The cross and suffering – David Platt

O mica parte dintr-o predica MARE:

The first temptation: self-gratification. Commanding stones to become loaves of bread because He was hungry. Jesus was, and we are tempted to fulfill our wants apart from God’s will. Jesus fought off this temptation by trusting the all-satisfying,  all-sufficient goodness of the Father.

The second temptation: self-protection. “Throw yourself down from here, and the angels will catch you.” Jesus was, and we are tempted to question God’s presence and manipulate God’s promises, but Jesus resisted that temptation by resting in the shelter of the Father’s unshakeable security.

The third temptation: self-exaltation. “You can have everything in the world,” Satan says to Jesus, “if you’ll just turn from the worship of your Father.” Like Jesus, we are tempted to assert ourselves in the world while we rob God of His worship, and glory be to His name, Jesus refused to exchange the end-time exaltation by the Father for a right-now exaltation of a snake.

 

I carry Your heart with me – E. E. Cummings

I carry Your heart with me
(I carry it in my heart)
I am never without it
(anywhere I go You go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is Your doing, my darling)
I fear no fate
(for You are my fate, my sweet)
I want no world
(for beautiful You are my world, my True)
and it’s You are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is You
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart:

I carry Your heart (I carry it in my heart).

 

Sunt incredintat ca Acela care a inceput in voi aceasta buna lucrare o va ispravi pana in ziua lui Isus Hristos.

‘Impossible’ is not a word…

 

The Property of Tears

How assuring to know that our pain is not haphazardly viewed by the one who made tear ducts able to spill over with grief and anguish. God keeps count of our sorrowful struggling, each tear recorded and collected as pain steeped with the life of the one who wept it. Like a parent grieving at a child’s wound, God knows our laments more intimately than we realize.

But also more than a parent wiping eyes and collecting tears, God has shed tears of his own, taking on the limitations and sufferings of creation personally, declaring in body that embodiment is something God takes very seriously.

I know of no equal comfort in the midst of life’s sorrows, no other answer within the problem of pain and evil. God has sent a Son as unique and personal as the very tears we shed crying out for answers and consolation.

(Jill Carattini – A Slice of Infinity, RZIM )