Encouragement
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How to Make Meaning out of Suffering
Suffering without meaning is the hardest kind of agony to bear. Humans will put themselves through all sorts of torture, endure any kind of hell if only some meaning is attached to it. Parents whose children are killed by random gunmen or drunk drivers begin awareness campaigns. The thought that their children’s brief lives and sudden deaths held no meaning is the cross that is too hard to bear. Others of us begin to tell our stories, justifying the horrors faced by the hopeful thought that perhaps we can prevent even just one from going down the dead end we did. Or we frame our errors with inspirational quotes about…
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The Axis Mundi: Why Christians are Revolutionaries
The term, axis mundi, isn’t used much in common parlance. Just so we are on the same page, I include the Wikipedia definition which is accurate enough for my purposes: The axis mundi (also cosmic axis, world axis, world pillar, the center of the world, world tree), in certain beliefs and philosophies, is the world center, or the connection between Heaven and Earth. Nearly every major religion has such an intersection. The Old Testament has Mount Zion where Moses saw God. Jacob’s ladder is also such an intersection. Mount Kailash is sacred to the Hindu, the Innuit create totem poles, and even Feng Shui attempts to orient the home towards the sky in a practice called geomancy. Christianity…
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Encouragement for Faith Bloggers: Filling the Jars
As a blogger, I need regular encouragement. I wanted to share my own experience with the prayer exercise I published just yesterday because it blesses me on a number of different levels. You can find the link at the end of this post. The gist of it was an imaginative participation in the story of the widow who asks Elisha for help. He tells her to borrow as many pots and jars as possible and fill them up with her little jar of oil. I sat this morning in prayer and as always my blog is on my mind. My numbers go up and down, and I struggle with equating…
