Recently I've been working with some children's religious textbooks. I started with the upper grades and am now reading grade 1. I know from long experience that the theme of grade 1 is "God Loves You". So I was not surprised to see in the opening chapters that God the Father loves you, Jesus the Son loves you, Holy Spirit loves you. As I got into the later chapters I found myself thinking, "Now we will have a different subject." But every new chapter, every new topic, comes back around to "God Loves You." God created the word because God loves you. God created people because God loves you Often we adults forget what we learned in first grade. God loves us. For reflection: God loves me. God loves me. God loves me. God loves me.
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"Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." So goes the balance of the paragraph about the everyday lives of Jesus' followers (Acts 2:43-47). There are still Christian communities that hold some, if not all, of their goods in common. There are some who eat together every day. Of those who have tried to live in common (and I am one of them) it seems to work best in small groups. I suppose there are sociological factors at play relating to group size, how well you know each other, and trust, when groups fall apart. It didn't always work for the disciples either, as we see at the end of chapter 4 and beginning of chapter 5. But why did the disciples do this? Had they been living from a common purse with Jesus? Had they always eaten together? We don't know. Aside from donations they received, perhaps Peter and the other fishermen sometimes went off to fish, make a little money, and take care of their families before rejoining Jesus in his journey. Maybe Jesus occasionally worked in a carpentry shop as a day laborer. The Gospel writers did not find those day-to-day details of enough importance to take up precious space on a scroll. Yet they would be interesting to know. For reflection: Would I be trusting enough, and giving enough, to live in common with others? Would I sell things I own in order to give to people in need? Do I treat day laborers as if they might be Jesus? Let us pray. Father, Creator, Multiplier, all we have comes from you. All we have we owe to you. We've completed looking at the Resurrection and post-Resurrection accounts, the Ascension and Pentecost. It's also a new month and I like to move on to a new topic. However, we are going to stay with the Acts of the Apostles for a bit to experience life with the early church. At the end of chapter 2 we find this one paragraph which summarizes the day-to-day life of the disciples after Pentecost. If not for this paragraph we wouldn't know what "normal" life was like, because from here on Luke tells the stories of Peter and then Paul as they preached and suffered for the Gospel. Verse 42 says, "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." Teaching/learning, fellowship, communion and prayer marked their days. These are obviously the things they saw as immediately important. They continued to do what Jesus had done with them. He taught; he fellowshipped; he broke bread and he prayed. The things they had thought mundane when Jesus was alive, they now realized were essential. After Jesus had risen, they recognized him in the breaking of the bread. How many times had he done that with them before he died? After Jesus had risen, he explained to them again the Scriptures and how the promises and the covenant applied to him and to them. Flowing from the understanding of the Scriptures and what God had done came prayer. He spent time with them in their everyday lives in prayer and in showing them how to live in good times and in bad, in acceptance and rejection. And so they began to do as Jesus had done. For reflection: How much of my time do I devote to the teachings of God, to fellowshipping with other believers, to communion and to prayer? How important are those things in my life? Do I need to make adjustments? Let us pray. Jesus, you did so much for me. I do so little for you. Help me to arrange my schedule so that there is a good balance of time for your teaching, fellowshipping, communion and prayer. |
AliceI started this website and blog on May 1, 2012. I am a Catholic who has been in ministry for many years. I first developed what I would call a close relationship with Jesus in the early 1970s. Ever since then I have been praying with people for healing and other needs. It is because I have seen so many of these prayers answered that I am so bold as to offer to pray for you individually through this website and phone line. Archives
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