Eutopia Book Stuff
2024
Urstoff Love Scott Myers
Eutopia Book Stuff 2024
Index
June Finding all about you . . . . p. 3
April A Month of Prayer and Meditation . . . . . p. 5
February Red Bullets . . . . . p. 15
January We Tell Stories . . . . . . p. 19
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Finding All About You
We are created to seek God. We are created to love God. We won’t feel right about life about ourselves
apart from seeking God apart from loving God. There was a love song in the 1970’s with the first line
I remember finding all about you.
As I was growing up, certain females my age caught my attention. Their feminine divine fascinated me. I wanted to know everything about them. The first line of that song totally made sense to me. In a different but similar way, I was also totally fascinated by lizards, frogs, salamanders, grasshoppers, praying mantises, waterbugs, rocks, streams and ponds; anything that flies - airplanes, gliders, hot air balloons, blimps, dirigibles, paper airplanes, model airplanes, rockets; later, internal combustion engines and old (often rusty) sports cars; then literature, philosophy books, the Bible. The list of stuff in the world that fascinates you is probably different than mine, of course. But fascination in the world is all the same. Every one of these (non-destructive) fascinations were and are components, facets of our fascination with God, whom all creation reflects and expresses. God is the underlying fascination to all fascinations, the only truly satisfying fascination, the culmination of all fascinations. Also, the only rest from our fears, insecurities, and aversions. The one, true, lasting joy. Who is this God who is love? Who is this God we love? We are created to seek and love God. We won’t feel right about life apart from seeking and loving God. Learning about God is loving God. Loving God, we want to find all about God.
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A Month of Prayer and Meditation
World English Bible
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Day 1
Praise I love you, O Lord , my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower. I call on the Lord , who is worthy to be praised; and I am saved from my enemies. Psalm 18: 1-3 Humility/Confession When I kept silence, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me. My strength was sapped in the heat of summer. Selah I acknowledged my sin to you. I didn’t hide my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord , and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah Psalm 32: 3-5
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Petitions One thing I have asked of the Lord , that I will seek after, that I may dwell in the Lord ’s house all the days of my life, to see the Lord ’s beauty, and to inquire in his temple. Psalm 27: 4
Praise Of you comes my praise in the great assembly. I will pay my vows before those who fear him. The humble shall eat and be satisfied. They shall praise the Lord who seek after him. Let your hearts live forever. All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord . All the families of the nations shall worship before you.
For the kingdom is the Lord ’s. He is the ruler over the nations.
Psalm 22: 25-28
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Day 17
Praise How lovely are your dwellings, O Lord of Armies! My soul longs, and even faints for the courts of the Lord . My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. Yes, the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young, near your altars, O Lord of Armies, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house. They are always praising you. Selah Psalm 84: 1-4 Humility/Confession God looks down from heaven on the children of men, to see if there are any who understood, who seek after God. Every one of them has gone back. They have become filthy together. There is no one who does good, no, not one. Psalm 53: 2-3
Petitions Hear my cry, O God. Listen to my prayer.
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From the end of the earth, I will call to you, when my heart is overwhelmed. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I. For you have been a refuge for me, a strong tower from the enemy. I will dwell in your tent forever. I will take refuge in the shelter of your wings. Selah Psalm 61: 1-4 Praise I will sing of the loving kindness of the Lord forever. With my mouth, I will make known your faithfulness to all generations. I indeed declare, “Love stands firm forever. The heavens will praise your wonders, O Lord ; your faithfulness also in the assembly of the holy ones. For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord ? Who among the sons of the heavenly beings is like the Lord , a very awesome God in the council of the holy ones, to be feared above all those who are around him? O Lord , God of Armies, who is a mighty one, like you? Lord , your faithfulness is around you.. Psalm 89: 1-2, 5-8 You established the heavens. Your faithfulness is in them.”
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Day 22
Praise Shout for joy to the L ord , all you lands! Serve the L ord with gladness. Come before his presence with singing. Know that the L ord , he is God. It is he who has made us, and we are his. We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, and bless his name. For the L ord is good. His loving kindness endures forever, his faithfulness to all generations Psalm 100 Humility/Confession When pride comes, then comes shame, but with humility comes wisdom. Proverbs 11: 2 Petitions Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name. Deliver us, and forgive our sins, for your name’s sake. Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?” Let it be known among the nations, before our eyes, that vengeance for your servants’ blood is being poured out.
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Let the sighing of the prisoner come before you. According to the greatness of your power, preserve those who are sentenced to death. Psalm 79: 9-11 Praise The L ord reigns! Let the peoples tremble. He sits enthroned among the cherubim. Let the earth be moved. The L ord is great in Zion. He is high above all the peoples. Let them praise your great and awesome name. He is Holy! The King’s strength also loves justice. You do establish equity. You execute justice and righteousness in Jacob. Exalt the L ord our God. Worship at his footstool. He is Holy! Psalm 99: 1-5
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The time we spend alone with God each day we often experience to be the best part of the day. Jesus himself sought time away from the rest of the world to be alone with his Father. ( Mark 1:35, 6:46, Luke 5:16, 6:12, 9:18) Sometimes the beauty of this time with God outshines the prospects of the rest of the day and we say with Peter, ”Lord, it is good for us to be here” ( Mark 9:5) Let’s stay here all day! Now is the dwelling of God among men. ( Revelation 21: 3) The universe does not contain God. God does not need anything from us. Parents don”t need gifts from their children. But a child’s gift does bless the parent. When we praise God, we build with our words and our actions a place for God to inhabit on the earth, in our places. This blesses God.
Make a map of your places and times. Wherever, whenever you enter into praise, there you have built a dwelling for God among us.
Bless the Lord O my soul.
What a privilege God offers us if we are willing in our times with our words to build his temple in the rhythms of our days.
Scripture-Books . com
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Red Bullets
A Very Short Story
story Scott Myers
art Julie Holman
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Red Bullets
Hernando worked in a bullet factory. He wondered why some of the bullets that came down the assembly line were red while the rest were leaden gray.
His friends told him they were all gray and that he was crazy. He found out the red bullets were the ones that would eventually kill someone. He figured out how to take the red ones off the assembly line without being seen. At night he hid them in a box in the ceiling. One day the box fell through the ceiling onto Hernando, killing him.
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We Tell Stories the Success of Life
Urstoff Love
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We tell stories
about the Most Important People in the world.
The Fastest. The Strongest. The Prettiest. The Richest.
The Most Powerful. The Most Creative. The Most Interesting. The Smartest. The Coolest.
Important People become Famous. Desired. Sought After.
Don’t we all want to be Important, Famous, Desired, Sought After?
What does it mean to be important or famous?
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We have an entire economy built around Famousness , Importance . We have ranking systems. 99.9999% of us are not Important or Famous on these scales. How could we be? Importance and Fame exist only as a contrast to Not Important , Not Famous . The greater the level of Importance or Fame , the more of us are excluded from Importance and Fame . Necessarily. Everyone can’t be Famous . That just doesn’t work.
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How do categories of Importance or Famousness come to be? When we think of current events or events from world history, since we have limited minds, we have to abstract some list or some narrative out of Everyone Who Lived and Everything That Happened. We cannot have everyone or everything on our lists, in our minds or in the stories we tell. We don’t have that kind of mental capacity. We choose what and whom to include and exclude so that we can work with a representative sample of events and actors. A concise version of Everything. A representive sample of Everything sized to our mental capacities. The representative people and events mentioned become Famous and Important! How do we make these choices? What criteria do we apply? How do we know that we choose the right criteria for determining what and who is Important? It might not even be worthwhile deciphering the calculus we use to determine who should be Famous and Important. Our needing to edit down to pivotal events and influential actors is an artifact of our capacity to hold only a certain number of facts or ideas in mind at any given moment. We need drastically edited versions of broad scale events in order to think or talk about them. From that work-around of our limitations we form ideas that certain individuals and events - the stand-ins to represent the whole - have more significance than perhaps they really do have.
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Another reason we create Important and Famous lists: What can we do?
What are we capable of? What is our potential? We have in our hearts a desire, a drive to be more . Therefore,
our attention goes to those who achieve more , who embody more. Their examples energize us (or maybe discourage us). We admire them (or maybe resent them). (Or maybe both.) We want to be more , both individually and together in our communities. We notice and study and perhaps motivate ourselves by those we see achieving and being more . A potential downside to this (inevitable) practice: - admiring the wrong achievements in others; - fostering a climate where people (perhaps we ourselves) aim to be noticed, to be thought of as Important ; - allowing our admiration for others to stand in for our own lives of doing and developing; - becoming discouraged by and maybe even resentful of what others have achieved (or what we think they have achieved) and devaluing our own lives of growth and development. Or even losing our motivation to continue growing and developing, thinking, “What’s the use? I will never be as (fill in the blank) as the Important people.”
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Perspective: God doesn’t edit the world’s stories just to the highlights that we notice or can remember, or classify as Important . God holds everything and everyone in mind. The Major Figures and Unifying Narratives of our representative overviews are important to God. So, too, are all the stories and people that we edit out. They all are important to God. The little society in third grade with our teacher and all our friends, what became of each of us later in life - these are as important to God as the life stories of pivotal Major Figures from history, modern cultural known and noticed by everyone. So too is everyone we know and meet, all the groups of people we’ve ever been part of, what we do together, how we love each other, how we support each other’s growth and development, how we work together to expand shalom. So are all the groups of people everywhere in the world. All are important in all the same ways. What is important is every one of us in every one of our relationships. How we love, grow, bring balance peace health good things to the people we know and those we do not know in the places we live, generation after generation after generation. That is what is important. And we each get our turn. The history of how previous generations did this is interesting, perhaps instructive. And it is our turn. Here. Now. How people somewhere else are living can be interesting, perhaps instructive. And it is our turn. Here. Now. With the people in our lives.* Each just as faboulously important as anyone else - past, present, or future, * In the current age of travel and technology some or many of the people in our lives could be many miles or time zones away.
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God has already told us what is important about living. It is Love. What matters, what counts, what is important, is living lives of love (this comes by grace). Who are the Most Important people in the world? Think of Jesus’ answer to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” The most important people in the world are the people you meet - those close to you,complete strangers, and everyone in between. Every person we meet is as important to God as anyone else from anywhere else on the planet - past or present or future, seen by others to be important or not. Love is the success of life. This comes to us by grace. The stories of the winners that God tells are about people who live in love.
All over the planet, all through history, people get the same opportunity to live lives of love. Each life story is equally important - whether any of the rest of us ever hear or tell them.
Our Creator knows them. We live before our Creator. No one else might ever notice.
That is not important.
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Live a life of love in full view of your Creator and you will be as Important and Famous as you possibly can be. The one who needs to see and know what you do sees and knows you. Don’t become enamored with the Important People who are fast, strong, pretty, rich, powerful, creative, who beat everyone else in some kind of contest. Being the something-est is not important. Living a life of love where we are, that is important. Nearly always,
lives of love will not be picked up by news services. History does not take pains to record lives of love. Sometimes History or media might pick up stories of love, almost by accident. That is not their aim. Don’t let History or media trick you into thinking that anything other than living a life of love is important!
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Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us
and his love is made complete in us.
I John 4: 7 - 12
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