Defining Love

The love of God expresses itself through sacrifice and opens the door to redemption.  The love Hollywood portrays expresses itself in selfishness and ends in pain and separation.  God’s love is always compatible with His Holiness. Jfs

(1 John 4:7-8) Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.  (NKJV)

A Page of Life

Our lives are like books, some are short and some are long.  Each day is a page in the book.  Our story is written one day at a time.  The book tells our life’s story and we write it with our choices and the consequences of those choices.  When we give our lives to Christ it becomes His story.  Our lives become light and salt influencing the world for our King and His kingdom.  A page can be a short story written in one day, a story of His Grace and mercy protecting us from the evil one.  A page can be a definition of Love, defined by the way we treat each other.  Everyday our lives write one page at a time, the big question is, will it be about His Story or our story.  For me today is page 26,856.  I pray it is a page worth reading. Jfs

Ps 90:12 ¶ So teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Two Views

Yesterday I stood with Mary by the bedside of her dying sister.  The scene was not easy, the struggle for breath, the distorted face and the helpless feelings of the moment leaves an ugly memory.  This was the earthly view, the human view, the what you see, and hear view.  It is the earthly view that we are all too familiar with and it is not pretty.  There is another view seen only by faith and assured by His Word.  It is the spiritual view, the view God sees and it is as real as the one we see.  In the story of Steven, the first Christian martyr, there are two views. One as ugly as it gets, an innocent man being stoned to death, not something you could forget.  Read the story for yourself and you will see that there are two views, the earthly view and the Kingdom view, both real, one temporary the other eternal.  In the ugly situation of Steven he saw the other view.  He saw Jesus and Jesus saw him and for Steven the earthly view was nothing more than a “momentary trouble.”   We earthlings must always remember there are two scenes.  As Christians we are assured of life after death, guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus.  The death scene does not have the final say.  Jesus said, “Because I live you shall live also.”  It is the resurrection scene that has the final word. 

As I write this, word has come that Rhoda has left us.  Life has pulled the curtain on the earthly scene but Heaven has opened the curtain on the eternal one.  Let us, “look to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.” jfs