Saturday, January 22, 2011
God's love is a symphony
This song does express how I often fee. God's love is all around me--beneath, over, in, above and through---just like a symphony
Monday, January 17, 2011
memorizing Philippians and song about it
I am memorizing Philippians and I like this song about Philippians
Sunday, January 16, 2011
wounds for the wounded
I like this quote
"In today’s Gospel passage from St. John, we have heard again of the appearance of the Risen Christ to his disciples. At that moment he brought to them the fruits of his triumph over death: the forgiveness of sins and the gift of peace. Here too we come to the work of the ordained priest: to pronounce with confidence the forgiveness of God and to bring peace to a troubled soul and a troubled world.
To this service, to this ministry we welcome our three priests today. But we must be attentive to the words of the Gospel. In bestowing these gifts, the Risen Lord also employs an eloquent gesture: he shows them his hands and his side.
He shows them his wounds. The mission they receive, the mission of reconciliation, comes from the wounds of Christ. This is the mission we share and at every Mass we once again gaze on the wounded, broken body of the risen Lord. Our mission is characterised by woundedness: a mission to a wounded world; a mission entrusted to a wounded Church, carried out by wounded disciples. The wounds of sin are our business. The wounds of Christ, even though we have caused them, are also our consolation and strength."
-Archbishop Vincent Nichols at the ordination of three Anglican bishops into the Roman Catholic Church.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Tupperware Christianity
I like what David Robinson says in "Ancient Paths"
"Many people have a "Tupperware" understanding of the spiritual life. In this view, faith and religion are kept in plastic containers with sealed lids. Our faith seldom mixes with the rest of our lives. Such people tend to ignore God at their workplace, in a restaurant, or while making love, or knitting a scarf. Those realms are in their own separate plastic containers called Career, Food, Sex, and Hobbies. Religion is just one more container. Benedict saw the Christian life differently. Spirituality is more like the coolant in the refrigerator. It infuses every container, moving right through the plastic lids and containers, keeping everything fresh and new. The ladder of humility moves us away from a compartmentalized approach to God. We begin to allow God into every aspect of our life, infusing our life with freshness."
Monday, November 8, 2010
Tribulation
A quote from St. Francis de Sales:
"Considered in themselves, trials certainly cannot be loved, but looked at in their origin--that is, in God's Providence and ordaining will--they are worthy of unlimited love.......Tribulations considered in themselves are dreadful things; looked at in God's will , they are things of love and delight. Often have we felt disgust for remedies and medicines when a doctor or apothecary gives them to us, but when offered to us by some loved hand love conquers our loathing and we take them with joy. In fact, love either removes the harsh character of suffering or makes pleasant our experience of it."
"........Afflictions are like that. If we look at them apart from God's will, they are naturally bitter. If we consider them in that eternal good pleasure, we find them all gold and more lovely and precious than can be described."
Well, this is something to think about.....it is easier when I look back on a trial than when I am in one, however!
"Considered in themselves, trials certainly cannot be loved, but looked at in their origin--that is, in God's Providence and ordaining will--they are worthy of unlimited love.......Tribulations considered in themselves are dreadful things; looked at in God's will , they are things of love and delight. Often have we felt disgust for remedies and medicines when a doctor or apothecary gives them to us, but when offered to us by some loved hand love conquers our loathing and we take them with joy. In fact, love either removes the harsh character of suffering or makes pleasant our experience of it."
"........Afflictions are like that. If we look at them apart from God's will, they are naturally bitter. If we consider them in that eternal good pleasure, we find them all gold and more lovely and precious than can be described."
Well, this is something to think about.....it is easier when I look back on a trial than when I am in one, however!
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Spiritual insight by the wee grandkids?
My daughter told us about the conversations of her two kiddies above. One is 4 and one is 2. Rhianwen is the 4 year old girl:Funny conversation:
Rhianwen to Alden about if God is here with us: "Do you know how to obey without Him?"
Alden: silent
Rhianwen: "Ok, then, He's here!"
Take that, atheists ;0) From the mouth of babes...
Alden to mommy: "Is there food in heaven?"
Mommy: "The Bible says that there's a banquet, so I think so."
Alden: "I like God."
Thursday, October 14, 2010
What the miners shirts said!!!
Did you know that one of the first things the miners asked for after they were first found was Bibles. Now look at this video and find out what their shirts said as they came out of the mines!
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Blogging Break
I have been on a break in the Mountains. I will return at some point and catch up with you all!!
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
When we suffer
This below was helpful to me. It is a quote from Jared Wilson's blog found here:
How to Carry the Death of Jesus in Our Bodies When We Suffer
2 Corinthians 4:6-12
For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.
This is a beautiful, confounding passage. The image at work is the frailty of a clay vessel concealing a priceless treasure ("the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ"). It is something eternally valuable placed inside something with an expiration date. We are dime store piggy banks holding within us the Hope Diamond. What Paul is getting at with this imagery is that when the jar is broken, as in suffering, the treasure becomes visible.
When we suffer, we show what we're really made of.
The purpose of suffering for the believer, then, is to reveal this light of Christ, to reveal the image of Christ, and we do this first by suffering as he suffered, by being conformed to the image of the crucified Savior. But how do we do that? How can we actively engage, in the midst of our hurts and brokenness, in carrying the death of Jesus in our bodies so that the life of Jesus is visible in our bodies?
I look to the actual dying of Jesus for help. In his words from the cross, I see the means of dying and dying to myself in a cross-centered way.
1. Be Honest with God
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
Jesus is here quoting Psalm 22, and as I have argued in Your Jesus is Too Safe, I don't believe God actually forsook Jesus on the cross, as Psalm 22 is not about being forsaken by God at all, but actually about God not forsaking his children. But the opening of Psalm 22 and Jesus' words here are certainly about feeling forsaken. And in this we find the okay to be honest with God. Many times, either out of fear of the pain of further vulnerability or out of bad theology that tells us to put on a happy face or God won't like us, we hold back from God, thinking we may leverage his healing or his comfort or his approval by sucking it up and pretending we aren't hurting. But the psalmists don't do this. The prophets don't do this. And Jesus didn't do this. You can't hide anything from God anyway. He sees you're hurting. Be honest with him. He can take it. Being honest with God is the way of holding no part ourselves back, the way of laying it all on the altar for his dealing. This is precisely what Jesus did, even in his anguish. We show that Jesus was real, in more ways than one, when we agree to expose all to God.
2. Forgive
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
One ironic way to embrace the power of God in the midst of hurt is to forgive those who have hurt you. Unforgiveness brews bitterness, which does not alleviate pain but exacerbates it. When we forgive our enemies and bless those who persecute us, we glorify God by acknowledging he is the sovereign Judge over all and that vengeance is his. And we highlight the treasure of Christ, who forgave all the way to death those who hate him.
3. Submit to God's Sovereignty
"Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."
This is the dying man's way of saying "Not my will, but yours be done." We may not know all the why's of our suffering, but as Rich Mullins sang, "It would not hurt any less, even if it could be explained." As Christians, what we can know is that God has purposed pain to remind us that the world and those of us who live in it are broken, fallen because of sin. We can know that "pain is God's megaphone," as C.S. Lewis reminds us, to wake up to the reality that something is wrong, that we are in need of a Fixer. And we can know, thanks to the revelation of God that is his written word, that the grand purpose of suffering for the Christian is to be conformed to the image of Christ. We can commit our spirit into the Father's hands by ditching our pleas for fairness and trusting that God is revealing the treasure of Christ in our bodies through our bodies' very decay. Let us look forward to the resurrection, when we will have new eternal bodies, powered by the Spirit and awash in the glory of the risen Son. Let us amen Job's oath: "Though you slay me, yet will I trust you." The sufferer who is able to say this makes Christ look big.
4. Center on the Gospel of Jesus Christ
"It is finished."
The work is done. This is the great message of the good news: he has done it! (Also the final cry of Psalm 22.) We can hope in our suffering, then, that the finished work of Christ, when believed with our hearts, is a down payment on the work begun in us. The gospel tells us that we are forgiven from sin, that we stand under grace, that we have the blessed hope of Christ's return, that we will be resurrected as he was, and that we stand to receive the inheritance of Christ's rich presence in the new heavens and the new earth. The gospel tells us that God will be faithful to finish the work he started. So the fragility of our jars of clay is not just our winding down for the grave, but our winding up for eternity. When we center on the gospel as we suffer, we communicate as dying men to dying men that there is real hope for real people. We make Christ manifest in this witness. With Job we can declare, "Though worms destroy my body, yet in my flesh I will see God. My eyes will behold him." And: "I know my redeemer lives and in the end he will stand upon the earth."
If we can apply these words from the cross in our times of suffering, we can carry the cross-shaped death of Jesus in our bodies, thereby revealing that he who is the life everlasting is our true treasure.
Posted by Jared at 8:30 AM 3 comments
How to Carry the Death of Jesus in Our Bodies When We Suffer
2 Corinthians 4:6-12
For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.
This is a beautiful, confounding passage. The image at work is the frailty of a clay vessel concealing a priceless treasure ("the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ"). It is something eternally valuable placed inside something with an expiration date. We are dime store piggy banks holding within us the Hope Diamond. What Paul is getting at with this imagery is that when the jar is broken, as in suffering, the treasure becomes visible.
When we suffer, we show what we're really made of.
The purpose of suffering for the believer, then, is to reveal this light of Christ, to reveal the image of Christ, and we do this first by suffering as he suffered, by being conformed to the image of the crucified Savior. But how do we do that? How can we actively engage, in the midst of our hurts and brokenness, in carrying the death of Jesus in our bodies so that the life of Jesus is visible in our bodies?
I look to the actual dying of Jesus for help. In his words from the cross, I see the means of dying and dying to myself in a cross-centered way.
1. Be Honest with God
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
Jesus is here quoting Psalm 22, and as I have argued in Your Jesus is Too Safe, I don't believe God actually forsook Jesus on the cross, as Psalm 22 is not about being forsaken by God at all, but actually about God not forsaking his children. But the opening of Psalm 22 and Jesus' words here are certainly about feeling forsaken. And in this we find the okay to be honest with God. Many times, either out of fear of the pain of further vulnerability or out of bad theology that tells us to put on a happy face or God won't like us, we hold back from God, thinking we may leverage his healing or his comfort or his approval by sucking it up and pretending we aren't hurting. But the psalmists don't do this. The prophets don't do this. And Jesus didn't do this. You can't hide anything from God anyway. He sees you're hurting. Be honest with him. He can take it. Being honest with God is the way of holding no part ourselves back, the way of laying it all on the altar for his dealing. This is precisely what Jesus did, even in his anguish. We show that Jesus was real, in more ways than one, when we agree to expose all to God.
2. Forgive
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
One ironic way to embrace the power of God in the midst of hurt is to forgive those who have hurt you. Unforgiveness brews bitterness, which does not alleviate pain but exacerbates it. When we forgive our enemies and bless those who persecute us, we glorify God by acknowledging he is the sovereign Judge over all and that vengeance is his. And we highlight the treasure of Christ, who forgave all the way to death those who hate him.
3. Submit to God's Sovereignty
"Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."
This is the dying man's way of saying "Not my will, but yours be done." We may not know all the why's of our suffering, but as Rich Mullins sang, "It would not hurt any less, even if it could be explained." As Christians, what we can know is that God has purposed pain to remind us that the world and those of us who live in it are broken, fallen because of sin. We can know that "pain is God's megaphone," as C.S. Lewis reminds us, to wake up to the reality that something is wrong, that we are in need of a Fixer. And we can know, thanks to the revelation of God that is his written word, that the grand purpose of suffering for the Christian is to be conformed to the image of Christ. We can commit our spirit into the Father's hands by ditching our pleas for fairness and trusting that God is revealing the treasure of Christ in our bodies through our bodies' very decay. Let us look forward to the resurrection, when we will have new eternal bodies, powered by the Spirit and awash in the glory of the risen Son. Let us amen Job's oath: "Though you slay me, yet will I trust you." The sufferer who is able to say this makes Christ look big.
4. Center on the Gospel of Jesus Christ
"It is finished."
The work is done. This is the great message of the good news: he has done it! (Also the final cry of Psalm 22.) We can hope in our suffering, then, that the finished work of Christ, when believed with our hearts, is a down payment on the work begun in us. The gospel tells us that we are forgiven from sin, that we stand under grace, that we have the blessed hope of Christ's return, that we will be resurrected as he was, and that we stand to receive the inheritance of Christ's rich presence in the new heavens and the new earth. The gospel tells us that God will be faithful to finish the work he started. So the fragility of our jars of clay is not just our winding down for the grave, but our winding up for eternity. When we center on the gospel as we suffer, we communicate as dying men to dying men that there is real hope for real people. We make Christ manifest in this witness. With Job we can declare, "Though worms destroy my body, yet in my flesh I will see God. My eyes will behold him." And: "I know my redeemer lives and in the end he will stand upon the earth."
If we can apply these words from the cross in our times of suffering, we can carry the cross-shaped death of Jesus in our bodies, thereby revealing that he who is the life everlasting is our true treasure.
Posted by Jared at 8:30 AM 3 comments
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Cruciform love--more about it in marriage
I have gotten back to Paul Tripp's book called What did you Expect??Redeeming the Realities of Marriage. He talks about cruciform love and its context in marriage. He wants to tell us how Christlike love thinks and acts in marriage. Since this is helpful to me, I want to place some of his descriptive points down here. These are QUOTES:
1. Love is being willing to have your life complicated by the needs and struggles of your husband or wife without impatience or anger.
2. Love is actively fighting the temptation to be critical and judgmental toward your spouse, while looking for ways to encourage and praise.
3. Love is the daily commitment to resist the needless moments of conflict that come from pointing out and responding to minor offenses.
4. Love is being lovingly honest and humbly approachable in times of misunderstanding, and being more committed to unity and love than you are to winning, accusing, or being right.
5. Love is a daily commitment to admit your sin, weakness, and failure and to resist the temptation to offer and excuse or shift the blame.
6. Love means being willing, when confronted by your spouse, to examine your heart rather than rising to your defense or shifting the focus.
7. Love is a daily commitment to grow in love so that the love you offer to your husband or wife is increasingly selfless, mature, and patient.
8. Love is being unwilling to do what is wrong when you have been wronged but to look for concrete and specific ways to overcome evil with good.
9. Love is being a good student of your spouse, looking for his physical, emotional, and spiritual needs so that in some way you can remove the burden, support him as he carries it, or encourage him along the way.
10. Love means being willing to invest the time necessary to discuss, examine, and understand the problems that you face as a couple, staying on task until the problem is removed or you have agreed upon a strategy of response.
11. Love is always being willing to ask for forgiveness and always being committed to grant forgiveness when it is requested.
12. Love is recognizing the high value of trust in a marriage and being faithful to your promises and true to your word.
13. Love is speaking kindly and gently, even in moments of disagreement, refusing to attack your spouse's character or assault his or her intelligence.
14. Love is being unwilling to flatter, lie, manipulate, or deceive in any way in order to co-opt your spouse into giving you what you want or doing something your way.
15. Love is being unwilling to ask your spouse to be the source of your identity, meaning, and purpose, or inner sense of well-being, while refusing to be the source of his or hers.
16. Love is the willingness to have less free time, less sleep, and a busier schedule in order to be faithful to what God has called you to be and to do as a husband or a wife.
17. Love is a commitment to say no to selfish instincts and to do everything that is within your ability to promote real unity, functional understanding, and active love in your marriage.
18. Love is staying faithful to your commitment to treat your spouse with appreciation, respect, and grace, even in moments when he or she doesn't seem to deserve it or is unwilling to reciprocate.
19. Love is the willingness to make regular and costly sacrifices for the sake of your marriage without asking anything in return or using your sacrifices to place your spouse in your debt.
20. Love is being unwilling to make any personal decision or choice that would harm your marriage, hurt your husband or wife, or weaken the bond of trust between you.
21. Love is refusing to be self-focused or demanding but instead looking for specific ways to serve, support, and encourage, even when you are busy or tired.
22. Love is daily admitting to yourself, your spouse, and God that you are not able to love this way without God's protecting, providing, forgiving, rescuing, and delivering grace.....love is fundamentally deeper and more active than some warm, romantic, feeling.....No, love is a specific commitment of the heart to a specific person that causes you to give yourself to a specific lifestyle of care that requires you to be willing to make sacrifices that have that person's good in view.
"This comprehensive, lifelong relationship is a tool in the hands of God to expose our delusions of wisdom, righteousness, and strength and to mobilize us to seek help. And there is help, wonderful and sufficient help, for all who seek it."
His book fleshes all of these points out in more detail in just one of the chapters. This is helpful to me---it is a goal to look toward and a key help in examining my love.
1. Love is being willing to have your life complicated by the needs and struggles of your husband or wife without impatience or anger.
2. Love is actively fighting the temptation to be critical and judgmental toward your spouse, while looking for ways to encourage and praise.
3. Love is the daily commitment to resist the needless moments of conflict that come from pointing out and responding to minor offenses.
4. Love is being lovingly honest and humbly approachable in times of misunderstanding, and being more committed to unity and love than you are to winning, accusing, or being right.
5. Love is a daily commitment to admit your sin, weakness, and failure and to resist the temptation to offer and excuse or shift the blame.
6. Love means being willing, when confronted by your spouse, to examine your heart rather than rising to your defense or shifting the focus.
7. Love is a daily commitment to grow in love so that the love you offer to your husband or wife is increasingly selfless, mature, and patient.
8. Love is being unwilling to do what is wrong when you have been wronged but to look for concrete and specific ways to overcome evil with good.
9. Love is being a good student of your spouse, looking for his physical, emotional, and spiritual needs so that in some way you can remove the burden, support him as he carries it, or encourage him along the way.
10. Love means being willing to invest the time necessary to discuss, examine, and understand the problems that you face as a couple, staying on task until the problem is removed or you have agreed upon a strategy of response.
11. Love is always being willing to ask for forgiveness and always being committed to grant forgiveness when it is requested.
12. Love is recognizing the high value of trust in a marriage and being faithful to your promises and true to your word.
13. Love is speaking kindly and gently, even in moments of disagreement, refusing to attack your spouse's character or assault his or her intelligence.
14. Love is being unwilling to flatter, lie, manipulate, or deceive in any way in order to co-opt your spouse into giving you what you want or doing something your way.
15. Love is being unwilling to ask your spouse to be the source of your identity, meaning, and purpose, or inner sense of well-being, while refusing to be the source of his or hers.
16. Love is the willingness to have less free time, less sleep, and a busier schedule in order to be faithful to what God has called you to be and to do as a husband or a wife.
17. Love is a commitment to say no to selfish instincts and to do everything that is within your ability to promote real unity, functional understanding, and active love in your marriage.
18. Love is staying faithful to your commitment to treat your spouse with appreciation, respect, and grace, even in moments when he or she doesn't seem to deserve it or is unwilling to reciprocate.
19. Love is the willingness to make regular and costly sacrifices for the sake of your marriage without asking anything in return or using your sacrifices to place your spouse in your debt.
20. Love is being unwilling to make any personal decision or choice that would harm your marriage, hurt your husband or wife, or weaken the bond of trust between you.
21. Love is refusing to be self-focused or demanding but instead looking for specific ways to serve, support, and encourage, even when you are busy or tired.
22. Love is daily admitting to yourself, your spouse, and God that you are not able to love this way without God's protecting, providing, forgiving, rescuing, and delivering grace.....love is fundamentally deeper and more active than some warm, romantic, feeling.....No, love is a specific commitment of the heart to a specific person that causes you to give yourself to a specific lifestyle of care that requires you to be willing to make sacrifices that have that person's good in view.
"This comprehensive, lifelong relationship is a tool in the hands of God to expose our delusions of wisdom, righteousness, and strength and to mobilize us to seek help. And there is help, wonderful and sufficient help, for all who seek it."
His book fleshes all of these points out in more detail in just one of the chapters. This is helpful to me---it is a goal to look toward and a key help in examining my love.
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