All will be well in the end —
if all is not well, then it's not the end!
~ Megan McKenna
a Catholic writer, and a peace and justice activist
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/practices/features.php?id=15978
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Punishments for Laziness
Failure is not the only punishment for laziness;
there is also the success of others.
~ Jules Renard
there is also the success of others.
~ Jules Renard
Friday, September 01, 2006
The Deepest Yearning of Our Hearts
“Speak to us about the deepest yearning of our hearts, about our many wishes, about hope; not about the many strategies for (mere) survival, but about trust; not about new methods of satisfying our emotional needs, but about love.
Speak to us about a vision larger than our changing perspectives and about a voice deeper than the clamorings of our mass media. Yes, speak to us about something or someone greater than ourselves. Speak to us about.....God.”
~ Excerpt from Life of the Beloved,
by Henri J.M. Nouwen (page 22).
Speak to us about a vision larger than our changing perspectives and about a voice deeper than the clamorings of our mass media. Yes, speak to us about something or someone greater than ourselves. Speak to us about.....God.”
~ Excerpt from Life of the Beloved,
by Henri J.M. Nouwen (page 22).
Truth-Telling, Kindness, Forgiveness, and Anger
“Contrary to popular opinion, Christians are not nice polite people who never get angry with one another. Those are not the virtues of God’s people. Our virtues are truth-telling, kindness, forgiveness and yes, even anger—as long as it is the anger that is part of true love—through which we move closer to one another and to the God who has shown us how it is done.”
~ Barbara Brown Taylor
~ Barbara Brown Taylor
Seeing the Creature Made in the Divine Image
“God can look right through whatever evil we have done in our lives and get to the creature made in the divine image. I suspect that only God and well-loved infants can see this way. Peter denied Jesus, and Saul persecuted the early Christians, but God could see the apostles they would become. Maybe that’s why we worship—to respond to this grace. We praise God not to celebrate our own faith but to give thanks for the faith that God has in us and in others.”
~ Kathleen Norris
~ Kathleen Norris
To be a Christian is to live dangerously
“To be a Christian is to live dangerously, honestly, freely,—to step out in the name of love as if you may land on nothing, and to keep on stepping because the something that sustains you no empire can give you and no empire can take away. This is the kind of vision and courage required to enable the renewal of prophetic, democratic, Christian idenity in the age of American Empire.”
~ Cornel West
Democracy Matters
~ Cornel West
Democracy Matters
The Organized/Economic Church
Organized Christianity seems, in general, to have made peace with “the economy” by divorcing itself from economic issues, and this, I think, has proved to be a disaster, both religious and economic. The reason for this, on the side of religion, is suggested by the adjective “organized.” It is clearly possible that, in the condition of the world as the world now is, organization can force upon an institution a character that is alien or even antithetical to it.
The organized church comes immediately under a compulsion to think of itself, and identify itself to the world, not as an institution synonymous with its truth and its membership, but as a hodgepodge of funds, properties, projects, and offices, all urgently requiring economic support. The organized church makes peace with a destructive economy and divorces itself from economic issues because it is economically compelled to do so.
Like any other public institution so organized, the organized church is dependent on “the economy”; it cannot survive apart from those economic practices that its truth forbids and that its vocation is to correct. If it comes to a choice between the extermination of the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field and the extermination of the building fund, the organized church will elect—indeed, has already elected—to save the building fund.
The irony is compounded and made harder to bear by the fact that the building fund can be preserved by crude applications of money, but the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field can be preserved only by true religion, by the practice of a proper love and respect for them as the creatures of God. No wonder so many sermons are devoted exclusively to “spiritual” subjects. If one is living by the tithes of history’s most destructive economy, then the disembodiment of the soul becomes the chief of worldly conveniences.
~ Wendell Berry, “God and Country” in What are People For?
The organized church comes immediately under a compulsion to think of itself, and identify itself to the world, not as an institution synonymous with its truth and its membership, but as a hodgepodge of funds, properties, projects, and offices, all urgently requiring economic support. The organized church makes peace with a destructive economy and divorces itself from economic issues because it is economically compelled to do so.
Like any other public institution so organized, the organized church is dependent on “the economy”; it cannot survive apart from those economic practices that its truth forbids and that its vocation is to correct. If it comes to a choice between the extermination of the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field and the extermination of the building fund, the organized church will elect—indeed, has already elected—to save the building fund.
The irony is compounded and made harder to bear by the fact that the building fund can be preserved by crude applications of money, but the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field can be preserved only by true religion, by the practice of a proper love and respect for them as the creatures of God. No wonder so many sermons are devoted exclusively to “spiritual” subjects. If one is living by the tithes of history’s most destructive economy, then the disembodiment of the soul becomes the chief of worldly conveniences.
~ Wendell Berry, “God and Country” in What are People For?
The Theology Already There
“We are at the beginning of a period in which many things will have to be tried. A few will work; many will not. But the place where the courage to attempt something different—something by way of participation in the worldly suffering of God—begins is thinking critically about the theology that has accompanied Christendom and asking for another theology. Not just a new strategy, or greater commitment to social programs, or more exciting liturgies, or more sincere spirituality—no, for a different theology.
And I am comforted by the thought that we do not have to invent such a theology….The theology that we need is already there—from the Old Testament onwards! It is really just a matter of letting go of some of our conditioned beliefs and assumptions and allowing what is there to speak to us as we are, where we are, and when we are.”
~ Douglas John Hall, The Cross in our Context
And I am comforted by the thought that we do not have to invent such a theology….The theology that we need is already there—from the Old Testament onwards! It is really just a matter of letting go of some of our conditioned beliefs and assumptions and allowing what is there to speak to us as we are, where we are, and when we are.”
~ Douglas John Hall, The Cross in our Context
The Human Soul
“If we want to support each other’s inner lives, we must remember a simple truth: the human soul does not want to be fixed, it wants simply to be seen and heard.
If we want to see and hear a person’s soul, there is another truth we must remember: the soul is like a wild animal—-tough, resilient, and yet shy. When we go crashing through the woods shouting for it to come out so we can help it, the soul will stay in hiding. But if we are willing to sit quietly and wait for a while, the soul may show itself.”
~Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach
If we want to see and hear a person’s soul, there is another truth we must remember: the soul is like a wild animal—-tough, resilient, and yet shy. When we go crashing through the woods shouting for it to come out so we can help it, the soul will stay in hiding. But if we are willing to sit quietly and wait for a while, the soul may show itself.”
~Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach
Belonging and Election
Belonging is that complex, entangling, and freeing experience of simultaneous choosing and being chosen that lovers, committed members of marginalized groups, members of religious communities, and others know. Belonging is the way human beings find a home for themselves in a universe not centered in or on them…. [B]elonging brings with it not greater privilege, but wider and deeper joy, obligations to others, and suffering…. the acknowledgement that one is a participant rather than a ruler.
Finally, the teaching of election reconstructed as belonging could help to counter the tendency toward spiritualism (the devaluing of the embodied life); for each of us belongs only in and through the stubbornly concrete and particular experience that is ours.
“Election” by Mary Potter Engel in The New Handbook of Christian Theology.
Finally, the teaching of election reconstructed as belonging could help to counter the tendency toward spiritualism (the devaluing of the embodied life); for each of us belongs only in and through the stubbornly concrete and particular experience that is ours.
“Election” by Mary Potter Engel in The New Handbook of Christian Theology.
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
© Mary Oliver. Online Source
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
© Mary Oliver. Online Source
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Einstein's Religion
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
~ Albert Einstein
~ Albert Einstein
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Success is Simple
Success is simple. Do what's right, the right way, at the right time.
A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.
All some folks want is their fair share and yours.
An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied.
Expecting something for nothing is the most popular form of hope.
Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance.
Improvement begins with I.
Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects.
Live so that your friends can defend you but never have to.
One of the true tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.
Success isn't a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
Telling a teenager the facts of life is like giving a fish a bath.
The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion.
The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it.
What the country needs are a few labor-making inventions.
~ Arnold H. Glasow
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors
/a/arnold_h_glasow.html
A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.
All some folks want is their fair share and yours.
An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied.
Expecting something for nothing is the most popular form of hope.
Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance.
Improvement begins with I.
Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects.
Live so that your friends can defend you but never have to.
One of the true tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.
Success isn't a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
Telling a teenager the facts of life is like giving a fish a bath.
The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion.
The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it.
What the country needs are a few labor-making inventions.
~ Arnold H. Glasow
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors
/a/arnold_h_glasow.html
Monday, August 28, 2006
God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved
Isaiah 45:22-23 NRS 22 Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. 23 By myself I have sworn, from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness a word that shall not return: "To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear."
Ephesians 2:11-22 NRS 14 For [Jesus] is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. … 17 So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; 18 for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.)
1 Timothy 2:1-6 NRS 1 First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, 2 for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. 3 This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, 6 who gave himself a ransom for all-- this was attested at the right time.
Ephesians 2:11-22 NRS 14 For [Jesus] is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. … 17 So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; 18 for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.)
1 Timothy 2:1-6 NRS 1 First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, 2 for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. 3 This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, 6 who gave himself a ransom for all-- this was attested at the right time.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
The Alien and the Stranger
NRS Exodus 12:48 If an alien who resides with you wants to celebrate the passover to the LORD, all his males shall be circumcised; then he may draw near to celebrate it; he shall be regarded as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it;
NRS Exodus 12:49 there shall be one law for the native and for the alien who resides among you.
NRS Exodus 22:21 You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
NRS Exodus 23:9 You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
NRS Exodus 23:12 Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, so that your ox and your donkey may have relief, and your homeborn slave and the resident alien may be refreshed.
NRS Leviticus 16:29 This shall be a statute to you forever: In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall deny yourselves, and shall do no work, neither the citizen nor the alien who resides among you.
NRS Leviticus 18:26 But you shall keep my statutes and my ordinances and commit none of these abominations, either the citizen or the alien who resides among you
NRS Leviticus 19:10 You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the LORD your God.
NRS Leviticus 19:33 When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien.
NRS Leviticus 19:34 The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.
NRS Leviticus 23:22 When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien: I am the LORD your God.
NRS Leviticus 24:22 You shall have one law for the alien and for the citizen: for I am the LORD your God.
NRS Leviticus 25:47 If resident aliens among you prosper, and if any of your kin fall into difficulty with one of them and sell themselves to an alien, or to a branch of the alien’s family,
NRS Leviticus 25:48 after they have sold themselves they shall have the right of redemption; one of their brothers may redeem them,
NRS Leviticus 25:50 They shall compute with the purchaser the total from the year when they sold themselves to the alien until the jubilee year; the price of the sale shall be applied to the number of years: the time they were with the owner shall be rated as the time of a hired laborer.
NRS Numbers 9:14 Any alien residing among you who wishes to keep the passover to the LORD shall do so according to the statute of the passover and according to its regulation; you shall have one statute for both the resident alien and the native.
NRS Numbers 15:14 An alien who lives with you, or who takes up permanent residence among you, and wishes to offer an offering by fire, a pleasing odor to the LORD, shall do as you do.
NRS Numbers 15:15 As for the assembly, there shall be for both you and the resident alien a single statute, a perpetual statute throughout your generations; you and the alien shall be alike before the LORD.
NRS Numbers 15:16 You and the alien who resides with you shall have the same law and the same ordinance.
NRS Numbers 15:29 For both the native among the Israelites and the alien residing among them-- you shall have the same law for anyone who acts in error.
NRS Numbers 15:30 But whoever acts high-handedly, whether a native or an alien, affronts the LORD, and shall be cut off from among the people.
NRS Numbers 19:10 The one who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening. This shall be a perpetual statute for the Israelites and for the alien residing among them.
NRS Numbers 35:15 These six cities shall serve as refuge for the Israelites, for the resident or transient alien among them, so that anyone who kills a person without intent may flee there.
NRS Deuteronomy 1:16 I charged your judges at that time: "Give the members of your community a fair hearing, and judge rightly between one person and another, whether citizen or resident alien.
NIV Deuteronomy 5:14 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor the alien within your gates, so that your manservant and maidservant may rest, as you do.
NRS Deuteronomy 10:19 You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
NRS Deuteronomy 23:7 You shall not abhor any of the Edomites, for they are your kin. You shall not abhor any of the Egyptians, because you were an alien residing in their land.
NRS Deuteronomy 24:17 You shall not deprive a resident alien or an orphan of justice; you shall not take a widow's garment in pledge.
NRS Deuteronomy 24:19 When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all your undertakings.
NRS Deuteronomy 24:20 When you beat your olive trees, do not strip what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.
NRS Deuteronomy 24:21 When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.
NRS Deuteronomy 25:5 When brothers reside together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband's brother shall go in to her, taking her in marriage, and performing the duty of a husband's brother to her,
NRS Deuteronomy 26:1 When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it,
NRS Deuteronomy 26:2 you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name.
. . .
NRS Deuteronomy 26:5 you shall make this response before the LORD your God: "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.
NRS Deuteronomy 27:19 "Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of justice." All the people shall say, "Amen!"
NRS Joshua 8:33 All Israel, alien as well as citizen, with their elders and officers and their judges, stood on opposite sides of the ark in front of the Levitical priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD, half of them in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded at the first, that they should bless the people of Israel.
NRS Joshua 8:34 And afterward he read all the words of the law, blessings and curses, according to all that is written in the book of the law.
NRS Job 29:14 I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe and a turban.
NRS Job 29:15 I was eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame.
NRS Job 29:16 I was a father to the needy, and I championed the cause of the stranger.
NRS Job 29:17 I broke the fangs of the unrighteous, and made them drop their prey from their teeth.
NRS Job 31:32 the stranger has not lodged in the street; I have opened my doors to the traveler—
NRS Jeremiah 7:5-7 5 For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, 6 if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, 7 then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever.
NRS Jeremiah 22:3 3 Thus says the LORD: Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place.
NRS Ezekiel 22:6-7 6 The princes of Israel in you, everyone according to his power, have been bent on shedding blood. 7 Father and mother are treated with contempt in you; the alien residing within you suffers extortion; the orphan and the widow are wronged in you.
NRS Ezekiel 22:29 29 The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery; they have oppressed the poor and needy, and have extorted from the alien without redress.
NRS Zechariah 7:9-10 9 Thus says the LORD of hosts: Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another; 10 do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.
NRS Malachi 3:5 5 Then I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the LORD of hosts.
NRS Matthew 25:31 - 26:1 31 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33 and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. 34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' 37 Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' 40 And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.' 41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' 44 Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?' 45 Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
Egypt, Assyria and Israel
Isaiah 19:17-25 - "Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage."
17 And the land of Judah will become a terror to the Egyptians; everyone to whom it is mentioned will fear because of the plan that the LORD of hosts is planning against them. 18 On that day there will be five cities in the land of Egypt that speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the LORD of hosts. One of these will be called the City of the Sun. 19 On that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the center of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to the LORD at its border. 20 It will be a sign and a witness to the LORD of hosts in the land of Egypt; when they cry to the LORD because of oppressors, he will send them a savior, and will defend and deliver them. 21 The LORD will make himself known to the Egyptians; and the Egyptians will know the LORD on that day, and will worship with sacrifice and burnt offering, and they will make vows to the LORD and perform them. 22 The LORD will strike Egypt, striking and healing; they will return to the LORD, and he will listen to their supplications and heal them.
23 On that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians. 24 On that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, 25 whom the LORD of hosts has blessed, saying, "Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage."
NRS Exodus 12:49 there shall be one law for the native and for the alien who resides among you.
NRS Exodus 22:21 You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
NRS Exodus 23:9 You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
NRS Exodus 23:12 Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, so that your ox and your donkey may have relief, and your homeborn slave and the resident alien may be refreshed.
NRS Leviticus 16:29 This shall be a statute to you forever: In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall deny yourselves, and shall do no work, neither the citizen nor the alien who resides among you.
NRS Leviticus 18:26 But you shall keep my statutes and my ordinances and commit none of these abominations, either the citizen or the alien who resides among you
NRS Leviticus 19:10 You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the LORD your God.
NRS Leviticus 19:33 When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien.
NRS Leviticus 19:34 The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.
NRS Leviticus 23:22 When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien: I am the LORD your God.
NRS Leviticus 24:22 You shall have one law for the alien and for the citizen: for I am the LORD your God.
NRS Leviticus 25:47 If resident aliens among you prosper, and if any of your kin fall into difficulty with one of them and sell themselves to an alien, or to a branch of the alien’s family,
NRS Leviticus 25:48 after they have sold themselves they shall have the right of redemption; one of their brothers may redeem them,
NRS Leviticus 25:50 They shall compute with the purchaser the total from the year when they sold themselves to the alien until the jubilee year; the price of the sale shall be applied to the number of years: the time they were with the owner shall be rated as the time of a hired laborer.
NRS Numbers 9:14 Any alien residing among you who wishes to keep the passover to the LORD shall do so according to the statute of the passover and according to its regulation; you shall have one statute for both the resident alien and the native.
NRS Numbers 15:14 An alien who lives with you, or who takes up permanent residence among you, and wishes to offer an offering by fire, a pleasing odor to the LORD, shall do as you do.
NRS Numbers 15:15 As for the assembly, there shall be for both you and the resident alien a single statute, a perpetual statute throughout your generations; you and the alien shall be alike before the LORD.
NRS Numbers 15:16 You and the alien who resides with you shall have the same law and the same ordinance.
NRS Numbers 15:29 For both the native among the Israelites and the alien residing among them-- you shall have the same law for anyone who acts in error.
NRS Numbers 15:30 But whoever acts high-handedly, whether a native or an alien, affronts the LORD, and shall be cut off from among the people.
NRS Numbers 19:10 The one who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening. This shall be a perpetual statute for the Israelites and for the alien residing among them.
NRS Numbers 35:15 These six cities shall serve as refuge for the Israelites, for the resident or transient alien among them, so that anyone who kills a person without intent may flee there.
NRS Deuteronomy 1:16 I charged your judges at that time: "Give the members of your community a fair hearing, and judge rightly between one person and another, whether citizen or resident alien.
NIV Deuteronomy 5:14 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor the alien within your gates, so that your manservant and maidservant may rest, as you do.
NRS Deuteronomy 10:19 You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
NRS Deuteronomy 23:7 You shall not abhor any of the Edomites, for they are your kin. You shall not abhor any of the Egyptians, because you were an alien residing in their land.
NRS Deuteronomy 24:17 You shall not deprive a resident alien or an orphan of justice; you shall not take a widow's garment in pledge.
NRS Deuteronomy 24:19 When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all your undertakings.
NRS Deuteronomy 24:20 When you beat your olive trees, do not strip what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.
NRS Deuteronomy 24:21 When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.
NRS Deuteronomy 25:5 When brothers reside together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband's brother shall go in to her, taking her in marriage, and performing the duty of a husband's brother to her,
NRS Deuteronomy 26:1 When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it,
NRS Deuteronomy 26:2 you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name.
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NRS Deuteronomy 26:5 you shall make this response before the LORD your God: "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.
NRS Deuteronomy 27:19 "Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of justice." All the people shall say, "Amen!"
NRS Joshua 8:33 All Israel, alien as well as citizen, with their elders and officers and their judges, stood on opposite sides of the ark in front of the Levitical priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD, half of them in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded at the first, that they should bless the people of Israel.
NRS Joshua 8:34 And afterward he read all the words of the law, blessings and curses, according to all that is written in the book of the law.
NRS Job 29:14 I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe and a turban.
NRS Job 29:15 I was eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame.
NRS Job 29:16 I was a father to the needy, and I championed the cause of the stranger.
NRS Job 29:17 I broke the fangs of the unrighteous, and made them drop their prey from their teeth.
NRS Job 31:32 the stranger has not lodged in the street; I have opened my doors to the traveler—
NRS Jeremiah 7:5-7 5 For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, 6 if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, 7 then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever.
NRS Jeremiah 22:3 3 Thus says the LORD: Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place.
NRS Ezekiel 22:6-7 6 The princes of Israel in you, everyone according to his power, have been bent on shedding blood. 7 Father and mother are treated with contempt in you; the alien residing within you suffers extortion; the orphan and the widow are wronged in you.
NRS Ezekiel 22:29 29 The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery; they have oppressed the poor and needy, and have extorted from the alien without redress.
NRS Zechariah 7:9-10 9 Thus says the LORD of hosts: Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another; 10 do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.
NRS Malachi 3:5 5 Then I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the LORD of hosts.
NRS Matthew 25:31 - 26:1 31 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33 and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. 34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' 37 Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' 40 And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.' 41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' 44 Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?' 45 Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
Egypt, Assyria and Israel
Isaiah 19:17-25 - "Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage."
17 And the land of Judah will become a terror to the Egyptians; everyone to whom it is mentioned will fear because of the plan that the LORD of hosts is planning against them. 18 On that day there will be five cities in the land of Egypt that speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the LORD of hosts. One of these will be called the City of the Sun. 19 On that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the center of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to the LORD at its border. 20 It will be a sign and a witness to the LORD of hosts in the land of Egypt; when they cry to the LORD because of oppressors, he will send them a savior, and will defend and deliver them. 21 The LORD will make himself known to the Egyptians; and the Egyptians will know the LORD on that day, and will worship with sacrifice and burnt offering, and they will make vows to the LORD and perform them. 22 The LORD will strike Egypt, striking and healing; they will return to the LORD, and he will listen to their supplications and heal them.
23 On that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians. 24 On that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, 25 whom the LORD of hosts has blessed, saying, "Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage."
A Heavy Heart
Like vinegar on a wound is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.
Like a moth in clothing or a worm in wood,
sorrow gnaws at the human heart.
~ Proverbs 25:20 NRSV
NRS Notes (Pro 25:20)
(1) Gk: Heb Like one who takes off a garment on a cold day, like vinegar on lye
(2) Gk Syr Tg: Heb lacks Like a moth . . . human heart
Like a moth in clothing or a worm in wood,
sorrow gnaws at the human heart.
~ Proverbs 25:20 NRSV
NRS Notes (Pro 25:20)
(1) Gk: Heb Like one who takes off a garment on a cold day, like vinegar on lye
(2) Gk Syr Tg: Heb lacks Like a moth . . . human heart
Saturday, August 26, 2006
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