Flower

Pluck this little flower and take it, delay not! I fear lest it 
droop and drop into the dust. 

I may not find a place in thy garland, but honour it with a touch of 
pain from thy hand and pluck it. I fear lest the day end before I am 
aware, and the time of offering go by. 

Though its colour be not deep and its smell be faint, use this flower 
in thy service and pluck it while there is time. 

- by Rabindranath Tagore

Endless Time

Time is endless in thy hands, my lord. 
There is none to count thy minutes. 

Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers. 
Thou knowest how to wait. 

Thy centuries follow each other perfecting a small wild flower. 

We have no time to lose, 
and having no time we must scramble for a chance. 
We are too poor to be late. 

And thus it is that time goes by 
while I give it to every querulous man who claims it, 
and thine altar is empty of all offerings to the last. 

At the end of the day I hasten in fear lest thy gate be shut; 
but I find that yet there is time. 

- by Rabindranath Tagore

Money Madness is About Emotion

After all, money is nothing more nor less than a medium of exchange—without any intrinsic value itself. Or so the economists tell us. We carry money in our pockets and transact with it passively, automatically: Buy the muffin, pay the toll, slide the debit or credit card across the counter.

Money is neutral—a facilitator. So why is there an epidemic of money madness—and how does the contagion work?

The simple answer is that money madness isn't really about money at all. It's about emotion. It's about intensely subjective feelings that come out of a place very deep within us and go right past the conscious mind as they drive us to act in certain ways. As I learned through years of analyzing and working through my own and my clients’ money madness, it starts in childhood, yet it has the power to affect us all our adult lives.

- Spencer Sherman, The Cure for Money Madness

Darkness v.s. Glory

Psalm 33:12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!

Exodus 15:11“Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?

Your Word says that before the Lord Jesus comes, the world will become darker and darker—as it is now. Father, help me to be perfect before You. Keep me away from the entanglements of sins and ignite Your light within me. Remove the darkness inside me as I open my heart to You.   Shine Your truth upon me so I can confess my sins and repent wholeheartedly. Lord, cleanse me of all unrighteousness so that my prayers are counted before You.

Lord, thank You for paying the price for my Sin on the cross. Thank You that I could approach Your throne full of confidence, to receive mercy and grace. I praise You, lifting up Your Holy Name full of joy!  All glory be unto You!  In Jesus’ Name, Amen!

Trials, Tests, Temptations

In order to obtain the fruit of patience we must go through periods of testing and trials. They are what make us strong and help us to learn patience. The trials are like a training ground. You don’t just get patience. You must earn it through experience and endurance. Not only do we have to go through the trials, but we must be calm and have a cheerful enduring attitude--as if the trial itself wasn’t enough. I

In this world we will have trials. There is no way out of it. It is part of life. However, even though we must go through these trials, our Wonderful and Mighty God threw in a benefit. The benefit is that when we go through these trials calmly, with a good attitude, and stand strong in our faith, we will become fully developed and lack nothing.

The only way to really overcome temptation is to renew your mind. The only way you can renew your mind is to study the Word. Every sin that we commit started in our mind. When we allow our minds to go astray we are opening the door to sin and death. This does not have to happen. God has given us power over sin. God has shown us through His Word how to overcome sin and death. 

However, it is our choice. We can choose to be overcome by temptations or we can choose to overcome temptation. Remember, we must submit our thought life to Him and stop the thought before it ever becomes a manifestation. 

- Lara Velez. Proverbs of the New Testament.

The Victim Becomes the Victor

    The cross is the seal on a particular kind of life: a life which has turned away from violence, manipulation, domination; a life in which the Son of Man is there not to be served but to serve; a life in which the very act of God is made flesh and blood in a vulnerable human being. Already in the life of Jesus we see that the quality and character of this life and this love are such that death is too small for it. 

    That is why, when we turn to the last book of the Bible, to the Revelation of John, we find there many songs of victory, which are addressed to or which name God and ‘the Lamb’ together. God and the sacrificial victim, they are the ones to whom praise and worship is due because they, together, have won the victory. The Lamb who was slaughtered is worthy to receive praise. The Lamb has conquered. 

    And in a set of very paradoxical and challenging images, the writer of Revelation underlines the oddity of what he’s talking about. The Lamb, the helpless, woolly creature trussed and slaughtered on the butcher’s slab, the Lamb becomes the triumphant conqueror. It is the Lamb who releases the enemy’s prisoners, the Lamb who has led the ultimate successful raid into enemy territory and brought back the prisoners of death and evil. 

    In Revelation 5:9, for example, the Lamb has won, has earned a cosmic triumph. Again in 5:13, the Lamb has conquered and has set us free. The victim has become the victor.

- Rowan Williams, God with Us.

Lukewarm Water

Paul’s colleague Epaphras worked in Colossae, as well as in Laodicea and Hierapolis (Col 4:13). It was a less notable city than Laodicea, but it had one thing Laodicea didn’t: a cold, freshwater spring. In fact, it was water—or the lack thereof—that set Laodicea apart. Unlike its neighbors, Laodicea had no springs at all. It had to import its water via aqueduct from elsewhere: hot mineral water from Hierapolis or fresh cold water from Colossae. The trouble was, by the time the water from either city made it to Laodicea, it had lost the qualities that made it remarkable. The hot water was no longer hot; the cold water was no longer cold. The Laodiceans were left with all the lukewarm water they could drink. Surely they wished their water was one or the other—either hot or cold. There isn’t much use for lukewarm water. I suspect that the meaning of the Lord’s warning was clear to the Laodiceans. He wished his people were hot (like the salubrious waters of Hierapolis) or cold (like the refreshing waters of Colossae). Instead, their discipleship was unremarkable.
 
    The point of this story is that where we stand influences how we read—and ultimately apply—the Bible. In the revivalist traditions of North American Christianity, the text reads as a warning against nominal Christian commitment. Eugene Peterson explains what this interpretation demanded of the religious leaders of his youth (and mine): “High on every pastor’s agenda was keeping people ‘on fire’ for Jesus. Worship in general and the sermon in particular were bellows for blowing the smoldering embers into a blaze.” “Hot” (committed) was best, but “cold” (lost) was preferable to “lukewarm” (nominal), because it was honest!
 
    From the marble streets of Laodicea, hot and cold are equally acceptable. In both places and times, the meaning may seem plain, even though the interpretations are plainly different. In whatever place and whatever age people read the Bible, we instinctively draw from our own cultural context to make sense of what we’re reading.

- E. Richards & Brandon J O'Brien, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: 

Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible, 2012.