With the celebration of the birth of Jesus we are reminded that God
bridged the gap between us and Him with the birth of his Son, Jesus.

In the Old Testament it was prophesied according to Isaiah 9:7:
Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will
reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of
the LORD Almighty will accomplish this.

Continue reading “JESUS, The Package Which Keeps Giving JOY”

This morning Pastor Sean spoke about Joseph.The sermon was so
enlightening, I wanted to share it with the daily lilies. We don’t know a
lot about Joseph, but as the Pastor spoke, I learned that we are a lot like
him. Most of us have a plan for our lives. We have it all laid out –
college, career, marriage, family, advancement, and retirement. Joseph had
it all planned out too, then, Mary informs him that she is pregnant. His
plan is shot. What is he to do next? Like us he probably raked his mind
trying to find a solution that his mind could justify, not sleeping, pacing
the floor, near throwing up thinking and thinking and thinking.
Sometimes in our thinking the options may be embarrassing, like in Joseph’s
case. Joseph continues to try to come up with an option that is suitable,
placing God in a box asking him to choose one of his options to get out of
the mess or situation. In order to get Joseph to be silent so He could
speak to him, God has to have him in an unconscious state so he could
get a word in.

Continue reading “Hear from God and Do It God’s Way”

Task of Advent

“Advent is concerned with that very connection between memory and hope which is so necessary to man. Advent’s intention is to awaken the most profound and basic emotional memory within us, namely, the memory of the God who became a child. This is a healing memory; it brings hope. The purpose of the Church’s year is continually to rehearse her great history of memories, to awaken the heart’s memory so that it can discern the star of hope.…

It is the beautiful task of Advent to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope.”

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

This morning Pastor Sean was talking about the African impala and how
they can jump high and forward as an inborn survival mechanism. The
impala is known to jump about ten feet high. This high jump propels the
impala to land about thirty feet from the spot where it starts. With
this type of jumping, the impala survives in Africa.
However, a unique limitation to the impala is that he will only jump
when it can see where it will land. In an area like the zoo the African
impala can be confined by a three-foot high fence, it won’t jump
because it cannot see where he will land.
He then took a quote from John Emmons, which says:
Faith is the ability to trust what we cannot see, and with faith we are
freed from flimsy enclosures of life that only fear allows to entrap
us.

Continue reading “Step Out in Faith”