Honestly it’s the same basic idea as a newspaper… controversy attracts more attention.Swiss Bro wrote: ↑Sat Apr 08, 2023 1:45 am Just thought about the marvellous blessings of the sacrifice and resurrection of ourLord and Saviour Jesus Christ and thought I‘d wish you all a very blessed Easter weekend.
Feel free to chip in and bring some positive feelings into the doom and gloom of recent Mennonet debates (no criticism intended but I feel we don‘t have enough simple worship/devotion threads going).
With that said may God bless you and your loved ones during all trials and tribulations. Keep the faith and have trust in Him, He knows what He is doing even if we don‘t
By LUTHER RAY ABEL / April 7, 2023 3:13 PM
Good Friday, the day of Christ’s execution, is a time to surrender the stage to civilization’s best writers and orators.
Let us read of joy on this day of death.
Chesterton meditates upon Christ’s least-disclosed trait at the close of Orthodoxy (thanks to Robert Alderson for reminding me of this passage):
Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.
And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came;
and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall.
His pathos was natural, almost casual.
The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears.
He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city.
Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger.
He never restrained His anger.
He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell.
Yet He restrained something.
I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness.
There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray.
There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation.
There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth;
and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.
Alone, the events of that Friday simply were; only when considered in the dawn of the third day can they be understood as “Good.”
We can find that joy again at the conclusion of Chesterton’s poem, “The Earth’s Shame”:
A smile. How good it is to know of. I simply cannot close a Good Friday post without the hopefulness of S. M. Lockridge:Name not his deed: in shuddering and in haste
We dragged him darkly o’er the windy fell:
That night there was a gibbet in the waste,
And a new sin in hell.
Be his deed hid from commonwealths and kings,
By all men born be one true tale forgot;
But three things, braver than all earthly things,
Faced him and feared him not.
Above his head and sunken secret face
Nested the sparrow’s young and dropped not dead.
From the red blood and slime of that lost place
Grew daisies white, not red.
And from high heaven looking upon him,
Slowly upon the face of God did come
A smile the cherubim and seraphim
Hid all their faces from.
That line I underlined reminded me especially of the apostle Peter. Matthew 16:21-23Swiss Bro wrote: ↑Sat Apr 08, 2023 1:45 am Just thought about the marvellous blessings of the sacrifice and resurrection of ourLord and Saviour Jesus Christ and thought I‘d wish you all a very blessed Easter weekend.
Feel free to chip in and bring some positive feelings into the doom and gloom of recent Mennonet debates (no criticism intended but I feel we don‘t have enough simple worship/devotion threads going).
With that said may God bless you and your loved ones during all trials and tribulations. Keep the faith and have trust in Him, He knows what He is doing even if we don‘t
Peter was quite an example of having human concerns and not trusting that God knows what He is doing, I, too, can and often do, take on earthly concerns that rob me of my peace and joy as I rest in Him. The hymn goes - 'Trust and obey for there is no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.'From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Philippians 3:7-16
English Standard Version
7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Straining Toward the Goal
12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. 16 Only let us hold true to what we have attained.
One of my favorite Easter hymns, and one of the best arrangements:But Jesus has cheered the dark valley of sorrow,
And bade us, immortal, to heaven ascend.
Lift then your voices in triumph on high,
For Jesus has risen, and man shall not die.
