The Bible is mine.

Holy Bible, Book divine,Precious treasure, thou art mine:
Mine to tell me whence I came,Mine to teach me what I am;
Mine to chide me when I rove,Mine to show a Saviour's love;
Mine thou art to guide and guard,Mine to punish or reward;
Mine to comfort in distress,Suff'ring in this wilderness;
Mine to show, by living faithMan can triumph over death;
Mine to tell of joys to comeAnd the rebel sinner's doom:
O thou holy Book divine,Precious treasure, thou art mine

My Elder Bishop Ceasar said...

There is a blessing in each time that you read the Bible.

Could that be? I wondered curiously, long before I had ever attempted to read the Bible, from cover to cover. I was enamored by this statement and set myself to read the Bible, at least once, to know.
I read that passage already, one is tempted to think, who has not known the life and power of the true Word of the Living God. I would have been one of those, to whom the Word was just an accomplishment, at having read or touched each passage once with my eyes.
Bishop made me curious for communion with God, through His Word, by discussing the "Blessing".
Now, when I repeat that to my children, I try to put a number on it for emphasis, so that they can realize the infinite proportions of such a promise of God's fellowship. Is this the blessing of the 150th time that we have read this passage?
It usually quiets the murmurings, that we are reading...again. Halleluia, What a Savior!

How deep the Father's love for us...

How Deep the Father’s Love For Us




Lyrics:
How deep the Father's love for us,
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure

How great the pain of searing loss,
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the chosen One,
Bring many sons to glory

Behold the Man upon a cross,
My sin upon His shoulders
Ashamed I hear my mocing voice,
Call out among the scoffers

It was my sin that helf Him there
Until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life
I knoww that it is finished

I will not boast in anything
No gifts, no power, no wisdom
But I will boast inJesus Christ
His death and resurrection

Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer
But this I know with all my heart
His wounds have paid my ransom


(REPEAT)As Wounds, which mar the chosen One, Bring many sons to glory.


What an amazing comfort, in the loss of war and searing loss. The Eternal value of the darkness, when the Father turned His face away as the wounds had to be allowed. What eternal paternal self control that He would watch and turn, or He would have had to come from Glory and turn the tables on the earth itself to deliver His Son from such pain and grief. Why are You turning from Me, said the Son. Every parent knows to what lengths they would go to turn pain and grief around for your child. The Father turned His face away to allow the salvation of a wretched soul, bringing many sons to glory. There was no other way. The Son had laid the plan out to His Father. Are You sure, the travail of soul is worth it to You; did they agree? Of Course they did. The outworking of the labor of redemption looked at through the sieve of parents of children gone in war, is the Hymn. How deep the Father’s love for us!

He did turn His face away. He did allow the marring of His son’s soul and those parents who send their children off to war can identify with the love that they have to sacrifice the possible loss for a greater good.
Many sons, in glory are the travail of the soul of the “Perfect Savior”.
Somebody meditated on Jesus' words from the cross and gave us this great hymn.

Dear Mommy- How deep the Father's Love For Us!

Dear Mom,

I hope that this letter finds you well in body, if not in spirit. I hear that your grief journey has taken you into the darker portions of its depths. I am sorry to hear that you are grieving in such a fashion this year. I cannot know how hard it is to look at pictures of the past and not be able to touch your beloved. God has comforts for us when we traverse these depths, I am sure that you have experienced some of them. Some of the questions and difficulties that we experience in these grievous days of bereavement, tongue cannot even create a word to describe. I have told you that sometimes I would want to wrap my entire body in gauze like a mummy and say that I couldn’t feel worse, if the pain was to my entire body. Your soul hurts, when the loss is a child. Your mind goes from stem to stern looking for the rightness of it. Sometimes, I look at people and want to say, why are you here, when my son isn’t. It can’t be rectified, if every other person were gone and my dear son reincarnated and placed into my bosom. In the book of Ruth, Naomi stated to her people, call me Marra, because grief has enveloped me and I can’t get out of it. The people kept trying to steer her eyes to the blessing that God had given to her, in Ruth and baby Obed. But, I do notice that though there is restoration, to her, she is still speaking in grief mode.
I love how Jesus embraces the women, Mary and Martha in their loss and grieves with them, though their unbelief was too much. “If You had been here, my brother would not have died?”
I translate that as, What is up with healing people you don’t even know and leaving your best friend to die? Jesus embraced them in their sorrow and wept with them, even though He intended to raise Lazarus from the grave. I feel with you, He said to His beloved. I feel that pain of loss, even though I am the Resurrection and the Life. Death touches me. Death has touched and continues to touch me.
In our love for Him, sometimes we feel that the only response to grief is to recoil and to close ourselves off from people, until we have a sufficient answer to justify the goodness of God with the grief of our souls. There is no answer for our loss. There is no amount of time that we can close ourselves off and find comfort for the loss of a child. A piece of our hope and heart and soul is gone and there is no restoration of that, until we unite in Heaven. We can’t talk about it, because people will say that we don’t trust God. People get up and say stuff like, have you ever seen God fail you. You feel like raising your hand and saying, Yes! Absolutely yes! There is no way that God would have let my son die, and still be my friend. But He is still good, isn’t He? He is still our friend, isn’t He? He is still great? He said to His best friends, I am the resurrection and the life. And to Thomas, blessed are they who have not seen and still believe. I believe, though I have trusted and He has said no, to my deepest and only real request. Keep my children safe, Lord. What else is there?
Blessed and deeper friends are those who know that God is good despite the deepest disappointments. I pray that no one would ever feel the pain of that loss. Death is horrible...





"Heirs together of the Grace of Life"

Femininity is directed and expected by men.

2010
1969
I love the reality that the original woman was formed while the man slept and almost, as though out of his dreams and his bone, God enfleshed his dreams. Men cannot know how much, their expectations are enfleshed in the women that they affect. I saw my father look into each of the eyes of his daughters with an awe of the knowledge that he had of us. Almost as though he had wished us somewhere. We were each a relationship that he had longed for more of with his mother and sister and aunts and grandmas. He would sometimes sit and think of something that would instigate and show out the personalities of each daughter. It was interesting and delightful sometimes to see him enjoy being the boss over these ladies who had bossed him in his youth.
Jesus, guided the men, with the woman caught in the act, that this expression is an expression that is formed and proposed by men. Not that there is no blame on the woman, but, we have a responsibility as a community to direct people in the positive and not to make that sort of career choice the only one for women in our midst. That is pagan! Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. The bone of the man, which was the dream that God created for him was redeemed and reformed in Jesus. Jesus becomes the greater breath that fills the sails of direction and makes it purposeful to live and to grow, even if the other people around have seen only the negative and the misdirected. Jesus saves that part and directs the sail toward heaven. As a culture, though, we are only what we think of our lowest citizens and of our lowest women, especially. If we cannot stoop to pick up the lowly, as the rich man forgot to do with Lazarus, we cannot expect Him to stoop to pick us up.

We are either heirs together, or disinherited and disintegrated apart.

Thoughts on the full sail /as we sail to Heaven's shores