Month: February 2025
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When God rescues your heart from its natural rebellion, and makes it new through your trust in him, your baptism and your following of Jesus, the way this newness works must be through your own decisions, your own thinking things through, your own will power (aided and strengthened at every point, Christians would say, by the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ own spirit).
N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part 2 -
Forgiveness is more like the air in our lungs. There’s only room for you to inhale the next lungful when you’ve just breathed out the previous one. If you insist on withholding it, refusing to give someone the kiss of life they may desperately need, you won’t be able to take in any more yourself and you will suffocate very quickly.
N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part 2 -
While the words aren’t a magical formula – the “proper” words could be uttered with no forgiveness transpiring – I am convinced that it matters to utter them. To say “I apologize” or “I forgive you” is to carry out a speech act, not unlike saying “I do” or “I promise”. The words accomplish the thing they say in the saying of them. Just as the Lord says, “Let there be” and reality comes to be, just as the words “I do” or “I promise” bring a new family into existence, so saying “I’m sorry” and “I forgive you” seem to reach down into the stuff of the universe and shift it toward something more and new.
Ester Lightcap Meek, Forgiveness -
February 2025
Housing January was a whirlwind as we moved out of our old house, in to our new house, and started to get unpacked and organized in the new place. In reality, this meant I wasn’t able to make any progress…