“Didn’t we play stickball with him?” “Didn’t he once pull the tail of a donkey an make it bray so loudly at 3am that all the neighbors woke up?” “Didn’t he used to catch frogs down by the river and scare the girls with them?”
“Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”
The trouble with this viewpoint is that it seeks to benefit from faith without putting any work into it. It looks for safety, it looks for rescue and the salvation from eternal damnation, rather than a relationship with God. It is purely practical.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. Exodus 20:7 – KJV The other day I was reading again in Paul Tillich’s collection of sermons entitled “The Eternal Now” and ran across a sermon titled, “The Divine Name.” Tillich used…
Daily Office Readings – New Testament ( 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 ) Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and…
This COVID-19 pandemic has really changed a lot about our daily lives. Many of us have lost jobs, others of us are working from home, and most of us are either willingly staying at home, or begrudgingly complying with statewide “stay at home” orders. But of all the changes that we have encountered in the…
Daily Office Readings – NT ( Hebrews 13:17-25 ) I’ve been involved in various Christian churches since birth. At one point in my life, I belonged to a particular denomination that closely resembled the Catholic/Anglican/Episcopal traditions, but wasn’t related to any of them. They were a blend of the charismatic, the evangelical and the liturgical,…
Just recently I attended a retreat, during which we had the opportunity to learn about prayer beads and mantras from a licensed yoga instructor. One of the things that they tried to make clear to us is that any repetitive phrase is a mantra, and that any string of beads used to help focus your…