QUOTE OF THE DAY 8-4-20
Tag Archives: miracles
The Something In the Nothing
Take a gander at Patricia’s Place and tell us your story IN OTHER WORDS
Our quote for the week, from which we are to concoct a itsy bitsy story, is
” Abundance is, in large part, an attitude.”
Sue Patten Thoele
The Something In the Nothing ( A dramatization of 2 Kings Chapter 4:1-7)
by JE Lillie
She bent to her task without a word. What was there to say? Everyone thought she was crazy.
Miriam had called her a fool.
Havah had all but thrown her out of the house.
The widow had pleaded, “But the prophet said…”
“Prophet Smophet! You dim beggar take the bowls and go. What use have I for them when my husband and sons are dead at the hands of those Moabite pigs? But don’t you dare talk to me about a God who treats people like this.”
She could hear Havah’s words echoing in the back of her mind as she unpacked the sack full of bowls.
She could hardly blame them. Everyone had lost someone in the raids, including her.
She pushed the thought of Azariah from her mind. The exorcism of his image took conscious effort every day but it was the only way she held on to the few strands of faith she had left.
The widow plunked the bowls and vials onto her table. She lined the window sills and edges of the room with all the containers she had collected from her doubting neighbors. At last, when she was finished arranging the hodge podge collection of vessels, the prophet stepped into the room.
She thought he would wave his walking stick or utter some magic words.
Instead he nodded almost imperceptibly, smiled and said, “That’s a lot of pots.”
The widow began to pour from her tiny decanter. By sunset every bowl, vessel, pot and vial was full of oil.
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In Other Words: Finishing The Island Lady
Here is a new challenge I am taking over at Patricia’s Place. You can participate by going to…
http://patriciasplace.me/2015/02/11/13074/
Patricia has given us a quote and has asked us to write a new piece between 250 and 500 words.
Here is the quote and my newest story
Where there is great love, there are always miracles.”
Willa Cather
Finishing the Island Lady
By JE Lillie
Andre was determined to make his mark on the world. His parents were even more determined that their son would succeed in his ambition. The family moved out of the tenements in lower Cleghorn when Andre was five and found a low rent apartment in a nearby suburb. It meant commuting in a beat up old truck for Andre’s father and working in the Dollar Store for his mother but they considered the sacrifice for their son worth it all.
Andre was no genius in the classroom but there was nothing the boy couldn’t create with a paintbrush. The word “prodigy” was tossed around throughout Andre’s high school career. That and a dozen blue ribbons from around the state and a full scholarship to the Boston School of the arts made him a shoe in as one of Massachusetts up and coming artists in gallery shows around the Commonwealth.
But Andre’s mark was bigger than a name on a canvas, bigger than money in the bank. When the boy started teaching art classes at the Boys and Girls club in Lower Cleghorn he knew he had come home. He trained a dozen young men and women in the art of painting.
For his Senior project he got permission from the City to begin painting murals over several of the graffitied walls in the center. Andre was warned of the danger of painting over gang tags. When he was interviewed he told the papers he was not challenging anyone’s authority, that his only goal was to revive a love for beauty in the downtrodden village called Cleghorn.
The gang’s did not see his work as beautiful. They shot and killed Andre on a Wednesday as he was finishing the outline of a mural he called, Island Lady.
Andre’s memorial service was held at the site of the outlined portrait. A hundred artists from around the state agreed to finish the Island Lady and to paint over every tag in the city as tribute to one of their own. The broken heart of love can breed anger. Used right that anger becomes resolve. When resolve meets hope and hope meets God that opens the way for many miracles.
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Heaven Pt. 159: God Stooping
Praise the Lord.[a]
Praise the Lord, you his servants;
praise the name of the Lord.
2 Let the name of the Lord be praised,
both now and forevermore.
3 From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets,
the name of the Lord is to be praised.
4 The Lord is exalted over all the nations,
his glory above the heavens.
5 Who is like the Lord our God,
the One who sits enthroned on high,
6 who stoops down to look
on the heavens and the earth?
7 He raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
8 he seats them with princes,
with the princes of his people.
9 He settles the childless woman in her home
as a happy mother of children.
Praise the Lord. Psalm 113
One of my commentators recently asked a question about the incarnation of Christ, “How do you come to the conclusion that “God became human” when the young girl (Myriam/Miriam/Mary/Maria) became pregnant from a child without sexual contact with any being? Where in your Bible can you find such a thing? That Jesus would be human without limitation is contradicted in the same proof of him not being God, by him not knowing everything and having to learn everything, plus being able to be tempted and by being able to die and to come into hell for three days.
God knows everything, has no beginning (= not born) has no end (= can not die) plus according to the Bible is an eternal Spirit Who can not be seen by man or they would die. Jesus was seen by many, who did not fall death, and even took some out of dead and proofed after his resurrection out of the dead, that he was not a Spirit..” (sic)
The writer of this comment seems stuck on the implausibility of God becoming a man. I can understand that. How is such a thing even possible? How could the all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present, eternal, invisible God become a limited, uneducated mortal bound by the laws of time and space?
Psalm 113 verse 6 gives us the simple answer, “He stooped”.
A miracle by its definition takes the impossible and makes it possible. A Miracle takes the unexplainable and reveals it (even if most times it doesn’t explain it).
The incarnation (God becoming man and yet remaining God) is a miracle revealed by Scripture if not explained:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome[a] it.
6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:1-14
“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,” Col. 1:15-19
“For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.” Col. 2:9
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Hebrews 4: 14-15
Scripture doesn’t tell us how it is so; It just says it is so. I am pretty certain that is because even were He to explain it we could never understand it, at least not from our current perspective.
I have to tell you though God becoming man is not the most unfathomable thing in the whole Christmas story. Honestly, God WANTING to become a man is far more incredible to me.
“I don’t know why Jesus loved me. I don’t know why He cared. I don’t know why He sacrificed His life. Oh but I’m glad. I’m glad He did.” Andrae Crouch
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Prophetical-Priestly Quotes 12
” The recovery of spiritual health will be nothing less than a supernatural miracle. Such miracles which amount to reversals of human character, dwarf the so-called miracles of nature. The church can exist without the latter but it will die without the former.” Darius L. Salter
Lillie-Put 