People come and go; leaders, teachers, thinkers speak and work for a season, and then fall silent and impotent. Christ abides. They die, but He lives. They are lights kindled, and, therefore, sooner or later quenched; but He is the true light from which they draw all their brightness, and He shines for evermore.
Alexander MacLaren
(How is your life rooted in Christ?)
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ROM 6:19-23; PS 1:1-2, 3, 4 AND 6
LK 12:49-53
Jesus said to his disciples:
“I have come to set the earth on fire,
and how I wish it were already blazing!
There is a baptism with which I must be baptized,
and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!
Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division.
From now on a household of five will be divided,
three against two and two against three;
a father will be divided against his son
and a son against his father,
a mother against her daughter
and a daughter against her mother,
a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”
Reflection on the Scriptures |
“I have come to set the earth on fire,” Jesus teaches His disciples. He describes the result of this fire as a future state of division and conflict and unease – not peaceful harmony, but families divided. Since I read this passage and have been reflecting prior to writing these thoughts I have wondered what He meant. Why would Jesus seek to sow
dissension?
Fire is a powerful force, one that the scriptures frequently incorporate to indicate the presence of the Almighty. Abraham prepared an altar for a fire to sacrifice Isaac; the Israelites followed a pillar of fire; an angel touches Isaiah’s lips with a burning coal to purify him for the task of prophesying; Moses encounters God in a burning bush. Many indigenous peoples
incorporate fire as a cleansing part of their spirituality, through smoke and incense and sweat lodges. Fires cleanse grasslands of accumulated dead and decaying growth, and fires rejuvenate forests as part of the natural process of fostering new growth. Visiting a forest or a grassland immediately after a fire is a stark reminder of the power of fire, but returning a year or two later and seeing the incredible recuperative force of the earth to refresh itself through wildflowers and
seedlings is an uplifting reminder of the genius of the Creator in putting these forces in balance.
by Tom Purcell
Revelations of Divine Love
- by Julian of Norwich
Fifteenth Revelation, Chapter 64
Thou shalt come up above
It is God’s will that we set the point of our thought in this blissful beholding as often as we may,—and as long time keep us therein with His grace; for this is a blessed contemplation to the soul that is led of God, and full greatly to His worship, for the time that it lasteth. And [when] we fall again to our heaviness, and spiritual blindness, and feeling of pains spiritual and bodily, by our frailty, it is
God’s will that we know that He hath not forgotten us. And so signifieth He in these words: And thou shalt never more have pain; no manner of sickness, no manner of misliking, no wanting of will; but ever joy and bliss without end. What should it then aggrieve thee to suffer awhile, seeing it is my will and my worship?
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