Basil takes aim. Better duck, he's aiming at you!

Yes, Basil would make many modern Christians uncomfortable, particularly those raised in an affluent environment where every need for food, shelter and clothing is well met. The modern martyrs and prisoners of the faith would more readily recognize his voice. Without doubt Basil would consider the affluent Western lifestyle at best a spiritual smokescreen that, like the lifestyle of many of his own wealthy contemporaries, could blind one to the need for utter dependence upon God and sensitivity to the needs of the surrounding poor. Later, while serving as an auxiliary bishop in Caesarea, Basil would witness firsthand the horrors of famine and the even greater horror of wealthy Christians turning a blind eye to the needs of the poor.—Christopher Hall, Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers, 83

<idle musing>
The more things change, the more they stay the same! Wealthy christians are still turning a blind eye. John Michael Talbot's "Would You Crucify Him" has been running though my mind the last several weeks. Even though it was written in the 1970s, it seems terribly relevant.

Sometimes, in the cool of the evenin'
The truth comes like a Lover through the wind
Sometimes, when my thoughts have gone misleadin'
She'll ask that same old question once again...

CHORUS 1:
Would you crucify Him
Would you crucify Him..., my old friend?
Now would you crucify Him...,
I'm talking 'bout the sweet Lord Jesus
If He'd walk right here among you once again?

She's askin', How many times have you looked down to the harlot
Lookin' through her tears, pretendin' you don't know?
But once you were just like her, how can you be now so self righteous
When in the name of the Lord you'd throw the first stone

CHORUS 2:
Would you crucify Him
Now would you crucify Him..., my religious friend?
Now would you crucify Him...,
I'm talking 'bout the sweet Lord Jesus
If He'd walk right here among you once again?

So now I turn to you through your years of your robes and your stained-glass windows
Do you vainly echo your prayers, say you're "pleasing the Lord"
Profess the Marriage with your tongue, but your mind dreams like the harlot
But if the Judge looks to your thoughts can't you guess your reward?

But yet how many times have you quoted from your Bible
To justify your eye for your eye and your tooth for your tooth?
You say that He didn't mean what He was plainly sayin'
But like the Pharisee, my friend, you're an educated fool!

CHORUS 3:
And somehow... I think they'd crucify Him
I think they'd crucify Him..., my religious friends.
Now would you crucify Him...,
I'm talking 'bout the sweet Lord Jesus
If He'd walk right here among you once again?

Now would you crucify Him...I'm talking 'bout the sweet Lord Jesus
If He'd walk right here among you once again?

Again, the more things change, the more they stay the same. I just read this the other day: "What the world needs—far more than gold, lithium, or faster silicon chips—is wisdom: an awe and delight in God and a desire to follow his ways." Yep.
</idle musing>

The world and what we see

What have Job, Agur, Ecclesiastes discovered in their search? They have discovered that the existence of the world is a most mysterious fact. Referring not to miracles, to startling phenomena, but to the natural order of things, they insist that the world of the known is a world unknown, of hiddenness, of mystery. Not the apparent but the hidden is the apparent; not the order but the mystery of the order that prevails in the universe is what man is called upon to behold. The prophet [Isaiah], like Job and Agur, alludes to a reality that discredits our wisdom, that shatters our knowledge.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 358