Weekend Reading: He Calls You By Name

 

This is a season of penance and sorrow, as we sow in tears, that ends in the rich harvest of coming home, with abundant life as we reap in joy.  

All we must do is put aside our fear, and our foolish pride, accepting His loving kindness and tender mercy, and come home.   For He loves us, more than any other, more faithfully than we love ourselves.

Tax collectors and notorious sinners were all gathering round to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the experts in the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners, and even eats with them.' And so he told them this story—

‘There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, “Father, give me my share of the estate.” So he divided his property between them.

‘Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

‘When he came to his senses, he said, “How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!  I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.”  So he got up and went to his father.


‘But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms round him and kissed him.

‘The son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

‘But the father said to his servants, “Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate.  For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” So they began to celebrate.

‘Meanwhile, the elder son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. “Your brother has come,” he replied, “and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.”

‘The elder brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, “Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!”

‘“My son,” the father said, “you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.  But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and now he is found.”’

“Addiction might be the best word to explain the lostness that so deeply permeates society.  Our addiction make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power; attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink, and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love.  These addictions create expectations that cannot but fail to satisfy our deepest needs. 

As long as we live within the world's delusions, our addictions condemn us to futile quests leaving us to face an endless series of disillusionments while our sense of self remains unfulfilled.  In these days of increasing addictions, we have wandered far away from our Father's home.  The addicted life can aptly be designated a life lived in 'a distant country.'  It is from there that our cry for deliverance rises up.”

Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son

"All sin, indeed, when repented of, He will put away; but pride hardens the heart against repentance, and sensuality debases it to a brutal nature."

John Henry Newman

"Almighty God lets the sinner go his own way, for He has given to man free-will, and does not want a forced obedience, but an obedience springing from love.  In his forgetfulness of God, the sinner squanders his fortune, the natural and supernatural gifts which he has received, using his natural gifts, his health, his physical powers, and his reason, to offend God.  

The sinner, having forsaken the service of his God, falls under the dominance of Satan, and becomes the slave of his lowest passions, which are signified by the swine which the prodigal was forced to feed.  But the more he obeys his passions, the more dissatisfied he becomes.  No pleasure of the senses can give him happiness, and he feels an emptiness and spiritual hunger in his heart which he is powerless to satisfy.  He knows no rest; he only knows that he is miserable, and hateful to himself."

Friedrich Justus Knecht, On the Prodigal Son

"The sun rises with its scorching rays and withers the grass, flowers droop, and their beauty fades away. So too the rich will be brought low in the midst of their affairs. Blessed are they who stand fast when tempted, for after being tested and tried they will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him."

James 1:11-12

"The Lord requires you to act justly, and to love kindness and mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."

Micah 6:8

He calls you by name.   Turn away from the phantom of empty desires, and come home.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Standing Before the Nations With Judgement

 

“The fine thing about pacts with the devil is that when you sign them you are well aware of their conditions.  Otherwise, why would you be recompensed with hell?”

Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

"I have this feeling in my stomach that I felt in other countries, much poorer countries, countries that were headed into really difficult economic situation.  When there's a small group of people who got you into a disaster, and who were still powerful.  Disaster even made them more powerful. The powerful people are the insiders. They're the people who run these banks. They're the people who pay themselves the massive bonuses at the end of the last year.  Now, those bonuses are not the essence of the problem, but they are a symptom of an arrogance, and a feeling of invincibility, that tells you a lot about the culture of those organizations, and the attitudes of the people who lead them."

Simon Johnson, Interview with Bill Moyer's Journal, February, 2009

"There was a man, a landowner, who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower.  He leased it to tenant farmers and went away.  When the grape harvest drew near, he sent his slaves to the farmers to collect his fruit.  But the farmers took his slaves, beat one, killed another, and stoned a third.  Again, he sent other slaves, more than the first group, and they did the same to them.  Finally, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.

“But when the tenant farmers saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance!’  So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.  Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those farmers?”

“He will completely destroy those terrible men,” they told Him, “and lease his vineyard to other farmers who will give him his produce at the harvest...”

Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing good fruit."

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they knew He was speaking about them. Although they were looking for a way to arrest Him, they feared the crowds, because they regarded Him as a prophet."

Matthew 21:33-46

"God has a way of standing before the nations with judgement, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America 'You are too arrogant!   If you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power!  And I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name.  Be still, and know that I am God.'"

Martin Luther King, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam, 1967

The Congress cleared the fears of a shutdown with another continuing resolution.

And the Fed's Waller provided some context this morning about adjusting their Balance Sheet favoring more short term debt, presumably steepening the yield curve, and perhaps providing more short term liquidity.

And Wall Street took this suggested option to mean, 'Let's party!'  Because the speculatariat feeds on short term cheap money.

Stocks took off north.

Gold and silver rallied very hard, with gold breaking out.  Gold had its highest close ever, although lower than the intraday spike from a few months ago. 

Let's see if they can hold it and move past some stubborn overhead resistance.

The Dollar declined.

The VIX dropped.

Largely unnoticed in all this excitement was the warning by the US Defense Secretary of the coming of a war between NATO-Russia if Ukraine falters.

Just jawboning?  Fever dreams?

Maybe.  There seems to be a lot of that going around.

Even from the Fed.  But their words seem to be more pleasing to our jaded ears.

Judgement is coming, and it could leave a mark, in more ways than one.

And that's Uncle Joe, he's a-moving kind of slow, at the junction.

Need little, want less, love more.  For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Brothers, Blinded By Sin, What Are We Becoming?

 

"You shall not offer children as a sacrifice to the fires of Moloch, and profane the name of your Lord."

Leviticus 18:21

“It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise.  Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority, they don't dare to assert themselves.”

Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

"All the world marveled at this, and gave their allegiance to the Beast.  And they worshiped the Serpent for giving such power to him.  'Who is as great as the Beast?' they exclaimed. 'And who is able to resist him?'   And the Beast was allowed to commit great blasphemies against God."

Revelation 13:3-5

"Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening.  Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.  Power is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the latter it crushes, the former it intoxicates.  The truth is, no one really possesses it."

Simone Weil

"Therefore they shall eat the bitter fruit of their ways, and be gutted by their own schemes.  For the foolish turn away from me—to death.  For fools are destroyed by their pride and self-satisfaction.”

Proverbs 1:31-33

"Genocide has been defined as intentional killing by government of people because of their race, religion, ethnicity, or other indelible group membership.  Power will achieve its murderous potential.   It simply waits for an excuse, an event of some sort, an assassination, a massacre in a neighboring country, an attempted coup, a famine, or a natural disaster, to justify the beginning of murder en masse."

R. J. Rummel, Death By Government: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900, 1994

The rich man replied, ‘No, Father Abraham! But if someone is sent to them from the dead, then they will repent of their sins and turn to God.’  But Abraham said, ‘If they won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded, even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Luke 16:31

“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory or one of unthinkable horror.”

C. S. Lewis
 

Stocks were cheered by the relatively benign inflation numbers this morning.

The major indices rallied, and went out near the highs.

VIX fell back again to the 50 DMA.

Gold and silver rallied back a bit.

The Dollar was flat.

The madness serves none but itself.

Have a pleasant evening.