The theme is: Celebrate God, all day, every day
For further information about Sisters Days see www.chsn.org.uk/sisters-days-information-and-aims
Tuesday 10 May 2016
2016 Sisters Day at Solihull
At the Solihull Ecclesial Hall there will take place an informal day for all sisters, female relatives and friends to share the joy of friendship, study, discussion and worship around God's Word.
The theme is: Celebrate God, all day, every day
The theme is: Celebrate God, all day, every day
Saturday 7 May 2016
Saved through grace not through keeping rituals
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| Small-grace-for-all (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
We cannot ‘earn’ salvation through keeping rituals;
we are “saved through grace” and it will only be through grace that we will gain a place in God’s kingdom.
The essential ingredient for those who believe is to develop cleansed hearts,
the outcome of having a genuine faith.
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Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism 2015-2016
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| Human Rights Party Malaysia logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
So many journalists fighting this year for the right of a free voice, having been endangered, I am curious who shall be the nominees.
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Month of many special moments
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| 2 Maiko (apprentice Geisha) conversing near the Golden Temple in Kyoto, Japan. Parts of the kimono and the special make-up are clearly visible. Français : Deux maiko arborant le kimono, la coiffure et le maquillage traditionnels. Türkçe: Tipik ense makyajı Русский: Традиционная косметика и причёска гейши (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Perhaps this is a good time to think about those many festivals and holy days or holidays.
Please do find to read:
- All things seem possible in May!
- That everyone may honour the Son and sent one from God
- Golden Week a cluster of holidays from late April to early May
- May, for many a month for mothers and many celebrations
- The start of Golden Week for us – and a new life for many.
- Religious celebrations in May 2016
- Golden Week Day 1: Chichibu
- Mothers’ May – 5/2/16
- Mothers
- The price of freedom
- Remembrance and freedom in the Netherlands – Dodenherdenking and Bevrijdingsdag
- Having put lives on the line to protect the freedoms that we enjoy
Monday 2 May 2016
Afraid to see the man of the heavens opened
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| Icon of St. Athanasius of Alexandria (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Still today lots of Christians are afraid to accept what Jesus told about himself and his heavenly Father. They prefer to continue in the thought of the early Christian leader Athanasius who many years after the disciples of Christ castrated their ideas.
Looking at Stephen his process we may find comparisons in more recent centuries with the persecution and killing of those who spoke to expose the false teachings the churches developed about humans having an immortal soul and the teaching of the Trinity, a word foreign to Scripture. It was Athanasius, who is celebrated in many Christian communities today as a saint, who in various writings defended the teaching that the Son and the Holy Spirit were of equal divinity with God the Father and so shared a three-fold being. (See Athanasian Creed)
Stephen was one of those men who was not afraid to give a reply and gives those gathered around him, a long history lesson of all the follies of belief and actions in the past and how God worked through faithful men to fulfil his purpose.
Like him we should show others how God has sent a man to the world to declare the Works of God. But this son of man who is the son of God was killed like other prophets, who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, were persecuted and killed. (Acts 7:52).
Like today we can see that mots people think only about themselves and want to have all the advantages the world has to offer, and as such exclude the world of God, the reaction of the accusers of Stephen was totally human, totally self-centred! Their minds were blind to the ways of God.
The Holy Spirit gave Stephen a vision of “… the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said,
‘Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God’” (verses 55,56).How long before we see such a vision – and then realize it is more than a vision: it is reality – and the words of the two angels to the astonished disciples we read in Acts 1 come true,
“This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (verse 11).Our minds cannot comprehend this event, yet it will happen, over 200 scripture passages testify to this.
Finally look at what we read on April the 27th, in chapter 3 and Peter’s testimony about the return of Jesus,
“whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago” (Acts 3:21).
Stephen and his friends did believe in the man he had followed and which we also should follow and believe, because only by accepting who he is and what he did we shall be able to come under the grace of salvation.
“For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life”.For the Gentiles God offered also a solution to become children of God, becoming part of the people of God who may enter the Kingdom of God. for being able to come under that blessing they only have to accept this sent one from God, who is the son of God. He gave his life as a lamb but was taken out of the dead as an example for what can happen to us. His resurrection is there to look at as our liberation out of death and the Way to a new life for us all. We should be pleased to find him now sitting at the right hand of God, being a mediator between God and man. His intercession for us even now before the throne of God The Father should convince us of his importance for us and how heavens are opened for us.
Dare to step away from the false teaching of a three-headed god and come to the same believe as St. Stephen and the early followers of the Nazarene teacher Jeshua, the son of man and son of David who, when the heavens opened up above him after his baptism, God declared to be His only begotten beloved son.
During May we will start reading the heart-stirring prophecies God gave through Isaiah – some of these will enable us, in a spiritual sense, to “see the heavens opened”. How long now before we literally see this?
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Preceding article: It happened on May 2nd 295
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It happened on May 2 295
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| Icon of St. Athanasius of Alexandria (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
It happened on May 2
295
Today is the liturgical memorial of St. Athanasius of Alexandria (295-373), theologian, ecclesiastical statesman, and Egyptian national leader, who was the chief defender of Christian orthodoxy in the 4th-century battle against Arianism, and who is the most favourite teacher of the false teaching of tri-une doctrine.
In his youth, as secretary to Bishop Alexander, he took part in the christological debate against Arius at the Council of Nicaea (see Nicaea, First Council of), and thereafter became chief protagonist for Nicene orthodoxy in the long struggle for its acceptance in the East. He defended the homoousion formula that states that Jesus is of the same substance as the Father, against the various Arian parties who held that Jesus was not identical in substance with the Father.
Athanasius’ two-part work of apologetics, Against the Heathen and De Incarnatione Verb or The Incarnation of the Word of God, completed about 335, was the first great classic of developed Greek Orthodox theology, in whihch he refuted the Epicurean atomists, who maintained the world could have spontaneously sprung into being by chance, by elucidating the signs of Divine Providence discernable in creation (Chapter I, nn. 2-3). In Athanasius’ system, the Son of God, the eternal Word through whom God made the world, entered the world in human form to lead men back to the harmony from which they had fallen away. Athanasius reacted vigorously against Arianism, for which the Son was a lesser being, and welcomed the definition of the Son formulated at the Council of Nicaea in 325: “consubstantial with the Father.”
Athanasius was accused of threatening to interfere with the grain supply from Egypt, and without any formal trial Constantine exiled him to the Rhineland.
During his period of hiding with the hermit monks of the Egyptian desert, whom he admired greatly, he wrote his exposition of Nicene christology, Discourses Against the Arians, attacking both the Arians and the views of Marcellus of Ancyra.
The Athanasian Creed, a summary of Christian doctrine formerly attributed to St Athanasius, but probably dating from the 5th century is included in the Book of Common Prayer for use at morning prayer on certain occasions.
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In his youth, as secretary to Bishop Alexander, he took part in the christological debate against Arius at the Council of Nicaea (see Nicaea, First Council of), and thereafter became chief protagonist for Nicene orthodoxy in the long struggle for its acceptance in the East. He defended the homoousion formula that states that Jesus is of the same substance as the Father, against the various Arian parties who held that Jesus was not identical in substance with the Father.
Athanasius’ two-part work of apologetics, Against the Heathen and De Incarnatione Verb or The Incarnation of the Word of God, completed about 335, was the first great classic of developed Greek Orthodox theology, in whihch he refuted the Epicurean atomists, who maintained the world could have spontaneously sprung into being by chance, by elucidating the signs of Divine Providence discernable in creation (Chapter I, nn. 2-3). In Athanasius’ system, the Son of God, the eternal Word through whom God made the world, entered the world in human form to lead men back to the harmony from which they had fallen away. Athanasius reacted vigorously against Arianism, for which the Son was a lesser being, and welcomed the definition of the Son formulated at the Council of Nicaea in 325: “consubstantial with the Father.”
Athanasius was accused of threatening to interfere with the grain supply from Egypt, and without any formal trial Constantine exiled him to the Rhineland.
During his period of hiding with the hermit monks of the Egyptian desert, whom he admired greatly, he wrote his exposition of Nicene christology, Discourses Against the Arians, attacking both the Arians and the views of Marcellus of Ancyra.
The Athanasian Creed, a summary of Christian doctrine formerly attributed to St Athanasius, but probably dating from the 5th century is included in the Book of Common Prayer for use at morning prayer on certain occasions.
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