In Matthew 10: 3 we are told by Jesus, 'Love me more than your mother and father.' Why on earth would He say those things? Is it that the physical shells we come to hold so dear are ultimately of no intrinsic value after our death, or, as it is with Mammon, any encompassing love for temporal things endangers our total, loving commitment to Christ.
John 1: 14 warns us that we must give freely others. Why? Because in giving to others we receive our growth in righteousness which comes from wanting to give to God and to others. Unless an apple tree bears apples there is little point in it existing apart from its having a purely decorative effect but for all the practical use it is it might as well be uprooted and put to the torch.
Therefore my primary task in life after the worship of God must always be to love and to help others and by so doing I begin the process of freeing myself from the needs and desires of self. It is in reaching out to others that I allow the seed of my human life, my ego, to fall to the ground and die, and then give birth, and increasingly, life, to the spirit.
There is more, far more, to this faith of ours than I ever dreamed of at the beginning of my journey. The glory that I now know will be ours when the journey is completed will be of such a magnitude that earthly sufferings will be as a sub-atomic particle when compared to all the matter in the universe.
I now know that if we continue in our Christian faith and obey God's commandments to the end of our human lives we will complete the journey home to God and that it is the task of all Christians to make others aware of their destiny and then to help them on their journey. (Luke 8: 16)
We are here to make the load lighter for others on their trek through life. People really do matter, and within the confines of the number of talents we have each been given it is vital that we help others whenever, wherever and however we can. (Galatians 6: 2.)
The journey towards eternal life with God has to be commenced and then run as a Christian to the end of this life if we hope to arrive in the next. I liken it to a caterpillar struggling to become a butterfly. Should the caterpillar give up its struggles before its time it will die and never know the glorious freedom of flight. In order to become a butterfly, the caterpillar has to disintegrate and decompose down to its very essence, devoid of any shape or awareness. It literally dies. There is nothing left of it. And from this liquid essence, the butterfly begins to reassemble itself from scratch.
Long ago I learned the hard way that there is a world of difference between wanting and doing and that I, like many others still possess the tendency to embrace the easier maxim of 'do what I say, and not what I do' but slowly I am learning.
I've also learned that in this vale of tears the importance of our corporeal life consists neither in its length of days nor in the ease of body, for this is our training ground for the eternal and in it we run the race of our lives with eternal Life with God as the prize but should we cease running then the dreadful result is clearly outlined for us by Jesus in Matthew's Gospel. 13: 41-42.
John 1: 14 warns us that we must give freely others. Why? Because in giving to others we receive our growth in righteousness which comes from wanting to give to God and to others. Unless an apple tree bears apples there is little point in it existing apart from its having a purely decorative effect but for all the practical use it is it might as well be uprooted and put to the torch.
Therefore my primary task in life after the worship of God must always be to love and to help others and by so doing I begin the process of freeing myself from the needs and desires of self. It is in reaching out to others that I allow the seed of my human life, my ego, to fall to the ground and die, and then give birth, and increasingly, life, to the spirit.
There is more, far more, to this faith of ours than I ever dreamed of at the beginning of my journey. The glory that I now know will be ours when the journey is completed will be of such a magnitude that earthly sufferings will be as a sub-atomic particle when compared to all the matter in the universe.
I now know that if we continue in our Christian faith and obey God's commandments to the end of our human lives we will complete the journey home to God and that it is the task of all Christians to make others aware of their destiny and then to help them on their journey. (Luke 8: 16)
We are here to make the load lighter for others on their trek through life. People really do matter, and within the confines of the number of talents we have each been given it is vital that we help others whenever, wherever and however we can. (Galatians 6: 2.)
The journey towards eternal life with God has to be commenced and then run as a Christian to the end of this life if we hope to arrive in the next. I liken it to a caterpillar struggling to become a butterfly. Should the caterpillar give up its struggles before its time it will die and never know the glorious freedom of flight. In order to become a butterfly, the caterpillar has to disintegrate and decompose down to its very essence, devoid of any shape or awareness. It literally dies. There is nothing left of it. And from this liquid essence, the butterfly begins to reassemble itself from scratch.
Long ago I learned the hard way that there is a world of difference between wanting and doing and that I, like many others still possess the tendency to embrace the easier maxim of 'do what I say, and not what I do' but slowly I am learning.
I've also learned that in this vale of tears the importance of our corporeal life consists neither in its length of days nor in the ease of body, for this is our training ground for the eternal and in it we run the race of our lives with eternal Life with God as the prize but should we cease running then the dreadful result is clearly outlined for us by Jesus in Matthew's Gospel. 13: 41-42.