Help us to answer your call to be the body of Christ together for the sake of all God’s children. Then, send us out to go and tell others about this holy mystery and bring them to experience Jesus for themselves. Amen.
Come, Lord Jesus. Walk with us. Break bread with us. We need your help as we struggle to seek you and to see you. Inspire us to continue to gather as often as possible as your community of love and justice so that our eyes of faith and our hearts of love might be open to see you more each day.
In that same hour they go back to Jerusalem. With night coming on, these two got up and went the entire seven miles back to Jerusalem, through the dangers of the road and into the dangers of the Jewish leaders, to tell the others what they had seen!
It was only after He took bread, blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them that their eyes were opened. Don’t you see, People won’t and aren`t able care how much we know until they know how much we care.”
Jesus tells them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into His glory?"
Sign along the road
It’s more than just our limited understanding of Scripture. Our narrow view, and our lowered expectations, of how we expect Our Lord or Our World to work is what often prevents our recognizing things or people right before our eyes.
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Tacitly, American leadership treats the United States as so special that other countries need not even exist. Has God’s blessing of America become an America-only kind of thing?
(Ted Peters Substack SR 1216)
A mob spirit has taken over. American culture has normalised cruelty, uncontrolled corruption, marginalisation of selected populations, denial of free speech, loss of compassion for those who die, governmental tyranny, and the spirit of war.
(Ted Peters)
"The most striking, contemporary form of it [the demonic] is a religious nationalism in which race and nation assume the eminence of God and demand unconditioned devotion. This absolute claim for something which is not absolute identifies the possessing spirit as demonic.” (Reinhold Niebuhr)
"...The demonic self-evelation of one nation over against all others in the name of her God or system of values produces the reaction from other nations in the name of their God.”
"We treat our own nation as if it were universally divine, and this creates confusion. How could we have two nations with the same universal claims? The demonic makes a “claim to divinity on a finite basis: the elevation of one element of finitude to infinite power and meaning…"
"...The demonic ... distorts self-transcendence by identifying a particular bearer of holiness with the holy itself.... We most frequently confront the demonic in nationalism, especially during times of war. (Tillich, Systematic Theology 1951-1963, III: 102)
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And you say this is one like Cyrus?
And you say this one is likened to Cyrus?
Remember what happened a few years back when BP’s Deep Water Horizon oil spill affected all fishing and recreation in the Gulf Coast states?
Hegseth told them that “recent hostile action” by Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz, “highlights ..why robust domestic oil production is a national security imperative: the same Hegseth who says it’s all right to forego regular rules of engagement of war.
Another type of God Squad just met. It happened on Tuesday this past week This ‘God Squad’ Waives Environmental Rules for Offshore Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico
He did so with no charges, no due process, no legal representation, and no real trial. He was the one who said it was expedient, for one like Jesus, to die rather than risk the ruination of the whole nation
The Chief Priests and Pharisees demanded that Pilate put guards at the tomb of Jesus, lest the disciples steal his body and say that he was raised from the dead. You do know about that God Squad, then, don’t you? It happened when Caiaphas the High Priest, planned to have Jesus put to death.