The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish. John 1:14 MSG
The first Christmas God moved into our neighborhood and our world changed for the better. Since then He hasn’t left us alone. We look forward to a future when this will repeat and the world we see about us will be changed forever. John the apostle after seeing a vision about our final destination writes this in the last book of the Bible:- I heard a voice thunder from the Throne: âLook! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! Theyâre his people, heâs their God. Heâll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for goodâtears gone, crying gone, pain goneâall the first order of things gone.â The Enthroned continued, âLook! Iâm making everything new. Write it all downâeach word dependable and accurate.â Revelation 21:3â-âŹ5 MSG
The first time He moved in like a helpless baby born in an obscure town of Bethlehem, but we look forward to a time when He moves in with all His glory and splendor in the New Jerusalem. The first Christmas was a reminder that God is with us, the promise of Immanuel. He promised and gave us the Holy spirit (John 14) which is a guarantee of the future to come.
In this world we will have troubles, hearts will ache, bones will break, but because of Immanuel, we have a future when He’ll wipe every year and remove every pain and the glory of the Son will obscure the light of the sun.
What if success was measured not by the harvest but by the seeds sown?
People always remember the medal winners but no one talks about the participants. We just watched the 2020 Olympics from Tokyo, podium finishers were decorated, commemorated, honoured and worshipped but does anyone remember the others who finished the race 4th, 5th and so on, probably facing and fighting insurmountable odds in the process. Medal winners made headlines while the others were frowned over as disappointments.
When a farmer sows seeds, not every seed that is sown comes to fruition. When a farmer scatters his seeds, some of them may not get buried immediately, some will be picked up by the birds others dispersed by the farm animals. There is a possibility that the dispersed seed is buried elsewhere outside the limits of the farm and bears a fruit there. Hence, the success of the farmer can’t be judged only by his farm produce in a limited time period.
Let’s learn from apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth, he writes, “I planted the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow. Itâs not important who does the planting, or who does the watering. Whatâs important is that God makes the seed grow. The one who plants and the one who waters work together with the same purpose. And both will be rewarded for their own hard work.” 1 Corinthians 3:6â-âŹ8 NLT
Against the backdrop of eternity let our lives continually, persistently sow seeds of the gospel, seeds of hope and love in a world starved of love. Our labour may not be rewarded with an instant harvest or even in our lifetime, but one can never estimate the potential of a seed. Let us continue to shine our light and sow seeds of the good news unabashedly in the face of the darkness.
This little light of mine I am gonna let it shine.
Samuel Clemens who later became the famous American author under the pen name Mark Twain wrote this about the Jews more than a century ago: “If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one quarter of one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk.
His contributions to the worldâs list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are also very out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world in all ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it. The Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Persians rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greeks and Romans followed and made a vast noise, and they were gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, and have vanished.
The Jew saw them all, survived them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmaties, of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert but aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jews; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality? ” – September 1897 (Quoted in The National Jewish Post & Observer, June 6, 1984)
Well if Mark Twain had opened his Bible he’d have know the “secret of Jews’ immortality”, “Behold, He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” Psalm 121:4 AMPC
“After a period of glory, the Lord of Heavenâs Armies sent me against the nations who plundered you. For he said, âAnyone who harms you harms my most precious possession.” Zechariah 2:8 NLT God is speaking of Israel, His covenant people as His most precious possession.
God promised Abraham when He made a covenant with him. “And I will bless those who bless you [who confer prosperity or happiness upon you] and curse him who curses or uses insolent language toward you; in you will all the families and kindred of the earth be blessed [and by you they will bless themselves].” Genesis 12:3 AMPC The salvation through Jesus bringing eternal life is the ultimate fulfillment of this promise.
God has blessed Israel and made it a blessing for the world much more than the world can comprehend. Jews constitute only 0.2% of the world population of 7.8 billion plus, still more than 20% of the Nobel prize winners from 1910-2000 were Jewish.* A nation which was formed only in 1948, is now one of the leaders in technology, startups, medicine, military and defence research and the list goes on.
Israel is the only true democracy in middle East. Also the only nation in middle East where women have most freedom, including Muslim women.
Sadly Israel is surrounded by nations which propogate hatred towards the Jews and even publically call for their annihilation. As children of Yahweh let us pray for peace in the land where Jesus walked. As partakers of the Abrahamic blessings through our faith in Jesus (Galatians 3:14), it is our responsibility to pray for our Jewish brothers and sisters and for the peace of Jerusalem.
“Pray for peace in Jerusalem. May all who love this city prosper. O Jerusalem, may there be peace within your walls and prosperity in your palaces. For the sake of my family and friends, I will say, âMay you have peace.â For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek what is best for you, O Jerusalem.” Psalms 122:6â-âŹ9 NLT
Shalom Yisrael! (׊××× ×׊ר××)
* B. Shalev, 100 Years of Nobel Prizes, 3rd edn (Los Angeles, 2005), pp. 57â61.
Every God-begotten person conquers the worldâs ways. The conquering power that brings the world to its knees is our faith. The person who wins out over the worldâs ways is simply the one who believes Jesus is the Son of God. 1 John 5:4â-âŹ5 MSG
Whining is counterproductive to winning.
Whining saps the strength, endurance, hope and joy that’s prerequisite for winning.
Whining is giving consent to the external environment to poison the internal environment.
People whine about things beyond their control, but as children of the Creator of the universe, we have a direct approach to the One who is sovereign over all.
Donât fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of Godâs wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. Itâs wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. Philippians 4:6â-âŹ7 MSG Here apostle Paul exhorts us to conserve our breath and energy wasted on worrying, whining and complaining, and instead focus on praising and praying.
In a crisis situation when the lay people complain and grumble, the King’s family is usually devoid of complaining. The family knows the king their father will control the outcome. If we look around and about us we can conjure up complain lists that can never satiate our appetites for cribbing, but does this behove the children of the King? We live in a broken world but we await a day when there shall be no more suffering no more tears. Till that day comes let us fix our eyes on what is unseen.
The temporal may cause us to complain but what’s eternal causes us to praise. Our hearts will never find the perfection and peace in this world, cause we are made for another.
Separated from his family at 17 years âĄď¸, from the pit to being sold as a slave, âĄď¸ then in an Egyptian household âĄď¸ then for a number of years in the dungeons of Egyptian prison (wrongly accused).
The teenage dreams remained unfulfilled, God took him through the dungeons, moulded him into the man before whom his family and all of Egypt and Cannan would eventually kneel down.
He never stopped dreaming, through the scorn of his brothers, through the betrayal in the prison, till his dreams finally earned for him an audience with the Pharoah and later a seat at his table. He remained as humble in the palace as he was in the prison.
The journey to the fulfillment of your God ordained dreams may be painful, but He is perfecting you and developing a charcter which will not vacillate not stumble when flooded with fame and the fulfillment of the dream.
Character which is perfected in the dregs of the dungeons will not vacillate in the opulence of the palace.
Bethlehem was the promised birth place of the Messiah (Micha 5:2), in order to fulfill that promise God moved Joseph and Mary, to take a journey from their hometown to Bethlehem. A journey in the late 3rd trimester of pregnancy, probably nearing the due date was not in the schedule for the new parents to be. A journey of approximately 90 miles was something they’d not envisioned to undertake in the days preceding the baby’s birth. Bethlehem was Joseph’s ancestral place, Boaz and Ruth lived there, it was the city of David and there after his lineage.
Sometimes it does our soul good to visit the places (literally and figuratively) and testimonies of the lives of the people who passed on before us. Each generation not only carries forward the family name, but the collective experience of God’s goodness in each generation functions to fuel us and propel us forward. “One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.” Psalm 145:4 ESV
No doubt it caused them emotional and physical strain to leave their comfort zone and travel to their ancestral place in Bethlehem. Nevertheless they journeyed, eventually causing the Messiah’s birth to take place in a manger. Mary who’d carried the hope of the world in her womb had to go through a inconvenient place and time to fulfill God’s promise. Beyond the inconvenience of the promise were the angelic choir and the awestruck shepherds and the wisemen from East with their gifts.
If you’re reading this, God has a promise for your life. It may need a change of place and perspective or you may have to go through an inconvenient journey in order to receive the promise, but what He says shall surely come to pass. “So shall My word be that goes forth out of My mouth: it shall not return to Me void [without producing any effect, useless], but it shall accomplish that which I please and purpose, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55:11 AMPC
Imagine peeping into a phone of a sheep and finding this on the recent Google search – “pastures near me?”! Even if the sheep in our age were to own and use a phone it’s unlikely that this will feature on their Google search.
King David who was a shepherd by occupation wrote this:- The Lord is my shepherd; I have all that I need. Psalms 23:1 NLT. This is coming from someone who knows his sheep well. A sheep’s security is founded on the assurance that all it’s needs are met, “I have all I need”. Hence, the sheep never has to worry about the next meal or pasture.
Ba ba bo sheep I have all I need!
Contentment leads to gratitude and prevents insecurity. Whereas discontent leads to ingratitude and disconnect owing to lack of submission to the leadership/authority. My Shepherd knows the pastures near me (in fact He knows each one of those pastures) so I needn’t waste my breath & time on searching for pastures. I may not like a particular pasture but the Shepherd knows that, this is the place I should be in for this season of life. What doesn’t make sense now, I’ll hopefully look back one day in retrospect and realise the grand picture which now evades me.
To please all men or to gain the applause of all men is impossible, if you voice your opinion you might offend someone who has a differing viewpoint, if you stay silent you might offend someone who is banking on you to support his/her stance. Whereas it is impossible to please God without faith (Hebrews 11:6); it is possible and feasible and logical to have faith.
This makes the applause of God and heaven attainable as compared to the applause of men.
Secondly, Jesus is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow (Hebrews 13:8), unlike the wavering adulation of our fellow men. Jesus never backs down on His word. God is not a man, so he does not lie. He is not human, so he does not change his mind. Has he ever spoken and failed to act? Has he ever promised and not carried it through? Numbers 23:19 NLT
Lastly, the Bible’s explicit stance on certain key ideas of culture and society leaves no room for ambiguity. The sanctity of life, including the life inside the womb, the intrinsic value of every human being created in the image of God, the sacredness of sex within the covenant of marriage, the creation of man and woman to complement each other in a hetero sexual union through marriage. The Bible is unequivocally pro-life and God values every individual regardless of race, colour or ethnicity, since He created them in His image and likeness, making all as equals.
We are meant to show God’s love for all (no ifs and buts), but we’re also meant to preach the truth in love, even though the truth may not go down well with everyone. In the 1st century the gospel was a stumbling block to the Jews and the Greeks considered it foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:23). Speaking the truth may not help us win popularity contests, but it may cause someone to gain eternity. Popularity through compromise is detrimental to the kingdom of Heaven. Hence, the onus is upon the church to be Biblically correct before political or cultural correctness.
What if you lose popularity so that someone can gain eternity?
The author is Dr Susan John, currently working in Baptist Christian Hospital, Tezpur, Assam.
The following is her narration of the story – from fighting Covid as a doctor to battling it as a patient and the lessons learnt in the journey.
Over the past few months, our world has gone through much turmoil, unlike never before. Entire countries  shut down, economies collapsed, schools and business were closed, travel restrictions were enforced and everyone was forced to stay home. Fear and uncertainty became prevalent, physical distancing and social isolation became the norm. We couldnât move outside our homes without a mask, all because of a 0.1 um sized particle of protein (to get some perspective, that would be 1/1000th the size of a strand of your hair), talk about small.
We couldnât thank Joseph Lister enough for teaching us about handwashing, even as we started adjusting to the new normal way of doing life. The entire scientific community grappled with understanding this stealthy little virus. All the health systems braced to rise up to fight this global pandemic.
I am also part of such a team, at a remote mission hospital in Tezpur, Assam. It initially began just as something that had originated from bats in China, and we were told to be prepared, and we did that. Over the next few months as the virus swept through the entire world, wearing PPE became second nature to us, even as now we had to triage all our patients. Strategies changed often. The senior doctors had to attend multiple seminars and webinars and pore through numerous guidelines, day in and day out. Finally, predictions came true as the peak hit India in July- August and cases started to surge.
We werenât admitting COVID patients but we had to refer any suspected patients to the nearby government center. It broke our hearts every time we had to take tough decisions of referring sick patients. We had to say no, to desperate, sometimes angry relatives. We had to wear PPE through the heat of summer. The hospital was also struggling due to dwindling patient numbers and added to that the struggles of our patients who were not able to access care due to multiple reasons. We were trying our best, but life was tough and challenging, and we just needed a break…
Masked smiles
Thatâs when it struck, the virus had invadedâŚme!!
I badly wanted it to be just a normal cold, but the rapid test came positive, and strongly positive at it, and I had to be isolated, in my hostel room, for the next 17 days. There were a few questions at the back of my mind, like why was this happening? Did I do something wrong? But then there was also this calm assurance that God had allowed this and that He would carry me through. His reassurance was that, âIn all things God works together for good, for them that love God, for them that have been called according to His purposeâ. I could trust Him.
It was tough the initial few days, with the fever and blocked nose, and my parents back home who were concerned for my well-being. But that settled soon.
It was a bit lonely so I tried to keep myself busy reading and leaning in more to God in my desperate situation.
I never realized I was so dependent on others in my life, in the form of the constant help that my friends provided during this period. Getting me the essential things that I needed.
And I did eventually have a quick recovery from the sickness, without having very bad symptoms. All glory to God and because of the prayers of my loved ones and special thanks to my mother who kept doctoring me from so far away..
But if there is one important lesson that I have learnt from this whole exercise, is that I was too self- sufficient, self- reliant, self- confident, in my work, and relationships and even the things I thought I was doing for God.
All of a sudden all the plans that I had made for the next two weeks had come to fail. Even my efforts to be productive during the break were failing. Not because my intentions were bad, but because I had to realise I couldnât do it in my own strength. I was infact feeling burdened, frustrated and burnt out.
Much like Moses who had to run away and hide after taking things into His own hands, by trying to kill the Egyptian, we want to do great things for God, but before God uses us He has to break us, till we learn to rely on Him completely, despising our every effort, saying like Jesus, â I do nothing of my own accord, but only what I see the Father doing.â
He wants us to rest and abide in Him and seek our direction and purpose from Him. Jesus says, âApart from me, you can do nothing.â ( John 15)
We can spend our whole lives doing the âworksâ of God, but in the end God will have to say, â I donât know you, away from me you evildoersâ , if it was not done according to His will, and how do we know His will ? Only through spending time with God and His word and He will reveal it to us through His Holy Spirit dwelling within us.
In the parable of the ten virgins, all ten were waiting for the bridegroom, carrying their lamps with them, five of them who were foolish, ran out of oil, the other five of them who were wise, made sure they had extra oil for the whole duration of the wait, and that is the oil of intimacy, that Jesus, is asking us to cultivate in these last days, if we are to be ready for Him.
So as the world is going through this pandemic, God is reminding us to be still and know that He is God, He is asking us to cease from our striving. He doesnât want servants, He wants friends, intimate friends that is, with whom He can share His heart and His secrets.
Daniel 11:32 says, â But the people that know their God, shall be strong and do exploitsâ.
Will we be set apart and Holy? Will we be that priestly generation that will dedicate themselves to draw close to God and to stand in the gap for our people and represent Him to the world? Will we be the prophets calling down the reign of heaven on earth, by praying prayers that are after His own heart?
Will we say like Samuel, or Abraham, or Moses, âHere I am, I am available, you can have it all, you can use me Godâ?
Before Christ, cross was a symbol of the brutal Roman capital punishment, a public shaming and mutilation leading to death reserved only for the worst of the criminals.
It was considered a curse for the Jews, for the law said that it is a cruse to be hung on a tree (Deuteronomy 21:23).
After Christ, the cross became a symbol of Faith Hope Love.
Faith: John 1:12 (NLT) But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.
Hope: Colossians 1:27 (AMPC) To whom (saints, holy people) God was pleased to make known how great for the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ within and among you, the Hope of [realizing the] glory.
Love: John 3:16 (NLT) âFor this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
The greatest of these is love.
Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
1 Corinthians 13:7 NLT
If God can take a symbol of curse and death and transform it to a symbol of hope and love then it can definitely do super abundantly more than you can ask or imagine to transform any situation in your life.
