Hello everyone. Just thinking...should I create a totally new blog with a new account so that you guys can just post/blog directly. Means it will be a shared password and email. The current one is under my existing account. I just feel like you guys deserve more. Also, was thinking maybe on certain sundays/every sunday, we can get the 'group' (still dunno who exactly comprises this group at the moment. But shall find out) to read that day's chapter together. That will put 'faces' to this group (just more personal lah...than some cyperspace community) and we can encourage those who are lagging behind/have stopped/still going strong. Oso it can be a time of prayer for each other. Regarding Esther's suggestion to assign 1person per post per day, let me check out who's doing the readings at the moment and whether they are comfortable blogging.
Just a penny worth of thoughts to Eel's question/comment. I think being on this side of the cross, reading Jesus' words and the dialogue would feel/seem perplexing and cryptical sometimes. Maybe its bcus of the translation into english and we only have selected accounts to read by the gospel writer. I actually do think that Jesus could be understood most of the time by the people and he spoke without ambiguity about himself. But, the true problem lies with the hearers. Like what we read yesterday in chapter 9, there was spiritual blindness. The man who was cured believed in Jesus (within 2 sentences!) while the pharisees who engaged in so much intense conversations with Jesus never believed (see 8:43). Anyway, chapter 9 was easier to read...more straightforward than chapters 7 and 8.
In chapter 8, Weiling and I were confronted by the seriousness and 'harshness' (nevertheless the truth) of Jesus' words. Jesus said that those who hear what God says belong to God while those who don't...well, they are children of the devil. Firstly, we are grateful that we (and you as well) belong to God and not the devil. 2nd, it reminds us of those who still do not believe...who they really belong to. Pray with me (remind me to pray!) for this friend called Damian. He is a good fren from NS days. He is a long time catholic and I keep in touch with him by going for runs with him ard gardens (recently, he went for the recce trip with vernon and me). Yesterday, I attempted to talk some christianity after the run but I hit a wall. It's not knowledge that I lack but how to 'infiltrate' into his existing beliefs. I'm reminded by chapter 8 that he belongs to the devil if he does not hear/believe in the truth.
Another summarised main point from what we gathered so far from what Jesus testifies about Himself...Believing in Jesus is about LIVING/LIFE. He says he is Bread of Life/Living Bread, Living water, Light of the world (which makes life possible). Made me ask/wonder how come I experience so little of this LIFE (I asked Weiling whether she feels alive by knowing Jesus and she said "yes"). What do you guys think? Is it because as Romans says, this creation is groaning and I'm waiting for my liberation from bondage to decay? (Romans 8:20)
KING JESUS
Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS. The chief priests of the Jews protested to pilate, "Do not write 'The King of the Jews,' but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews." Pilate answered, "What I have written, I have written."
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Sorry, accidentally deleted my comment. Here it is again ... ...
I do still think that Jesus' words were not always so easy to understand or accept. It was too much of a different gospel and it was so much against the grain of popular thinking and in fact, rational thinking. In chapter 6, Jesus reminds us that no one can come to Him unless the Father has enabled him. So it is that we can hear and understand the word of God and respond to it only by grace, through faith; not of ourselves, it is the gift of God; not by our own understanding, but by the Holy Spirit's enabling.
In reflecting on Lon's question about why we don't experience life/Life ... ... I wonder if it's because we don't recognise our need and we feel too self-sufficient. When I compare the Pharisees with the others (e.g. the blind man, the Samaritan woman), one difference I see is that these guys understood what it meant to be in need. They knew they did not have it all; that life as they knew it was not good. Jesus Christ offered them something way way better.
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