Treasure In Clay Jars

That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak." But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." The man asked him, "What is your name?" "Jacob," he answered. Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome. (Genesis 32: 22-28 NIV) So, God decided that for reasons only He understands, the nation Israel would be directly created by Himself. It says so right there in the scripture above. This one act, has influenced the entire hu...

Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" "Who is he, sir?" the man asked. "Tell me so that I may believe in him." Jesus said, "You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you." Then the man said, "Lord, I believe," and he worshiped him. Jesus said, "For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind." (John 9:35-39 NIV) I happen to be reading John Chapter 9 when I came across the above verse of scripture. As with all scripture, it’s accuracy captures the essence of the world in which we live, and as such is a perfect indictment of our fallen society and world. The blind man in the story (and by the way it is a true story) is representative of so few in our world: people who truly want to believe. When Jesus asked the man if he believed in the Son of Man, he didn’t know who that was, but hi...

The Episcopal Church USA continues to stake out their territory as a “church unto itself” as opposed to a part of Christ’s body of believers with such decisions as 2003’s approval of the New Hampshire Diocese's election of V. Gene Robinson, as the organization’s first openly gay bishop. This year the “church” elected liberal Katherine Jefferts Schori as their leader. Along comes this not surprising bit of information about Ms. Schori courtesy of Newsbusters.org . Most recently, she irritated some conservatives by speaking about "Mother Jesus" in a sermon....the website then goes on to quote Washington Post reporter Alan Cooperman who stated: To those who accuse her of heresy for referring to a female Jesus, she responds with a typically learned disquisition on medieval mystics and saints who used similar language, including Julian of Norwich and St. Teresa of Avila. "I was trying to say that the work of the cross was in some ways like giving birth to a new creation,...

The widespread publicity afforded to Warren Buffet last week when he announced his intention to leave his billions to charity coupled with a somewhat similar announcement a few weeks earlier by Bill Gates regarding his intention to step down as leader of Microsoft to focus on his humanitarian foundation illustrates a very deceptive flaw in our global human thinking. These very caring people are to be lauded for their giving spirit to others, but at the same time, the outpouring of attention continues to cement the myth of human “goodness” to combat the evil of this world, when in fact such “goodness” is nothing more than a deception that we can cure ourselves. We as human beings are selfish, depraved and self centered; that is how God describes us in Jeremiah 17:9 - The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? The generosity of billionaires cannot cure it. God presents only one cure for the human heart: If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ours...