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Conrad Hyers in his book, And God Created Laughter tells a of an 8 year old girl who wrote to Abraham Lincoln, who was then running for President suggesting that he grow a beard. In her opinion, Lincoln would stand a better chance of election if he grew one to hide the homeliness of his face. Lincoln could have been offended, but instead he answered her letter personally and thanked her for her suggestion, furthering adding that he’d like to visit with her when his campaign came to her area.
On the day that Lincoln’s campaign train was scheduled to pass through the town, practically the whole town was assembled at the station. There were the leading Republicans wearing their top hats, the shiny marching, band, the townsfolk in their finest attire. Almost everyone was there... al except the little girl. She was left home. After all, her father reasoned, Lincoln would be interested only in the politicians and their speeches - the votes and the voters - not the attentions of a little girl.
It so happened, however, that as the campaign train approached the town, it was forced to stop for repairs. Lincoln, not wanting to sit in the warm train, set off across the field afoot in search of the little girl’s home.
When Lincoln introduced himself at the door, the maid was speechless. But the little girl and her playmate, the maid’s daughter, welcomed him in as if they were expecting him. The two girls had been having a pretend party, drinking pretend hot chocolate out of their small teacups and they invited Mr. Lincoln to join them. After a while, Lincoln said he must be going, thanked them for the party, and asked them how they liked his new beard. Then he walked to the waiting train.
When Lincoln boarded the train, it started on its way and went right through the town without stopping. Right past all the waiting dignitaries, politicians, loud playing band and flag draped platform; right past ladies and gentlemen in their Sunday best... for Lincoln hadn’t come to visit people who were putting on a show for his benefit. He had come to visit and say thank you to a little girl who just wanted to spend time with him.
Cher and Nicholas Cage starred in a 1987 movie called Moonstruck. In the film, Cher’s fiancé rushes to his dying mother’s bedside in Sicily. During his absence, Cher meets his estranged younger brother, played by Nicholas Cage. Cher is thunderstruck when she takes an immediate liking to Cage and an uneasy romance develops. At one point in the movie, Cage tells Cher that he loves her, whereupon Cher slaps his face and says, “Snap out of it.”
We want to say the same thing when we read the Old Testament. Time and time again, Israel sins against the Lord. We want to shout to God, "Snap out of it!" That is, until we realize that we, too, have sinned like Israel--and God keeps loving us, as well.
God does not change – even in the bad times. I think that is why Matt Redman writes that he is going to choose to say “Blessed be your name”
Blessed be Your name,
When the sun’s shining down on me
When the world’s "all as it should be"
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be Your name,
On the road marked with suffering
Though there’s pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name
… You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, blessed be Your name
Story: At a comparative religions conference, the wise and the scholarly were in a spirited debate about what is unique about Christianity.
Someone suggested what set Christianity apart from other religions was the concept of incarnation, the idea that God took human form in Jesus. But someone quickly said, “Well, actually, other faiths believe that God appears in human form.”
Another suggestion was offered: what about resurrection? The belief that death is not the final word. That the tomb was found empty. Someone slowly shook his head. Other religions have accounts of people returning from the dead.
Then, as the story is told, C.S. Lewis walked into the room, tweed jacket, pipe, arm full of papers, a little early for his presentation. He sat down and took in the conversation, which had by now evolved into a fierce debate. Finally during a lull, he spoke saying, “what’s all this rumpus about?”
Everyone turned in his direction. Trying to explain themselves they said, “We’re debating what’s unique about Christianity.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” answered Lewis. “It’s grace.”
The room fell silent.
Lewis continued that Christianity uniquely claims God’s love comes free of charge, no strings attached. No other religion makes that claim.
After a moment someone commented that Lewis had a point, Buddhists, for example, follow an eight-fold path to enlightenment. It’s not a free ride.
Hindus believe in karma, that your actions continually affect the way the world will treat you; that there is nothing that comes to you not set in motion by your actions.
Someone else observed the Jewish code of the law implies God has requ...
Dawn Marie Turner
In the book, “Let Us Break Bread Together” Fred Daniel Gealy writes,
“The word Epiphany is a great Christian word. The grace of God has appeared is the testimony of every page in the New Testament. My eyes have seen God has not just shown himself in the past; nor is his coming simply some far-off divine event. That the one who manifested himself to the fathers is here. The coming one has come. The light shines. And in the presence of this revelation we see ourselves as we are in our true relations to the world, to one another, and to God. In showing himself to us, God shows us ourselves. Light is not to look at but to see by.”
I WAS WRONG
Jim Bakker is back in the pulpit again. "It’s awesome to die and come back," he told about 400 worshipers at Way of Life Church, where he was the guest speaker Sunday.
The former PTL Ministries leader presided over a multimillion dollar TV ministry until he resigned amid a sex and money scandal that led to a five-year prison term.
The reinvigorated Bakker preached against "the gospel of money."
"If you fall in love with the things of this world, you will be disappointed," he said. He apologized for his misdeeds and once lavish lifestyle and thanked the Lord for sending him to prison.
Bakker has moved to Los Angeles and joined the International Dream Center helping inner-city youth.
"My flesh doesn’t want to live in the inner city because I don’t like earthquakes," Bakker said. "Jesus told me to move to L.A."
"As the true impact of Jesus’ words regarding money impacted my heart and mind, I became physically nauseated. I was wrong. I was wrong! Wrong in my lifestyle, certainly, but even more fundamentally, wrong in my understanding of the Bible’s true message. Not only was I wrong, but I was teaching the opposite of what Jesus had said."
SOURCE: ANAHEIM, Calif. (July 27, 1998 5:16 p.m. EDT. http://www.nandotimes.com)
Pat Cook
The risen Jesus will fill you with His life and give you, like Mary Magdalene, a life of fulfillment, a life of faith, and a life of favor with Him. Canadian Celine Dion sang these words in her song, “Because You Loved Me”, and they seem to fit what Jesus did in Mary Magdalene’s life. Maybe even in yours.
For all those times you stood by me, For all the truth that you made me see, For all the joy you brought to my life, For all the wrong that you made right, For every dream you made come true, For all the love I found in you, I’ll be forever thankful baby, You’re the one who held me up, Never let me fall. You’re the one who saw me through, through it all. You were my strength when I was weak, You were my voice when I couldn’t speak, You were my eyes when I couldn’t see, You saw the best there was in me. Lifted me up when I couldn’t reach, You gave me faith cause you believed, I’m everything I am because you loved me. You gave me wings and made me fly, You touched my hand I could touch the sky, I lost my faith, you gave it back to me, You said no star was out of reach, You stood by me and I stood tall, I had your love I had it all, I’m grateful for each day you gave me, Maybe I don’t know that much, But I know this much is true, I was blessed because I was loved by you. You were always there for me, the tender wind that carried me, A light in the dark, shining your love into my life, You’ve been my inspiration, Through the lies you were the truth, My world is a better place because of you.
Ortberg notes this about the inability to love:
1. The most serious sign of hurry sickness is a diminished capacity to love. Love and hurry are fundamentally incompatible. Love always takes time, and time is one thing hurried people don’t have (87).
2. The truth is look around at our society hurried people cannot love because they are always in a hurry!
3. Ortberg adds this thought about the hurry sickness (lack of patience syndrome): It is because it kills love that hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life. Hurry lies behind much of the anger and frustration of modern life. Hurry prevents us from receiving love from the Father or gi...
When a child doesn’t get his or her own way the common response to the parent is, “You don’t love me.” Of course this isn’t true. The parent’s love hasn’t changed. It’s just that at that moment their love is expressing itself differently than how the child wants it.
God’s love is like that. Sometimes he expresses it in ways that we don’t like. For instance, some experience God’s love in a deeper more meaningful way than others. The fact that God’s special love is selective doesn’t sit right with us. But God’s love has never been thrown around at random. God’s love has always been directed primarily at a particular group of people.
“God’s Algebra!” Romans 8:9-17 Key verse(s) 16:“The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”
One of the unchangeable and mysterious laws of mathematics is that whenever you multiply a positive number by a negative number you will always get a negative number. I remember my 7th grade teacher, Mr. Kramer, drilling that into our heads. There was no way of adequately explaining why a negative times a positive will always equal a negative. And, for a math underachiever such as myself, it simply was a matter of memorizing the theorem and forgetting the understanding part of it. From a purely logical perspective, it always seemed to me that whichever number was the larger ought to be the determining factor in any equation. It just made sense. The big guy was going to defeat the little guy in a wrestling match. The larger hawk would always overpower the smaller sparrow. If you mixed a little bit of gravel with a lot of sand you would still have more sand than gravel. I always had a hard time understanding the concept of something small overpowering something very large.
This seemed logical to me for the most part. Even daily life as it played itself out around me testified to the fact that the equation embraced faulty logic. For example, when you were having a good day and things were going along pretty well and you stumbled into calamity for some reason, if the amount of good you had happened to collect did not exceed the magnitude of the calamity, the bad would always put the hammerlock on the good sending you down to the mat every time. It was a question of balance. If your alarm didn’t go off in the morning and you were late for class, that could be overcome in general if you simply negated it by hitting a home run at recess and added a couple of good test scores to the mix throughout the course of the day. That seemed pretty logical to 13-year-old kid who was simply trying to make the best of life at the moment and was determined to finish each day with more good on his plate than bad.
Sometimes being a Christian and having to deal with the bad and negative things in our lives also has this same underpinning of illogical calculation. Life can real deal out some pretty heavy blows sometimes. Even worse, when we are already down for the count, there are even those days when bad piles on bad. If we use the logic of the 13-year-old boy just trying to make it through the day, days like this become unbearable. There simply isn’t enough good within our grasp to deal with all the bad. That’s when despair steps in to put its heavy boot on the back of our neck to keep us down for good.
Thank God for they mystery of His Holy Spirit. When He is inserted into the equation of life, what Mr. Kramer taught me in 7th grade mathematics starts to become even more illogical, however in a reverse sort of way. Whereas algebra dictates that a negative times a positive always equals a negative, God’s textbook, the Bible, dictates that a negative times a positive always equals a positive. When life becomes overpowering it doesn’t matter how much of it is negative. When we put the Holy Spirit of God into the equation the outcome is always the same; we get the help we need to cope and to restore our faith. This is a mystery that flies in the face of earthly logic but it is trustworthy. Sorrow and Affliction x the Holy Spirit = Patience. But God’s algebra doesn’t stop there. Patience x Experience = Faith. It doesn’t seem logical at the outset, but no matter how big sorrow and affliction are, they never come out the winner in this equation.
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