Me: Yes, Let me share this. Every thought is a seed. If you plant crab apples, don’t count on harvesting Golden Delicious.
This is from Chuck Swindoll
Do you remember when the cosmonauts made that primitive little journey around the earth the first time? They came back with their thumbs under their suspenders bragging, “We have been in the air. We have been around the earth. And we did not see God!” The following Sunday W.A. Criswell, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, made a classic statement. He said, “Ah, if those cosmonauts had stepped out of their spacesuit, they would have seen God!”
O sing unto the LORD a new song; for he hath done marvellous things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory. Psalm 98:1 (KJV)
The Bible was a gift from Bob, my husband, but it seemed to belong as much to our son, Doug, as it did to me. Doug and I read it together. We shared it in Bible study groups. Together we underlined God’s promises. So when I received a new Bible, this familiar one became Doug’s own.
Doug married, and eventually he and his family moved into a house not far from ours. Driving an eighteen-wheeler, he spent long hours away from home. He kept a little leather pocket Bible with him in the rig, but he made sure that “our” Bible stayed safely at home.
Then one bitter winter afternoon, there was a fire. He and Marla and the three boys were in despair. “The whole house burned down,” Doug told us. “We lost everything.”
For a week, neighbors, family, and friends tried to help them. They supplied clothes, money, food, furniture, and many prayers. Then one day Marla came over, smiling.
“Mom,” she said, “look what I found in the rubble.” Into my hands she laid and old Bible, soaking wet, its leather cover shriveled and brittle, but with all the pages intact. Doug’s Bible-our Bible.
Immediately I began to dry it, first with a towel, then in the oven at 150 degrees. Slowly it became supple enough for me to turn its pages. When Doug came home, I said excitedly, “Open it up. Just let it fall open.”
The Good Book opened and Doug read a passage we had underlined: When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee….when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee (Isaiah 43:2).
Psalm 121 portrays the upward look: “I will lift up my eyes to the hills–from whence comes my help? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth” (verse 1). The upward look of a mature Christian is not to the mountains, but to the God who made the mountains. It is the maintained set of the highest powers of a man–not stargazing till he stumbles–but the upward gaze deliberately set toward God. He has got through the choppy waters of his elementary spiritual experience and now he is set God. “I have set the LORD always before me” (Psalm 16:8)–but you have to fight for it.
Then Jesus said to the man with the withered hand, “Stand up among us.” Mark 3:3 (KJV)
This is from Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World by Joanna Weaver
“True love hurts,” Mother Teresa once said. “It always has to hurt.” And elsewhere she has written pointedly, “If you really love one another, you will not be able to avoid making sacrifices.” For many years, this tiny nun and her followers went out of their way to minister to the dying–first in Calcutta, India, and later around the world. Their ministry went far beyond simply holding hands and praying. They physically carried broken bodies in off the streets. They sponged out foul-smelling wounds. They got down on their knees to mop up accidents. They tenderly spooned warm food into toothless mouths.
Now that Mother Teresa is gone from this earth, her Missionaries of Charity still continue the work she began–work that again and again goes out of its way to love and serve. Why do they do it? If you ask them, their answer is clear and confident: “We do it because Jesus did.” And so must we.
Once again Jesus entered the synagogue, and a man with a withered hand was there. Mark 3:1 (KJV)
Prodigal: We got our ducks in a row so we are ready to listen.
Me: Good, I hope you enjoy!
This is from Ernest Borgnine
Back in 1975 I was offered a part in the film Jesus of Nazareth, which through the years has been shown at Easter time on NBC television. Our cast, directed by the renowned Franco Zeffirelli, included Anne Bancroft as Mary Magdalene and Olivia Hussey as Mary, mother of Jesus. I played the part of the centurion who was present at the crucifixion, the one whose servant had been healed by Jesus.
Much of the film was shot in Tunisia on the Mediterranean during January and February of 1976. A cold, damp wind continually knocked over floodlights and stung us with desert sand. I was uncomfortable in my thick leather uniform. My neck ached under a ponderous metal helmet, and I even began to pity those ancient Roman soldiers who were called centurions because they commanded a hundred men.
When it came time for my scene during the crucifixion, the weather was chill and gray. The camera was to be focused on me at the foot of the cross, and so it was not necessary for Robert Powell, the actor who portrayed Jesus, to be there. Instead, Zeffirelli put a chalk mark on a piece of scenery beside the cameraman, “I want you to look up at that mark,” he told me, “as if you were looking at Jesus.”
“Okay,” I said, moving into position and looking up at the mark as instructed.
“Ready?”
I hesitated. Somehow I wasn’t ready. I was uneasy.
“Do you think it would be possible for somebody to read from the Bible the words Jesus said as He hung on the cross?” I asked.
I knew the words well from the days of my childhood in an Italian-American family in Connecticut, and I’d read them in preparation for the film. Even so, I wanted to hear them now.
“I will do it myself,” Zeffirelli said. He found a Bible, opened it to the Book of Luke, and signaled for the camera to start rolling.
As Zeffirelli began reading Christ’s words aloud, I stared up at the chalk mark, thinking what might have gone through the centurion’s mind.
That poor Man up there, I thought. I met Him when He healed my servant, who is like a son to me. Jesus says He is the Son of God, an unfortunate claim during these perilous times. But I know He is innocent of any crime.
“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” The voice was Zeffirelli’s, but the words burned into me–the words of Jesus (Luke 23:34-46).
Forgive me, Father, for even being here, was the centurion’s prayer that formed in my thoughts. I am so ashamed, so ashamed.
“Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in paradise,” said Jesus to the thief hanging next to Him.
If Jesus can forgive that criminal, then He will forgive me, I thought. I will lay down my sword and retire to my little farm outside of Rome.
Then it happened.
As I stared upward, instead of the chalk mark, I suddenly saw the face of Jesus Christ, lifelike and clear. It was not the features of Robert Powell I was used to seeing, but the most beautiful, gentle visage I have ever known. Pain-seared, sweat-stained, with blood flowing down from thorns pressed deep, His face was still filled with compassion. He looked down at me through tragic, sorrowful eyes with an expression of love beyond description.
Then His cry rose against the desert wind. Not the voice of Zeffirelli, reading from the Bible, but the voice of Jesus Himself: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”
In awe I watched Jesus’ head slump to one side. I knew He was dead. A terrible grief welled within me, and completely oblivious of the camera, I started sobbing uncontrollably.
“Cut!” yelled Zefirelli. Olivia Hussey and Anne Bancroft were crying too. I wiped my eyes and looked up again to where I had seen Jesus–He was gone.
Whether I saw a vision of Jesus that windswept day or whether it only something in my mind. I do not know. It doesn’t matter. For I do know that it was a profound spiritual experience and that I have not been quite the same person since. I believe that I take my faith more seriously. I like to think that I’m more forgiving than I used to be. As that centurion learned two thousand years ago. I too have found that you simply cannot come close to Jesus without being changed.
So they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress; he sent his word to heal them and bring them alive out of the pit of death. Let them thank the Lord for his enduring love and for the marvellous things he has done. Psalm 107:19-21 (NEB)
Me: God made all of this out of nothing. He can take care of you.
Prodigal: Amen!
This is from the book The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
And they took of the fruit of the land in their hands, and brought it down unto us, and brought us word again, and said, It is a good land which the LORD our God doth give us. Deuteronomy 1:25 (KJV).
