Today's Gospel lesson was Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. The pastor had a wonderful children's sermon; he handed out cups and kept filling them with water even after the children didn't want any more to drink. What a good illustration of God's endless love for us.
I thank you, Lord, that I continue to thirst for the living water. I thank you, Lord, that you continue to quench my thirst.
+ pax

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you;
All things are passing;
God never changes;
Patience gains all things;
Whoever possesses God,
Lacks nothing.
God alone is enough.
Found in Teresa of Avila's Prayer Book after her death
+ pax

(T)heology is not stagnant. It, like language, evolves. Someone told me that God doesn't change but our understanding of God changes. As people/society develop over the centuries/milleniums, we will naturally come to an expanded understanding of God.
Frances Wallis
+ pax

A friend of mine is facing what is not unusual in the business world: be a team player who ignores what is right -- or -- stand up for the truth -- at the probable cost of losing your job.
On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question, "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
+ pax

Bible Christians . . . must necessarily believe the Book of Genesis, word for word inspired by God, is an accurate and literal book of science. It is clear to the rest of us that Genesis teaches that God created and established order in the cosmos, religious truths indeed that go beyond the realm of science but not against it.

The evangelicals are entitled to their beliefs, but they have no right to try to impose their view of creation on the rest of us and to deprive other people's children of an accurate picture of how science models the emergence and development of life -- or an alternative view of the literary nature of the book of Genesis.

One can understand their effort to fight scientific modernism. If literal interpretation of Genesis is taken away from them, then their entire religious edifice is shaken to its foundations. However, when in their battle against modernism they deprive other children of a proper education, they violate our freedom of religion.

Andrew Greeley

+ pax

People often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
C. S. Lewis
+ pax

But avoid stupid controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.
Titus 3:9
+ pax

No, the Church has not been victorious, she has failed and is failing still because she assumes that the judgment that is passed around her applies to the world but not to herself.
Martin Niemoeller
+ pax

LENTEN MESSAGE

Rend your hearts not your garments.

Joel 2:12

+ pax

Something to think about:
Do not attach yourself to any particular creed exclusively and disbelieve all the rest; otherwise you will lose much good, nay, you will fail to recognize the real truth of the matter. God, the omnipresent and omnipotent, is not confined to any one creed, for he says, "Wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of Allah." Everyone praises what he believes; his God is his own creature, and in praising it he praises himself. Consequently he blames the beliefs of others, which he would not do if he were just, but his dislike is based on ignorance.
Ibn al-Arabi
+ pax

I have been contemplating the question: What is it that drives fundamentalists and pietists to attempt to enslave or else condemn other believers with their human-devised codes of behavior? -- works oriented outward superiority? The words of Paul to the Galatians came to mind:
I went up in response to a revelation. Then I laid before them (though only in a private meeting with the acknowledged leaders) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure that I was not running, or had not run, in vain. But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. But because of false believers secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might enslave us — we did not submit to them even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might always remain with you.
Galatians 2:2-5
+ pax

Christ was the Word that spake it.

He took the bread and brake it.

And what that Word doth make it.

That I believe and take it.
John Donne
+ pax