The Danakil Plain in Ethiopia is the hottest place on earth and is filled with salt. Matthew 5:13 Amplified Bible says about creyentes (believers), "You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste (its strength, its quality), how can its saltness be restored? It is not good for anything any longer but to be thrown out and trodden underfoot by men."
One of the definitions for salt in Webster's New World Dictionary is "any person or persons regarded as the finest." Creyentes, God's finest, are called to live vigorously in relationships filled with love. Love starts with God and flows to self and to family. Love doesn't stop there. Love flows to strangers.
Why should God's finest get involved in stopping China's one-child policy with forced abortion and forced sterilization? Why should creyentes get involved in closing the business of abortionists Douglas Karpen and LeRoy Carhart who have killed babies and women? Why should creyentes push for religious freedom in Nigeria, Iran and other places globally? Why should creyentes help people to receive a relationship with God and to improve relationships like marriage, parenting, friendships, etc? God says to do these types of things. We serve a God who does way more than the minimum and expects from creyentes way more than the minimum. Matthew 22:36-40 Amplified Bible says, "Teacher, which kind of commandment is great and important (the principal kind) in the Law? [Some commandments are light—which are heavy?] And He replied to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (intellect). This is the great (most important, principal) and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as [you do] yourself. These two commandments sum up and upon them depend all the Law and the Prophets."
We cannot say that we love God without also loving a lot of people in a large way. 1 John 5:3 Amplified Bible says, "For the [true] love of God is this: that we do His commands [keep His ordinances and are mindful of His precepts and teaching]. And these orders of His are not irksome (burdensome, oppressive, or grievous)."
We can love large because God makes creyentes to be hot and salty living love stories. God lives inside of creyentes constantly cultivating us to make our love story even better. Please share your love story. Write to:
Michele F. Jackson
P. O. Box 2106
Woodbridge, VA 22195
Follow Michele F. Jackson on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/michelelove30.
Showing posts with label Ethiopia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ethiopia. Show all posts
Monday, May 27, 2013
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Imagine Opening Our Arms To Immigrants And The Disabled
Kaldi and the Dancing Goats is a story from Ethiopia. Kaldi was a goatherd, who one day was grazing his goats on a mountain side, but by the end of the day he could not find them.
Kaldi searched, and he searched, and he searched. Finally, he found them dancing around a bush whose red berries they had been feasting on. Kaldi decided to try the berries and found himself inspired to dance.
Kaldi took the red-berry treasure to some monks in a nearby monastery. One monk felt the red berries were a work of the devil and flung them into the fire. The fire brought out such an exquisite aroma from the red berries that the monks rescued the berries, ground them and made the hot, black drink we know as coffee. What they at first thought was a work of the devil, they later decided was a gift from God because coffee kept people awake during their prayers.
Some people feel that allowing a short, easy path to citizenship without economic burden for immigrants is a work of the devil. However, many immigrants are Christians fleeing from places of persecution and/or poverty to places that treasure things like freedom, equality and economic opportunity.
Religious freedom is not a reality in northern Nigeria. Also other parts of Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, have absorbed about as many people fleeing from northern Nigeria as they can help. Nigeria is about 50 percent Islam, 40 percent Christian and 10 percent other faiths.
One tradition says that the reason Abraham of the Bible had to immigrate from Ur of the Chaldees to Canaan is because he was being persecuted. God will use persecution and other situations to move us from one place to another for a good purpose. Genesis 12 records that Abraham coming to Canaan would be a part of his family being a global blessing to people.
The Brazos River flows through the middle of the American state of Texas. This river was originally named Los Brazos de Dios (In the Arms of God). Creyentes (believers) serve a big God whose arms are so big that they could never be too many people for Him to hug. Creyentes are God's physical arms on earth. Hugging immigrants is a blessing to us and to them.
Christian Minister and Civil Rights Activist Martin Luther King, Jr., says, "[People] often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they do not know each other; they do not know each other because they cannot communicate; they cannot communicate because they are separated." Demonic fear is designed to divide and to destroy people.
An East African proverb says, "When minds are the same, that which is far off will come." If we stay in fear, we cannot unify and do the great works God said we are to do.
Demonic fear produces irrational thinking. Imagine the extensive psychiatric problems in China due to China's one child policy with forced abortion and forced sterilization. Inflicting psychiatric problems reduces productivity. Productivity is essential for people to survive and thrive.
The idea of killing people and/or disfiguring them for social advancement is ancient and modern. In America and in other countries abortionists kill unborn baby girls and baby boys. Sometimes abortionists also kill babies born alive after botched abortions, adolescents and women. Abortionist LeRoy Carhart killed Christin Gilbert, a 19-year-old who had Down syndrome, and her baby. Gilbert is not the only woman killed by Carhart, who does late-term abortions. People with disabilities are discriminated against in the womb and out of the womb. Robert Ethan Saylor, was a young man killed in a movie theater because people didn't understand someone with Down syndrome.
We must learn to distinguish among foreign invaders/enemies and the potential friends of immigrants and people with disabilities.
Share some stories of immigrants and persons with disabilities overcoming discrimination. Write to:
Michele F. Jackson
P. O. Box 2106
Woodbridge, VA 22195
Follow Michele F. Jackson on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/michelelove30. Recommend this article on Google.
Enjoy Memorial Day on Monday.
Kaldi searched, and he searched, and he searched. Finally, he found them dancing around a bush whose red berries they had been feasting on. Kaldi decided to try the berries and found himself inspired to dance.
Kaldi took the red-berry treasure to some monks in a nearby monastery. One monk felt the red berries were a work of the devil and flung them into the fire. The fire brought out such an exquisite aroma from the red berries that the monks rescued the berries, ground them and made the hot, black drink we know as coffee. What they at first thought was a work of the devil, they later decided was a gift from God because coffee kept people awake during their prayers.
Some people feel that allowing a short, easy path to citizenship without economic burden for immigrants is a work of the devil. However, many immigrants are Christians fleeing from places of persecution and/or poverty to places that treasure things like freedom, equality and economic opportunity.
Religious freedom is not a reality in northern Nigeria. Also other parts of Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, have absorbed about as many people fleeing from northern Nigeria as they can help. Nigeria is about 50 percent Islam, 40 percent Christian and 10 percent other faiths.
One tradition says that the reason Abraham of the Bible had to immigrate from Ur of the Chaldees to Canaan is because he was being persecuted. God will use persecution and other situations to move us from one place to another for a good purpose. Genesis 12 records that Abraham coming to Canaan would be a part of his family being a global blessing to people.
The Brazos River flows through the middle of the American state of Texas. This river was originally named Los Brazos de Dios (In the Arms of God). Creyentes (believers) serve a big God whose arms are so big that they could never be too many people for Him to hug. Creyentes are God's physical arms on earth. Hugging immigrants is a blessing to us and to them.
Christian Minister and Civil Rights Activist Martin Luther King, Jr., says, "[People] often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they do not know each other; they do not know each other because they cannot communicate; they cannot communicate because they are separated." Demonic fear is designed to divide and to destroy people.
An East African proverb says, "When minds are the same, that which is far off will come." If we stay in fear, we cannot unify and do the great works God said we are to do.
Demonic fear produces irrational thinking. Imagine the extensive psychiatric problems in China due to China's one child policy with forced abortion and forced sterilization. Inflicting psychiatric problems reduces productivity. Productivity is essential for people to survive and thrive.
The idea of killing people and/or disfiguring them for social advancement is ancient and modern. In America and in other countries abortionists kill unborn baby girls and baby boys. Sometimes abortionists also kill babies born alive after botched abortions, adolescents and women. Abortionist LeRoy Carhart killed Christin Gilbert, a 19-year-old who had Down syndrome, and her baby. Gilbert is not the only woman killed by Carhart, who does late-term abortions. People with disabilities are discriminated against in the womb and out of the womb. Robert Ethan Saylor, was a young man killed in a movie theater because people didn't understand someone with Down syndrome.
We must learn to distinguish among foreign invaders/enemies and the potential friends of immigrants and people with disabilities.
Share some stories of immigrants and persons with disabilities overcoming discrimination. Write to:
Michele F. Jackson
P. O. Box 2106
Woodbridge, VA 22195
Follow Michele F. Jackson on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/michelelove30. Recommend this article on Google.
Enjoy Memorial Day on Monday.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Kindness
Ebed-melech, an Ethiopian employee of the Hebrew King Zedekiah, didn't have to help the prophet Jeremiah, but he did (Jeremiah 38-39). Enemies of Jeremiah spoke to Zedekiah. Zedekiah agreed to follow their advice and had Jeremiah placed in a prison filled with mud. The Hebrew people were at war with Babylon, and little food and no water was available to Jeremiah in prison. Ebed-melech may have counted the cost, but irregardless he spoke to Zedekiah, and Zedekiah released Jeremiah from prison.
People like Ebed-melech and Chuck Wall speak up when others are wronged. One day in the spring of 1993 an anchorman commented on a bad situation, "Another random act of senseless violence." Chuck Wall, who is blind and an American teacher, heard the comment and was inspired to commit random acts of senseless kindness. Wall shared his idea with his students asking them to do something out of the ordinary to help someone and then to write an essay about it. He also decided to print bumper stickers that said: "Today, I will commit one random act of senseless kindness...Will you?" The idea caught on in Wall's community and spread internationally, so that today many are familiar with the phrase "random acts of kindness."
Krpa (kindness) celebrates and reproduces life. Chuck Wall's kindness has helped other people. When Ebed-melech was kind to Jeremiah, God was kind to Ebed-melech. Jeremiah 39:15-18 Amplified Bible says, "Now the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah while he was [still] shut up in the court of the guard, saying, Go and say to Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will bring to pass My words against this city for evil and not for good; and they will be accomplished before you on that day. But I will deliver you [Ebed-melech] on that day, says the Lord, and you will not be given into the hands of the men of whom you are afraid. For I will surely deliver you; and you will not fall by the sword, but your life will be [as your only booty and] as a reward of battle to you, because you have put your trust in Me, says the Lord."
"My life is better because of you," T.D. Jakes to his wife Serita Jakes in a love letter published in the February 2013 Ebony magazine article "House of Love." Please leave an on-line comment about those who make people's lives better and people who practice on-going kindness.
Perhaps Ebed-melech is one of the early believers who shared the news of an eternal, loving relationship with God with others in his native Ethiopia and in Egypt and in other parts of Africa. When we madly love God, everyone knows. International Christian minister Francis Chan says, "I found a love that is greater than life itself."
Aedesius and Frumentius, relatives of the Christian philosopher of Tyre, Meropius, worked for the Axumite King Ella Amida, who is the father of Ezana who is often credited with being the first to make Christianity a state religion in Abyssinia, which later became named Ethiopia. Please leave an on-line comment sharing interesting information about Christianity in Ethiopia, Egypt, Kush and other parts of Africa before, during and after the reign of Ezana.
Today Ethiopia is an African nation never conquered by a European nation in modern times and is a Christian-majority country that has been filled with Christians for centuries. Ethiopia has long interacted with Asians and others. Please leave an on-line comment sharing little-known facts about Asian Christianity.
People like Ebed-melech and Chuck Wall speak up when others are wronged. One day in the spring of 1993 an anchorman commented on a bad situation, "Another random act of senseless violence." Chuck Wall, who is blind and an American teacher, heard the comment and was inspired to commit random acts of senseless kindness. Wall shared his idea with his students asking them to do something out of the ordinary to help someone and then to write an essay about it. He also decided to print bumper stickers that said: "Today, I will commit one random act of senseless kindness...Will you?" The idea caught on in Wall's community and spread internationally, so that today many are familiar with the phrase "random acts of kindness."
Krpa (kindness) celebrates and reproduces life. Chuck Wall's kindness has helped other people. When Ebed-melech was kind to Jeremiah, God was kind to Ebed-melech. Jeremiah 39:15-18 Amplified Bible says, "Now the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah while he was [still] shut up in the court of the guard, saying, Go and say to Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will bring to pass My words against this city for evil and not for good; and they will be accomplished before you on that day. But I will deliver you [Ebed-melech] on that day, says the Lord, and you will not be given into the hands of the men of whom you are afraid. For I will surely deliver you; and you will not fall by the sword, but your life will be [as your only booty and] as a reward of battle to you, because you have put your trust in Me, says the Lord."
"My life is better because of you," T.D. Jakes to his wife Serita Jakes in a love letter published in the February 2013 Ebony magazine article "House of Love." Please leave an on-line comment about those who make people's lives better and people who practice on-going kindness.
Perhaps Ebed-melech is one of the early believers who shared the news of an eternal, loving relationship with God with others in his native Ethiopia and in Egypt and in other parts of Africa. When we madly love God, everyone knows. International Christian minister Francis Chan says, "I found a love that is greater than life itself."
Aedesius and Frumentius, relatives of the Christian philosopher of Tyre, Meropius, worked for the Axumite King Ella Amida, who is the father of Ezana who is often credited with being the first to make Christianity a state religion in Abyssinia, which later became named Ethiopia. Please leave an on-line comment sharing interesting information about Christianity in Ethiopia, Egypt, Kush and other parts of Africa before, during and after the reign of Ezana.
Today Ethiopia is an African nation never conquered by a European nation in modern times and is a Christian-majority country that has been filled with Christians for centuries. Ethiopia has long interacted with Asians and others. Please leave an on-line comment sharing little-known facts about Asian Christianity.
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