Minister’s Blog
The belief that moved the heart of Jesus in this story has almost nothing to do with knowing Jesus or his mission and teachings, but has something to do with the inner sincerity and unconditional love in the father’s heart.
Samuel issued this prophecy, “on that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you on that day.”
I feel that we may be living in a time when and where Christians are challenged, yet again, to explain what we mean by being a Christian and to show in our lives what we believe.
One of the most heated Christian arguments has been around how to obtain righteousness and its relationship with either faith or works or both.
What would it mean to live life fully with this as a kind of foundational belief—how might it change the ways we live with and treat others, that they, too, are also potential angels-in-the-making?
There are strong, clear teachings in the Judeo-Christian scriptures that we are to welcome, feed, and clothe the stranger, those who are different from us, those who might practice a different religion or come from a different culture.
Next time you read Swedenborg, think of these words as being written by the hands of a gardener; fingers that also knew how to weed and prune, and tend to the long time of gestation and growing.
“Now is a time for us to stand together, to take courage from one another and learn together how we are to be brave now and to hold on to the things that are good about us and about our country.”
Similar to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, Swedenborg wrote how in the spiritual world, there is no linear chronological time, but only changes of affective state.
Often, we use the word “freedom” as a kind of condition determining our behavioral ability within human societies. However, Swedenborg suggests that there can be an even deeper understanding of freedom…