October 29, 1929, the New York Stock Exchange crashed, panic selling ensued and America plunged into the Great Depression. President Herbert Hoover, in a nation-wide drive to aid the private relief agencies, stated: “Time and time again the American people have demonstrated a spiritual quality… of generosity… This is the occasion when we must arouse that idealism… This civilization… which we call American life, is builded and can alone survive upon the translation into individual action of that fundamental philosophy announced by the Savior nineteen centuries ago… Modern society can not survive with the defense of Cain, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ ”

Federer, B. (2003). American minute. St. Louis, MO.: Amerisearch, Inc.

It were better to have no opinion of God at all,
than such an opinion as is unworthy of him.
--- Francis Bacon


What God does, He does well.
--- Jean de La Fontaine


But I always think
that the best way to know God
is to love many things.
--- Vincent van Gogh
(Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh )

... from here, there and everywhere

21     The crucible [tests] silver, and the furnace [tests] gold,
but a person [is tested] by [his reaction to] praise.

Stern, D. H. (1998). Complete Jewish Bible-OE
: An English version of the Tanakh (OT) and
B'rit Hadashah (NT) (1st ed.). Clarksville, Md.: Jewish
New Testament Publications.

                Substitution

     He hath made Him to be sin for us, … that we might be made the righteousness of God. --- 2 Cor. 5:21.

     The modern view of the death of Jesus is that He died for our sins out of sympathy. The New Testament view is that He bore our sin not by sympathy, but by identification. He was made to be sin. Our sins are removed because of the death of Jesus, and the explanation of His death is His obedience to His Father, not His sympathy with us. We are acceptable with God not because we have obeyed, or because we have promised to give up things, but because of the death of Christ, and in no other way. We say that Jesus Christ came to reveal the Fatherhood of God, the loving-kindness of God; the New Testament says He came to bear away the sin of the world. The revelation of His Father is to those to whom He has been introduced as Saviour: Jesus Christ never spoke of Himself to the world as one Who revealed the Father, but as a stumbling-block (see John 15:22–24 ). John 14:9 was spoken to His disciples.

     That Christ died for me, therefore I go scot free, is never taught in the New Testament. What is taught in the New Testament is that “He died for all” (not—He died my death), and that by identification with His death I can be freed from sin, and have imparted to me His very righteousness. The substitution taught in the New Testament is twofold: “He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” It is not Christ for me unless I am determined to have Christ formed in me.

Chambers, O. (1993). My Utmost for His Highest

Did I confuse the categories?
  Was I blind?
  Was I afraid of hubris
  in identifying this land
  with the kingdom? Those stories
  about the far journeys, when it was here
  at my door; the object
  of my contempt that became
  the toad with the jewel in its head!
  Was a population so small
  enough to be called, too many
  to be chosen? I called it
  an old man, ignoring the April
  message proclaiming: Behold,
  I make all things new.

  The dinosaurs have gone their way
  into the dark. The time-span
  of their human counterparts
  is shortened; everything
  on this shrinking planet favours the survival
  of the small people, whose horizons
  are large only because
          they are content to look at them
  from their own hills.
          I grow old,
  bending to enter the promised
  land that was here all the time,
  happy to eat the bread that was baked
  in the poets' oven, breaking my speech
  from the perennial tree
  of my people and holding it in my blind hand.

R.S. Thomas, London: Macmillan, 1978. Frequencies

     After exhibiting concern that the prophet’s authority be accepted and followed at all costs, Maimonides qualifies his opinion by reference to an apparently trivial detail of Halakhah. The community is at war. Because of the command of the prophet, its members are plundering, killing, and being killed. Yet, within this context, Maimonides cautions one not to tie a permanent knot on the Sabbath unless it is necessary, for this act is prohibited by the Halakhah. Concern for this minute detail of religious ritual within the context of war appears absolutely absurd. The concern, however, expresses Maimonides’ feeling that obedience to the authority of the prophet must be circumscribed even in situations of stress. Obedience to the political authority of the prophet, under the conditions presented, could become total and lead to the reaction that everything else is permitted. In the situation described, a natural and human response to expect from the community would be the feeling that if some aspects of life are upset, everything, therefore, is permitted. But Maimonides insists that one must never relax one’s ability to discriminate. One obeys the prophet only to whatever degree is necessary. Beyond that, other obligations remain intact.

     Though the authority given to the prophet is enormous, the prophet is powerless regarding issues not in his domain. His authority ceases when he participates in rational discourse with scholars. As a prophet, he may initiate a war, but he may not decide whether the Sabbath limit is to be one cubit more or less. The juxtaposition of minute details of Halakhah with the life-and-death command to war focuses attention on a crucial principle: Prophecy has a role in Judaism, yet this role is not limitless. Even if the limits of prophetic authority are manifested in seemingly trivial minutiae of Halakhah, one must conscientiously ensure that these limits are not overstepped.

     Maimonides insists that the Jew must be aware of the exact scope of obedience to authority. He must not only discriminate among all the grounds of different norms, but he must also act on the basis of his discrimination. The security of routine or of a single type of response to religious norms is absent from the mind of the Halakhic Jew, according to Maimonides. The crux of his response is meticulous selectivity. He approaches Halakhah with principles for discriminating the scope and type of various commandments. Halakhic observance that is grounded in routine and uncritical obedience could not sustain the upsetting changes introduced by the prophet; people either would resist his demands or they would accept his disruptive demands in a manner which would destroy existing values. Only a reflective person could live with change in his religious life and still maintain an approach of discrimination as opposed to the all-or-nothing response of the uncritically obedient.

     From Maimonides’ first major legal work, we recognize the Jew which he believed emerged from Halakhah. In comparing Halakhic man to philosophic man it is not correct to claim that the former reflects the virtue of unthinking obedience and the latter the value of critical reflection.42 The Halakhah itself develops a disciplined, discriminating approach. A person who follows the prophet to war yet who refuses to unnecessarily tie a knot on the Sabbath, or who refuses prophetic authority for halakhic laws which are open to human reasoning, is the type of person who critically evaluates the claims of authority. The personality which Halakhah cultivates, according to Maimonides, is the same as that which emerges when the Jew is exposed to philosophy. The same critical discrimination characterizes the Jew’s attitude toward beliefs. We can now analyze Maimonides’ approach to beliefs and show how the anthropology which emerges from Halakhah is also manifested in the cognitive claims of Judaism.

     As a system which includes the notion of God’s revelation in history, Judaism is anchored, at least in part, on authoritarian claims. The belief in divine revelation—as well as numerous other principles which claim divine action in history—cannot be rationally demonstrated.43 Thus, among the fundamental principles of religion, there are those which must rely on the authority of tradition for their acceptance. Yet, according to Maimonides, other principles—such as God’s existence and non-corporeality—are capable of being demonstrated rationally.44

     In his introduction to Ḥelek, Maimonides does not distinguish between the logical status of those principles of Judaism which can be established by reason and those which rest on the authority of tradition. However, Maimonides must account for the acceptance of principles grounded in the authority of tradition if he is to maintain that Aggadah be included within a universal framework of truth. In The Guide of the Perplexed Maimonides does clarify the situation by offering definite criteria which justify one’s acceptance of beliefs based on the authority of tradition. Simply stated, Maimonides claims that appeals to authority are justified when it can be shown that demonstrative reason is not able to offer certainty. This is the method he uses when he argues with those who claim that the eternity of the world has been demonstrated by Aristotle:

     What I myself desire to make clear is that the world’s being created in time, according to the opinion of our Law—an opinion that I have already explained—is not impossible and that all those philosophic proofs from which it seems that the matter is different from what we have stated, all those arguments have a certain point through which they may be invalidated and the inference drawn from them against us shown to be incorrect. Now inasmuch as this is true in my opinion and inasmuch as this question—I mean to say that of the eternity of the world or its creation in time—becomes an open question, it should in my opinion be accepted without proof because of prophecy, which explains things to which it is not in the power of speculation to accede. For as we shall make clear, prophecy is not set at naught even in the opinion of those who believe in the eternity of the world.45

     Truths based upon demonstrative certainty, however, can never be contradicted by an appeal to prophetic authority:

     That the Deity is not a body has been demonstrated; from this it follows necessarily that everything that in its external meaning disagrees with this demonstration must be interpreted figuratively, for it is known that such texts are of necessity fit for figurative interpretation. However, the eternity of the world has not been demonstrated. Consequently, in this case, the texts ought not to be rejected and figuratively interpreted in order to make prevail an opinion whose contrary can be made to prevail by means of various sorts of arguments.

Hartman, D. (2009). Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest (See all Torah Books) .

     Maurice Abbot was a clothier in a village 20 miles from London. One night his pregnant wife, Alice, dreamed that if she could catch a pike, her child would be a boy. She rushed to the nearby river and trapped a young pike in her pitcher. She cooked it, ate it, and on October 29, 1562, bore a son.

     The story spread through the superstitious town, and many people offered to finance the boy’s education. Consequently, George entered Oxford at age 16. The Abbots were staunch Protestants, and the young man entered the ministry. His powerful, Puritan-leaning sermons, though often dull, were always scholarly. When King James approved a new version of the Bible, George became a translator of the Gospels, Acts, and Revelation.

     In 1611, the year the King James Version was released, George became head of the Church of England, the archbishop of Canterbury—the only KJV translator to reach that office. When James died, it was Abbot who crowned the new king, Charles I. He thus became the only KJV translator to crown a monarch.

     But he was also the only translator and the only archbishop of Canterbury ever to kill a man. It happened when he joined friends in a hunting party, midsummer of 1621. Abbot was stout, stodgy, and unfamiliar with bows. When a buck came into sight, he drew back his arrow and let it fly. It flew right into poor Peter Harkins who quickly bled to death. All England was stunned, and many were critical of the archbishop, who was himself doubled over in grief. A special council absolved him of guilt, more or less; and the king issued a pardon. But many churchgoers whispered doubts about the holiness of a man who had killed another. Abbot soon became ill with “the stone and gravel,” and with gout. He began fasting every Tuesday in sorrow for his poor marksmanship. But he was never again well—or well-accepted by the people. Yet he still speaks to us every time we read the Gospels, Acts, or Revelation in the King James Version of the Bible.

   I am about to collapse from constant pain.
   I told you my sins, and I am sorry for them.
   Many deadly and powerful enemies hate me,
   And they repay evil for good because I try to do right.
   You are the LORD God!
   Stay nearby and don’t desert me.
   --- Psalm 38:17-21.

Morgan, R. J. On This Day 365 Amazing And Inspiring Stories About Saints, Martyrs And Heroes

     None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
--- 1 Corinthians 2:8.

     Whatever else is to be made of it, everyone feels that the cross stands out as a hideous tragedy, a dreadful fact black as a splash of ink on our human records. (The Galilean Accent: Being Some Studies In The Christian Life ) They “have crucified the Lord of glory”! gasps Paul in horror. And as often as it comes in sight of Calvary, the human heart echoes that shuddering cry, stands rooted to the spot, staring incredulously at what can’t be true, yet there it really is!

     How did it happen, this appalling thing? What sudden orgy of insanity overwhelmed for one mad day the kindly human nature that we know so well and swept it headlong into this? For we feel hotly that it must have been something monstrous, inexplicable, blown in from the darkness round us that was guilty of that horror. Yet the last haunting terror of it is that it was brought about by ordinary mortals like us, kind and likable in many ways, no doubt. Their children ran with happy shouts to father that day he came home from Calvary, well satisfied, as he kept telling his wife as he played with his little one, with the day’s admirable work—it was not something unthinkable and gross and obviously devilish that was responsible for our Lord’s cross, but it was set up by the quite ordinary, decent, and respectable little sins of decent and respectable people, by the kind of thing into which we are all apt to drift every other day. Let us remember that with a great shivering awe, lest in our lives, too, there rings out that sound of hammering as the nails run home.

     “The past throws light on the future,” says Guicciardini, “because the world was ever on the same make, and all that is or will be in another day has already been, and the same things return, only with different names and colors. It is not everyone who knows them under the new face, but the wise know them.” And age by age the Lord Christ is crucified. And we too have crowded eagerly to Calvary and nailed him to his cross and laughed up into his face and watched him die and gone our way well pleased and much relieved that we have hustled him out of the way—yes, even we.
--- Arthur John Gossip

Wallis, D. (2001). Take Heart: Daily Devotions with the Church's Great Preachers

PROPER 25, SATURDAY
YEAR 1

Psalms (Morning) Psalm 55
Psalms (Evening) Psalm 138, 139:1–18 (19–24)
Old Testament Nehemiah 4:1–23
New Testament (Revelation 7:4–8) 9–17
Gospel Matthew 13:31–35

Index of Readings

PSALMS (MORNING)
Psalm 55

To the leader: with stringed instruments. A Maskil of David.
1 Give ear to my prayer, O God;
do not hide yourself from my supplication.
2 Attend to me, and answer me;
I am troubled in my complaint.
I am distraught 3 by the noise of the enemy,
because of the clamor of the wicked.
For they bring trouble upon me,
and in anger they cherish enmity against me.

4 My heart is in anguish within me,
the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
5 Fear and trembling come upon me,
and horror overwhelms me.
6 And I say, “O that I had wings like a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest;
7 truly, I would flee far away;
I would lodge in the wilderness; Selah
8 I would hurry to find a shelter for myself
from the raging wind and tempest.”

9 Confuse, O Lord, confound their speech;
for I see violence and strife in the city.
10 Day and night they go around it
on its walls,
and iniquity and trouble are within it;
11 ruin is in its midst;
oppression and fraud
do not depart from its marketplace.

12 It is not enemies who taunt me—
I could bear that;
it is not adversaries who deal insolently with me—
I could hide from them.
13 But it is you, my equal,
my companion, my familiar friend,
14 with whom I kept pleasant company;
we walked in the house of God with the throng.
15 Let death come upon them;
let them go down alive to Sheol;
for evil is in their homes and in their hearts.

16 But I call upon God,
and the LORD will save me.
17 Evening and morning and at noon
I utter my complaint and moan,
and he will hear my voice.
18 He will redeem me unharmed
from the battle that I wage,
for many are arrayed against me.
19 God, who is enthroned from of old, Selah
will hear, and will humble them—
because they do not change,
and do not fear God.

20 My companion laid hands on a friend
and violated a covenant with me
21 with speech smoother than butter,
but with a heart set on war;
with words that were softer than oil,
but in fact were drawn swords.

22 Cast your burden on the LORD,
and he will sustain you;
he will never permit
the righteous to be moved.

23 But you, O God, will cast them down
into the lowest pit;
the bloodthirsty and treacherous
shall not live out half their days.
But I will trust in you.

PSALMS (EVENING)
Psalm 138, 139:1–18 (19–24)

Of David.

1 I give you thanks, O LORD, with my whole heart;
before the gods I sing your praise;
2 I bow down toward your holy temple
and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness;
for you have exalted your name and your word
above everything.
3 On the day I called, you answered me,
you increased my strength of soul.

4 All the kings of the earth shall praise you, O LORD,
for they have heard the words of your mouth.
5 They shall sing of the ways of the LORD,
for great is the glory of the LORD.
6 For though the LORD is high, he regards the lowly;
but the haughty he perceives from far away.

7 Though I walk in the midst of trouble,
you preserve me against the wrath of my enemies;
you stretch out your hand,
and your right hand delivers me.
8 The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me;
your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever.
Do not forsake the work of your hands.

1 O LORD, you have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
3 You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
O LORD, you know it completely.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.

7 Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

13 For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
I come to the end—I am still with you.

[ 19 O that you would kill the wicked, O God,
and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—
20 those who speak of you maliciously,
and lift themselves up against you for evil!
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
22 I hate them with perfect hatred;
I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my thoughts.
24 See if there is any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting. ]

OLD TESTAMENT
Nehemiah 4:1–23

4 Now when Sanballat heard that we were building the wall, he was angry and greatly enraged, and he mocked the Jews. 2 He said in the presence of his associates and of the army of Samaria, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore things? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish it in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish—and burned ones at that?” 3 Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, “That stone wall they are building—any fox going up on it would break it down!” 4 Hear, O our God, for we are despised; turn their taunt back on their own heads, and give them over as plunder in a land of captivity. 5 Do not cover their guilt, and do not let their sin be blotted out from your sight; for they have hurled insults in the face of the builders.

6 So we rebuilt the wall, and all the wall was joined together to half its height; for the people had a mind to work.

7 But when Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and the gaps were beginning to be closed, they were very angry, 8 and all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it. 9 So we prayed to our God, and set a guard as a protection against them day and night.

10 But Judah said, “The strength of the burden bearers is failing, and there is too much rubbish so that we are unable to work on the wall.” 11 And our enemies said, “They will not know or see anything before we come upon them and kill them and stop the work.” 12 When the Jews who lived near them came, they said to us ten times, “From all the places where they live they will come up against us.” 13 So in the lowest parts of the space behind the wall, in open places, I stationed the people according to their families, with their swords, their spears, and their bows. 14 After I looked these things over, I stood up and said to the nobles and the officials and the rest of the people, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the LORD, who is great and awesome, and fight for your kin, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.”

15 When our enemies heard that their plot was known to us, and that God had frustrated it, we all returned to the wall, each to his work. 16 From that day on, half of my servants worked on construction, and half held the spears, shields, bows, and body-armor; and the leaders posted themselves behind the whole house of Judah, 17 who were building the wall. The burden bearers carried their loads in such a way that each labored on the work with one hand and with the other held a weapon. 18 And each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while he built. The man who sounded the trumpet was beside me. 19 And I said to the nobles, the officials, and the rest of the people, “The work is great and widely spread out, and we are separated far from one another on the wall. 20 Rally to us wherever you hear the sound of the trumpet. Our God will fight for us.”

21 So we labored at the work, and half of them held the spears from break of dawn until the stars came out. 22 I also said to the people at that time, “Let every man and his servant pass the night inside Jerusalem, so that they may be a guard for us by night and may labor by day.” 23 So neither I nor my brothers nor my servants nor the men of the guard who followed me ever took off our clothes; each kept his weapon in his right hand.

NEW TESTAMENT
(Revelation 7:4–8) 9–17

[ 4 And I heard the number of those who were sealed, one hundred forty-four thousand, sealed out of every tribe of the people of Israel:

5 From the tribe of Judah twelve thousand sealed,
from the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Gad twelve thousand,
6 from the tribe of Asher twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Naphtali twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Manasseh twelve thousand,
7 from the tribe of Simeon twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Levi twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Issachar twelve thousand,
8 from the tribe of Zebulun twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Joseph twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Benjamin twelve thousand sealed. ]

9 After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 10 They cried out in a loud voice, saying,

“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

     The Dead Sea Scrolls have made their way online some 2,000 years after they were written through a partnership between Google and Israel’s national museum.

     The important documents are available in searchable, high-resolution images, accompanied by informative videos, background information, and historical data. So far five of the scrolls have been digitized, including the biblical Book of Isaiah, the Temple Scroll, and three others.

     Managing Director of Google’s R&D Center in Israel, Professor Yossi Matias said they plan to add additional Dead Sea Scroll documents to the site in the future. The AP says nearly all the scrolls will be online by 2016. (PC Magazine)

     Here is technology at its best!           Click Here