Jesus

Where is Jesus?

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 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb.  And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. John 20:11-14

When our children were small one of their favorite books was Richard Scarry’s  “Cars and Trucks and Things that Go” On every page of the story were all different kinds of vehicles traveling down busy city streets, highways and country lanes. But no matter what page we were on – we and our boys were always on the look out for a tiny gold colored character named Goldfarb (I was never sure if he was a worm or caterpillar). You never knew where Goldfarb might be. On one page he was hiding in the back of a dump truck and on the next he was sitting with the firemen in a big red fire truck. But no matter where he was we all laughed each time we found him.

While this was a pleasant pastime for us a parents, I have discovered that In a similar but much more serious way we need to look for Jesus along the highways and byways of our lives. In the story book every day looks like fun but real life things can be quite different. Some days Jesus is sleeping in our storm tossed boat and others it seems to us that He is days late in showing up to help. We may even find ourselves in the position of Mary as she wept at the tomb supposing that someone had taken Jesus away. Her sorrow was so overwhelming that when the living resurrected Jesus did come she didn’t recognize Him. She turned and thought, “Oh it’s only the gardener…but maybe he knows something about my Lord!”

Maybe God is showing up as a rather plain looking gardener to you today. Maybe there is soil on his knees from laboring with weeds and planting flowers. Maybe his hands are so cracked and worn from work that we fail to recognize the prints of the nails in His palms. As He walks up quietly behind us we don’t see the wounds on His feet that happened on His journey to find us. But the night is almost past and dawn is just beginning to peak over our horizon. Where is Jesus? He is right at our side ready to call our name. Whenever we are seeking Him with all our hearts His word assures us that He will come up our garden paths ready to be found!

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Review- Lumo visual Gospel

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My wife and I are lovers of the old classic movies going back as far as Rudolf Valentino on The Sheik. Besides Wonderful Life, Yours Mine and Ours and The Bishop’s Wife, we have watched most of the faith based epics. Some were long but poignant and if slightly inaccurate they stayed with the idea of keeping things close to the biblical account. Among the greats we loved The Robe, Ben Hur and of course The Ten Commandments. The modern films trying to appeal to the same audiences have tended to wander farther from scripture with each new big budget production.

How refreshing it was then to finish the abbreviated version of Mark offered up as The Teachings of Jesus from Lumo productions on the Youversion bible app. It is not only 100% scripture but it is beautifully filmed in Morocco. The actors are speaking in Aramaic but the script is dubbed over so you barely hear what they are saying. This creates a pseudo-silent film with wonderful attention given to facial expressions, costume and interesting camera angles. All in all I would give this a 5 star rating and now can’t wait to get hold of some of the full length gospels. These are well worth watching and remain astonishingly faithful to God’s word. I suppose my only concern would be for those who would use this in place of their own bible reading rather than as an inspirational supplement. I would love to hear any feedback from my readers. What do you think?

All is Bright?

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 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:5

Silent night Holy night / All is calm all is bright      Josef Mohr 1818

I am not sure of the exact inspiration for Josef Mohr when He wrote the words for Silent Night. What strange word are these? What Silent night? What holiness could be seen? From the braying donkey carrying Mary to Bethlehem to her cries piercing the night as she gave birth; there was no silence or holy place given her. ” All is calm all is bright.” Yet it would be hard to imagine Joseph being calm when there was no better place for Mary than a stable or cleaner spot to lay her child than a feeding trough for the cows! Yet the oddest of all these lines is “All is bright.”  All is bright? I have memories of milking our cow at 4:45 a.m. in a barn without electricity. My only light was a candle stub which I placed on a beam. There was nothing at all especially bright about those cold early mornings in the barn.

And yet by faith we sense the deeper reality of the silence of angels, stooping low to see the Savior. We recognize the holiness of the child conceived by God’s Holy Spirit. We feel the calm assurance of Mary and Joseph’s hearts as everything happen

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ed just as the angel had foretold. We see the brightness as the first flicker of God’s light in our dark and waiting world. From that first Christmas till now, the darkness has never put it out!