Today's Soul Food — April 13
 

April 13

"...Love your neighbor as yourself." Leviticus 19:18, Mark 12:31.

Christians seem to have a tough time with this verse. We are told to love our neighbors and we are admonished to forget ourselves, but both the Old Testament and the New Testament remind us to love ourselves as well as our neighbors. The acronym JOY goes thus: Jesus, Others, and You. This is the priority. But you are in there also to be loved, for Jesus loves you.

"The regulating principle, `as thyself,' points to the due estimate of one's own life; such a love for it as would prevent its exposure to evil, and such a discernment of the true interests of life, and the common participation in those interests, as would lead to right adjustment of the relative claims of self and the apparently conflicting claims of others." Anonymous.

It doesn't lessen our love for ourselves when we wrong ourselves, and it doesn't take very long before we forgive ourselves. We should likewise just as quickly forgive others and love those who have wronged us. Just as we avoid that which hurts us, so in love we should avoid what hurts our neighbors. We seek our good; so we seek our neighbor's good, as well. "In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you" (Matthew 7:12). Job reminded his friends of the golden rule: "I also could speak like you, if you were in my place; I could make fine speeches against you and shake my head at you. But my mouth would encourage you; comfort from my lips would bring you relief" (Job 16:4,5). Job's friends violated the very laws of friendship by trampling on his integrity and feelings while he was temporarily crushed. "Let your conversation be...seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone" (Colossians 4:6). Instead of encouraging his faith and patience with the salt of support, they poured the scalding salt of misunderstanding in his wounds of heart and mind. Job simply wanted his friends to love him as they loved themselves!

Pat Nordman ©

Today's Bible Question ?

What was the name of the secretary that wrote the book of Romans for Paul?

Previous question and Answer: Nicodemus put how many pounds of myrrh and aloes on the body of Jesus? Answer: One Hundred pounds. John 19:39 And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight. (KJV)

 

T H I N K A B O U T I T

Easter Crown Crowns have always been the sign of authority and Kingship. Charlemagne, whom historians say should deserve to be called "great" above all others, wore an octagonal crown. Each of the eight sides was a plaque of gold, and each plaque was studded with emeralds, sapphires, and pearls. The cost was the price of a king's ransom. Richard the Lion Heart had a crown so heavy that two earls had to stand, one on either side, to hold his head. The crown that Queen Elizabeth wears is worth over $20 million. Edward II once owned nine crowns, something of a record. Put them all together, from all of Europe and from the archives of the East, all of them are but trinkets compared to Christ's crown. Revelation 19 says he had many diadems. He wears a crown of righteousness. He wears a crown of glory. He wears a crown of life. He wears a crown of peace and power. Among those crowns, one outshines the rest. It was not formed by the skilled fingers of a silversmith, nor created by the genius of a craftsman. It was put together hurriedly by the rough hands of Roman soldiers. It was not placed upon its wearer's head in pomp and ceremony, but in the hollow mockery of ridicule and blasphemy. It is a crown of thorns.  The amazing thing is that it belonged to me. I deserved to wear that crown. I deserved to feel the thrust of the thorns. I deserved to feel the warm trickle of blood upon my brow. I deserved the pain. He took my crown of thorns--but without compensation. He offers to me instead His crown of life, the crown that fadeth not away.  --James S. Hewett "Christmas is the Promise, and Easter is the Proof."

 

Today's  Devotion

Anguish   Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.  Job 2:8 NIV

I dearly love the Book of Job. The year our son died I had lost two other basic relationships, all three deaths within months of each other, and all suddenly with no time for goodbyes. I found my comfort in the Old Testament, Job and Isaiah especially. On the third reading of Job I decided that one big message is: God trusts us! We always speak of our trusting God, but it came through so clearly that God trusted Job enough to allow Satan to do his terror. What a comfort that was, to know that God trusted me to get through this time in my life when I wanted so much to wake up dead the next morning. I learned that God would hold on to my hand; that if any letting go happened, it would be on my side, not His. I received an e-mail that really touched my heart and I'd like to share it. It's titled GET OFF YOUR ASH: "In Job 2:8 we see a picture of a man who took an instrument to scratch his itch and sat down among the ashes ... We have a choice. We can sit down on our ash, the thing we don't like that seems painful for the moment but in the end will produce a full measure of eternity, or we can rise and walk in the newness of life He has set before us. We all have an individual ash we just can't seem to get off of: an issue of life we can't part with, a hurt we can't let go of, a brother or sister we can't forgive or a memory we can't release. Let's realize the Father is waiting for us to rise up and allow Him to restore to us seven fold and give us beauty for our ashes (Is. 61:3)."Healing Love Outreach Ministries, Devotional #14, Dominica and Carrie Anderson. Thank you, Dominica and Carrie! Actually the Book of Job does not give us answers but it helps us to better understand the reasons for the anguish that eventually touches every life. The question is not the why , for that we can never answer, but the how: how do we accept and overcome it? We ask ourselves, "What is the meaning of all this?" and then we look up to the Man on the Cross. The meaning is/was found when He arose on that golden resurrection morning to give us a new translation of love and life, and a blessed hope.  © Pat Nordman

What a comfort that was, to know that God trusted me to get through this time in my life when I wanted so much to wake up dead the next morning. I learned that God would hold on to my hand; that if any letting go happened, it would be on my side, not His.

More Walking Through the Darkness

All the Rest April 13

Today in History April 13