Joy is a gift.
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Joy is a gift. […] One of the bigger arguments in the Christian church can be summed up like this: “Faith and works”. […] Stop. Give up. Let go. Cut it out. Go limp. All are valid translations of the Hebrew word raphah, which begins Psalm 46:10. It’s a well-known verse, but I think it’s been misunderstood. The ESV translates it, “Be still, and know that I am God.” If you wanted, you could translate it, “lose heart.” […] We are capable of a lot. We’re born with talents and develop skills and strengths. “You can do anything you set your mind to” is mostly true. The human race got as far as the moon with no computers as sophisticated as the average pocket calculator. Patience, time, and sheer determination are all it takes […] No two people are exactly the same. […] We are all slaves. Slavery is, apparently, essential to the way we work. We must be enslaved to something: we must obey something. Something must be our driving force and end goal. We must have something to adhere to, to follow, to be our identity and our touchstone. We must belong to something. […] It’s easy to stand on a mountaintop and praise God. Not that there aren’t people who, upon reaching a mountaintop, decide to praise themselves instead. […] I found a neat book today. It was called How to Build a Fire: and Other Handy Things Your Grandfather Knew. […] Knowledge doesn’t save us. Praise God, because otherwise we would live in mortal fear of amnesia, and people who don’t test well wouldn’t have a prayer. Even geeks like me would suffer, because I’m as likely as anyone to get things wrong, or backwards, or leave something out entirely without realizing it. […] One of my favorite Bible passages goes like this: It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23, KJV) […] |
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