Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our read more

Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly. We insist upon trying to modify Him and bring Him nearer to our own image.

Commemoration of Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, 690 To pass from estrangement from God to be a son read more

Commemoration of Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, 690 To pass from estrangement from God to be a son of God is the basic fact of conversion. That altered relationship with God gives you an altered relationship with yourself, with your brother man, with nature, with the universe. You are no longer working against the grain of the universe; you're working with it... You have been forgiven by God and now you can forgive yourself. All self hate, self-despising, self-rejection, drop away, and you accept yourself in God, respect yourself, and love yourself... You cease to move into yourself, away from others. You give up your antagonism. You begin to move toward others in love. God moved toward you in gracious, outgoing love, and you move toward others in that same outgoing love.

Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge.

Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge.

Commemoration of Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, 1095 There are a number of Hebrew words about salvation which also mean read more

Commemoration of Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, 1095 There are a number of Hebrew words about salvation which also mean "to bring into a spacious environment", "to be at one's ease", "to be free to develop". "Salvation" can be seen then as the new life in Christ, in which we are to be "free to develop" into Christ-like people. For this maturing to take place, there needs to be a breaking down of barriers, a breaking up of the soil of our personalities, and a healing of inner wounds and hurts. The soil is softened, the clay becomes malleable through the experience of the tender love of God and the accepting, non-judgmental love of Christians. We cannot be beaten into shape.

Feast of Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, & his sister Macrina, Teachers, c.394 & c.379 Humility is the root, mother, read more

Feast of Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, & his sister Macrina, Teachers, c.394 & c.379 Humility is the root, mother, nurse, foundation, and bond of all virtue.

Feast of John Vianney, Curè d'Ars, 1859 [Christ] is the breathing forth of the heart, life and spirit of read more

Feast of John Vianney, Curè d'Ars, 1859 [Christ] is the breathing forth of the heart, life and spirit of God into all the dead race of Adam. He is the seeker, the finder, the restorer of all that, from Cain to the end of time, was lost and dead to the life of God. He is the love that prays for all its murderers; the love that willingly suffers and dies among thieves, that thieves may have a life with him in Paradise; the love that visits publicans, harlots and sinners, and wants and seeks to forgive where most is to be forgiven.

Not immediately, but as the months and years passed, increasingly, from experience and thought based on extensive reading, I found read more

Not immediately, but as the months and years passed, increasingly, from experience and thought based on extensive reading, I found the Evangelical faith in which I had been reared confirmed and deepened. Increasingly I rejoiced in the Gospel -- the amazing Good News -- that the Creator of what to us human beings is this bewildering and unimaginably vast universe, so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Everlasting life, I came to see, is not just continued existence, but a growing knowledge -- not merely intellectual but wondering through trust, love, and fellowship -- of Him who alone is truly God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. (Continued tomorrow).

How can we know that what Jesus has shown us of God is the truth; or how do we know read more

How can we know that what Jesus has shown us of God is the truth; or how do we know when we look into the face of Jesus that we are looking into the face of God? The answer is so plain and simple that it is a marvel how intelligent men can manage to miss it as they do. Look at what Christ has done for the soul of man: that is your answer. Christianity is just Christ --nothing more and nothing less. It is a way of life, and He is that way. It is the truth about human destiny, and He is that truth.

Holy Saturday Commemoration of Jack Winslow, Missionary, Evangelist, 1974 The progress of these terrors is plainly shown us in read more

Holy Saturday Commemoration of Jack Winslow, Missionary, Evangelist, 1974 The progress of these terrors is plainly shown us in our Lord's agony in the garden, when the reality of this eternal death so broke in upon Him, so awakened and stirred itself in Him, as to force great drops of blood to sweat from His body... His agony was His entrance into the last, eternal terrors of the lost soul, into the real horrors of that dreadful, eternal death which man unredeemed must have died into when he left this world. We are therefore not to consider our Lord's death upon the Cross as only the death of that mortal body which was nailed to it, but we are to look upon Him with wounded hearts, as being fixed and fastened in the state of that twofold death, which was due to the fallen nature, out of which He could not come till He could say, "It is finished; Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.".