Tag Archives: light

Christianity, faith

From the Darkness

I needed some time to contemplate my life and faith. I was raised with protestant parents, saved in a protestant church but became Roman Catholic in the last year of the 20th century. Since then, there have been times when I have stepped from the church to get air so to speak. But this was different.

Catholics, and maybe protestants as well, have a period known as the dark night of the soul. My definition and tradition, this is where one thinks God has stepped from your life and you seek Him in earnestness. The fall of 2021 was mine.

I had gotten back into my faith fully in the last couple of years after issues that affected me and ended the family unit I had known for 20 years. At that time, the stress had caused my health to falter and my spirit to cry out. For the first time since being a Catholic, I hit my knees, wept, and prayed. It led me into my Catholic Christian faith unlike before.

But for some reason, this fall had played havoc within my mind and spirit and I needed to refresh, think, and clear the cobwebs. So, while not leaving my faith, I stepped away from the building that had become my church home. I had only planned on it being about a month. What it led to was something I had not really expected.

What it led me to, instead of free wheeling life and secular enjoyment, was deeper. It led me to deeper scriptural study. Instead of just one translation, I started using multiple including translations like the King James, New American, and New International. But it also included the Stone edition Tanach and the Douay-Rheims. In the mix of these, I started finding new influence and messages that hit my spirit and mind. It called me to self examination. This then led to a deeper prayer life. And to deeper study.

For all of this time, I had attended a Methodist church with a couple of my children and found that, like the Catholic faith, believed not in only a bread and juice remembrance of the last supper of Christ and His apostles, but in the beautiful truth of the words of Christ himself when He spoke “This is My body…and this is My blood”.

This self imposed sabbatical and longing search went beyond the month I had expected and lasted until the 3rd week of Dec this year. A former priest had passed and I went to his viewing, out of the respect that I had for him. As I stepped into the first parish I ever attended, and my Catholic home for most of my time in the faith, the noise and chaos faded away. There is that sanctuary, among the scent of the decades of incense and visuals of the life of Christ and the saints, that small still voice came. Not like a voice or whisper, but something more distant yet comforting. Only 2 words, “you’re home”.

This, the 4th Sunday of Advent, I returned to the little parish I had stepped out of months ago. As I sat there, taking in the visuals of Advent and the liturgical music and homily, I found myself with an inner peace that I had not had in awhile. Like someone who had left home and traveled the world, only to return to the place he was raised, I had indeed come home. That type of peace can only truly be found in a home.

During my 50 plus years I have been protestant and Catholic, Christian and pagan. During my walks outside of the faith of Christ, the pagan pantheons never answered, spoke, or given me any divine inspiration. And of my 25 years as a Christian, first as a protestant Christian and now as Roman Catholic Christian, this is the first encounter with that small still voice.

While the pagan pantheons are once again raising their heads, and yes infighting between Christians and the Pope himself having and promoting heretical ideas, have I seen for myself that one light and hope in this world of darkness. An old country tradition is to leave a candle lit in a window to guide home those that wander off from the homestead. Mine was the only light brighter than a million suns. When others have dimmed and gone out, this light will shine for an eternity.

The revelation of the Apocalypse witness and recorded by St. John on Patmos said that the Light of God will be so bright in Heaven and the new Jerusalem that there will be no need of a physical sun. That is the light that leads me, that calls me, and the comforts me.

What I thought was to be only a few weeks brought me back at a perfect time for a new beginning. What a better place and time to start a new and refreshed path than at a little cave hewn out as a place of birth for beginning of our Salvation. To behold the One that created the whole of everything and yet started His human life the way we all do.

May God the Father always guide you, bring you unto Himself through Christ the Lord, endow you with the Holy Spirit in wisdom and guidance, and comfort you on your journey through this temporary landscape of life.

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Christianity, faith

When Salt Has No Flavor

You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.” Matthew 5:13 

The church is called the salt of the earth. A Catholic professor does podcasts and videos quite often. He ends all of his broadcasts with ‘you are the salt of the earth and a light to the world. Go out and be salty’. He says the last line because salt does 2 things. It seasons the bland and heals. If you have every worked in meat processing, by most stations there is a box of cure salt. If you cut yourself, you put your hand in the salt. Yes it burns, but it also heals the wound. Our salt, the Testimony of Christ, burns old wounds and impurities. But it also leads one to healing through the redemptive power of Christ.

The reason that the world has embraced the church, is because it has lost its spice. It has forgotten that we Christians are not to be friends with the world. Our mission is to bring the lost to Christ. So many times I hear people say “I led someone to the Lord”. No you didn’t. You may have gave someone the road map but the Holy Spirit was who led that person to the foot of the cross. We, as Christians do nothing more than plant the seed. The Holy Spirit does the rest. But the church today can’t even show someone the road map to the Cross. We have lost our flavor.

You hear in this times, we have to except people as they are because God looks at the heart. Yes God does look at the heart. And unless that person has come to Christ, the heart has not been washed clean. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded (James 4:8).Being a good person doesn’t cut it. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:8-10).

We, the Church, are not to make people happen in their sins. The Bible (remember that book that was written through the Holy Spirit by men) tells us who will make it to Heaven and who won’t. Or do you not know that the unrighteous[a] will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-10). And yet, the modern church can be seen supporting these things in their own congregations. They have become the world. The only difference in these congregations is that they preach only the love of Christ. They don’t tell the members of the world that they need to seek Christ and REPENT.  He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things (Luke 24:46-48). I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus (Acts 20:21). 

Yes, the love of Christ must be taught. But the message wasn’t ‘God loves you so everything is ok’. The message is repent and be saved.Now, that doesn’t mean blood bought Christians won’t mess up. We aren’t perfect. Even Christians need to repent.Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place (Revelation 2:5). 

Christ told John at Patmos who would make it to heaven. Here is the patience of the saints; here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus (Revelation 14:12). The faith of Jesus is repentance and the saving grace of Christ through the Cross. Without it, there is no hope of salvation.

The church today is being given the same warning as those of Israel in His time. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness (Matthew 23:27).

Church, quit playing fast and loose with the edicts of God. Time is running out and those you say you love from the world will die in their sins because the church has lost its salty flavor. The warnings to the church are clear. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven (Matthew 7:21). This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth (2 Timothy 3:1-7). But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed (Galatians 1:8-9).Members of the Bride of Christ, the Church, we more than the world need repentance. We have let false thinking invade our doctrines. We have become tasteless in our giving of the message of SIN, REPENTANCE, and HOPE IN CHRIST. The Church preaches a different Gospel and will be held accountable at judgment. Better to make members of the world hate us than to lose our place in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

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