I’ve been hoping to encourage my church members to have some kind of "solitude" or "devotional" time since the beginning of the year. I basically re-send them The Upper Room Daily Devotional with some of my own comments at the beginning. These short paragraphs are little "harmonic" meditations, I chip in hopefully drawing the readers to get into the main melody of the Scriptures. 🙂 I got an encouraging email today, and it surprised me that the "harmonics" were helpful too for the our church members on our email list. So, let me pick out some occasionally to share them with you. Looks like this will add to my Random Links and Random Thoughts collection 🙂
There are times when I feel life has been pretty smooth, at other times, there seems to be so many obstacles in front of me. If I just look at the obstacles, I’m tempted to be discouraged. But, I’m learning more each day, to after bumping into an obstacle to first pause, and look beyond that for a while to the "possibilities". And then, many a times, the creative juices kick in or a moment of inspiration happens, and some solutions emerge to deal with the obstacles so we can move forward. Acting in faith is not being blind to the obstacles, it’s about opening our eyes to possibilities, and then reframe what the obstacle means in the light of that new perspective. That’s what conversing with God does too …. because then we’re not limited by our truncated tunnel vision as human beings 🙂
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What do we see everyday? What captures our attention? What seems to occupy our hearts?
Do we just decide on what we do by the overwhelming circumstances before our eyes? Or do we pause and then look for hidden clues of God’s workings? And then, renegotiate what’s the best next step possible?
Nothing fool-proof, but then that’s the way of faith …
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Take Time … fast food Christianity just won’t do… fast food life will just bloat us from real health as people. "Be Still …. and know …that I am God". Let’s stop being too busy for God.
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Two paradoxical images for Jesus … he’s the Lord of all who is the Lamb of God. The one who brings us true freedom through forgiveness
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I’ve been wondering how "tough" are we really these days. How often we cave in so easily when we face trouble? How many times we escape from facing the giants before us? When was the last time we persevered and bit our teeth and pressed on? Who were the people who held our hands together during down times? How did we mature after a storm?
As long as, we are serious about following Christ, believing in God and trusting in the Spirit here on earth, we can not and must not still hold on to illusions of "rosy" Christian lives. Ok, granted most of us don’t believe that …. but then how are we more prepared to face the challenges? This season is good to purge some bad habits of mind, feelings and actions … make more room for God’s life to blossom, and his grace to be made perfect in our weaknesses.
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These "harmonics" rang from February 21-26, 2008