Tag Archives: God

Reflection

God Made Man

Julian of Norwich, p 4 says,

” … our God wants us to value all his work very highly; the noble work of creation, especially the creation of man, which excels everything else…”*

It strikes me that this is really significant. God made man in his own image (Gen 1:26) and he declared that all he made was excellent in every way (Gen 1:31).
Satan has been attacking man ever since to get at God. He has been hard at work to demean man, to make him less than. It seems this demeaning is getting worse and worse. The most dreadful denigration of man is happening today – reducing the glory of man (made in God’s image) to an animal – sexual denigration, moral denigration (lying, cheating, killing, etc), cheap life (abortion, war, drugs), etc.
Satan had been robbing us of our glory out of his hatred for God. Are we going to let him continue? Time to take a stand, to resist him, and return to our true place in and with God.

*[ Julian of Norwich. 1987. Revelations of divine love. (This edition edited by Halcyon Backhouse with Rhona Piper) London: Hodder & Stoughton.]

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Reflection

Suffering of the Animals and the Land

I’ve been reading Hosea in the Old Testament. I’ve read it many times before but I’ve recently noticed a few verses in Hosea 4 (verses 1-3). Here’s what it says in the Living Translation:

“There is no faithfulness, no kindness, no knowledge of God in your land. You curse and lie and kill and steal and commit adultery. There is violence everywhere, with one murder after another. That is why your land is not producing. It is filled with sadness, and all living things are becoming sick and dying. Even the animals, birds, and fish have begun to disappear.”

My goodness, this sounds like a description of what is happening today all around the world! Watching the news, reading the newspaper, reading the news online gets to be pretty distressing with such an increase in unnatural events like murder, war, embezzlement, greed, etc. These have the consequence of polluting the land, polluting the world, polluting the very air we breathe. How many species of animals, birds and fish are now extinct or close to extinction? It seems that what Hosea had to say so very long ago is so very true for our now. Sometimes it seems so hopeless and I feel a “what’s-the-point” feeling creeping up trying to overtake me.
The world is filled with sadness, the land itself is sad. What reason has the animal world to fight to survive?
It makes me sad too.
However, there is hope. Hosea has the answer. It might not be palatable to many but I believe it is the way we should go. In the last chapter (chapter 14 verses 1-7), he speaks of our returning to God and of turning from our sinful ways. There’s some good promises in there.
Hosea is a good book to read. With very good advice to put into practice.  I encourage you to do so.

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Reflection

Jesus, the Lamb Sacrificed for Us

Jesus is the pure and spotless lamb sacrificed for us. Our sins are covered by his blood, a full and perfect atonement. Jesus is also the only High Priest who could offer up the once-for-all-time perfect sacrifice. He has made the WAY for us, the only way, out of the jaws of death and damnation back to our Creator in whose arms we truly belong.

There is much to reflect on at Easter as we trace Jesus’ last days — the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the last supper, Gethsemane, betrayal and desertion, torture and the mockery of a trial, agonising death by crucifixion, burial in someone else’s tomb, and finally the resurrection. My prayer is that God will guide you as you reflect on this and that you will hear His heart for you. God bless you this Easter.

Throughout his life he resisted the persistent temptations of the evil one till now:

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in ever way, just as we are — yet was without sin.” Hebrews 4:15

Because Jesus was a person like us, he knows the temptations to which we are exposed. He will help us to resist them, and he paid the full price for all our failures.

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Reflection

Eternity, no beginning and no end!

I’ve started reading 1 John yet again. So good!! Jesus was from the beginning… but was there ever a beginning? Eternity has no beginning and no end. My mind cannot grasp that. God has ever been, and ever will be. No beginning, no end!
There are vast universes out there. They are endless. Are we the only place where there is intelligent life? Has God created beings in his own image elsewhere? Could be. Have they done better than us? Perhaps so.
How vastly different is our little world trapped in time and space when compared to God with his infinite timelessness and infinite universe, with no beginning and no end. We cannot begin to grasp it as much as we may try. There is no logical explanation. Yet God made us in his own image, and desired to have fellowship with us because he loved us, his own creation. By giving us free wills he introduced a tremendous wrinkle in it all. Jesus has and continues to deal with that wrinkle.
By choosing him our wrinkled will is lined up with God’s. We are then inheritors of eternity. Thank you, Jesus!

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Reflection

Jesus pleased God!

When Jesus was baptized (as recorded in Mark 1), God spoke from heaven saying, “You are my beloved Son, and I am fully pleased with you.” Jesus had not yet begun any sort of ministry. All he’d done was be born, grow up and get baptized by John. Yet God was pleased with him, and fully pleased at that!! That pleasure had nothing to do with what Jesus did or his ministry. That set me thinking. How many of us grew up with a father (and/or mother) who was fully pleased with us, and let us know it? I doubt there’s many. Yet we spend much of our lives unconsciously striving to please, or to be so relevant (important, indispensable, useful, whatever) and so ‘please’ the one whose love and pleasure we so long for. This might not make much sense to you but I’m thinking there’s a connection to relevance deprivation and the fact there’s nothing we can or need do to earn the Father’s love and delight. It is already ours. Jesus made sure of that.
Now we are coming close to Christmas. It’s just weeks away. It is a good time for us to reflect on the why’s of why he came. He left a pretty wonderful place to be born poor in rather questionable circumstances, and then to live a short life building the foundation for us to enter into a fresh new relationship with God the Father. A relationship where our sins are forgiven and where our Father God is pleased with us.
Take heart! You are greatly loved. You don’t have to strive to be loved… you just are.

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Reflection

Temptation

Some years ago I was strongly impressed with Jesus’ response to the evil one’s temptation of him after those 40 days in the wilderness.

We read in Matthew 4:1-11 that Jesus was tempted to take matters into his own hands to achieve his earthly goals:
– to satisfy hunger
– to get God to do what he wants
– to get world from Satan by any means

He was tempted to move from absolute trust in God to helping God our by his own efforts.

Really for me it comes down to realising that no matter how “hungry” I am to achieve a goal I am to trust Jesus and not help God out by self-effort, manipulation, or idolatrous submission to someone or something else. Phew! Help, I need your help, Lord Jesus.

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General

A year to forget, perhaps…

It’s been too long since I wrote anything on Hope Today. Life seems to have had a way of slurping up the available hours in the day. Now, I have to say that this past 12 months have been a challenge in so many ways. Here’s a little review of what that has meant…
1) Australia has been experiencing a drought, a rather long one. Everything was so dry, so dead looking. The grass crunched beneath my feet as I walked around my garden. I didn’t need to mow since nothing was growing. Gardening was mostly at a standstill except watering a little in an attempt to keep the garden alive.
2) In September we had a snow storm, the first I’d experienced in the 9 years I’ve lived here. Such a beautiful sight even though it melted away too quickly. It provided some much needed nourishment for the soil and plants.
3) Then came the bush fires!! What can I say? What an awful time that was for NSW and Vic. The fires came so very close from several sides over the summer months. The winds blew fiercely making things much worse. Each time it looked as if we would ‘get it,’ the wind changed and we were safe again.
4) With the bushfires came the smoke. It was so thick and there was no escape. Going outside proved a challenge for breathing. I stayed inside most of the time and dealt with life from there, though the smoke smell permeated the house long after the fires were gone.
5) Then early this year the Corona Virus appeared on the scene. COVID-19 has disrupted life across the world in ways we could not have imagined this time last year. Australia has fared better than other countries (thus far). Living out in a rural area has been a blessing for me so that lockdown has not been as traumatic or stressful as it has for those in the cities. Also, we have had no postive cases in the region. Sad to say the whole economy has taken a huge hit. And, it seems there is no end in sight for the pandemic coming to an end. Will they ever develop a vaccine?

So, what does the future hold? I don’t know. What I do know is that through it all God has given me peace. My times and my life are in his hands. He is well aware of what is happening all over the world, AND he is still God.
My prayer is that God will bring good out of all the awful things that have been happening.
I am continually pressed to trust Jesus, and not to look at the wild storms all about me.
May you be able to do the same.
Came across this on the web and it about sums up what most of us feel, eh?

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Reflection

Father Heart of God

Back in 2003 I was thinking about God as Father. I was particularly struck by what Jesus said of his own relationship with Father God all through the gospel of John. It seems like it would be good to come back to what I wrote all those years ago. May Father God bless and encourage you as you read and think about God as your heavenly Father.
We need to experience God’s father heart towards us. What we know of a father’s heart is pretty pitiful. For some it’s as a tyrant who demands unquestioning obedience and who uses physical force or verbal abuse to achieve that obedience. For some it’s as a slave driver who requires “work” to pay one’s way. For some it’s like a school teacher requiring perfect scores. For others though there may be a physical presence, the father is emotionally absent. For many there is no father because of death, divorce, or other circumstance causing separation of the family.
Our experience of our own fathers’ hearts becomes our view of God’s father heart so that our sense his heart may be one or more of the following:

He’s a tyrant waiting for me to put one foot out of place
He’s violent and vengeful
He’s distant and disinterested
He’s unapproachable
He doesn’t listen
He only pays attention if I get all my ducks in a row
He doesn’t care about me or what I feel
He won’t help me, I have to figure it out myself
He doesn’t like me (because I’m ugly, stupid, slow, lazy, fat, careless, a girl, a boy, not like him, whatever)

Here are some scriptures to help you meditate on Father God. God is emotionally present, kind, loving, gentle, and understanding of our limitations. Our minds may know this but our hearts don’t.

Psalm 103:13, 14 says, “The Lord is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him. For he understands how weak we are; he knows we are only dust.”

Isaiah 9:6 “Mighty God, everlasting father …”

Matthew 6:9 “Our Father in heaven may your name be honored …”

*John 10:30 “The Father and I are one …” Look at Jesus to get a view of the father heart of God.

Romans 8:15 “Father dear Father …”

Hebrews 1:5 “Today I have become your Father …”

Ephesians 4:6 “Only one God and Father …”

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Reflection

Time

Time. In some respects time is so against us. The older we get the more quickly it scurries away… a month comes and goes like it is just a single day. Why, just yesterday it was New Years day, wasn’t it? How could it have become the end of April already?
There are days when I feel as if I don’t have enough time to complete all the projects I have on my list, even for that day let alone the rest of my life This has become especially so as I’ve gotten older. Physical limitations have become sadly apparent. Once I could easily and quickly chop wood, change a tyre, fix a broken window! Now even simple tasks have become a challenge. And, oh, how I ache in places I wish I didn’t. If I sit awhile my muscles freeze up. If I stand in one place too long then my back aches. Where has the agility and flexibility of youth gone?
So, time is in my thoughts today.
A friend has just reminded me of these verses in Ecclesiastes 3:1-4,11 (NIRV)

“To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; A time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance. … He has made everything beautiful in its time.”

My friend goes on to say:

Time in this life is brief. Take the time to dance. Take the time to love. Take the time to pray. Take the time to laugh and to sing. Take the time to give hugs and kisses. Take the time to watch the sunset. Take the time to cherish each moment you are given. Take the time to thank God for every day you have.

And, I do agree. Our times are in God’s hands. I am so thankful! My hope is in him.

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Reflection

In what do we hope?

Is the world moving closer to another world war? Current events being reported in the media are pretty harrowing. And, if the truth be told, rather fear inducing. It’s as if there is nothing to contain or stop the death and destruction being carried out by a growing group of terrorists without a moral compass. World leaders are looking at ways to stop the progress of this group, and how best to help those groups suffering the most there in the Middle East. Not an easy task and one fraught with the danger of igniting a conflagration.

I don’t have any magic words. My heart aches for those directly affected and I pray for God’s mercy and provision for them. I pray too that God will grant wisdom beyond human ability as the leaders consider what to do.

It has prompted me to listen carefully to what God might be saying in all this, and especially for myself. The thing that stands out is that God is in control. And though the foundations of law and order have collapsed… God is still God and he rules from heaven. (Psalm 11:3-4). I can trust his unfailing love, no matter what. My hope is in him!

This world is not the be all and end all of everything. Our hope (my hope) is in the promises of God that he has given in the Scriptures.

 

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