If words prayed without thoughts fail to ascend to heaven, then thoughts must be the wings of prayer that bring those words there.
Enoch and Elijah, like Jesus, ascended to heaven, but Enoch and Elijah, unlike Jesus, did not DESCEND from heaven in the first place.
There was once an infinite infant who joined the infantry, in fact he grew to become commander and CHIEF of God’s infantry.
We humans are all lazy, only in different ways, and we are also all ignorant, only in different areas. This realization isn’t a negative, if it helps us go easier on the weaknesses of others (with which and with whom we tend to compare ourselves only by our strengths) and easier on our own weaknesses sometimes.
There’s earthly fame and there’s heavenly fame, and the one who experiences one may know nothing of the other.
There’s earthly obscurity and there’s heavenly obscurity, and one is more serious than the other in that it is spread further and lasts longer.
Come to think of it, if earthly obscurity preserves good character, then it IS heavenly.
It’s been said that almost half of the ancestral line of Jesus Christ is made up of broken families. That needn’t surprise us in light of what God had to work with, and the fact that ALL of redemptive history is the account of the restoration of that original Adamic broken family.
The Garden of Eden becomes a city, New Jerusalem. One might say it’s to be THE garden city. Far more will have been gained than was ever lost in The Fall, so all that was endured will have been well worth it! There are other garden cities on earth and even a garden state, but New Jerusalem far surpasses them all. The prophet Ezekiel spoke of a “garden of renown” or “a planting place.” (Ezekiel 34 v.29) The plantings in this case will be human plantings and flowerings made everlasting.
If all shepherds are responsible for the condition of their sheep, then there are many hoping for the contrition of their sheep.
It’s no wonder that Jesus cares so much about the sanctity of life when we consider that he was once a fetus inside a woman himself.
Human nature is like twisted wood (acacia wood of example), the gnarls produce the snarls. But that gnarled and snarling wood can be inlaid with pure gold.
May we find what we don’t expect in pleasant surprises, grain waving on the mountaintops, lambs in the place of lions…..and all seeming to come out of nowhere.
King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon referred to himself as the king of kings. This title was only later applied to Jesus. When Nebuchadnezzar acknowledged the true God hundreds of years before the birth of the Messiah, he was slow to give up his prized title, so he called God the “Lord of Kings.” But we know who is the true King of Kings!
When Peter (Jude also) in his epistles greets the reader with. “peace is being multiplied to you,” he is using an ancient greeting also used by King Nebuchadnezzar and even Darius of Persia in their written decrees. Peter, you see, knew he was a king himself and a priest in a spiritual kingdom. He too had the power of royal decree, as do we, but from the King of Kings and His word alone.
trbarlow 