First, a quote for today.
“Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.”-- Lord Byron
As far as being too busy:
Matthew 6:33 New Living Translation (NLT)
33 Seek the Kingdom of God[a] above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.
So if you take time for God…then God will take time for you.
In fact, God might even sing - this song to you. Anything is possible!
LOL. No, I’m not a stay-at-home mom, but I do stay at home WITH my mom (advanced Alzheimer’s) and my husband and dogs and chickens and cows… so no, moving is not an option. We did have a house church, but everyone else but us were young couples with children and the time and travel (this is a low population density area) got to be too much for them.
I’m not suffering. I just see no motivation to “go to church.” If the church isn’t a community, but merely a place in which to listen to an oration, engage in the (enjoyable) crowd dynamic of what we hope is “worship,” shake hands/exchange pleasantries and go home, then I don’t see the point. People will not accept an invitation to share a meal and get to know one another. Usually they’re polite about it. Sometimes they’re honest enough to say things like, “We aren’t interested in more things to do.” So what does one do with that? Turn the clock back to the 1950s? I wish I could, but the world has moved on.
This message was from today at the CAC - via RC Fr. Richard Rohr:
Death and Resurrection
Life-Death-Life
Friday, November 23, 2018The whole process of living, dying, and then living again starts with YHWH “breathing into clay,” which becomes “a living being” called Adam (“of the earth”; see Genesis 2:7). Breath and what appears to be mere dirt become human (the word “human” comes from the Latin humus ). Matter and spirit are bound together; divine and mortal interpenetrate and manifest one another. The Formless One forever takes on form as “Adam and Eve” (and in Jesus “the new Adam”), and then takes us back to the Formless One, once again, as each form painfully surrenders the small self that it has been for a while . Jesus says, “I am returning to take you with me, so that where I am you also may be” (John 14:3). Resurrection is simply incarnation taken to its logical conclusion: what starts in God ends in God—who is eternal.
Buddhists are looking at the same Mystery from a different angle when they say, “Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form,” and then all forms eventually return to formlessness (spirit or “emptiness”) once again. Christians call it incarnation > death > resurrection > ascension. This is about all of us, including all of creation—not just Jesus—coming forth as individuals and then going back to God, into the Ground of All Being. That cyclical wholeness should make us unafraid of death and thus able to fully appreciate life.
The Risen Christ represents the final and full state of every True Self: God-in-you who is able to see and honor God-everywhere-beyond-you too! In other words, Christ is more than anything else a “holon”—a scientific term for something that is simultaneously a whole by itself and yet a part of a larger whole, too. Jesus is telling us that we are all holons! We all participate in the one single life of God.
“To God, all people are in fact alive,” as Jesus put it (Luke 20:38). We are just in different stages of that aliveness—one of which we experience as dying.
This last paragraph is especially interesting:
“To God, all people are in fact alive,” as Jesus put it (Luke 20:38). We are just in different stages of that aliveness—one of which we experience as dying.
Does this also apply to any zombies, from Z-Hell (1, 2, 3, 4)?
Hi Cindy, have to say that you are doing good with your mom. I see many families who decide they can’t deal with what you are doing. Not a judgment, just an observation.
Hardest time in your life.
Peace and prayers for you.
Please don’t be afraid to offer hope to others here. We all need it and will be blessed. Thanks for what you are doing for your mom.
The alleged healings & miracles in Kathryn Kuhlman’s meetings have been questioned:
.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Kuhlman
Can the alleged healings of those “revivals” be verified?
Was the gospel preached that of the apostle Paul, or a false gospel:
Gal.1: 6 I am amazed that so quickly you are deserting from the One having called you in the grace of Christ to another gospel, 7 which is not another, except there are some who are troubling you and are desiring to pervert the gospel of Christ.
8 But even if we or an angel out of heaven should preach a gospel to you contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let him be accursed!
2 Cor.11: 13 For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. 14 And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. 15 Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.
Well, I watch TV evangelist Joel Osteen each Sunday…before attending the EO, OCA service. And I think I hear God singing, this song to me…after I’m done watching Joel Osteen!
I think the tougher question for me is “How do I be a good Christian AND go to church?” I simply define “church” as a gathering of two people or more people in Christ’s name for the purpose of worship. It can be at home or in a large building with hundreds of people. I think we all want that as Christians. Personally I like the idea of Christians coming together in large numbers to pool their resources together. The pitfalls, of course, becomes being a Pharisee and buying into distorted groupthink. And of course there is going to be no perfect church. But we so need each other and the personal interaction that I think it is worth the imperfection.
One may be a good Christian and not “attend church” (if “attend church” means to be present at a denominational “church” meeting). But you can’t be a good Christian—indeed, you can’t be a Christian at all—without being a part of the only true Church (Assembly) that exists—the Church which Christ founded. There’s only one such Church.
I heard about Kathryn Kuhlman’s many miracles, but when I actually attended her packed out rallies in LA, I saw nothing but paranormal insghts, no convincing healings.
Kathryn Kuhlman didn’t set out to be a healer. She was a preacher and thought that was her calling. But during one of her meetings, several people who had been present, came up to her and said that while she was speaking, they were healed of various conditions that they had. So she came to realize that God was healing people through her.
You may have seen “no convinced healings,” but do you know that there were none? An acquaintance of mine attended one of her meetings, and was gloriously healed of a serious condition.
I can’t speak for Kathryn Kuhlman. But I know they are very prevalent, in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Pentecostal and Native American worlds. They are also prevalent in such groups, as the Bruno Groening Circle of Friends. i have experienced and witnessed this the most, when I:
Attended the healing services, of Roman Catholic priest Father A… Before he moved to Wisconsin. He has the gift of healing and hearing the voice of God.
Or when I was part, of the Two Feathers Medicine Clan. And hung around them and their Lakota leader, Duke Big Feather. And later with Ute Medicine Man, Joseph Many Horses.