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Lord’s Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.

Prayer of a Nigerian Christian

God in heaven, you have helped my life to grow like a tree. Now something has happened. Satan, like a bird, has carried in one twig of his own choosing after another. Before I knew it he had built a dwelling place and was living in it. Today, My Father, I am throwing out both the bird and the nest.

~ Anonymous

Prayer of Praise (from Psalm 86)

Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer; and attend to the voice of my supplications. In the day of my trouble I will call upon you: for you will answer me.

Among the gods there is none like you, O Lord; and no works like those you have done. All nations whom you have made will come and worship before you, O Lord; and will glorify your name.

For you are great, and do wondrous things: you are God alone.

Teach me your way, Lord, and I will walk in your truth: unite my heart to fear your name. I will praise you, O Lord my God, with all my heart: and I will glorify your name forever.

Lenten Prayer of St. Augustine

O  Lord, The house of my soul is narrow; enlarge it that you may enter in. It is ruinous, O repair it! It displeases Your sight. I confess it, I know. But who shall cleanse it, to whom shall I cry but to you? Cleanse me from my secret faults, O Lord, and spare Your servant from strange sins.

Meditation

[Has Satan made a nest in my heart?]

Parting Prayer

O  good shepherd, seek me out, and bring me home to your fold again. Deal favourably with me according to your good pleasure, until I may dwell in your house all the days of my life, and praise you forever and ever with them that are there.

from a prayer of St. Jerome, 408 A.D.

Think of the day ahead in terms of God with you, and visualize health, strength, guidance, purity, calm confidence, and victory as the gifts of His presence.

Fear of Men

1 Corinthians 15:12-19 (ESV)

The Resurrection of the Dead [1]

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.

We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.

For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

Notes on the Scripture

We live inside a box, sealed and opaque. Every scientist agrees that our universe is finite, a great hollow sphere, the inside of which is all we can see. No matter how powerful our telescopes may ever become, they cannot penetrate the boundaries or even see the edge, which is pure energy.

utside our universe, science simply has no concept of what exists or does not exist. We don’t know if there is matter, or people, or energy, or even time. One plus one might not equal two. But if we believe in the Bible, we know that God is there, for He existed in the void when He created light. (Genesis 1:1) While the Bible is not a scientific document, it did describe the “Big Bang” thousands of years ago — and some scientists scoffed at the Bible because of it!

But our senses and our minds have no knowledge of reality outside the walls of our box.

We Christians, of course, believe that our souls live on eternally and, moreover, that we retain some sort of identity. It would be idle imagining except for one thing: God has come to us and done things that are impossible under the rules of the universe. A man, the Son of God, who was human in every way, died and then came back to life. Unbelievers scoff because it is physically impossible; but that was the whole point. It cannot happen in our world. And so, when it did happen, it was proof positive of another world.

Paul’s passage today addresses a question sent to him, about people in Corinth who said they were Christians but did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. But the resurrection is the linchpin of Christian belief, for (assuming you believe all the people who say they saw Christ after he died) the resurrection proves beyond doubt that there is a God, who is not constrained by the laws of science that exist inside the box where we live.

The Resurrection of Christ, by Mikael Nesterov (Russian), c. 1917.

Daily Inspiration

“The Goodness of God”

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