hiatus

I'm going to be taking a break from posting for a while; if I feel I have anything worthwhile to write, I will ask Pastor Ivars to post it on his blog.

Keep searching for God -- until he finds you.

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Those other people

If you must speak badly of someone, don't speak it, but write it - in the sand, at the water's edge, near the waves.

Anonymous

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How is our vision?

If a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred -- like the Moon seen through a dirty telescope. That is why horrible nations have horrible religions: they have been looking at God through a dirty lens.
C. S. Lewis
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More thoughts about New Years' resolutions

The enemy often tries to make us attempt and start many projects so that we will be overwhelmed with too many tasks, and therefore achieve nothing and leave everything unfinished. Sometimes he even suggests the wish to undertake some excellent work that he foresees we will never accomplish. This is to distract us from the prosecution of some less excellent work that we would have easily completed. He does not care how many plans and beginnings we make, provided nothing is finished.
St. Francis de Sales
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Seeking God in the desert

Read about a unique monastic community and its difficulties with Rome.
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New Year's resolutions?

Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money." Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that." James 4:13-15
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The baby Jesus

As I settled down for the midnight Christmas Eve service, a small baby began to cry somewhere near the back of the sanctuary. I wondered, did the baby Jesus sound like this?
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Do you feel cold this Christmas?

Even in the midst of the joy of Christmas, there are those who do not feel joyful. Even during the season of love and goodwill, there are those unable to feel and extend such warm emotion. Even during the season of giving and gratitude, there are those who are "Scrooge-like" and unwilling to be grateful for what they have.

BUT ... the GOOD NEWS is that Jesus Christ -- our Lord and Savior -- was born so that "whosoever believeth in him may have eternal life!" Jesus is for us, even if we aren't feeling joyful. Jesus is for us, even if we haven't had a perfect year! Jesus is for us even if we feel like everyone else is against us!

CHRIST THE SAVIOR IS BORN ... FOR US ... ALL OF US!!
Rev. Alison Robuck
First Christian Church, Minneapolis, MN
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God's creation

Why argue about how God created the Universe? Let us belive that He did it. Let us agree that most of it is still a mystery. Let us accept that God also gave us the intellect to understand his creation, bit by bit, over years and years.
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For more images, click here.

Nativity

Andy Warhol

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Listen & follow

Let your soul be attentive to his word; follow carefully the path God tells you to take, for he is swift in his passing.
St. Ambrose
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Are we limiting God?

Creationist notions of intelligent design diminish God. Instead we should see his love for the infinitely evolving universe as like that of a parent allowing a growing child to make its own choices and go its own way in life.
George Coyne
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Wilderness

Last Sunday the sermon was on the Gospel text from St. Matthew, the first 8 verses of Chapter 1. Mark relates the prophecy in Isaiah about John the Baptist, "the voice of one crying out in the wilderness." We often look at the world around us as wilderness. But Rev. Brown pointed out that the real wilderness, the wilderness we must be concerned about, is not the world we live in, "The wilderness is not what's outside, but what is in our hearts."
This Advent, are our hearts prepared for the one who is to come? - the one who baptizes us with the Holy Spirit?

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Faith

Faith's way of walking is to cast all care upon the Lord and then to anticipate good results from the worst calamities.
-- Charles Spurgeon
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Why isn't God speaking to me?

The principal reason why the Old Law permitted us to ask questions of God, and why prophets and priests had to seek visions and revelations of God, was because at that time faith had no firm foundation and the law of the Gospel was not yet established; and thus it was necessary that men should enquire of God and that he should speak, whether by words or by visions and revelations or whether by figures and images or by many other ways of expressing His meaning. For all that he answered and revealed belonged to the mysteries of our faith and things touching it or leading to it.

But now that the faith is founded in Christ, now that in this era of grace the law of the Gospel has been made manifest, there is no reason to enquire of God in that manner nor for him to speak to us or answer us as he did then. For, in giving us, as he did, his Son, who is his one and only Word, he spoke to us once and for all, in this single Word, and he has no occasion to speak further.

And this is the meaning of that passage with which the Letter to the Hebrews begins, trying to persuade the Hebrews that they should abandon those first ways of dealing and communicating with God which are in the law of Moses, and should set their eyes on Christ alone: At various times in the past and in various different ways, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets; but in our own time, in the last days, he has spoken to us through his Son. That is, God has said so much about so many things through his Word that nothing more is needed, since that which he revealed partially in the past through the prophets, he has now revealed completely by giving us the All, which is his Son.

Therefore if someone were now to ask questions of God or seek any vision or revelation, he would not only be acting foolishly but would be committing an offence against God – for he should set his eyes altogether upon Christ and seek nothing beyond Christ.

God might answer him after this manner, saying: This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; listen to him. I have spoken all things to you in my Word. Set your eyes on him alone, for in him I have spoken and revealed to thee all things, and in him you shall find more than you ask for, even more than you want.

I descended upon him with my Spirit on Mount Tabor and said This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; listen to him. You have no reason to ask for new teaching or new answers from me because if I spoke to you in the past then it was to promise Christ. If people asked questions of me in the past then their questions were really a desire of Christ and a hope for his coming. For in him they were to find all good things, as has now been revealed in the teaching of the Evangelists and the Apostles.

St. John of the Cross

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Monastery life

A recent article in the NY Times provides a fascinating peek into the life of one monastery. From personal observation, I know that routines can vary in different communities; but, nevertheless, this is an interesting account.
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