| |||
|
Copyright © 2025 Sojourners. All rights reserved. |
BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
Showing posts with label miracles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label miracles. Show all posts
02 October 2025
VERSE AND VOICE FROM SOJOURNERS 2OKT25
18 August 2011
gov rick perry's TEXAS:The Texas Unmiracle from THE NEW YORK TIMES 14AUG11
HOW sad that the Christian governor of Texas, rick perry, finds it necessary to lie, manipulate and distort the economic record of his state just because he wants to be president. If he is unable to to tell the truth as governor you know he will be a liar in the White House. From the New York Times...
By PAUL KRUGMAN
As expected, Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, has announced that he is running for president. And we already know what his campaign will be about: faith in miracles.
Some of these miracles will involve things that you’re liable to read in the Bible. But if he wins the Republican nomination, his campaign will probably center on a more secular theme: the alleged economic miracle in Texas, which, it’s often asserted, sailed through the Great Recession almost unscathed thanks to conservative economic policies. And Mr. Perry will claim that he can restore prosperity to America by applying the same policies at a national level.
So what you need to know is that the Texas miracle is a myth, and more broadly that Texan experience offers no useful lessons on how to restore national full employment.
It’s true that Texas entered recession a bit later than the rest of America, mainly because the state’s still energy-heavy economy was buoyed by high oil prices through the first half of 2008. Also, Texas was spared the worst of the housing crisis, partly because it turns out to have surprisingly strict regulation of mortgage lending.
Despite all that, however, from mid-2008 onward unemployment soared in Texas, just as it did almost everywhere else.
In June 2011, the Texas unemployment rate was 8.2 percent. That was less than unemployment in collapsed-bubble states like California and Florida, but it was slightly higher than the unemployment rate in New York, and significantly higher than the rate in Massachusetts. By the way, one in four Texans lacks health insurance, the highest proportion in the nation, thanks largely to the state’s small-government approach. Meanwhile, Massachusetts has near-universal coverage thanks to health reform very similar to the “job-killing” Affordable Care Act.
So where does the notion of a Texas miracle come from? Mainly from widespread misunderstanding of the economic effects of population growth.
For this much is true about Texas: It has, for many decades, had much faster population growth than the rest of America — about twice as fast since 1990. Several factors underlie this rapid population growth: a high birth rate, immigration from Mexico, and inward migration of Americans from other states, who are attracted to Texas by its warm weather and low cost of living, low housing costs in particular.
And just to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with a low cost of living. In particular, there’s a good case to be made that zoning policies in many states unnecessarily restrict the supply of housing, and that this is one area where Texas does in fact do something right.
But what does population growth have to do with job growth? Well, the high rate of population growth translates into above-average job growth through a couple of channels. Many of the people moving to Texas — retirees in search of warm winters, middle-class Mexicans in search of a safer life — bring purchasing power that leads to greater local employment. At the same time, the rapid growth in the Texas work force keeps wages low — almost 10 percent of Texan workers earn the minimum wage or less, well above the national average — and these low wages give corporations an incentive to move production to the Lone Star State.
So Texas tends, in good years and bad, to have higher job growth than the rest of America. But it needs lots of new jobs just to keep up with its rising population — and as those unemployment comparisons show, recent employment growth has fallen well short of what’s needed.
If this picture doesn’t look very much like the glowing portrait Texas boosters like to paint, there’s a reason: the glowing portrait is false.
Still, does Texas job growth point the way to faster job growth in the nation as a whole? No.
What Texas shows is that a state offering cheap labor and, less important, weak regulation can attract jobs from other states. I believe that the appropriate response to this insight is “Well, duh.” The point is that arguing from this experience that depressing wages and dismantling regulation in America as a whole would create more jobs — which is, whatever Mr. Perry may say, what Perrynomics amounts to in practice — involves a fallacy of composition: every state can’t lure jobs away from every other state.
In fact, at a national level lower wages would almost certainly lead to fewer jobs — because they would leave working Americans even less able to cope with the overhang of debt left behind by the housing bubble, an overhang that is at the heart of our economic problem.
So when Mr. Perry presents himself as the candidate who knows how to create jobs, don’t believe him. His prescriptions for job creation would work about as well in practice as his prayer-based attempt to end Texas’s crippling drought.
Some of these miracles will involve things that you’re liable to read in the Bible. But if he wins the Republican nomination, his campaign will probably center on a more secular theme: the alleged economic miracle in Texas, which, it’s often asserted, sailed through the Great Recession almost unscathed thanks to conservative economic policies. And Mr. Perry will claim that he can restore prosperity to America by applying the same policies at a national level.
So what you need to know is that the Texas miracle is a myth, and more broadly that Texan experience offers no useful lessons on how to restore national full employment.
It’s true that Texas entered recession a bit later than the rest of America, mainly because the state’s still energy-heavy economy was buoyed by high oil prices through the first half of 2008. Also, Texas was spared the worst of the housing crisis, partly because it turns out to have surprisingly strict regulation of mortgage lending.
Despite all that, however, from mid-2008 onward unemployment soared in Texas, just as it did almost everywhere else.
In June 2011, the Texas unemployment rate was 8.2 percent. That was less than unemployment in collapsed-bubble states like California and Florida, but it was slightly higher than the unemployment rate in New York, and significantly higher than the rate in Massachusetts. By the way, one in four Texans lacks health insurance, the highest proportion in the nation, thanks largely to the state’s small-government approach. Meanwhile, Massachusetts has near-universal coverage thanks to health reform very similar to the “job-killing” Affordable Care Act.
So where does the notion of a Texas miracle come from? Mainly from widespread misunderstanding of the economic effects of population growth.
For this much is true about Texas: It has, for many decades, had much faster population growth than the rest of America — about twice as fast since 1990. Several factors underlie this rapid population growth: a high birth rate, immigration from Mexico, and inward migration of Americans from other states, who are attracted to Texas by its warm weather and low cost of living, low housing costs in particular.
And just to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with a low cost of living. In particular, there’s a good case to be made that zoning policies in many states unnecessarily restrict the supply of housing, and that this is one area where Texas does in fact do something right.
But what does population growth have to do with job growth? Well, the high rate of population growth translates into above-average job growth through a couple of channels. Many of the people moving to Texas — retirees in search of warm winters, middle-class Mexicans in search of a safer life — bring purchasing power that leads to greater local employment. At the same time, the rapid growth in the Texas work force keeps wages low — almost 10 percent of Texan workers earn the minimum wage or less, well above the national average — and these low wages give corporations an incentive to move production to the Lone Star State.
So Texas tends, in good years and bad, to have higher job growth than the rest of America. But it needs lots of new jobs just to keep up with its rising population — and as those unemployment comparisons show, recent employment growth has fallen well short of what’s needed.
If this picture doesn’t look very much like the glowing portrait Texas boosters like to paint, there’s a reason: the glowing portrait is false.
Still, does Texas job growth point the way to faster job growth in the nation as a whole? No.
What Texas shows is that a state offering cheap labor and, less important, weak regulation can attract jobs from other states. I believe that the appropriate response to this insight is “Well, duh.” The point is that arguing from this experience that depressing wages and dismantling regulation in America as a whole would create more jobs — which is, whatever Mr. Perry may say, what Perrynomics amounts to in practice — involves a fallacy of composition: every state can’t lure jobs away from every other state.
In fact, at a national level lower wages would almost certainly lead to fewer jobs — because they would leave working Americans even less able to cope with the overhang of debt left behind by the housing bubble, an overhang that is at the heart of our economic problem.
So when Mr. Perry presents himself as the candidate who knows how to create jobs, don’t believe him. His prescriptions for job creation would work about as well in practice as his prayer-based attempt to end Texas’s crippling drought.
12 August 2011
Jesus Walking on the Water - A Sermon Sarcastic and Serious from SARCASTIC LUTHERAN 8AUG11
AGAIN this lady touches me with her sermon, because she is honest enough to apply the teachings of Christianity to herself and not only to those she is preaching to....
It’s Jesus walking on the water Sunday here at House for All Sinners and Saints and we thought maybe during Open Space we should have a kiddie pool set up in the back so you could all “test your faith”. You know – go ahead and give it the old Christian try. That’s how I’ve always heard this story preached: like it’s the Little Engine Who Could Have. As a matter of fact, here’s a 1 minute version of the sermon I just don’t have the stomach to preach to you….it might sound familiar: The disciples are in a little boat battered by waves, they see Jesus walking toward them and for a moment, Peter is a hero. He steps out of the boat and has sufficient faith to walk on water. He actually does it. Peter musters up what it takes to be God-like and what it takes is faith. Lots and lots of faith. Because with enough faith you can walk on water all the way to Jesus. If you had enough faith you could do it too. And maybe even better than Peter. Because Peter’s only mistake was that he took his eyes off Jesus and that’s why he sunk. So the moral of the story, and of course every Bible story is about how to be moral…so the how to be moral of this story is that if you in your life are not God-like in your ability to financially prosper or overcome all your failings as a human or defy the forces of nature and walk on water then the problem is that you don’t have enough faith and you should really muster up some more because the thing is, it’s all up to you to make your way to Jesus. So, don’t be afraid. Get out of the boat but be better at it than St Peter and don’t take your eyes off of Jesus. You can do it if you really try. End of sermon. And good luck with that.
OK, this is a cynical view even for me, but it’s honest. Yet I know that having a preacher tell me that the solution to my problems is to just try and have more faith – so I can make my way to Jesus never sounds like good news to me. It reminds me of The Simpson’s episode where square jawed newscaster Ken Brockman made a set of motivational tapes called “get confident stupid!”. In the end, I just don’t know how helpful is to say “get faith sinner”. It doesn’t work.
But the weird thing is, here you all are. Gathered again around this story of the man who walks on water. Some of you are new to the story of Christ, and for some of you it formed who you are from the cradle. I could be wrong but I think maybe we aren’t all here because some preacher exhorted us to “have more faith”. I think we are here because at some point we heard the Story and the story claimed us. At some point, someone told you the story about this God who created the universe, who spoke through prophets, who came to us in Jesus, who ate with sinners and scoffed at the powerful, who suffered and died and rose again and calls us out of our of own graves to new life. And here’s the thing about stories… they tell us who we are. Sometimes a story can tell us what to do but when we hear who we are we then know what to do and God’s story found in the Bible does this more than any other story can.
And I guess this particular story of Jesus walking on water can be reduced to a moral about having more faith. But, like so much of the Bible, it can also be a way to see who we are and see who God is for us.
See if you recognize yourself in this story: Because maybe some of us are like the ones in the boat who are afraid. Maybe you are so caught up in the fear of making the wrong decision that you can’t make any decision at all. Or maybe you are like the one experiencing the thrill of stepping into the unknown - a new relationship or a new job or you’ve just moved to Denver leaving behind the familiar - and maybe the first few steps are ok but then it gets scary. Or maybe you or the person next to you is the one who is sinking in debt or depression or maybe you feel like you’re sinking because what you could handle last month you just can’t handle now. Or maybe you’re the one who knows you’re doomed, knows that all your own efforts have failed and you are crying out to God to save you and you’re the ones who Jesus has reached down to catch and you’re clinging on to the sweet hand of Jesus with all you’ve got. or maybe you’re the one in the boat looking in wonder all you’ve just seen… you’re the one who bears witness to the miracle and danger of it all and how the hand of God reaches down and pulls us up and you see it and can’t help but say “truly this is God.” At some point or other I know I have been all of the above.
Yet, a lot of what I’ve heard in the church both with this story and with so many others is not who I am but who I should be. I should be the one with enough faith to walk on water. I should be the one whose eyes are always always on Jesus. I should be the one who makes my way to Jesus.
But all these characters in the walking on water story – the cautious ones in the boat, the brave one who walked for a time on water, the same one who is afraid and sinks and calls for help, and the ones who saw it all and confessed that Jesus is the son of God they are all actually equal in their relationship to God because…all of these and you have one thing in common: they are those whom Jesus draws near saying “it is I, do not be afraid”. The glamorous part of this story is that Peter walked on water. Which I admit is pretty cool. And maybe he almost had enough faith to make his way to Jesus. But what happens on either side of his short little water walk? Jesus comes toward HIM. In the storm Jesus is walking toward the boat, when Peter sinks Jesus is reaching toward Peter then he comes so much toward them all that finally he just gets in the damn boat. That’s about as with them as he can be. Yet we seem to always focus on Peter walking toward Jesus when the whole story is about how much jesus walks toward them reaches toward them and then even gets in the boat with them.
We might see the moral of the story as “you should have so much faith that you can walk on water toward Jesus” but the truth of this story is that Jesus walks toward us. The truth of the story is that my abundance of faith or lack of faith does not deter God from drawing close. That even if you are scared to death you can say Lord Save Me and the hand of God will find you in even the darkest waters. Because this is a story not of morals but of movement. Not of heros of the faith making their way to Christ but of Christ drawing near to you in the midst of fear. As our reading from Romans says the Word of God is near to you – on your hearts and in your lips. And for us for today, I would say the Word of God that was made flesh and dwelt among us in Jesus the Christ draws near to you. He is written on your hearts and is proclaimed from your lips. He walks toward you saying “It is I, do not be afraid” and God reaches down when you call his name and as Paul wrote to the Romans Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
14But – he writes - how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? 15And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"
So. There is actually a kiddie pool in back filled with water and scented oil. I invite you during open space or during communion not to try and walk on it, but to dip your feet in as a blessing. Feel the cool of the calm waters and know that yours are the beautiful feet of they who have been sent to tell the story of who you are and who God is….and you tell the story of God so that you and others might call out Lord save us as we continually die and rise in the waters of our baptism. Do not be afraid. For that is your beautiful story.
It’s Jesus walking on the water Sunday here at House for All Sinners and Saints and we thought maybe during Open Space we should have a kiddie pool set up in the back so you could all “test your faith”. You know – go ahead and give it the old Christian try. That’s how I’ve always heard this story preached: like it’s the Little Engine Who Could Have. As a matter of fact, here’s a 1 minute version of the sermon I just don’t have the stomach to preach to you….it might sound familiar: The disciples are in a little boat battered by waves, they see Jesus walking toward them and for a moment, Peter is a hero. He steps out of the boat and has sufficient faith to walk on water. He actually does it. Peter musters up what it takes to be God-like and what it takes is faith. Lots and lots of faith. Because with enough faith you can walk on water all the way to Jesus. If you had enough faith you could do it too. And maybe even better than Peter. Because Peter’s only mistake was that he took his eyes off Jesus and that’s why he sunk. So the moral of the story, and of course every Bible story is about how to be moral…so the how to be moral of this story is that if you in your life are not God-like in your ability to financially prosper or overcome all your failings as a human or defy the forces of nature and walk on water then the problem is that you don’t have enough faith and you should really muster up some more because the thing is, it’s all up to you to make your way to Jesus. So, don’t be afraid. Get out of the boat but be better at it than St Peter and don’t take your eyes off of Jesus. You can do it if you really try. End of sermon. And good luck with that.
OK, this is a cynical view even for me, but it’s honest. Yet I know that having a preacher tell me that the solution to my problems is to just try and have more faith – so I can make my way to Jesus never sounds like good news to me. It reminds me of The Simpson’s episode where square jawed newscaster Ken Brockman made a set of motivational tapes called “get confident stupid!”. In the end, I just don’t know how helpful is to say “get faith sinner”. It doesn’t work.
But the weird thing is, here you all are. Gathered again around this story of the man who walks on water. Some of you are new to the story of Christ, and for some of you it formed who you are from the cradle. I could be wrong but I think maybe we aren’t all here because some preacher exhorted us to “have more faith”. I think we are here because at some point we heard the Story and the story claimed us. At some point, someone told you the story about this God who created the universe, who spoke through prophets, who came to us in Jesus, who ate with sinners and scoffed at the powerful, who suffered and died and rose again and calls us out of our of own graves to new life. And here’s the thing about stories… they tell us who we are. Sometimes a story can tell us what to do but when we hear who we are we then know what to do and God’s story found in the Bible does this more than any other story can.
And I guess this particular story of Jesus walking on water can be reduced to a moral about having more faith. But, like so much of the Bible, it can also be a way to see who we are and see who God is for us.
See if you recognize yourself in this story: Because maybe some of us are like the ones in the boat who are afraid. Maybe you are so caught up in the fear of making the wrong decision that you can’t make any decision at all. Or maybe you are like the one experiencing the thrill of stepping into the unknown - a new relationship or a new job or you’ve just moved to Denver leaving behind the familiar - and maybe the first few steps are ok but then it gets scary. Or maybe you or the person next to you is the one who is sinking in debt or depression or maybe you feel like you’re sinking because what you could handle last month you just can’t handle now. Or maybe you’re the one who knows you’re doomed, knows that all your own efforts have failed and you are crying out to God to save you and you’re the ones who Jesus has reached down to catch and you’re clinging on to the sweet hand of Jesus with all you’ve got. or maybe you’re the one in the boat looking in wonder all you’ve just seen… you’re the one who bears witness to the miracle and danger of it all and how the hand of God reaches down and pulls us up and you see it and can’t help but say “truly this is God.” At some point or other I know I have been all of the above.
Yet, a lot of what I’ve heard in the church both with this story and with so many others is not who I am but who I should be. I should be the one with enough faith to walk on water. I should be the one whose eyes are always always on Jesus. I should be the one who makes my way to Jesus.
But all these characters in the walking on water story – the cautious ones in the boat, the brave one who walked for a time on water, the same one who is afraid and sinks and calls for help, and the ones who saw it all and confessed that Jesus is the son of God they are all actually equal in their relationship to God because…all of these and you have one thing in common: they are those whom Jesus draws near saying “it is I, do not be afraid”. The glamorous part of this story is that Peter walked on water. Which I admit is pretty cool. And maybe he almost had enough faith to make his way to Jesus. But what happens on either side of his short little water walk? Jesus comes toward HIM. In the storm Jesus is walking toward the boat, when Peter sinks Jesus is reaching toward Peter then he comes so much toward them all that finally he just gets in the damn boat. That’s about as with them as he can be. Yet we seem to always focus on Peter walking toward Jesus when the whole story is about how much jesus walks toward them reaches toward them and then even gets in the boat with them.
We might see the moral of the story as “you should have so much faith that you can walk on water toward Jesus” but the truth of this story is that Jesus walks toward us. The truth of the story is that my abundance of faith or lack of faith does not deter God from drawing close. That even if you are scared to death you can say Lord Save Me and the hand of God will find you in even the darkest waters. Because this is a story not of morals but of movement. Not of heros of the faith making their way to Christ but of Christ drawing near to you in the midst of fear. As our reading from Romans says the Word of God is near to you – on your hearts and in your lips. And for us for today, I would say the Word of God that was made flesh and dwelt among us in Jesus the Christ draws near to you. He is written on your hearts and is proclaimed from your lips. He walks toward you saying “It is I, do not be afraid” and God reaches down when you call his name and as Paul wrote to the Romans Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
14But – he writes - how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? 15And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"
So. There is actually a kiddie pool in back filled with water and scented oil. I invite you during open space or during communion not to try and walk on it, but to dip your feet in as a blessing. Feel the cool of the calm waters and know that yours are the beautiful feet of they who have been sent to tell the story of who you are and who God is….and you tell the story of God so that you and others might call out Lord save us as we continually die and rise in the waters of our baptism. Do not be afraid. For that is your beautiful story.
13 September 2010
SERMON ON THE WOMAN WITH THE BENT BACK 12SEP10
FROM the lady preacher who calls her blog 'Sarcastic Lutheran', she often post great sermons and life lessons. Click the header to go to her blog.....you'll have to go there to see what other have e mailed her in response to her request......
Sermon on the Woman With the Bent Back
Luke 13:10-17
10Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 11And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. 12When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” 13When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. 14But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” 15But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? 16And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” 17When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.
We know very little about the woman who was healed in our text today. The text is silent on the question of why was she healed and others weren’t. We don’t know why she bore the pain and humiliation of a bent back. Perhaps modern physiologists might be able to give a diagnoses, you know, now that we know SO much about human beings. Perhaps the source of her crippled physique was chiropractic in nature, perhaps a lack of calcium. Medically there’s only conjecture on our side of the 2,000 years that separate us from her.
None of us may have ever experienced the spinal reality of such a thing but The infirmity of the woman who was healed in our text for today seems spiritually familiar doesn’t it? Because her collapsed posture is the physical representation of being se encurvatus en se…, the self curved in on the self which, incidentally, is Luther’s definition of sin. Myopically unconcerned for anything but the self and having no thought for God or the neighbor. In other words, bent in a manner in which we see nothing but our own feet. We can come by it naturally – embodying the messages we receive from society and our families and our selves – that we are not thin enough, smart enough, rich enough, like our sister enough, or enough enough. This can just bend us in. Then add to it our cultural obsession with the self and the notion that we are our own Gods and the result is a deformity of identity. One particularly insidious example being our inability to forgive ourselves for not being God. For not being God! For making mistakes and getting things wrong and not hitting the mark. Hard to say which is worse – trying to be God for myself, or punishing myself for not managing to do something that isn’t actually possible in the first place.. What bends us over so that we see only self are the voices from inside or outside that try to overpower the sound of God naming us as God’s own.
It’s hard to say what it was like for her that day when everything changed. We think of this text in Luke as a healing narrative but really it was nothing less than an exorcism. Well, that and another opportunity for Jesus to pick a fight with the nice religious folks since all of this happened on the Sabbath. In all fairness the leaders of the synagogue were just doing their job when they said to the crowds that it was the Sabbath day of rest and not a time for healings. But see, Jesus does not violate the Sabbath by healing her. He fulfills it. By healing her he actually does Sabbath TO her. He physically embodies in her what Sabbath is, namely a time for putting aside our handiwork so that we might witness the handiwork of God. She is passive, in the midst of the faithful where she is restored to an upright position, no longer turned in on herself and is named as a Child of God’s promises. That sounds pretty sabbathy to me.
After she is seen, touched, and healed by Christ, she is named by him as a daughter of Abraham and restored to the dignity and wholeness of being a child of the promise. You know, this is the only place in the Bible where the term daughter of Abraham appears. Here Jesus places her in the history of God’s promises. And the promise to which she has claim...the promise to Abraham was not that his children and children’s children would be super rich and important and fabulous…the promise to Abraham was that his descendants would be a blessing to all nations. The good news for Abraham had little do with himself and had a lot to do with God’s love for the whole world.
So this daughter of Abraham is blessed to be a blessing. She encounters the Christ and For the first time in 18 years stands upright and praises God not because she got what she wanted but because praise is simply the consequence of wholeness.
Here’s where we finally learn what the purpose of her healing was. The purpose of her healing is not fulfilled when she stands up straight and it’s not fulfilled when she is named and it’s not fulfilled when she praises God. The healing is completed when the community witnesses new life in their midst and rejoices. In other words, her healing from God had less to do with her and more to do with God’s love for the whole world.
Having seen God’s mercy in the upright body of this daughter of Abraham, the community rejoices for having God in their midst. Right there in the mess of their broken lives and fractured hopes and crippled bodies. Right there in the midst of the hypocrites and religious legalists. There is where God shows up.
It’s the same for you actually. Your encounter with God’s grace has a purpose. Your being freed from the tyranny of self has a purpose. Your being acted upon by God…being made whole has a purpose: and it’s not so that you can collect higher self-esteem and a sense of well-being in order to Spiritually feather your nest. God does all of this for the good of your neighbor. It’s always been like that with God. You know why God gave us the 10 commandments? Because God demands obedience? So that you will be happy? nope. Because God loves your neighbor and would prefer you not steal from them or sleep with their husbands.
Having been restored by God, having been healed of being bent in on herself, this daughter of Abraham then bore Christ into her community. So if you too have been freed from bondage, if you have been shown selfless love, raised from the dead, restored to wholeness it is for the benefit of the community. Don’t keep it to yourself. Because like the bent woman, you really are blessed to be a blessing.
This week I asked you to email me examples of where God is healing you where you feel free and where you still feel bound. So, as an experience of doing Sabbath to each other hear now where God is at work.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)