I'm not fasting from this blog. Call me a hypocrite, this won't be my first instance of hypocrisy nor my last.
"If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true." "The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me."
Godliness and righteousness show themselves, words are unnecessary and are actually not to be trusted.
"You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life."
Sounds like Larry talking about biblidolatry.
"How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God?"
Scathing but true. How often do so many of us seek status and approval from our peers and our culture and refuse to do those things which are more important? How hard it is to reject the culture and peer approval to seek to do what God would have us do. We need sustenance, we need nourishment. Thank God for this community.
"Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?"
Interesting. Perhaps this is to ease the uncertainties of the Jews who are not sure that Jesus is the one. He's telling him that he is the one whom Moses wrote about. I wonder how many others said the same thing. Sometimes it seems so hard to know, so difficult to make the right choice. What if we choose to follow Jesus and break the law? What if we refuse to follow Jesus because we didn't understand and we make a worse mistake? Sometimes it seems that every path is frought with peril. That is when we must be still and listen and have faith.
3 comments:
Marjorie: re: ""You search the scriptures ....", this is a good Quaker verse. Fox said, "let Christ be your teacher". We don't believe the Bible is the word of God-- in the sense that Christ is the word. This is the basic primary principle, and most of us lack the faith to live up to it-- like Luther did when he said, "Here I stand". And this is what it means to love God with all your mind.
Marjorie,
I'm glad you'll continue blogging. I enjoy your wit and insight very much. I didn't pass opinion on your Lent question because I felt this bias - and of course it has to by your decision.
The spiritual friendship you are finding here is perhaps much more of a catalyst to spritual growth than giving such friendship up, Yes?
Smiling,
M
Meredith, thank you. It took me some time to parse out why I felt led to fast from blogging, what the purpose of it is, and I concluded that staying here is important for me. Of course, I'd like to be reading all of your blogs, but right now, its overwhelming to me and it ends up distracting me, so I'll stick with this one and hope to emerge from Lent refreshed and focused.
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