Love is Great and ...

Minister of The Church of Jesus Christ baptizing in Mexico. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Love is of God, whose Spirit led Jesus Christ...

To preach good news to the meek,

   to mend the broken heart, 

      to proclaim freedom to the captive, 

  

         to open the prison to those that are bound; 

  

            to give beauty of oil for ashes, 

               to comfort all who mourn.... 

(more...Isaiah 61: 1-3 ; Luke 4: 16-19)

Copyright (c)2012 Opinari Writers

Willing Suspension of Disbelief... for the Moment

English: Reproduced signature of poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. ...Photo credit: Wikipedia

I've always been an avid reader, and being able to escape into a great book is often the most satisfying, rewarding part of a day stuck at home with chronic migraine disease.--Diana Lee-Somebody Heal Me.com

If you or someone you care about suffers with a chronic illness, then you know that whatever can bring escape for even a moment is a blessing. A well-told story can enrich a moment and, perhaps, many moments and days ahead. Many of us like what might be called "the escapist genre" of writing, which includes mysteries, adventures, and more.

While my husband and I were dating in college, he introduced me to the phrase, "the willing suspension of disbelief for the moment," coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The willing suspension of disbelief is what we do when watching something out of our world on TV or getting caught up in science or fantasy fiction. We suspend our sense of disbelief or suspicion about the reasonableness of what is happening in the story. We do this when a tale catches us up in the lives and events we never thought possible. 

What I like about these kinds of stories is that coincidence is vindicated. Strange coincidences do happen. Some people call them God-instances, if they have the quality of divine intervention. Even some true stores, then, require us to suspend disbelief and, thereby, suspicion. We accept what is true.

My husband's work with refugee and human migration issues took us to Geneva, Switzerland for ten years, and I found disbelief impossible, as we witnessed many amazing people and events in the face of world crises. On one of our first Sundays there, we heard a new arrival tell about her experience going from Somalia to relative safety in Sudan. During terrifying and frantic moments, she and her husband became separated and were apart for days when a truck saved her and others by taking them into Sudan.   

She could find no one on the truck or in the camp where she was dropped who knew what had happened to her husband. No one had seen or been with him. She began to fear that he was dead.

Somehow, in the middle of a transfer at an area far from home, as she was getting out of the back of a truck, she heard a voice that she recognized. It was her husband's voice. She called out. He followed her voice. They found each other. 

This woman still marveled that among the thousands of people in the same situation as they were, with so many comings and goings over the long time of separation, by different routes, they had found each other not only in the same over-crowded place but within sound of the other's voice.

Like the refugees who could not escape the wars or persecutions that drove them out, there are certain troubles we cannot escape, Yet, God is patient. He wants us to call upon His name. Hard times hit everyone, yet many come through those valleys much different from others who refused to hope, trust, or even care about God. What's more, what we cannot bear, the Lord lifts onto Himself, as we trust willingly. He shares our load.
 

Copyright (c)2012 Opinari Writers

Harmony in 2012 for Christian Writers

HAPPY NEW YEAR GREETINGS!

Image by Amateur.Qin（秦） via Flickr

Jean Purcell

Twitter @opinaripeople

Twitter @OpineBookCafe_NEW 
"May this  SECOND DAY OF THE NEW YEAR be a day of thanks continuing for you!. I'm thinking what book to review for upcoming OpineCafeBlog."     

     

St. Augustine focused on the harmony needed between what we say and how we live. Anyone can write or say something profound or meaningful without in fact living it. Simply by writing well, do we do so as followers...of Christ? This is the measure of a year of work.      

     

An earlier follower of Christ than St. Augustine was the apostle Paul. God inspired him to write about love. Paul wrote, in essence, that the most heavenly-sounding words can only go so far as to shake the senses... if they are written or said apart from love. This message is inherent in the apostle's life. He wrote what is referred to, in the Bible, as I Corinthians 13, beginning: "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal..."

Conclusion

Harmony for 2012

is ours as we seek the Lord of love. 
Isn't He our heart's main desire, the One who leads us? 

 In expectation, we seek harmony 

between our words and how we live, inside and outside,
in the love of God through Christ Jesus.

 LORD, we put all trust in You. 

Help us to pray. Help us to read Your holy written Word,
which feeds us. Help us, alone or with others, to help the poor...with love.  
We need Your help so that we can write
in the harmony that is possible by varieties of means and expressions.       

   Amen.

Copyright (c)2011 Opinari Writers

The Thinking Christian: Thought and Faith

by Jean Purcell

editor@opinebooks.com 

Follow on Twitter @opinaripeople

Commentary

Image via WikipediaTo be called "Christian" has to do with belief, which has to do with both heart and mind. The mind is inseparable from faith. Faith includes intention. Believers at the head of Christian times knew that mind and heart are one..."thoughts and intentions of the heart." They would never have put thought aside, or reason. They relied on both as gifts of God (e.g., "think on these things"-emphasis added). 

     Emotionalism unfortunately is misunderstood or used falsely and even theatrically in what we might call faux experience. Yet, feelings like jubilation and joy can be and are extremely real for those fortunate to know them. The results immediately following Pentecost come to mind..."they are drunk!" And so they seemed, being filled to overflowing with the nectar of the freedom of God's Spirit.

    This is cause for rejoicing over many things, including the freedom to choose, to believe, to act, and to think. Martin Luther knew this when he wrote, "the body they may kill," when the church was being persecuted, and by religious leaders, no less. "God's truth abideth still, His kingdom is forever" finished Luther's argument. Those who believe that Christ came, lived, died, rose, and is coming again...rely on truth through a knowing and hidden faith. The faith is hidden to those who resist it as so many, including myself for a long time, do. However, when the mind willingly opens even to the possibility of God being, then all sorts of unseen things can be very near being seen. Each step closer in thought, reason, and intention is earth-shaking. If only we want to see...with the mind and the heart...

Recommended books about faith:
Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis
The Mourner's Comforter by C. H. Spurgeon
Faith by C. H. Spurgeon


Copyright (c)2011 Opinari Writers and Jean Purcell

Related articles

• God's Word Is The Source Of Faith (prhayz.wordpress.com)
• 2 Timothy (mybiblereadingplan.wordpress.com)
• What are some of the theses that martin Luther wrote against the catholic churches (wiki.answers.com)

Are They Changing Our Minds?

Image via Wikipedia

We know about mind-altering drugs. What about mind-altering attitudes, assumptions, beliefs, and emotions? What happens when a normal brain's chemistry is twisted by habitual emotions of anger, bitterness, envy, or revenge? What happens to the normal brain's chemistry when it is full of the love of God and mercy, forgiveness, love, and justice according to law?   

Each person's beliefs, thoughts, and emotions are affecting the chemistry of the mind. The question is: Are they--these beliefs, thoughts, and emotions--such that they are changing our minds for the better, or for the worse?
(c) 2011

C. S. Lewis's Classic Look at Liar's Work

"Readers are advised to remember that 

the devil is a liar. Not everything Screwtape 

says should be assumed to be true 

even from how own angle."      

Source: Preface, Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis.

C. S. Lewis's advice about Screwtape, a chief devil, and the Liar behind him, increases in importance as a reader progresses along each page. As pages turn, the mind of the liar is revealed to those with eyes to see and spiritual minds prepared..

Lies, more than anything, are central to Screwtape's strategy-advice to a junior devil, whom any liar wants to proceed and succeed in unsettling believers. One must attack truth and Truth. No attempt to turn someone away from belief in God as revealed in Christ can get anywhere without planting lies intended to sprout into doubt; doubt then can be nudged into full unbelief, over time, and then into slander against God. In other words, lies about God have a big objective: to break down the soul.

A broad overview of the effects of lies and subtle nudges is in Jesus' parable of the sower. There He prepared others about the ease of being too tender in faith to stand, of being easily pulled aside, then disillusioned. Even distractions of worries and pleasures of the world can work strongly against those who think their faith is already strong enough.  

Many a believer has been led onto side roads. Oh, how persuasive to a believer can be the Liar's words! Screwtape also demonstrates that sometimes ridicule is needed, for it can be quite effective is used well...for the believer to fear it and for other doubters to use it. This fits well with the use of false accusations and name-calling, according to the Liar.

Overall, all methods of hatred of God intend to break down what one once believed about what is good or worthy, what is part of awareness that one is beloved of God (see, e.g., John 3:16).  

Really, no writer has exceeded the Oxford and Cambridge professor, C. S. Lewis, in assembling such real examples of how Darkness works, as he did in the classic assemblage of letters of Liar's advice to his under-devils. Screwtape boasts from the dregs of a hell, selling his words as cleverer, more attractive, and most intelligent of any good counsel--all part of his package of lies. Screwtape Letters remains a good study for writers attempting analogy or metaphor. Most of all, however, an excellent study in spiritually intelligent observation needed by the growing Christian or seeker, young or old. Wherever there is deliberate imposition of disorder, loudness, hatred, and vicious attack...there are the Liar and his minions, clamoring for more souls to feed their appetite. 

Related articles

• The Screwtape Letters (davidscommonplacebook.wordpress.com)
• C. S. Lewis on How Courage Ranks among the Virtues (beinggoodnews.com)
• Fools Rush In (davidscommonplacebook.wordpress.com)
• Is the Devil Real? (broeder10.wordpress.com)