The center of a human being is the will.  Evil and good work upon that will. Suffering must be experienced while evil exists in the soul.  It is put there by God for a purpose:  that the man might work against the evil in him and thereby relieve the suffering.

How many people are there who aggressively attack evils in the world, yet fail to recognize and address the evil within themselves?  Even if it were possible for evil to be expunged, yet it still remains in me, I could not completely enjoy the goodness around me.

Corporate evil is not the problem.  Individual evil is.

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Before he was born, Jesus’ earthly father, Joseph, had a dream.  In it an angel told him that it was okay to marry Mary because the child that she was carrying was from God and that he (Jesus) would save his people from their sins.  That statement put two questions in my mind:  Who are Jesus’ people? and What does it mean that he will save them from their sins?

I believe that Jesus came from God and that he had a mission.  Often we receive messages incorrectly, or we may not fully understand the meaning of what was said.  We must always realize that if the message is from God, then he will ultimately make it clear to us through his Holy Spirit if we remain open to the truth.

We would be hard-pressed to find anyone who was continuously happy.

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It’s that time of year again.  Trees budding, flowers blooming, palm fronds waving, egg decorating and the opportunity to once again sing, “Up from the grave He arose …”  For religious folk, it’s time to focus on death, particularly death by crucifixion, and resurrection.  In my wife’s childhood church, akin to the Plymouth Brethren, the weekly Lord’s Supper (worship service) is centered on “the death of our Lord Jesus.”  Every Sunday.  The entire year.  Having participated in it for years after our marriage, and now looking back, it seems so morbid.

Most Western Christians like the best of both worlds.  Jesus bled and died for our sins (sad face), but was resurrected in a glorious body (bright face).  Now, where did we hide those eggs, and could you pass that Easter ham down this way?

As I have mentioned before, I get a lot of my ideas for these articles from church signs that I observe while driving around.  I attend a Methodist church, and our sign has no slogan.  Just the church name and the pastor’s name below, which gets obliterated part of the year when the shrubbery grows up too far.

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Located in the middle of our Bible is a collection of five books called Psalms.  I never noticed until now that the Psalms were divided into books.  And I am hard-pressed to find any division in the subject matter or authors that would identify them as separate books.

The root word is psallein, from the Greek, meaning “to play the harp.”  It seems that it might be difficult to sing songs of this nature, even accompanied by an instrument, although many today have attempted it with much success.

The first psalm was psung by King David when the Ark of the Covenant was returned to Jerusalem (I Chronicles 16:8-36).  In fact a lot of the chapters in the Book of Psalms were purportedly written by David, but the entire collection includes other authors.

Many of the Psalms are praise songs.  Not like the snippets of Psalms that are used in worship today, where they display it on an overhead projector, accompany it with a small band and sing the phrase over and over and over and over until you want to confess to something just to make it stop.

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I heard on the news that New York is leading the nation in total number of abortions.  That’s not a surprise since the state has a population of over 19 million.  What was interesting, though, was a recent poll about abortion in the state.  64% (consisting of 50% women) of New Yorkers felt that abortion was okay, but that there were too many being performed at the present time.

What?  Is it giving your state a bad name?  If you’re for abortion, then who cares what people think about your state?  And just how many is too many? Aren’t all of the unborn children being terminated?

Abortion has been, and still is, a hotbed for debate in political and religious circles.  The term “unborn children” sounds like an oxymoron.  If they’re not born yet, how can they be children?  But many mothers will identify and communicate with the child in their womb, preparing for the day when he or she will take their first breath.

Other mothers don’t even consider themselves mothers.  They see the “thing” as just a growth inside them, like a cancerous mass.  They need to remove it in order to improve their quality of life.  But malignant cancer, left to itself, will eventually kill you.  A fetus, left to itself, will become fully developed into another human being.

This “growth” will likely one day take care of you when you can’t care for yourself.

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