This might help..

By: enigma Date: July 22, 2009 Categories: Emotional, Family, Fatherhood, Intellectual, Spiritual

Imagine the person you love most
Imagine the person who gave you life, perhaps a parent
Imagine the person who protects you, perhaps a brother
Imagine the person who takes care of you, perhaps a sister
Imagine the person who is always there for you, perhaps a good friend
Now imagine you with a hammer
Imagine you with a spike
Nailing this person to a cross!
Whoa! Yikes!
Imagine that this pain could be quantified, multiplied by three, and then a few billion times
Oh the immense suffering!
Yet God loves us even more than this!

Have you ever been cheated on?
Have you ever been rejected by the one you love?
Have you ever had unrequited love?
Have you ever been stabbed in the back by your loved ones?
Humiliated for the sake of good?
Unfairly treated?
Unappreciated?
Unrecognized?

Consider how we injure the one who sustains every moment of our life, the one who protects us, the one who cares for us, and is always there for us! Should we not be moved with compassion as we would with our dearly beloved! Should we not be grateful! What is our measly suffering compared to God’s? What should we fairly deserve? What should we hold back from God? Why are we complaining?

God all powerful, all knowing, infinite, mightier than the mightiest.. more than the scanty finite human minds could comprehend. What could he possibly ever need or want? Yet! He _chooses_ to enter this fallen world as a human, so fragile and so humble. He said that there is no greater love than for a man to die for a friend. And! He, all righteous, suffered and died for us! What profound love! What an example for us to live by! He establishes the One True Church to teach His Truth so that the human race can be freed from the slavery of sin.

What could we ask of God that he doesn’t already know? Why should we love God any differently in adversity vs prosperity? What if suffering is a gift from God? What can we do to return love to him?… Is the highest form of love incompatible with Relativism? Where can we learn of these Truths? Would God come down to our level to bring us the Truth but not give us any way to follow his example? Love is an action, a choice. What can we sacrifice to return our love for God?! Why would I choose to be sad over frivolous miniscule irrelevants? I can be in pain, but still be full of joy. What is happiness? What is joy? What is right and what is wrong? At the end of our lives what is most important?

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Liberty – some things worth pondering..

By: enigma Date: July 5, 2009 Categories: Intellectual, Social, Spiritual

“[I]t is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People in a greater Measure, than they have it now, they may change their Rulers and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty.”
– John Adams

“God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.”
–Thomas Jefferson

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim tribute to patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness—these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. . . . reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.”
– George Washington

“…The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that ‘except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it.’ ”
– Benjamin Franklin

“Were my soul trembling on the wing of eternity, were this hand freezing to death, were my voice choking with the last struggle, I would still, with the last gasp of that voice, implore you to remember the truth: God has given America to be free.”
– Patrick Henry

“And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“Let us look forward to the time when we can take the flag of our country and nail it below the Cross, and there let it wave as it waved in the olden times, and let us gather around it and inscribed for our motto: ‘Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever,’ and exclaim, ‘Christ first, our country next!’ ”
– Andrew Johnson

“We cannot read the history of our rise and development as a nation, without reckoning with the place the Bible has occupied in shaping the advances of the Republic. Where we have been the truest and most consistent in obeying its precepts, we have attained the greatest measure of contentment and prosperity.”
– Franklin Roosevelt

“Without God, there is no virtue, because there’s no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we’re mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”
– Ronald Reagan

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