just going over home

I'll soon be free from every trial
This form will rest beneath the sod
I'll drop the cross of self-denial
and enter in that home with God
I'm going home to see my savior
I'm going home no more to roam
I am just going over Jordan
I am just going over home

INXS - The Stairs

I have flashbacks of lost loves when I hear this one.

Lyrics:

In a room above a busy street
The echoes of a life
The fragments and the accidents
Separated by incidents

We Listen to the walls
We share the same spaces
Repeated in the corridors
Performing the same movements

Story to story
Building to building
Street to street
We pass each other

Story to story
Building to building
Street to street
We pass each other

We listen to the walls
We share the same spaces
Repeated in the corridors
Performing the same movements

The nature of your tragedy is chained around your neck
Do you lead or are you led
Are you sure that you don't care
There are reasons here to give your life
And follow in your way
The passion lives to keep the faith
Though all are different all are great
Climbing as we fall
We dare to hold on to our faith
And steal away our destiny
To catch ourselves with quiet grace

Story to story
Building to building
Street to street
We pass each other on the stairs

Listened to by the walls
We share the same spaces
Repeated in the corridors
Performing the same movements

Story to story
Building to building
Street to street
We pass each other on the stairs

What is the worst thing that can occur? (an echoing in eternity)

I have decided... actually I hit DSM up many moons ago about this...

I have decided to post some of the e-mails from the volumoinous, dusty archives of the ongoing conversation between D.S. Martin and myself. I chose this transmission to lead with because;

A. Its a good one.
B. I am not sure if I answered any of these questions- at least not well, because I found them deeply penetrating, insightful, tough, perhaps pre-mature in our conversation... at least pre-mature for where I was really intending to go in the alotted timeframe we were working with.
C. I wonder if the answers DSM was pondering for these questions has changed from the time he asked them.

Here is the first installment of: Quantum Contemplations: Dialog Flucuating In Eternity

E-mail entitled: More Questions to consider

Scott,

There are some questions that I have pondered over the years in various contexts and by which I have been personally challenged.
These questions will directly impact our discussion about "Christianity" bringing horror to your ancestors and others.
I would like to know if you, personally, have answers to these questions, but even if you do not, I think that the questions are valuable to contemplate.
My formulation of the underlying question came about as a result of my struggle with the issue of Capital Punishment by a government.
If Capital Punishment causes the death of "innocent" people, which I know it does, (I put 'innocent' in quotes because the term is relative. Thus, no adult is innocent in real terms.), would there be an overarching value in allowing the individual to remain alive for a few years, yet, nevertheless to go to hell?
This question, obviously, would be directed to an omnipresent, omniscient, omni-benevolent, merciful, and just God.

1) What is the worst thing that can occur to any human being, man, woman, or child?

2) If torture and death is the worst thing that could happen, Where does this put damnation to hell?

3) If hell is the worst thing that could happen, Where does this put torture and death?

4) If hell is the worst thing that could happen, What level and/or number of tortures and death would make salvation of one solitary soul untenable?

5) If there is no level of torture and death that could justify the salvation of one solitary soul, What does this imply for Jesus' suffering torture and death?

6) If there is an acceptable & narrowly restricted level of torture and death that would make the salvation of one solitary soul acceptable, Where is that limit?

7) What is the fundamental value a soul who rejects God and will forever embrace Satan?

8) What is the cumulative value of a finite number of souls who reject God and will forever embrace Satan?

9) If hell is the worst thing that could happen, Could the preservation, for a finite number of years, of a finite number of souls who reject God and will forever embrace Satan, be preferable to the salvation of one solitary soul?

10) Has a single solitary soul attained salvation by Jesus as a result of the horrors of "Christianity"?

11) If a soul prayed to God for "the way" and the Lord answered the prayer and sent an evangelist to explain the way of Jesus (Like Cornelius' answered prayer in Acts 10), but which also brought torture and death to them and many others as well, Would the answered prayer be unjustified?

What do you think? Are there answers?

DSM

Isaiah 53 Suffering Servant Questions

He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with bitterest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way when he went by. He was despised, and we did not care.
Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows* that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God for his own sins!
Holy Bible : New Living Translation. 1997 . Tyndale House: Wheaton, Ill.

Was Jesus acquainted with bitterest grief and sorrows before He took up our weaknesses?

It occurs to me that this passage may imply that Christ knew sorrow prior to taking our infirmities upon him.

What might Jesus’ sorrows have been, i.e. His sorrows which were his alone and apart from mankind?

I have always thought that Jesus only knew grief, vicariously through mankind.
But, what if He knew grief in His own right; what if He experienced personally a grief that was unique to Him and His own life, would that make a difference on how I perceive my Lord?
It seems to make a difference to me.
Does it make a difference to you?

It is a curiosity.

God bless,
DSM