Our blog is inspired by The Holy Spirit.
Blessed are you when people hate you,
and when they exclude and insult you,
and denounce your name as evil
on account of the Son of Man.
Rejoice and leap for joy on that day!
Behold, your reward will be great in heaven. Luke 6:22-23
The above reading is from Saint Luke.
This paragraph stands out to me because it separates the Christian from all other religions. Rejoice and Leap for Joy when someone hates, excludes, insults, and denounces your name as evil on account of the Son of Man.
Rejoice and leap for Joy; this is genuinely counter to the thinking of mankind before Jesus and even after Jesus if you’re not a Christian.
We all want to be loved, admired, included, and this runs counter to what living in the “World” demands.
And yet,
If you consider what Jesus is saying, it makes total sense.
Every day we have to make a choice. Live in the “world, or live in the “Spirit World.”
Chapter six of Luke covers a lot of ground, for example.
The chapter starts with Jesus defending His Disciples for picking and eating grain on the Sabbath, which I learned from Tim Gray Jesus didn’t do; He never sinned. Jesus healed a man with a shriveled hand on the Sabbath and chose his twelve Apostles.
In the middle of the chapter, Jesus talks about Blessings and Woes, where we will consecrate.
The chapter ends with Love your enemies, Judging others, A tree, and its fruit, the wise and foolish builders.
Everything in the Chapter contradicts what man before Jesus practiced, and many still practice today.
I am sure you know that if you practice what Jesus asks us to do, some people will condemn us for this, and we are to Rejoice and leap for Joy because we are acting as the prophets did.
Strange, this religion,
And yet, for me, this is further proof we are on the right track in following Jesus.
Who else but God would set forth these demands?
I am reading Isaiah chapter 44, in which God’s frustration with the Jewish people pours out because they make gods out of wood and metal, hang them on the wall, and worship them. The wood not used for the carved god is used to make a fire to cook on.
Isaiah rail’s against the Jews and the Gods they are worshiping by reminding them that their Gods can’t walk, talk, see, and needs a nail to hold them up on the wall. These are fascinating chapters to read.
We worship a living God who wants a relationship.
Wow!!
Consider, when we receive communion, we are touching JESUS!
And
When we touch Jesus, we enter into a dance with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And,
The healings Jesus performed in Luke Chapter 6, “He healed them all” Luke 6:19, will continue today if only you will believe.
What sounds hard at the beginning, satan, because Jesus wants you with them in “the Spirit World” is much easier once you leave yourself behind and become a son or daughter by imitating Jesus and doing the will of God the Father.
Then you won’t care what the “world” thinks because you won’t be in the “world.”
“The nine” We pray you will grow in the Love, Joy, and Peace of the Holy Spirit by growing in Patience, Kindness, Generosity, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control.
Sidebar:
This past Sunday, Gail said, “Let’s ride our bikes to Bug Light and take in the fun of the ride and see the Ocean again.”
The ride is eleven miles round trip, and we hadn’t ridden that far all year, so we agreed we would turn around if either got tired.
The trip to the ocean was easy.
We arrived at Bug Light and were greeted with a spectacular view of Portland Harbor and the Calendar Islands.
It was great just to sit there and take in all of God’s creation, feel the warm sunshine, feel a gentle breeze, and enjoy the company of each other.
The summer had gone by too fast; it didn’t seem fair. In Maine, once Labor day comes, the weather gets colder, and I, for one, will miss the warmth of Summer.
Finally, it was time to head back.
Going to Bug Light, the gentle breeze at our back turned into a strong wind we now had to peddle against on the way to our car. If the wind speed is ten miles an hour and we are peddling against the wind at eight miles an hour, then the total wind speed is eighteen miles an hour.
I realized it would be hard pedaling for the next thirty to forty minutes, but what choice did we have? We either ride or walk.
I love this type of exercise because, at some point, there is the thought of quitting, satan, but how can we quit?
We have to get back to the car to get home.
Quitting before we completed the task was also true when we Climbed Mountains in our younger years; at some point, I was encouraged to quit, satan, but how would I get to the bottom?
Fighting through the thought of quitting and achieving the goal of completing the trip fills me with Joy.
We are mentioning this because I, we, believe this is true with our relationship with God.
At first, it seems easy when God does your will, and you are peddling with the wind, but at some point, you have to choose to do God’s will and not your will, and the wind at your back now seems to be a strong headwind.
What was interesting for me was as I kept trying to change my, to now our, life, the change process became easier and more enjoyable.
Now I realize I am on an electric bike, and God is doing the peddling; I have to steer the bike and steer it towards my ultimate objective, being fully one with God.
Picture:
Since we talked about Bug Light, I thought it would be fun to show Bug Light again. The picture at the top was taken in the Spring of 2021, one of my first bike rides that year. I kicked myself for not taking a picture Sunday because it was so beautiful, but I didn’t realize that we would be writing about our bike trip.
