Tag: Love
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Love and Sadness
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Matthew 23:37 To love is to choose a certain type of suffering, or to say it differently, to…
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Spiritual Ambition
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. Philippians 2:3-4 Paul could have said “fleshly ambition” instead of “selfish ambition,” and it would have been wholly consistent with how he often…
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Cross of Mercy
But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Matthew 9:13 Jesus twice quotes Hosea 6:6 here and in Matthew 12:7. The message of Hosea is that God does not desire sacrifices, even though many believed that sacrifices were God’s…
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Cross of Love
But we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness. 1 Corinthians 1:23 Paul’s statement about the difficulties people have in accepting the message of a crucified Lord is a lament, not a call to action. If the cross is problematic to understand, may it be so for the right reasons…
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A Question for Lent
One focus of Lent is that we are urged to be introspective. If we intend to examine ourselves, we need good questions. Knowing where to probe, what thoughts or frameworks to investigate, and to be daring enough to look within, is required if we are to engage meaningfully with our own inner lives. We inevitably…
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Seeking Dominance
Jesus never asked us to defend Christian values. He wants us to live them. The church, Christ’s body, is not to be the architect nor enforcer of particular behaviors for the world at large. We are to love our neighbors, rather than by law and legislation to dictate how they must live. Unfortunately, for decades…