Offenses will loose their weight and sting. Time changes us. Life stages adjust us. Also forgiveness is a healing balm. It’s an act of love that works both ways.
Now the Gibeonites were not of the people of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites; although the people of Israel had sworn to spare them, Saul had tried to wipe them out in his zeal for the people of Israel and Judah.
My winter cleaning unearthed an old notebook. I opened it to this poem from over a decade ago. I don’t think I’ve ever shared it and I certainly understand it better today […]
…and as I slowly made my way home I understood that even as we are caught in a web of hurt and brokenness, we’re also in a web of healing and mercy. […]
Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure. The Lord lifts up the humble; he casts the wicked to the ground.
Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; make melody to our God on the lyre! He covers the heavens with clouds; he prepares rain for the earth; he makes grass grow on the hills. {Click to read full chapter.}
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.[b] The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
We love each other because God loved us first. If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a Christian brother or sister, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people […]
Have you thought about those relationships where God joins hearts and souls before minds are aligned and vows are spoken? When a man and woman try to catch up to what God has ordained as their union? When they struggle to grasp the totality of His promise? How difficult that must be for each to know the end result and to continue to sink in the minutia of process, continually getting lost in the labyrinth of selfish independent will (independent of God’s will).
But, doesn’t that describe the bulk of intimate relationships? We all connect to our significant other in some way, on some level, long before our thoughts and our will align and operate in unity. The life of a relationship is intended to flow towards total unity… into oneness.
When my dad died, I realized that I had been subconsciously waiting for him to want a relationship with me. With my hope turned on low, I still hoped he would one day reach out to me in response to all my pass efforts… but he refused to send word to me, to request my presence, to offer reconciliation. That saddened me, but I realized he preferred to go to his grave before reconciling our relationship. Building a relationship was of no interest to him. And I’m okay with his preference. Understanding that about him put my interactions with men in a whole new light. My intolerance, my harshness. My hope, my repeated efforts. My exhaustion and frustration. My desire to build a relationship and lack of understanding of how to go about it. My ineffective communication and my inability to get what I want – a husband and family of my own.
Two Sundays ago, I participated in my first event as a RAINN representative. RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) is an organization dedicated to assisting survivors of sexual assault. As a member of the RAINN Speakers Bureau I receive notices from organizations looking for people to speak about sexual violence, preferably, but not necessarily, from their own experience…. {Click on VIEW ORIGINAL POST to read the whole blog….}
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$549,000
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111th Street & Madison Avenue, East Harlem
The nation that has no reverence for man is also lacking in reverence for God and need to be instructed.
