Monday, November 06, 2023
Friday, November 03, 2023
The Power of The Cross
I’ll turn conventional wisdom on its head,
I’ll expose so-called experts as shams.
So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn’t God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered stupid—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.
While Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle—and Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God’s ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so cheap, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can’t begin to compete with God’s “weakness.”
Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”"
(1 Corinthians 1:18-31) The Message Translation
Friday, October 27, 2023
Prayers From The Anglican Church
What we have not; give us,
What we are not, kindly make us
For Your Son’s sake.
Amen.”
~ an Old Anglican Prayer
"Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:
Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them,
that by patience, and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast
the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen."
~ an Old Anglican Prayer
"Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we your unworthy servants give you most
humble and hearty thanks. for all your goodness and loving-kindness to us and to all people;
We bless you for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life;
but above all for your inestimable love."
~ an Old Anglican Prayer
Friday, October 20, 2023
Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address
"On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it ~ all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place devoted altogether to saving the Union without war insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war ~ seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.
And the war came.