new church life: jan uary/february 2017
When Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him, Peter said: “Lord, you know all
things. You know that I love you.” Jesus just said to him – and to us: “Feed
My sheep.” (John 21: 15-17)
There is nothing complex or overly demanding in the Two Great
Commandments. Consider the simplicity of: “Obey My voice, and I will be
your God, and you shall be My people; and walk in the ways that I have
commanded you, that it may be well with you.” (Jeremiah 7:23)
The Lord’s love for us is constant. We know that if it ever ceased, if only
for a moment, we could not survive. And how does He love us? His providence
overlooks every moment of our lives, not shielding us from the consequences
of our free choices – or the choices of others – but always bending us toward
good, always lifting us up toward heaven, if that is what we choose, and never
giving up on us.
Our love for Him and for our neighbor should be as sure and constant –
not as something added to our daily lives but just incorporated into the way
we choose to live. That starts with loving the Lord’s commandments simply
by living them. As we shun evil and turn to Him, goodness and love from the
Lord flow into us and can be reciprocated.
As we reflect on our day before going to sleep we might ask ourselves:
Have I loved the Lord today? Have I read the Word? Have I been kind,
grateful, useful? Have I loved the Lord with all my heart, with all my soul,
and with all my mind? Have I fed His sheep?
(BMH)
religious feelings: a sense of holiness
The life of religion encompasses feelings, thoughts and deeds. The doctrinal
ideas and charitable works associated with religion are well known to us, but
religious feelings are a little harder to pin down and are not discussed as often.
So I plan to follow this with a series of editorials on the subject during the year.
Feelings flow, like streams from a fountain, from the love that forms a
person’s will and constitutes the essence of the person. The most profound
feelings are religious, as are the thoughts they inspire; they have to do with
God, heaven, and things that have the greatest value and significance for us.
The first religious feeling we’ll look at is a sense of holiness, or Divine
presence. It is what Jacob felt when he awoke from his dream and said: “Surely
the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.” (Genesis 28:16) It involves feelings
of awe, wonder, mystery, and holy fear. "And he was afraid...." (Genesis 28:16)
An adjective that has been used to describe the quality that provokes such
a sensation is “numinous.” The noumenon is the realm of spirit, as opposed to
the natural world of phenomena that we can apprehend by our physical senses.
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