For The Sake of The Gospel

 Read: Mark 8:34-38

While attending a Birthday Remembrance of Anne Frank in Huntington, New York, a man recalled spending three days next to a dead man within a "camp of terror". He explained that he lived off the ration, which the man no longer lived to consume. Surviving in desperate situations, so often requires desperate ways and means. Great strength is required to survive the mental and emotional challenges of being in a so-called "concentration camp". Maltreatment of human lives by human beings is a great sin.

People may ask the relevance of the experience of Jews in a death trap, so-called concentration camp to the teachings of Jesus as recorded in Mark 8. Including the fact that Jesus is of Jewish heritage, the human to human commonality is enough to know that injustices to a person of any heritage holds the potential of the same being inflected on persons of every heritage. Hate has no regards for age or nationality or race.

The good news is knowing that love is stronger than hate. Do you know this to be true? Not to know this truth is an indication of a need for love. The Gospel speaks of Jesus surviving a hate filled humanity by filling humanity with love. What is love with such power as to survive the strongest blows of hatred?

Love endures the onslaught of unkindness by being kind. Love is not ashamed of living, it joys in perseverance. Love is forever the winner, while hate is doom to lose. The truth in the good news of the Jews survival of the holocaust is that love makes extraordinary the ordinary. Ordinary people survived the extremities of hate by ways and means necessary, so that even the death of Anne Frank gives hope to the faithful, who love despite the hate of the unloving. Love is the intentional exchange of expressions of respect, care, and empathy with the willingness to listen as long as necessary to reach acceptance.

Christians, too, are taught to live beyond dying for the sake of the Gospel. It is a fight to live through dying, so that death is cause for life to believers and continuation of the good in creation. Our hope is embedded in a faith that love concurs hate, so Christians love beyond hate as to witness reconciliation in human relations.

When Jews and Christians unite for the sake of Truth, the Anointed power over the ill will of Evil is realized and everyone benefits surviving off the Divine ration of our historic past.

Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy and provide the faithful with the necessities for survival in a world of sin. Amen.

Better the End

I have an appreciation for love. Love is precious and dear. Love runs deep down into the heart. These words from Ciona were love to my heart: "I am glad to be in this life with you. I thank God for you being my father and I am glad to be living a good life. Thank you for all the things you have done for me..."

The words of a beloved daughter reached my heart and annuals of my mind. I spoke such words to my father at various times in life. Ciona and I are alike in many ways. We enjoy expressions of compassion. Her mere existence has given me a joy beyond what I could ever imagine without her. She and Lanecia (her older sister) are jewels that people knowing me know light my world and warm my heart.

On the day she uttered the previous words above, I had the misfortune of having allergic reactions so severely that I was very, very ill and resting in my easy chair. The call was not disruptive, because I was too miserable to nap and itching on my back, so that to move was uncomfortable. In fact, by merely calling a dose of comforting love was medicinal.

From the beginning, the sound of her voice was as a song bird, so sweet. Her very soothing tone delighted me. As good as the beginning was, when she spoke of love for her father made it - better the end.

In the middle of our conversation, she mentioned that Ecclesiastes is her current biblical study. During her younger life, Ciona never complained about reading the Bible. In fact, while in elementary school, she found Deuteronomy to be her favorite text. It would have blown my mind completely, except she was the child, who read so well at the age of four that the first grade teacher brought her up from kindergarten to help teach the first grade class. Well, her sister was in the particular first grade class and marveled, but with some shame that her sister had to teach reading to her class. We often laugh about it still today. Now, she is inspiring her father to revisit a favorite Scripture from my past studies - Ecclesiastes 7:8 - "The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride."

You see, better the end of the conversation with Ciona, because she reminded me of the key to my love for my father and perhaps her love for me - PATIENCE. She knows my mistakes as well as I knew those of my father, but she also knows the patience I learned from my father. Patience is a fruit of the spirit. Pride may be the gratification resulting from the fruit. The fruit itself is better than being proud of it.

Better the end may seem so paradoxical, when we think of beginnings and endings in life. I had such great times with my parents, which is not a fortune to take for granted. Some parents are abusive. However, as good as those days had been, my days of parenting are the ones to relive...because life with my children is better than life without them.

So, to Ciona, I must say: "Better the end" because you are here in my life. So may better the end be for each of us, greater still is the unending - life eternal. Agape!

   

 

Intervention

The Todd Marinovich Project is one of the best stories of lives in life.

 I recommend it to you.

 It is about Todd; about his Dad; about success; about failure; about addictions, about recovery; about love...about intervention for you and me.

To some Todd was among the most promising of quarterbacks to play in professional football. He was gifted with the mysterious "It Factor" - that something that propels one to exceed others in unexplainable ways.

When human beings work hard and harder and harder, the "It" either shows up or we far down.
It showed up for Todd and not only in glimpses on the football field, but through his battle with drug addiction. His greatest victory is seen in the marks of faith, hope and love; the greatest being love. The forever undefinable It Factor appears to always have the greatest gift in the midst, which is the gift of love. In the end, love appears to out distance ups and downs; success and failure; accomplishments and addictive behaviors, so those who acquire "it"should humbly thank God.

Great is the grace and mercy of divine intervention, enabling humans to be beyond expectations in existence. Through the grace of God children may be taught that in so being is the discovery of the It being of God, the great "I Am That I Am", who allows all that is to be. Making the best of it is making the best of being. Agape!