Prayer Is about Love

T Today’s Reflection IN A SENSE, stories of answered prayer are thrilling, encouraging, and hopeful. Yet often I let out a sigh of despair when I hear a miraculous story or read a study about answered prayer. Even if God dashes off a miracle now and then, most of the time, if we are really honest, prayer just doesn’t work at all. Haven’t you pleaded with God for the recovery of a loved one, only to have those prayers seem to fall harmlessly to the floor? Who believes that God answers only the super holy, or those who pray more minutes, or in greater numbers, or with more fervor, or utilizing the proper formulas? If prayer works, it doesn’t seem to work very efficiently, or frequently. Perhaps we need to reexamine this whole business of praying for this or that. Prayer’s value for Jesus did not rise or fall depending on whether it “worked” or not. He prayed in Gethsemane to avoid death! For Jesus, prayer was about love, not consequences. His relationship with God, whom he called “Abba,” an unusually affectionate word, was so passionate that the two of them had to be together regularly. Prayer is actually an end in itself because it is communion with God. That same God is full of compassion, gravely concerned about the troubles of the world. Prayer called us into communion, not only with God, but with all God loves. Therefore, prayer, practiced even amateurishly, catapults us out into the streets to be in service. – James C. Howell Yours Are the Hands of Christ

Sickness and Spirit (first draft)

Christmas Candi [ on Wordpress ]

The Upper Room Reflections

WHEN A STORM raged on the Atlantic one night, [John] Wesley’s English companions screamed and cowered; surely Wesley felt fearful himself. But he marveled at a group of German Christians called Moravians who worshiped and calmly sang hymns while the storm raged. What accounted for their composure? One Moravian explained to Wesley that the group was “not afraid to die” – strange words to a man who believed he had to be sanctified, that he had to live a holy life, before God would accept him.

Like Paul’s moment of reckoning on the road to Damascus, the episode began a lengthy period of discernment for Wesley that led him to learn more from the Moravians. Upon his arrival in Georgia, he sought out a Moravian pastor who posed the question: “Do you know Jesus Christ?”

“I paused,” Wesley wrote in his journal, recounting the conversation, “and said, ‘I know He is the Saviour of the world.’ ‘True,’ replied he, ‘but do you know He has saved you?’ ”

Wesley wrestled with this question even as he struggled to bring people to Christ. Two years later he departed Georgia, depressed and defeated. “I who went to America to convert others,” he wrote, “was never myself converted to God.” Imagine his desperation at this point. How many times do you think he was driven to pray, in so many words, Which way, Lord?…

Wesley realized he didn’t have to earn God’s acceptance. He’d found the starting point to a new, God-inspired direction. His purpose grew from God’s love, and he lived out that purpose by taking the message of this boundless love to his parishioners. Eventually, Wesleyan theology would spread throughout the world.

– Rob Fuquay

Deeply Rooted Faith

GOD INTRODUCES UNDERSTANDING, also referred to as intellect, as “the most noble aspect of the soul.” For God, understanding includes rationality but is more than that. Spiritual understanding is not reason alone but reason coupled with faith.

God uses the eye as an analaogy to explain the role of understanding. We all know what our eyes do. They perceive images. Just as a camera needs a flash to be of any use in the dark, we need light in order to see. For both sight and understanding, we use the term perceive.

Our eyes perceive the physical world, and our souls perceive the spiritual world. But the intellect, like the eye, does not produce its own light. It requires an external light source. The intellect is the eye of the soul, but it cannot see without the light of faith.

Reason alone cannot lead us to faith; rather, reason with faith leads us to spiritual understanding.

–
Deeply Rooted

classic, clean comedy, yet adult

The Honeymooners Season 5 Episode 15, circa 1950s

Red Baron full movie

The sinking of the Laconia part1

The Laconia incident refers to the controversial events surrounding the sinking and subsequent aborted rescue attempt of a British troopship in the Atlantic Ocean during World War II. On 12 September 1942, RMS Laconia under the command of Capt. Rudolph Sharp and carrying some 2,732 crew, passengers, soldiers and POWs, was torpedoed and sunk by German U-boat U-156 off the coast of West Africa. Operating partly under the dictates of the old prize rules, the U-boat commander, Korvettenkapitän Werner Hartenstein, immediately commenced rescue operations, broadcasting their humanitarian intent on open radio channels to all Allied forces in the area, and were joined by the crews of other U-boats in the vicinity. Heading on the surface to a rendezvous with Vichy French ships under Red Cross banners, with their foredeck laden with survivors, U-156 was deliberately attacked by a USAAF B-24 Liberator bomber. The bomber, which had confirmed and reported the U-boat's intentions and the presence of survivors to higher command, was explicitly ordered to attack the ship anyway. The B-24 ended up killing dozens of the Laconia's survivors with bombs and strafing attacks, forcing U-156 to cast their remaining passengers into the sea and crash dive to avoid being destroyed. The pilots of the B-24 inexplicably reported that they had sunk U-156, and were awarded medals for bravery.

The event seriously chilled the general attitude of Germany's naval personnel towards rescuing .... go to site