Hello, dear ones.
My watch is still on Oregon Time reporting 10:30am—but my smarty-pants cell phone is tracking me here to confirm that local time here is 1:30pm. That’s a 3 hour difference.
It was snowing like crazy earlier this morning. I went out and did my old man jog in light snow fall. I clicked a picture while crossing a nearby bridge over the famous Eerie Canal. Just for the fun of it, I’ll stick it on.
We had a good day yesterday surrounding our granddaughter’s 24th birthday. Maybe I’ll stick on a picture of Joann and me too.
Have a great day doing whatever you’re supposed to be doing. Blessings. Ray.
PS: I’m removing the attached photos because this file is not wanting to send. Maybe I can send them separate.
What do you think God thinks about all the obvious divisions within the Christian faith as represented by the huge volume of church names and denominations—with most of them claiming to be the right one—or the best one—some even claiming to be the only one? I’m inclined to believe that He is not nearly as concerned with this reality as we are—or as many are. Whereas He accepts and even inspires diverse personalities among His human creatures, why would He require His children to abandon their individuality any more than normal parents do? What He is concerned with is that the core of the Biblical Gospel be upheld—that relationship with God be promoted and modeled by means of what Christ achieved on the cross—and that Christ as Savior and Lord be maintained as the exclusive WAY, TRUTH, and LIFE means to that relationship. Therefore, I can’t imagine that when Jesus prayed for UNITY among His followers in John 17 that He was really meaning UNIFORMITY.
The conflict presented in this reading between Paul and Barnabas is a case in point. There is no evidence that they ever disagreed over the core truths of the Gospel—only over the practical details of how that Gospel was to be implemented and represented. There’s certainly nothing new about that.
The overarching beauty and benefit that flows from this intersection is not that there was disagreement, but that this disagreement actually played out to multiply the spread of the Gospel, not reduce or restrict it. We see two evangelistic teams going out into the harvest, not just one. So it appears that Sovereign God is big enough to even bless divisions—as long as a HEART AFTER GOD remains the foundational priority.
I’m feeling that familiar prayer of Psalm 19:14 coming on again—“Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.” (KJV).