The Sixth Day of Christmas
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The Gift of Redemption
To believe is not ultimately to wrap your brain around some existential concept. To believe is to embrace something with your heart, as if your life depended on it. Get out of the confusions of your head and go deeper into your heart.
I was raised in the Christian Science religion; I left this belief system, when I saw the death and destruction that the Vietnam War caused to my fellow Marines. As a young twenty-one-year-old, I could not accept the belief that what happens in this material world makes no impression of our spiritual self.
Although I still believe in some aspect, such as the power of God to heal, I know that what we do in this world matters, maybe not for our own eternal soul, since God loves us regardless of who we are, but our actions are important in the care of the rest of God’s creation; and that includes my brothers and sisters all around the world, the animals that both feed us and humor us in their daily antics, and in the Earth itself. I do my best to love, respect, and nourish all of God’s kingdom. Unfortunately, the human race has failed in many attempts.
May all people recognize and accept the blessings of God.
Many years ago I remember being shocked by an elderly priest telling me that he now believed more and more about less and less. Now that I am much older, and hopefully wiser, I know exactly what he meant. Many of the things we thought important as young clergy no longer matter and many of them actually obscured the Gospel. Thank you for reminding me of this in your sermon Brother, for it made very clear what we need to believe and how to believe it, in order that we might better love God and ourselves, that we might better love others in the service of He who is love itself.
I like it, although the text given is incomplete without the bit that comes next in the sermon, the bit about conforming our life to love.
Faith is lived much more than thought, but that seems like something folks often forget, especially if they aren’t much involved in the church.