MEDITATION
"IMPACT"

GOOD
NEWS

THE whole chebang IN A NUTSHELL

"‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

JESUS the CHRIST

a Mighty Mission

A Firm Assurance
An Able Companion

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." Isn't this awesome? Revealing. Assuring. There is more!

"Everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks the door will be opened." Re-assuring! It's worth a re-read!

[By the nature of the human, what we see, what we hear, what we feel, is conditioned (limited) by one's current knowledge, experience, environment, and mindset. That's just being human. Naturally limited, yet primed for expanded capacity.]

Perhaps one arrived at this brilliant juncture (ask, seek, knock) stoked by a consumer mindset (sees Santa Claus), or is in survivor mode (sees Super Woman), or say is on a mighty mission (sees Zeus). Pause. M-hm. Perhaps one does not readily realize not only how limiting this is, it is on a progression to disabling. Ring any bell? Prevalent.

[Whatever one's current disposition, the opening declaration, an offered assurance, a revealed foundation (ask, seek, knock), is both as plain as stated and as limitless as intended. Pause. Absorb. Consider. Love it! Let's go deeper.]

"Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?" Hmmm! Oh-boy! "Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?" Hmmm? "If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven - the Omnicient One, the Omnipotent One, the Omnipresent One - give good gifts to those who ask him." {A fine moment for thanksgiving. Isn't it?} M-hm. God is not Santa. Santa is not God. True? Isn't God Divine?

"So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets." Aha! A familiar pattern - loving care - the whole chebang again! Rubber meets road. {Surely, this is an ideal moment for rejoicing.} Don't add to it; don't take away from it.

ASK - SEEK - KNOCK

LIGHT of The World

Nicolette Sowder

"Give me the wild children with their bare feet and sparkling eyes. The restless, churning climbers. The wild ones using their outside voices, singing all the way home. Give me the wonder-filled, glorious mess makers dreaming of mountains and mud, aching to run through a field of stars."

Isaiah, the Prophet

"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners."

Bishop Gene Robinson

"It's funny isn't it? That you can preach a judgmental and vengeful and angry God and nobody will mind. But you start preaching a God that is too accepting, too loving, too forgiving, too merciful, too kind . . . and you are in trouble."

Desmond Tutu

"You may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.."

Salt of The Soil

SAND is not SALT

Ewww, to be slipped centuries of sand believing it to be salt. Slick trade.

Dear God, grant me victory today over all that assails. Help me square up to even the greatest challenges and claim authority over them, unafraid. Amen.

Joshua Dubois
PRAYERS

To be Magnificently Moulded

Rise Strong

"It was not enough to come and listen to a great sermon or message every Sunday morning and be confined to those four walls and those four corners. You had to get out and do something."

- John Lewis