Tag: freedom
Ghost month. A period of time when the gates of hell are opened, allowing ghosts and spirits to enter our world. It is a time for them to feast on the food and drink offerings made for them. At the height of the month, the ghost festival (the 15th day of the seventh lunar month), it is believed deceased ancestors visit the living. Around this time, people will offer food and drink, burn incense, joss paper (paper money), and various other things to the ghosts to alleviate their suffering and hunger. Also, a wash basin is provided for ghosts to…
Cover to Cover Reading: Deuteronomy 30:1-32:47 Focus: Deuteronomy 30:11-20 The society we live in finds itself dissatisfied with rules, structures, and anything else really that limits their “freedom”. Human nature has never been satisfied with any of these settings and have always sought to break out from them so that they might break new ground and find a new experience of life which they could not have under the old, restricted “regime”. And yet, the cycle continues as these new experiences find themselves subjected to the need for order, structure and form…seriously, after millennia past we still haven’t learnt.
Cover to Cover Reading: Leviticus 23:1-25:55 Focus: Leviticus 25:1-55 We live in a world where the rich are only getting richer, and the poor are only getting poorer. Over the generations, the status of families and businesses have overpowered and domineered over those who simply have not been able to keep up. As they continue to grow from the failure of those smaller than them, their growth expands exponentially as there is close to no way for people to catch up.
James 1:25 For most people, the two words ‘freedom’ and ‘obedience’ simply are not compatible. To be ‘free’ is to be unbound by submission to another authority, to be ‘obedient’ is to relinquish one’s freedom and submit to authority. Logically, they are incompatible ideals but James, and throughout the Bible, brings these two, seemingly opposite, ideas together as a part of the Christian life. Where most of us would immediately associate faith with obedience, James brings into the picture ‘freedom’ found what some might consider a rigid framework. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives…
