Tag: January

Protected: Discernment Series: Lent, Fasting, and Discernment, part 1

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Protected: Discernment Series: Techniques & Traps

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Protected: Discernment Series: The Good Work of Weeds

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Evil & The Justice of God

 “When people deny the humanity of others, they become evil themselves.”  -N.T. Wright

 

I’m preparing to do a quarter of a year (January-March) teaching with the themes and the companion videos of Tom Wright’s book Evil and the Justice of God.

We’ll be tackling some tough territory:

• Why is there so much Evil in the world? (More than ever?)

• Why does God let it happen and what, if anything, is God doing really about it? (What’s going on?)

• How does the Bible approach the subject? (Whoa. Lots of common misunderstandings here!)

• How does Justice work? (Revenge, Justice, Mercy, we’ll be sorting that out.)

• What is our role or best response with regards to Evil? (Do we stand against it, roll over, avoid it, bear it? The answers may surprise you.)

If you can’t make the classes Sundays 9:30-10:15 a.m. at Bethesda, I’ll be highlighting items here as I work on it and as I teach.

Here’s an intro video trailer. The book is remarkable. I highly recommend it.

The Story Behind the Song “Jesus Loves Me” (a poem by Anna Bartlett Warner)

Here’s the Story behind the song Jesus Loves Me.

The song most of us have sung, Jesus Loves Me was written by Anna Bartlett Warner  who was born August 31, 1827 – died January 22, 1915. Warner was an American writer, the author of several books, and of poems set to music as hymns and religious songs for children. (Via Wikipedia)

Anna’s family home was quite close to the United States Military Academy at West Point, in New York, in the era just before the Civil War. Each Sunday Anna taught Bible classes to the cadets. Her remains are buried in the military cemetery, and her family home is now a museum on the grounds of  the United States Military Academy.

Undoubtably, her most well-known work (and the point of this post) came from the poem from her and her sister’s 1860s quite sentimental and best-selling novel entitled Say and Seal. It was soon set to music by William Bradbury, who added the chorus we still sing today in one of the most well-known children’s Christian hymns of all time…you guessed it! Jesus Loves Me. Many soldiers on the battlegrounds during the War Between the States sang this hymn and found spiritual comfort.

In a scene that brought many people to tears in the novel, a child lays dying and is comforted from his pain, as the main character recites a poem:

Jesus loves me! This I know,

For the Bible tells me so.

Little ones to Him belong;

They are weak, but He is strong.

Children of God, let it be your simple prayer today.

Blessings.
-Lisa