We determine the salvation of those who abuse us.
How many times is Jesus Christ portrayed as a lion in the New Testament? How many times is he portrayed as a lamb? Numerous.
Imagine, a seemingly subordinate and inconsequential animal, as a lamb, harmless, with God drawing great meaning from a metaphor displaying his likeness to it in the nature of his acts and being.
He is the Lamb of God. Of infinite worth, of infinite sacrifice. He is the innocent one who bears the fall for our sins, the one who knew no sin, innocent as a lamb that was slain. This is God’s metaphor of choice. Not a raging lion only, but more so finding great power in the lamb, in its innocence, its value, and its saving sacrifice. The lamb stands as an image of the divine to humanity more so than a lion, fixed in the heavens not as a meaningless subordinate or inconsequential creature, but as a symbol of Jesus Christ to all creation.
And in heaven when the prophesy of Isaiah is fulfilled that the lion and the lamb may dwell together in peace, it is not only the absence of the lion’s violent nature that brings heaven but the bow of his head to the infinite value and worth and innocence of the innocent lamb, the lamb that is the symbol of God.
God is great, God is humble.
God is lover, God is judge.
God is creator, God is destroyer.
God is holy, God is merciful.
God is big, God is small.
God is wise, God is infant.
God is eternal, God is finite.
God is stern, God is sweet.
God is Triune, God is one.
God is divine, God is human.
God’s nature is multiplicitous, his being unfathomably complex.
He is.
There is music that when heard breathes the spirit of the composer, and there is music that breathes the Spirit of God, as living forms, being victors, being alive, emanating God’s essence.
When you read enough and process what you’ve written and have an intellect that can outmatch your predecessors, no matter how famed, you become capable of truly thinking freely, unshackled, able to pursue truth or rather are then gifted the special grace to do so if the search be sincere.
The stripping of constitutional rights is unconstitutional in all cases except if the individual is a felon and those rights are stripped after a fair and just trial convicting him of his crimes.
People are stripped of their rights every single day without being a criminal. Countless if not all have their rights violated frequently throughout their lives.
Hey, I have a thing I’d like to talk about with you.
Yeah, what is it bro? Huh! Yeah, bro, what is it? Huh!
Oh, you’re weird.
No, you’re not pure, you’re not chaste. Yeah, bro, what’s up? Huh!
Oh, go be a virgin.
I’m cool.
Give it a shot.
Huh, ok. What do you mean?
Go be one.
Oh, I can’t.
Ok, now suppose we are in heaven.
Ok.
Go be a virgin.
…
You see? Now do it to me.
…
Do it to me.
Be a virgin.
Great, I am. Now, keep going.
Ok… I get it. Be chaste.
Oh, that’s easy. I can do that. But you can’t do me.
Fitness is relative. Before a burning desert of over a thousand leagues the man fit and built as a statue of Zeus wins survival against the Herculean build of another who otherwise in close quarters would have the advantage. Therefore, all builds being relative to the task, no trained athlete ought to feel lesser than any other.
As I see what has become of the Armenian Apostolic Church’s leaders in the face of unjust claims, I can only remember Pope Francis, who was a father to the world, a grandfather to it, who with the rod of common sense, common values could convict the world with love and kindness, goodness, and sweetness of heart. He was a pope of popes, and father of them too, an example of true love, genuine love implemented with vigor. He was a sheep, the furthest thing from a wolf, his innocence prevented wars, so as not to come before his watchful eyes guilty of humanitarian violation and lack of conscience and common sense, for look, upon his death commenced near world war. He is a star in heaven, and I know this in my heart, in my deepest being. Upon his death, we lost the most innocent being on earth, the spiritual grandfather of the world. If he were present today, alive and well, life would be better for it.
He would read this and say with a little smile, “Un poquito,” not in feigned humility, like many others would, but in humorous love and acknowledgement that he is a grandfather to many.
Tears, with no great act of the body, can be the redemption so needed by many. When you mourn for another, something that has happened to him or her, remember this, in heaven they will see your tears and cry with you knowing your tears of redemption brought reality and life even death to bow and bend its knees before them.
Hey, look what I invented. It goes in a circle with a stick in the middle. I can carry stuff with it if I make two of them or more. I call it the wheel.
Oh, I can do that. Look…
Oh, you just copied me.
No, it’s easy. No big deal. Look I did it.
No one has done this in our lifetime or history ever. It was a lucky insight.
But look, I did the same thing.
Hmm… you must be an idiot. Let me be clear: I invented and you copied, so that doesn’t mean it’s easy to invent just because it was easy to copy. Right? Don’t you see?
It was so easy.
Sure…
Those who compete with family members, envying them, are dirt, lesser than it. For they trouble the lives of those exact people who otherwise support them but these are betrayed for no reason instead. It’s a disorder of the mind called pettier than feces.