Clothe yourself with Love Col. 3:14

We are unfished products until we meet Christ. What I mean is, we are untransformed until we meet Jesus and become transformed into His likeness. That’s why we often see ourselves in the story of the children of Israel. The Bible describes the rabble among them at the time when they had just been divinely rescued from their Egyptian slavery. We would think they would be grateful to God but Moses was faced with an angry mob. Israelites were craving for Egyptian food. They alarmingly forgot their own character as God’s people and threw a fit: Very disgraceful and ungrateful! They couldn’t wait to be in the promised land and expected a champagne lifestyle all the way. No, there is a bit of suffering on the way to where God is taking you. God is definitely willing to lead us. The trouble is: we act strangely like Israel when we face suffering. We grumble and forget the mountains that the Lord removed for us to be where we are now. Moses couldn’t deal with it. The letter of James attempts

The letter of James delivers a sharp rebuke to all of us with regards to the words that come out of our mouths. With just our tongue, we are able to bring so much destruction beyond belief. Case in point: World War 1 began with bad words. Wrong words can give offence to the wrong ears, and the result can be the fall of empires, or the wiping away of complete nations. I want us to consider the weighty responsibility that God has given us when he granted us speech. Do we use our speech for the healing of nations or for their destruction? There is power behind our words. The words that we utter can create situations. Funny enough, that’s exactly how our God created the world. He spoke creation into existence: “And God said: Let there be light.” I spotted a similar occurrence in Mark’s Gospel when Jesus asked his disciples: “ But who do you say that I am ?” Peter answered: You are the Messiah . That confession itself was powerful because it created a huge amount of faith in Peter’s life.

“Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Jesus declared. Those are puzzling words that only the Spirit of God can illumine our understanding regarding the mystery behind Jesus’ words. Have you ever been misunderstood? I guess that’s a yes. It can be painful. For those who have lived in countries that do not speak your language? You understand. Jesus had laid out exactly in no uncertain terms what he meant by our having communion with him. To his audience, it sounded gross and unthinkable. So, Jesus had to ask: “ Do you take offense at this ?” We take offense all the time at things in our earthly Kingdoms. Life in God’s Kingdom is different. Maybe some mystery we won’t understand, but our spiritual lives need to be nourished in God’s Kingdom. If not, first anemia and starvation in the death zone. This is what I call the implications of life in God’s Kingdom. For e.g. If you live in America, you have to follow its laws. It won’t matter

We are all on a life journey that begins before our birth in this world. Later on, we come to realize through the message of the Gospel of Christ, that this life journey extends into the realm of eternal life, even beyond our physical death. Lots of Bible stories shows how our life journey is accompanied with God’s love and purpose for our lives, and as always, the most common ingredient in all these stories, is our choices. When the war began in Rwanda in the 90’s, we embarked on an odyssey, a peculiar journey into exile. Every choice we made affected our destiny in ways that are indescribable. For e.g. our family chose to go south; I spent 10 years in different countries as a refugee, had several close calls with death. Yet, the whole time we were fed & clothed in miraculous ways. Years later, I understood the lesson: we needed to learn to trust God during the journey no matter how difficult it became. God fed us and protected us. Similarly, we walk through life facing all kinds

What does ‘ being filled with God ’ actually look like in real life? Can we recognize such a person filled with God? The reason I am asking is because, to live in this world, is to be subjected to so many pressures of life on a daily basis. It happens that we think that God is not present when we are being pressed on from every side or attacked. But, with growth and understanding, we come to realize that these pressures are in our lives for a reason and for a season. They come to form us; to reform us, to mend and heal us; and they can be uncomfortable, even outright painful. As one of St John's Society monks wrote: " It’s like in Physical Therapy, the practitioner massages; presses and compresses those areas that hurt the most to facilitate healing ." God knows how best to shape us. He is our maker after all. How do we navigate these pressures of life? Do we seek to remove these obstacles that pressure us? Or learn to be comfortable facing them? The words of Paul to Eph

In life we have all kinds of treasure boxes. Some boxes contain beautiful memories and others bad ones. Beautiful memories could be good encouragement words received; successes in life such as graduation, first paycheck, first house, wedding, children. Bad memories could be something in our past that was difficult to get over; or a bad word that deeply affected us; job loss; or loss of a loved one. As we live our lives, we keep adding to these treasure boxes, some of us in helpful ways and others in not so helpful ways. Jesus had sent his disciples in mission, to contribute to people’s treasure boxes in helpful ways. They were back from their mission and were happy to debrief. Jesus invited them to a quiet place for some rest and to recharge. That quietness became short-lived because they met a big crowd on the other side of the lake. Jesus saw them, was moved with pity because they were like sheep without shepherd, so he began to teach them. He did not say: I am tired, what are you d