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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

Nuggets in a Nutshell

Michelangelo 

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.
I saw the angel in the marble and carved it until I set him free.

Henry David Thoreau

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."

Michael Phillips 

“You have your good days, you have your bad days. -- You have your days when you say to yourself, I'm going to make it happen. You have your days when you say don't bother me, don't touch me, don't talk to me, leave me alone. -- You have your good days; you have your bad days. The good thing about any day is that God is the same yesterday, today, and forevermore. He is the constant, we are the variable. That is not an indictment on you, it is really a compliment on God. God is the constant, we are the variable, which means, He made us that way so that we would not stay the same. If we were not able to change, if we were not able to grow, if we were not able to adapt, if we were not able to let things go, if we were stuck in our mistakes, in our past and our failures, if we were constant in that position we would be cursed, we would be in trouble. -- Grow. Adapt. Develop. Change."

Paul formerly known as Saul 

"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit."

Elizabeth Lesser 

"We spend so much of our life trying to be what we think we are supposed to be, what society wants us to be, what our parents think we should be, our husband, our image, our image of what a good person, a spiritual person might look like -- good, not great! . . . I lost everything; my financial security, my self-image, my home. Everything changed for me. In the depth of that loss I found out who I really was. I began to trust who I was. (How do you do that?) You can either breakdown and shut down or you can break-open. It's a decision you make. It's a commitment: I am going through a very hard time; I am not going to waste this precious experience, this opportunity, to become the best me. (What did it teach you?) The first thing that it taught me was that I couldn't blame anyone . . . but I had to take the responsibility myself. I had to say, what does this have to teach me about me, not about him, not about how unfair life is. It wasn't about that. It was about what did I do to make this happen? And if I can really sit in the pain of that, the pain is really looking at yourself and what you did to create the mess you are in. And if you can look at it head-on fearlessly, and say teach me, teach me about myself so I can grow!"

King David

"Those who sow in tears will reap with shouts of joy."

John Wilds

"The Lord bless you and keep you, make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. The Lord bless you and keep you, make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. The Lord bless you and keep you, make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. Amen." 

from a letter to Galatians

"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery."

"For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flessh, but through love serve one another."

John, The Apostle

Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”

When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”

“But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you,and yet you are going back?”

Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”

After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.”

His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.

So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, 15 and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”

Then Thomas (also known as Didymus[a]) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was less than two miles[b] from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.

 “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believesin me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

“Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God,who is to come into the world.”

After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.” When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there.

When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” he asked.

“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.

Jesus wept.

Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”

But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. “Take away the stone,” he said.

“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”

Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”

So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”

When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen,and a cloth around his face.

Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

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.."

"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