Clothe yourself with Love Col. 3:14

  THU Evening Prayer Reflection 022421 (John 3: 16-21) John 3 has at its center the very good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It displays elaborately the regeneration process and its relationship to our healing. It is not easy to notice how the two are connected until we read this verse 17: “ God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world would be saved through him ” The word used for saved is [ sotheí ]. Just so I don’t mix the meanings here, I want to define healing, so we can understand its relationship with salvation: Healing means the restoration of wholeness to the person and restoration to the life of the community. That’s why Jesus' typical words to those who were healed was: “ Your faith has saved you; go into peace ” (Luke 8: 48). Healing here means salvation and peace. The Hebrew word [ Shalom ] comes close to this definition. Its meaning conveys peace, harmony, wholeness , completeness, prosperity, welfare and tranquili...

  TUE Evening Prayer Reflection 022321 (Polycarp, Deut. 9: 4-12; Ps 45; Heb. 3:1-11) Today I felt led to talk about the influence of the Grace of God in our lives. When we pray, we are acknowledging our insufficiency and pleading with God to empower us to do what pleases Him. We were created to worship God. God has our blue print, and He understands us better than we understand ourselves. We were created to worship God, to depend upon Him. I want to look into today’s scriptures as well as the life of Polycarp to notice and reflect on moments of the grace of God operating in someone’s life. Could it be that sometimes we don’t notice when we need most the grace of God and when to ask for it. Let us review the life of Polycarp. He was a 1 st century Bishop of Smyrna on the west coast of present Turkey. After he was denounced by the Government for being a Christian, he was arrested and asked by the proconsul to curse and deny Jesus so that they can let him go. He replied: “86 yea...