Doing the Impossible

On the occasions of the miraculous feedings of thousands Jesus didn't ask His followers to do the impossible. He simply asked for what they had. He then did the impossible with that.

Gary Haugen

International Justice Mission

Axioms for An Informed Electorate

“You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.

You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence.

You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.

You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.

You cannot establish security on borrowed money.

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they will not do for themselves.

Rev. William J. H. Boetcker, The Ten Cannots, Published 1916

As Quoted by Mark Alexander, October 31, 2008

patriot-JI08016721@m1.PatriotPost.US

Saul "Paul" of Tarsus - 2 Thessalonians 3: 6 - 15 - (THE MESSAGE) "Our orders—backed up by the Master, Jesus—are to refuse to have anything to do with those among you who are lazy and refuse to work the way we taught you. Don't permit them to freeload on the rest. We showed you how to pull your weight when we were with you, so get on with it. We didn't sit around on our hands expecting others to take care of us. In fact, we worked our fingers to the bone, up half the night moonlighting so you wouldn't be burdened with taking care of us. And it wasn't because we didn't have a right to your support; we did. We simply wanted to provide an example of diligence, hoping it would prove contagious.
Don't you remember the rule we had when we lived with you? "If you don't work, you don't eat." And now we're getting reports that a bunch of lazy good-for-nothings are taking advantage of you. This must not be tolerated. We command them to get to work immediately—no excuses, no arguments—and earn their own keep. Friends, don't slack off in doing your duty.

If anyone refuses to obey our clear command written in this letter, don't let him get by with it. Point out such a person and refuse to subsidize his freeloading. Maybe then he'll think twice. But don't treat him as an enemy. Sit him down and talk about the problem as someone who cares."

The Best Way of Life Up Close and Personal

Someone Who Loves is Someone You Can Count On

They are patient, unruffled, steady, knowing “God is in control.”

They build you up.

They passionately work to see you living to your highest potential.

They listen … REALLY … listen.

They never presume to know what you need and always treat you as a free and noble person.

They respect you and act like they do.

Not irritable or touchy, they manage their anger, confronting squarely the problems that arise, dealing directly with the people and issues involved, without taking it out on you when you’re not involved.

They are tirelessly forgiving.

They hate evil … They delight in things that are good, true, and just.

They will be loyal to you no matter what the cost.

They always believe in you, always expect the best of you, and always stand their ground in defending you.

Their love can outlast anything.

THEY ARE SOMEONE YOU CAN COUNT ON … THE BEST PEOPLE FOUND ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD …

1st Letter from Saul of Tarsus, AKA “Paul,” to 1st Century Christians in Corinth Paraphrased

The Best Way of Life in Practice 5

Love is very patient and kind

… never jealous or envious

… never boastful or proud

… never haughty or selfish or rude

… not irritable or touchy

… does not hold grudges and will hardly

even notice when others do it wrong

… never glad about injustice, but rejoices

whenever truth wins out

If you love someone you will be loyal to him/her no matter what the cost.

… always believes in the beloved, expects
the best of him/her, and always stands its
ground in defending them.

1st Letter from Saul of Tarsus, AKA “Paul,” to 1st Century Christians in Corinth

The Living Bible

The Best Way of Life in Practice 4

Love never gives up.

Love cares more for others than for self.

Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.

Love doesn’t strut,

Doesn’t have a swelled head,

Doesn’t force itself on others,

Isn’t always “me first,”

Doesn’t fly off the handle,

Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,

Doesn’t revel when others grovel,


Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

Puts up with anything,

Trusts God always,

Always looks for the best,

Never looks back,

But keeps going to the end.

1st Letter from Saul of Tarsus, AKA “Paul,” to 1st Century Christians in Corinth
THE MESSAGE New Testament

The Best Way of Life in Practice 3

Love is patient

Love is kind

It does not envy … is not self-seeking (does
not insist on its own way)

… does not boast

… is not proud (arrogant)

… is not rude

… is not easily angered (not irritable)

… keeps no record of wrongs (not resentful)

Love does not delight in evil (wrongdoing)

… rejoices with the truth

… always protects (bears all things)

… always trusts (believes all things)

… always hopes

… always perseveres

Love never fails.

First Letter from Saul of Tarsus, AKA “Paul” to 1st Century Christians in Corinth

New International Version

The Best Way of Life in Practice 2

Love is patient and kind.

Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude.

Love does not demand its own way.

Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged.

It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.

Love never gives up

…never loses faith

…is always hopeful

…endures through every circumstance

Love will last forever

1st Letter From Saul of Tarsus, AKA “Paul,” to 1st Century Christians in Corinth,

New Living Translation

The Best Way of Life in Practice

This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience

… it looks for a way of being constructive

It is not possessive

… does not pursue selfish advantage

… it is neither anxious to impress
nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance

Love has good manners

It is not touchy

It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people

… it is glad with all good men when truth prevails

Love knows no limit to its endurance

… no end to its trust

… no fading of its hope

… it can outlast anything

It is … the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen.

1st Letter of Saul of Tarsus, AKA “Paul,” to 1st Century Christians in Corinth

Phillips New Testament

The Best Way of Life

“Now I will show you the best way of all – THE BEST WAY OF LIFE!”

I may be able to speak with a golden tongue and eloquence that moves multitudes.
My words may flow from my lips as though they were angelic.

Loveless?

Such eloquence and marvels are nothing more than blaring brass or crashing cymbals.

I may be able to foretell the future with precision.
My mind may be filled with all human knowledge, even the very secrets of God.
My faith may be so perfected that I can move mountains.

All of this!

Without love, it amounts to nothing whatsoever …

If I give away all that I possess or even die in the excruciating flames of martyrdom …

Such sacrifice!

Without love achieves for me precisely nothing.

Whatever your claim to superiority

… n o l o v e …

empty rhetoric!

Ref. 1st Letter from Saul of Tarsus, AKA "Paul," to 1st Century Christians in Corinth

The Transforming Power of Wonder

"When our lives are focused on God, awe and wonder lead us to worship God, filling our inner being with a fullness we would never have thought possible. Awe prepares the way in us for the power of God to transform us and this transformation of our inner attitudes can only take place when awe leads us in turn to wonder, admiration, reverence, surrender, and obedience toward God." —James Houston

C.S. Lewis on the Resurrection

“… the Resurrection (the earliest Christian teachers claimed to have witnessed) was not regarded simply or chiefly as evidence for the immortality of the soul. … I have heard a man maintain that ‘the importance of the Resurrection is that it proves survival.’ Such a view cannot at any point be reconciled with the language of the New Testament. … The New Testament writers speak as if Christ’s achievement in rising from the dead was the first event of its kind in the whole history of the universe. He is the ‘first fruits’ the ‘pioneer of life.’ He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because He has done so. This is the beginning of the New Creation: a new chapter in cosmic history has opened.
I do not mean, of course, that the writers of the New Testament disbelieved in ‘survival.’ On the contrary they believed in it so readily that Jesus on more than one occasion had to assure them that He was not a ghost. From the earliest times the Jews, like many other nations had believed that man possessed a ‘soul’ or Nephesh separable from the body, which went at death into the shadowy world called Sheol: a land of forgetfulness and imbecility where none called upon Jehovah any more, a land half unreal and melancholy like the Hades of the Greeks or the Miflheim of the Norsemen. From it shades could return and appear to the living as Samuel’s shade had done at the command of the Witch of Endor. In much more recent times there had arisen a more cheerful belief that the righteous passed at death to ‘heaven.’ Both doctrines are doctrines of the ‘immortality of the soul,’ as a Greek or a modern … understands it: and both are quite irrelevant to the story of the Resurrection. The writers look upon this event as an absolute novelty. …
There are, I allow, certain respects in which the risen Christ resembles the ‘ghost’ of popular tradition. Like a ghost he ‘appears’ and ‘disappears’: locked doors are no obstacle to Him. On the other hand He Himself vigorously asserts that He is corporeal … and eats broiled fish.”
C.S. Lewis, Miracles

Luke 24: 37 – 43 – “They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.’When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, ‘Do you have anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.”

George MacDonald on Christ's Suffering

“The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.”
George MacDonald
PATRIOT POST
20 March, 2008
Patriot Vol. 08 No. 12

Dieing Leads to Life

“Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.”
Jesus of Nazareth

Jesus' Bitter Cup of Death

From Gethsemane to Golgotha Jesus has been, for the most part, “silent." In Mark’s account, he has revealed nothing of his private thought or his personal feeling. … His spirit has been mute. … the mind is hidden in mystery.
“But … finally, on Golgotha, comes a spontaneous gesture, and with it an insight into the spirit of the Savior … what he’s been doing in the solitude of his interior self.”
He’s lying on his back, wearing nothing but a loin cloth. His head and hands have been placed on the crossbeam to which his hands will be fastened with spikes. The command to drive the spikes through his hands has been given.
“So then a woman rushes over and kneels by the figure of Jesus and offers him a drink.” She’s doing what her people have done, mercifully, for generations. She’s obeying the command of the ancient Proverb, “Give strong drink to the dying, and wine to those in bitter distress; let them drink and remember their misery no more.” She is “seeking to ease the torment of the crucifixion. She’s offering Jesus myrrh, a narcotic.
“And here is the gesture, revelation, the mind of the dying Christ:
“He shakes his head. He will not drink from her cup. He will in no wise dull his senses or ease the pain.
“And so we know. What are the feelings? What has the spirit of Jesus been doing since Gethsemane? Why, suffering. With a pure and willful consciousness, terribly sensitive to every thorn and cut and scornful slur: suffering. This he has chosen. This he is attending to with every nerve of his being – not for some perverted love of pain. He hates the pain. But for a supernal love of us, that pain might be transfigured, forever.
What “has the Lord been doing since Gethsemane? Drinking. Not from the woman’s narcotic cup, but from the cup the father would not remove from him: drinking. Swallow by swallow, tasting the hell therein, not tossing it down in a hurry: ‘So that by the grace of God he might taste death for every one.’”
What “has the Lamb been doing since Gethsemane? Bearing our griefs. Carrying our sorrows. By the stripes he is truly and intensely receiving, healing us all.”

Walter Wangerin, Jr. Reliving the Passion

Wisdom for Warfare

“In war resolution. In defeat, defiance. In victory, magnanimity. In peace, good will.”
Sir Winston Churchill

Masterful Living

"The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both."
James Michener

The Light the Healing Spirit in This World

"Today you must listen to his voice. There is a light in this world.....a healing spirit much stronger than any darkness we may encounter. We sometimes lose site of this force.....where there is suffering, too much pain, and suddenly the spirit will emerge.....through lives of ordinary people, and answer in extraordinary ways. God speaks in the silence of the heart and we listen."
Mother Theresa

An After Christmas Prayer

This, the 12th Day of Christmas, is about over. The festive lights fade and the “hard times” which so often meet us in this “warring world” loom large in front of us.

Refusing to avoid the foreboding future and resolving to meet each challenge head on we pray …

Our God, our Father, make us strong,
When tasks of life seem hard and long,
To greet them with this triumph song:
Thy will be done.

Draw from our timid eyes the veil
To show, where earthly forces fail,
Thy power and love must still prevail –
Thy will be done.

With confident and humble mind
Freedom in service we would find,
Praying through every toil assigned:
Thy will be done.

Things deemed impossible we dare,
Thine is the call and Thine the care:
Thy wisdom shall the way prepare –
Thy will be done.

All power is here and round us now;
Faithful we stand in rule and vow,
While ‘tis not us, but ever Thou:
Thy will be done.

Heaven’s music chimes the glad days in;
Hope sours beyond death, pain, and sin;
Faith shouts in triumph, Love must win –
They will be done.

Frederic Mann, 1928