Clothe yourself with Love Col. 3:14

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...

Painters and builders use plumb lines to keep their work straight. God uses a plumbline in a different way. When God said to the prophet Amos that he was setting a plumb line among his people, he was declaring an end to their attempts to justify their crooked ways. What is interesting, is this human behavior of quickly defending ourselves when something about us is being pointed out for correction. Israelites were no different. God had been patient, longsuffering but this time, God was done. He was not going to put up with a provoking people, so He told his prophet his intentions. The prophet learned that at the bottom of trouble was sin, and he also understood that at the bottom of deliverance was forgiveness of sin, so he prayed for that. I wondered and contemplated on what message could God be sending to us, in our busy postmodern lives. It is true that God also sent a plumbline in our midst: The Bible. Do we have a track record of justifying our behaviors and shenanigans? It’s tou...

As I read our Gospel story, I had this impression that Pharisees were following Jesus and his disciples to notice that they were picking grains in the field. Were they on a random fault-finding journey? I wondered: “Let’s see what they do on the Sabbath! They are bound to break the law at some point.” Pharisees always brought to Jesus a number of arguments and grievances; many of which were a tip of the iceberg, a symptom of a much bigger problem underneath. This argument about what’s lawful on the Sabbath was the tip of the iceberg. God created the Sabbath for our benefit, to rest both physically and spiritually. But for Pharisees, the law became more important than the resting part. They believed they were right in what they thought and did, and needed no correction. Jesus sorted the argument but still, where did we go wrong by turning everything into an argument? Unfortunately, when we are so busy winning arguments, we don’t realize we are distracted from everything else that migh...