Syyskuun Kolmaskymmenes Päivä

Different Sins - September 30th

"Christians get very angry toward other Christians who sin differently than they do."

Philip Yancey

I have many sins.

And many times it seems I have learnt to live with them.

We have sort of made peace.

If I don’t bother them or pray.

Or try actively get rid of them.

If I just feed them a little.

Just a bit of me from time to time.

They’ll let me alone.

Most of the time.

They are my domesticated sins.

But I still need to judge the sin.

Because God told us to do so.

But it must be the other sin.

The one that I don’t do.

The one that is truly horrible.

The sin that I see others committing.

That I judge.

Do you judge and condemn the people who sin differently from you?

Syyskuun Kahdeskymmenes Yhdeksäs Päivä

Do You Conform To The Norm - September 29th

“Nontheless, it should be frankly admitted that for many modern Christians and Jews, “the valorous woman” (of Proverb 31) is hard to appreciate. A (woman) student at a prestigious urban university observed, “This is not the kind of woman we’ve learned to admire!” It is indeed the case that women whose work is primarily at home are accorded little public admiration in our society. But the problem of appreciating this woman goes even deeper than that. It will not do to make facile comparisons between the biblical figure and the suburban housewife, or alternately between her and the modern career woman. The difficulty of appreciation lies in the profoundly different social structure and function of the home in modern technological culture, and it is a difference that encompasses men’s lifestyles and work as much as women’s. For virtually all of us, the home is primarily a place of consumption rather than production. Very few households in our highly industrialized culture aim at self-sufficiency or produce any significant portion of their own food or clothing.”

Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs

Ellen F. Davis

Is your home a place of consumption or of production?

What have we made of our homes?

Why does the work have to be done outside of the home?

Why do we need to leave our family to be productive?

What really makes us happy or fulfills us with joy?

Conforming to the social norm?

Or finding our own destiny?

Syyskuun Kahdeskymmenes Kahdeksas Päivä

September 28th

Syyskuun Kahdeskymmenes Seitsemäs Päivä

September 27th

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. 

C. S. Lewis

What do you choose?

Is Jesus a man who calls himself a doorknob?

Is he a demon from Hell?

Or is He the Son of God?

Syyskuun Kahdeskymmenes Kuudes Päivä

The Thorns In My Flesh - September 26th

7 I will say this: because these experiences I had were so tremendous, God was afraid I might be puffed up by them; so I was given a physical condition which has been a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to hurt and bother me and prick my pride. 8 Three different times I begged God to make me well again.

9 Each time he said, “No. But I am with you; that is all you need. My power shows up best in week people.” Now I am glad to boast about how week I am; I am glad to be a living demonstration of Christ’s power, instead of showing off my own power and abilities.

2 Corinthians 12:7-9 Living Bible (TLB)

I think I have so many thorns that it is impossible to become conceited.

And somehow even though I manage to do it.

It's weird how persistent that sin is and how easy it is to see us as "wonderful Christians bringing God's light to the world" and not accept that the light shines if I'm there or not.

I'm just privileged enough to have it shine on me, too.

Syyskuun Kahdeskymmenes Viides Päivä

World is not in its True Form - September 25th

“Nothing is yet in its true form.” C.S. Lewis in Till We Have Faces The world around is broken by the fall. The perfection created by God could not exist for long, before it was damaged by pride. Everything around us, is in the middle of a metamorphosis. It has not reached its true form yet.

Be All There - (Not So) Wordless Wednesday

“My heart goes out to you, and I long to see you all coming constantly to God for a fresh supply of love.” 

 D.L. Moody

“Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.” 

Corrie Ten Boom

Syyskuun Kahdeskymmenes Neljäs Päivä

September 24th

Syyskuun Kahdeskymmenes Kolmas Päivä

Past is Perfect Preparation for the Future - September 23rd

“This is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see.”

Corrie Ten Boom

There are so many times I have rebelled against God for the pain and difficulties in my life.

Or because it is so boring and I'm not advancing fast enough.

For the senseless things happening to me and around me.

For the people that come and go.

That hurt me, or take something of me with them.

Or who love me and then leave me.

But the great secret is, that everything and everyone God puts in our lives is for a reason.

And we cannot move on if we don't let go first.

Evil Is Only Goodness Gone Bad - September 22nd

“Badness is only spoiled goodness.”

C.S. Lewis in The Case for Christianity

All that cool badness, all the revelry, going against the rules, breaking things and lives and standing against the authority.

All the rebels without a cause of the world are just people who's goodness has been spoiled.

That delicious evil we want to follow, is only goodness gone rotten.

The smell we so seek, are the fermented fumes of the dead and composing goodness in us.

The evil does not exist alone.

It is only the shadow and the absence of light.

The evil is only goodness gone bad.

Syyskuun Kahdeskymmenes Toinen Päivä

September 21st

Syyskuun Kahdeskymmenes Ensimmäinen Päivä

September 20th

Syyskuun Kahdeskymmenes Päivä

Have You Gone To The Temple - September 19th

“You have gone into the Temple...and found Him, as always, there.”

C.S. Lewis in from a letter “To A Lady”

Sometimes I read the Bible and am surprised to find God there.

Sometimes I go to the church and am surprised to find God waiting for me.

Sometimes I raise my eyes to see the world around me and God smiles to me from His work.

Sometimes I read a book, enjoy a work of art, listen to a song or hear a piece of poetry and God is there too.

Have you gone to the temple, and found God there?

Syyskuun Yhdeksästoista Päivä

Catch on Fire - September 18th

“Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn.” Charles Wesley When we fall in love with God. Our lives participate in this great romance of all times. In the marriage of the church with our groom, the Christ. When we burn with this love, when we are filled with awe and marvel, when it's not us but God in us. People will come, they will seek us. Because they have the need of love, the hunger of meaning, thirst for fulfillment of the soul. They will come to be close to God.

Syyskuun Kahdeksastoista Päivä

Syyskuun Seitsemästoista Päivä

September 17th

Filled with Joy and Hope - (Not So) Wordless Wednesday

“One of the worst things sin did for man was to make him selfish, for selfishness cannot love.”

Andrew Murray

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

 C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity

Send The Bread Over The Water

In the Western culture the majority of us recognizes the Golden Rule in one form or another.

We might not be able to pinpoint the exact words or the exact place in the Bible.

But we are familiar with the idea of doing to others what we want them to do for us.

I think most of us consider ourselves as good people.

We try to do good and be nice and fair to the people around us.

But many of us have changed this rule into:

Do good to others if they do it first to you.

Or do to others as they do to you first.

We even have a popular word for it, the Karma Law, it will come back to bite you in the end.

But the Bible talks about sending the bread over the water.

Of doing good before others have the chance to do good to me.

Turn the other cheek, even when it doesn't seem humanely possible.

We are not to do this with our own power.

But by leaving ourselves, and our wills, into His hands.