joanne guarnieri's Page

...and not the Bible interpreted through personal experience. I've written this mostly for Robert/Seraphim

This is one of the most valuable life lessons I have learned so far as a believer, and I learned it twelve years ago when I moved to Maryland. Until that time I had been interpreting the Bible through the lens of a vivid experience.

On a beautiful spring day, when I was twenty-one years old, I was walking to a friend's house. As I was walking I suddenly "heard" a man's voice speak to me.… Continue

Successfully managing your time implies that you are accomplishing what is the most important for you.

When you don't accomplish what you truly want, you feel overwhelmed, compromised, frustrated, stressed out. A lot of times people try to use time management techniques that work for other people, only to be disappointed. Often this is because they haven’t figured out what goals are the most important to them and gear the techniques toward those goals.

So the first step in effective… Continue

The most important day of the year for the Old Testament Jew was the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, when God accepted the symbolic shedding of animals’ blood as atonement for the sins of all the people, and gave everyone a new beginning.

The deaths of Nadab and Abihu [Leviticus 10] had been a shocking reminder of how important it was to approach God on His terms.

Sin is an outrage against God and the source of terrible harm to ourselves and others. At this point Aaron and his other sons… Continue

In order to put the Day of Atonement in perspective, we need to look at the annual festivals God ordained for His people. The sacrifices spoke of the blood that saves and the feast spoke of the food that sustains. Both are of God.

(1) Leviticus 23:4-6 "These are the appointed feasts of the LORD, the holy convocations, which you shall proclaim at the time appointed for them. In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight, is the LORD’s Passover. And on the fifteenth… Continue

A while back I read a fascinating article called “How the new science of thank you can change your life.” Apparently science has now been able to prove what God has been teaching people since the days of Cain: practicing gratitude can actually make us healthier – literally!!

Dr. Robert Emmons, a professor of psychology at UC Davis, has been able to prove, in his lab, that being thankful can change us for the better. He took three groups of volunteers and assigned them to focus on one thing:

1)… Continue