ephraimanesti

i came across the following and felt really blest at the insight it provided me:

Permit YOUR pain to become THE pain

"Your pain, deep as it is, is connected with specific circumstances. You do not suffer in the abstract. You suffer because someone hurts you at a specific time and in a specific place. Your feelings of rejection, abandonment, and uselessness are rooted in the most concrete events. In this way all suffering is unique. This is eminently true of the...

ephraimanesti

i came across a wonderful definition of God's Love by Henri J. M. Nouwen:

"What can we say about God's love? We can say that God's love is unconditional. God does not say, 'I love you,
if. . . .' There are no 'ifs' in God's heart. God's love for us does not depend on what we do or say, on our looks or intelligence, on our success or popularity. God's love for us existed before we were born and will exist after we have died. God's love is from eternity to eternity and...

ephraimanesti

Read today in II Corinthians 3:18: "And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit."

Unfortunately, for me at least, "reflecting the Lord's glory" isn't one of my strong points and, in reality, seldom happens with any predictability or frequency. In fact, normally, the opposite is generally the case.

The result of this...

ephraimanesti

What a blessing teaching Sunday School has turned out to be! What sharp minds and deep spiritual understanding the kids evidence if the right questions are asked.

I've been learning more from teaching than the kids have from learning, i am sure. Just preparing the lessons is an education in itself, and then doing the necessary research to answer the questions posed in class just adds frosting to the cake as far as my learning curve is concerned.

Combining Middle and...

ephraimanesti

i was wondering just how much meaning the Lenten Fast has lost, especially here in the West, with the desperate drive of many--myself included--to replace, with alternatives, what the Church teaches we should give up in the way of dairy, meat, etc. during Lent. The Church Book Stores are full of Lenten Cook Books as is the Internet if you Google that topic. Even Church bulletins offer helpful suggestion on "tasty Lenten cooking."

It seems to me that we put in an ungodly...

ephraimanesti