PARADOXICAL

"Go not to the temple to put flowers upon the feet of God,
First fill your house with the fragrance of love.

Go not to the temple to light candles before the altar of God,
First remove the darkness of sin from your heart.

Go not to the temple to bow down your head in prayer,
First learn to bow down in humility before your fellowmen.

Go not to the temple to pray on bent knees,
First bend down to lift someone who is downtrodden.

Go not to the temple to ask forgiveness for your sins,
First forgive them from your heart, those who have sinned against you."

-Tagore

posted by Resty Odon  # 5:21 PM 0 Comments

(Jan. 2004)

It's all about My grace. Everything is all about My grace. For what can you possibly boast of but your weakness, wickedness, and wiles? Hold fast to My grace. Hold fast to the grace of God.

It's not your effort that counts. Remember that I called you first. Remember that.

(Continue trusting in My power to work in You.)

Ref.: John 6:44
Acts 13:38-39, 42

posted by Resty Odon  # 4:51 PM 0 Comments

1. Life is hard but good.
2. We'll die only to live eternally.
3. We're not in control, God is.
4. We are as important as everyone is.
5. Our life is not about us. It's about God in our life.

Fr. T.U. and L.U.

(A truly paradoxical set of thought, I must say...)

posted by Resty Odon  # 4:21 PM 0 Comments

**
with just a whispered prayer
we can turn the Lord's wrath into mercy
with even just hesitant remorse
we can avert cataclysms and calamities
for the Lord of punishment
is the Lord of forgiveness
His mercy overflows as rivers in a deluge

sister raquel reodica, rvm [x1021]

**
if the Lord Creator of the universe
could bear insult and ridicule
why not you His mere creation

sister raquel reodica, rvm [x1002]

**

posted by Resty Odon  # 7:02 PM 0 Comments

(From a forwarded email)

Let me share with you a story that I use from time to time during my
motivation talks or counselling sessions. It is a story used by many
counselors, depending on the requirements of each case. Here it goes:

An elderly carpenter was ready to retire. he told his
employer-contractor of his plans to leave the house building business
and live a more leisurely life with his wife and to enjoy the company
of his extended family.

Of course, he would miss his paycheck but he needed to retire. They
could get by. The contractor was sorry to see his good worker go and
asked if he could build just one more house as a personal favor. The
carpenter said yes, but in time it was easy to see that his heart was
not in his work. He resorted to shoddy workmanship and used inferior
materials. It was an unfortunate way to end his career.

When the carpenter finished his work and the builder came to inspect
the house, the contractor handed the front door key to the carpenter.
"This is your house," he said, "my gift to you."

What a shock. What a shame. If he had only known that he was building
his won house, he would have done it all so differently. Now he had to
live in the home he had built none too well.

So it is with us. We build our lives in a distracted way, reacting
rather than acting, willing to put up less than the best. At important
points, we do not give the job our best effort. Then with a shock we
look at the situation we have created and find that we are now living
in the house we have built. If we had realized that, we would have
done it differently.

Think of yourself as the carpenter. Think about your house. Each day
you hammer a nail, place a board, or erect a wall. Build wisely. It is
the only life you will ever build. Even if you live it for only one
day more, that day deserves to be lived graciously and with dignity.
Life is a do-it-yourself (DIY) project. Your life tomorrow will be the
result of your attitudes and the choices you make today.

posted by Resty Odon  # 10:46 PM 0 Comments

Mac, the badminton addict: May d holidays b a SMASH, d nu yr SERVE u well, ur lyf a smuth DRIVE, ur hapines never DROP, ur probs CLEARED, ur woris b SHORT, & ur patience LONG! (See YONEX tym.)

T N.: Wishing you the gentle joys of Christmas, d warm contentment of home, d loving presence of family and friends and God’s unfailing love.

E P.: Epekto ng gamut ko: poor o loss of memory. Pero ikaw d ko kalimot, lalo pag ganitong okasyon! O pano? HAPPY EASTER na lang…

J.: Wishing you not just happiness but pure joy, not just wealth but heaven’s treasures, not just silence but God’s peace.

I: May all ur dreams and wishes take flyt, on ds & every othr nyt, May they all come alive in this bright year of 2005!

T N.: A relaxed mind, a peaceful soul, a joyful spirit, a healthy body, a loving heart – all these I wish for you and your family!

Ms. D.: May we continue to discover more of God’s purpose in our lives as we face year 2005.

A P.: Jesus was born for us to be rich. As we celebrate His birth, may we learn to judge wisely the things of earth and love the things of heaven. Merry Christmas!

O dL: In all your ways, may you always be in the shelter of the Lord, blessed by His love, led by His light, & kept by His grace.

P V.:A good life is when you assume nothing, expect little, do more, need less, smile often, dream big, laugh a lot.

M R.: May the coming year bring you… … a greater awareness of God’s love and a life full of life.

O dL: Tao po. Rooster Year 2005 na. Naway tilaukan ka ng grasya, kahigin ka ng suwerte, tukain ka ng ligaya at itlogin ka ng pera.

M C.:Hoc, lok, shiu!!! Good luck, prosperity & longevity. These r what I wish 4 u. Warmly sent and deeply meant!

E P.: Parties over, presents put away. Time 2 give thanks 4 best gifts of all, family & true friends! Thank u & wish u many blessings in 2005.

R G.: May d gud Lord b ur inspiration! D best thing He gave us on his bday is His lyf. May we also be gifts 2 oders not only dis season, but throughout 2005!

C V.: Happy 2 Kings!! (Kasi wala na si Da King.)

posted by Resty Odon  # 8:33 PM 0 Comments

(A piece snipped off from peyups.com)

Writings : Absolutely Unmixed Attention
Contributed by abogadototo (Edited by mananalaysay)
Tuesday, November 02, 2004 @ 12:01:06 AM (read 315 times)


IN HIS BOOK Letters to Malcolm, Christian apologist and literary critic C.S. Lewis writes that for most people, prayer is an unpleasant duty they are often reluctant to begin but happy to finish.

Indeed, for people reared in the realm of the rational, prayer is a discomfiting experience better consigned to the innocence of childhood than to the banal awakenings of adulthood. Yet for the Christian, that is what prayer is: a dangerous thing to human pride; for honest prayer brings us to an awareness of our own finitude and to the reality that when left with ourselves, we are utterly helpless.
It is a threat to human pride because the posture of prayer is surrender to a Higher Power. The perfectly human urge is to be self-sufficient, but when we pray, we come to what one writer has described as a “holy despair” – that despair that, when we are at our wit’s end in the face of adversity, “opens us to something beyond ourselves.”

We fall down on our knees, acknowledging before God our sins and banalities, our helplessness, our fears, as well as our best hopes and brightest dreams. Yahweh spoke to the prophet Jeremiah: Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know(Jeremiah 33:3, NIV).

Call to me. Yahweh’s challenge to Jeremiah is God’s constant call for a total and unqualified dependence on Him. When we pray, we lay down all protestations human reason foists over an act of humility, or obeisance, before a Sovereign yet Loving God. The proud goes by the Nietzchean ethic of the Super-Man: I need no crutch to fight life’s cruelties.Scientific logic and commonsense experience tell me that it is a simple cause-and-effect affair; I do this and something happens, I make things happen, I will things to happen.

But in prayer, we allow God to make things happen, often, in a way that goes against our very own wishes. Most of the time, we pray with a hidden agenda. We nurture an express request that only veil our secret desires. The Spirit of God, however, knows the deep things of the inner self.

For the prophet Jeremiah, it meant 20 years of constantly struggling with the will of Yahweh: no, he didn’t want the job in the first place, and rather than bring God’s incredible message to a people steeped in unbelief, he’d even wished he were dead. Yet, each moment of confrontation with the claims of God over his own life was also a moment of personal transformation. God directed the prophet to do things that, under the circumstances, no person in his sane mind would have done. For God wanted to show to Israel that He is a God who keeps and renews the covenant with His chosen people, that over the impossibilities of human history, He stands sovereign and in control.

And Jeremiah obeyed, often, with much reluctance, but as he did so, he began to feel the beating of God’s heart, he began to see a clearer vision of God’s character.

Through threats to his own life, imprisonment and physical and emotional suffering, he would live on to see most, if not all, of the dire things he had prophesied about Israel happen, though he only saw the promise of redemption from afar – and it was enough for him.

WE learn these things: how limited our understanding of who God is, and how selfish we could be, one frustrated prayer at a time.

Does prayer work? To ask that question, says C.S. Lewis, is to totally miss the point. When we ask that question, we expose our puny, immature, understanding of God’s character and His purposes. “Prayer works,” says one writer, “when God shows Himself to us and that it is not always as we expect or deserve.”

God’s promise is that when we call to Him. He will show us great and unsearchable things we do not know. The sweetest thing about prayer is that point where God ushers us into the mystery of His presence, where He reveals himself to us in a special way.

Call to me and I will show you great and unsearchable things you do not know. Our need for prayer is really a deep longing for the Holy. Our need for prayer establishes our relatedness as creatures to an awesome and loving Creator. Through prayer, we can truly relate with the God Who is There and Who is not Silent, to borrow the language of the late evangelical philosopher Francis Schaeffer. One of the philosopher’s original insights is that we can talk properly of personality only because we have been created by a Personal-Infinite God in His own image and likeness. God made personality possible. He is concerned with each person. As a God who communicates; He made human beings creatures with a deep yearning to communicate. And He demonstrated His concern for His wayward creation by sending His own son, Jesus Christ, to be Word Incarnate, who entered the realm of human history “in the fullness of time.”

Hence in prayer, we truly communicate with the God who created the cosmos and who delights to relate with His creation.

In prayer, we seek to bring the weight of heavenly glory down to our commonplace existence; in prayer we plead God to establish His holy presence in our hearts. Perhaps, the famed Jewish philosopher Simone Weil, who started as an atheist before she became something of a Christian mystic, caught a life-changing glimpse of this truth when she wrote of prayer as an “absolutely unmixed attention.” The psalm-writer knew of this truth intimately when he wrote, in breathless and beautiful invocation of awe and surrender:

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there, If I make my bed in the depths, you are there,

If I rise on the wings of dawn, If I settle on the far side of the sea. Even there your right hand will hold me fast.

If I say, “Surely, the darkness will hide me,” And the light become night around me,” Even the darkness will shine like the day, For darkness is as light to you…" Psalm 139:7-12 (NIV)

LIKE the psalm-writer, we are called to practice the presence of God in the everyday, moment by moment. And the proper spirituality behind prayer is this: not a grudging concession but a willing submission to God’s presence. As a preacher eloquently said of this existential habit:

This is what prayer is: prayer means seeking solidarity with God as we talk with Him and act with Him. Prayer is something we do together with God. Through prayer, God talks with us and walks with us, and knocks on the door of the world with us. The One who sagged in exhaustion on the cross can help us when we sag in exhaustion, and when we’re tempted to lose heart. The One whose hands bled on the cross can bind up our wounded hands. He takes them gently in His. We place them in His through prayer.”

posted by Resty Odon  # 8:45 PM 0 Comments

I can never understand those who reject Mary. This is a wonderful summation of Mary, the favored mother of God.

posted by Resty Odon  # 5:26 PM 0 Comments

My Child ~

You may not know me, but I know everything about you ~ Psalm 139:1

I know when you sit down and when you rise up ~ Psalm 139:2

I am familiar with all your ways ~ Psalm 139:3

Even the very hairs on your head are numbered ~ Matthew 10:29-31

For you were made in my image ~ Genesis 1:27

In me you live and move and have your being ~ Acts 17:28

For you are my offspring ~ Acts 17:28

I knew you even before you were conceived ~ Jeremiah 1:4-5

I chose you when I planned creation ~ Ephesians 1:11-12

You were not a mistake, for all your days are written in my book ~ Psalm 139:15-16

I determined the exact time of your birth and where you would live ~ Acts 17:26

You are fearfully and wonderfully made ~ Psalm 139:14

I knit you together in your mother's womb ~ Psalm 139:13

And brought you forth on the day you were born ~ Psalm 71:6

I have been misrepresented by those who don't know me ~ John 8:41-44

I am not distant and angry, but am the complete expression of love ~ 1 John 4:16

And it is my desire to lavish my love on you ~ 1 John 3:1

Simply because you are my child and I am your father ~ 1 John 3:1

I offer you more than your earthly father ever could ~ Matthew 7:11

For I am the perfect father ~ Matthew 5:48

Every good gift that you receive comes from my hand ~ James 1:17

For I am your provider and I meet all your needs ~ Matthew 6:31-33

My plan for your future has always been filled with hope ~ Jeremiah 29:11

Because I love you with an everlasting love ~ Jeremiah 31:3

My thoughts toward you are countless as the sand on the seashore ~ Psalm 139:17-18

And I rejoice over you with singing ~ Zephaniah 3:17

I will never stop doing good to you ~ Jeremiah 32:40

For you are my treasured possession ~ Exodus 19:5

I desire to establish you with all my heart and all my soul ~ Jeremiah 32:41

And I want to show you great and marvelous things ~
Jeremiah 33:3

If you seek me with all your heart, you will find me ~ Deuteronomy 4:29

Delight in me and I will give you the desires of your heart ~ Psalm 37:4

For it is I who gave you those desires ~ Philippians 2:13

I am able to do more for you than you could possibly imagine ~ Ephesians 3:20

For I am your greatest encourager ~ 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17

I am also the Father who comforts you in all your troubles ~ 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

When you are brokenhearted, I am close to you ~ Psalm 34:18

As a shepherd carries a lamb, I have carried you close to my heart ~ Isaiah 40:11

One day I will wipe away every tear from your eyes ~ Revelation 21:3-4

And I'll take away all the pain you have suffered on this earth ~ Revelation 21:3-4

I am your Father, and I love you even as I love my son, Jesus ~ John 17:23

For in Jesus, my love for you is revealed ~ John 17:26

He is the exact representation of my being ~ Hebrews 1:3

He came to demonstrate that I am for you, not against you ~ Romans 8:31

And to tell you that I am not counting your sins ~ 2 Corinthians 5:18-19

Jesus died so that you and I could be reconciled ~ 2 Corinthians 5:18-19

His death was the ultimate _expression of my love for you ~ 1 John 4:10

I gave up everything I loved that I might gain your love ~ Romans 8:31-32

If you receive the gift of my son Jesus, you receive me ~ 1 John 2:23

And nothing will ever separate you from my love again ~ Romans 8:38-39

Come home and I'll throw the biggest party heaven has ever seen ~ Luke 15:7

I have always been Father, and will always be Father ~ Ephesians 3:14-15

My question is ~ Will you be my child? ~ John 1:12-13

I am waiting for you ~ Luke 15:11-32


Love,

Your Dad, Almighty God

A Father's Love Letter is owned and copyrighted by Barry Adams.

posted by Resty Odon  # 5:18 PM 0 Comments

"I commend the past year to your mercy and the coming year to your providence."

-Word Among Us, Dec 31, 2004

posted by Resty Odon  # 3:40 PM 0 Comments

new year lesson
from martha and mary

balance the things of earth
with the things of heaven
timeliness with timelessness
scheduled tasks with unscheduled prayers
the now with the forever

when mary ate the sandwich martha prepared
she did not even notice it had no mayonnaise
because she was totally mesmerized
by the Lord's precious insights
let the mary in you dominate your life

the human and divine in you
must be partners
efficiency and spirituality
computers and the bible
must work in tandem

eastwind [x998]

***

NEW-YEAR FOOD FOR THE SOUL batch 153

**

the Lord Creator of the universe
was born in a sheep shed
placed on a feed box
honored by monarchs and peasants

so that He may bring salvation
to generation to generation
from east to west and north to south
past to future across eons

He is the shimmering Light in our darkness
the drizzle in our drought
the ship in our deluge
the solace in our pains

eastwind [x1004]

posted by Resty Odon  # 3:35 PM 0 Comments