This comes via Lisa Graas and is lovely little tool for finding your Bible Birthday Verse.
Mine was:
Ephesians 2:5 NIV
…alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
Isn’t that the truth!
What’s yours?
A few links I found interesting for one reason or another:
OneDaringJew – The Lamb that was slain: How can you reject such a great salvation?
Lisa Graas – Wednesday, January 5, 2011: News Roundup
National Post – Copts braced for copycat attacks by extremists
CIFWatch – The Board of Deputies’ appalling lack of moral clarity in response to the Kairos document
Accepting Abundance – Catholic Identity, Catholic Hospitals, You and Me
An exorcism reality show!
Wow what will they think of next?
Discovery Channel is teaming with the Vatican for an unprecedented new series hunting the deadliest catch of all: Demons.
The Exorcist Files will recreate stories of real-life hauntings and demonic possession, based on cases investigated by the Catholic Church. The project includes access into the Vatican’s case files, as well as interviews with the organization’s top exorcists — religious experts who are rarely seen on television.
I’m going to be honest, I just get help myself, I’d love to see this show as I’d find it morbidly fascinating.
I was planning to blog on the rather alarmist headlines…..
The Independent – The Islamification of Britain: record numbers embrace Muslim faith
…..being generated in the mainstream media – and on some blogs – following a new report published by the think-tank Faith Matters, entitled:
A Minority within a Minority: A Report on Converts to Islam in the United Kingdom.
However, Richard Bartholomew has beaten me to the punch and so do hop over to read his rather more sober appraisal:
Fascinating article by Fr Longenecker on the Anglican Ordinariate (Biretta-tip Fr. Stephen Smuts). Well worth reading the whole article but here’s a snippet:
The Anglican Ordinariate must be seen in a wider context. The creation of the ordinariate is first and foremost an attempt to answer the repeated pleas for an Anglican-Catholic structure. Rome simply responded to those who were asking for a way in while still retaining their styles of worship and culture of religion. However, the wider context is the present re-alignment within all of Christianity. This re-alignment is not between Catholics and Protestants but between those who believe in a revealed religion and those who believe in a relative religion. It is between two different foundational philosophies. The re-alignment is between those, on the one hand, who believe that all religion is a human construction devised in particular historical circumstances and therefore flexible, ambiguous and necessarily adaptable, and between those who believe that religion is revealed by God in particular circumstances and places and times because those times themselves and those people and those places were the best and most propitious ways for the Almighty to reveal himself to his beloved race of men.
The first are those who believe religion is relative and the second are those who believe it is revealed. There are plenty of both types within the different denominations, and at this time in church history the great re-alignment is taking place. In the years to come more and more Christians of every denomination will begin to see clearly and the divisions will continue. On one side will be those who believe their relative religion was devised by humans in particular historical circumstances and so they will continue to adapt their religion to whatever the world demands. In other words, they will adapt Christianity to the world rather than challenging the world with the Christian gospel.
Israel National News have an article reporting on archaeologists in Iraq attempting to save the ruins of a Biblical era Tower, that some claim is the Tower of Babel mentioned in Genesis 11.
As a first step, experts are working on a plan to prevent further deterioration of the mud-brick ruins, which were damaged by Hussein’s personal building projects.
A mound of mud-brick buildings is all that remains of the ancient city in Babylon where the Tower was being built, whose foundations appear to be a square of earthen embankments, measuring 300 feet on each side.
It’s worth noting that Professor John Byron urges caution and comments:
However, this is probably not THE tower of Babel. Instead it is Etemenanki which was a ziggurat built by Nebuchadnezzar II.
The below image comes courtesy of Richard Littledale and is a blood-splattered banner of Jesus taken from the shattered Egyptian Coptic al-Qiddissian church following the Bomb – complete with metal fragments, glass and ball bearings – which ripped through a crowd of Christian Copt worshippers as they emerged from their New Year’s mass:
Enough said….
According to an article on CNN:
In studies on college students, atheists and agnostics reported more anger at God during their lifetimes than believers. A separate study also found this pattern among bereaved individuals. This phenomenon is something Exline and colleagues will explore more in future research.
It seems that more religious people are less likely to feel angry at God and more likely to see his intentions as well-meaning, Exline’s research found.
And younger people tend to be angrier at God than older people, Exline said. She says some of the reasons she’s seen people the angriest at God include rejection from preferred colleges and sports injuries preventing high schoolers from competing.
The age difference may have to do with cultural norms, she said. Perhaps previous generations were taught to not question God, whereas younger people today don’t have any qualms about it. On the other hand, it might be that as people get older, they learn how to handle these types of feelings better.
The Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, was assassinated earlier today for supporting reforms to Pakistan’s arcane blasphemy laws.
[.....]
Taseer incurred the wrath of religious extremists after taking up the case of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian sentenced to death for blasphemy. He promised to reform Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and is known to have opposed constitutional discrimination against the Ahmadi/Qadyani sect which is currently declared heretical by the State.
A secularist who championed women’s rights and wanted to reform the religious ordinances, Taseer’s assassination will come as a massive blow to all those pursuing constitutional reforms in Pakistan.
Further Link:
National Catholic Register – Gunned Down for Defending Christians
I have been conversing with Lisa Graas on the subject of fear and love, prompted by recent tragic events.
I have been deeply troubled in spirit for the plight of our brothers and sisters and fearful for them.
This Scripture came to mind:
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear….
I know it’s not like me, but I’d like to post an Orthodox prayer from St Nikolai of Ohrid:
Martyrs of great love, pray to God for us.
You who have known a love stronger than death, pray to Love for us.
You who in this life luckily escaped from the snare of transitory love, which is like a little color on a boulder, which the rain washes away;
You who have preached that love is more mysterious than the flesh, and more eternal than the stars in heaven;
You who through love have understood both wood and stone, both the beast in the forest and the fish in the water (for love breaks the seals of all mysteries, and all things appear naked to their lover);
You who with love have fulfilled all the prophets, satisfied all religions, and surpassed all laws;
You are the greatest of conquerors, who is stronger than you?
You are the greatest of wise men, who is wiser than you?
You are the greatest of precious stones, who is scarcer than you?
You are gods*, who have seen yourselves in God and God in yourselves.
You have an honor greater than the angels, for the angels became angels without torment and martyrdom.
To you we bow down and ask: pray to God for us.
That we too may cleanse ourselves of the illusory love, that ends in hatred.
That we too may crown our faith and hope with a crown in which even suns have little value.
That we too may begin to see, and know, and rejoice with the joy, with which only the angels can rejoice.
That our life may also become a triradiate splendor, like the One from whom all splendor, unmixed with darkness, comes.
That we too may recognize in ourselves the eternal virgin, and the pre-eternal Son of the Virgin, and the dove-like Spirit.
Martyrs of great love, only you have suffering lesser than your love. Every worldly love brings suffering greater than its love. But you have loved what is deeper than time and wider than space.
When your mortal brothers hear about your sufferings they consider them unbelievable and unbearable. For they can really imagine themselves only in your sufferings and not in your love, in the meaning of your sufferings. Oh, if they could only imagine themselves in your love also! All your sufferings would seem like nothing to them, just as they seemed to you. Just as the cold rain and the howling of the wind seem like nothing to a mother as she hurries home to her child.
To one who has a goal greater than the world, the world can do nothing.
One who hurries to a home wider than space, space cannot contain.
One who has a love more precious than temporal creations, can neither be impeded nor trampled by time.
Across all rugged terrain and through all stormy tempests Love leads His beloved ones and draws them to Himself.
Martyrs of great love, pray to God for us.
*Cf. Ps. 82:6.
