Advent: Means “To come” in Latin.
Advent originally was a time of instruction, prayer fasting and self-reflection, in preparation to be baptized in the new year. Then in the mid-300s Constantine the Great declared Jesus' birthday a national holiday. The exact day of Christ's birth is unknown, it was probably in the spring, some time around Passover.
But Julius, bishop of Rome, set the date as December 25 because, at the time, this was the highest pagan festival of ancient Rome, called "…
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Added by joanne guarnieri on November 29, 2009 at 7:00am —
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Someone sent this to me, author unknown, and it was so good I just have to share it with you all!
"To Everyone Attending Thanksgiving Dinner....
"Martha Stewart will not be dining with us this Thanksgiving. I'm telling you in advance, so don't act surprised. Since Ms. Stewart won't be coming, I've made few small changes.
"Our sidewalk will not be lined with homemade, paper bag luminaries. After a trial run, it was decided that no matter how cleverly done, rows of flaming lunch sacks do not ha…
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Added by joanne guarnieri on November 25, 2009 at 7:00am —
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Am just thinking out loud right now, so if you have some thoughts to add, I'm all ears.
In talking with a friend yesterday, we came upon the subject of the eternal subordination of the Son to the Father in one variation of trinity doctrine. We both agreed, categorically, that this pernicious doctrine, a mere thirty years old, is a new spin to the ancient
Arian heresy that…
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Added by joanne guarnieri on November 24, 2009 at 9:12am —
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...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.…
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Added by joanne guarnieri on October 9, 2009 at 7:26pm —
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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…
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Added by joanne guarnieri on October 1, 2009 at 3:00pm —
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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…
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Added by joanne guarnieri on September 28, 2009 at 11:00am —
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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…
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Added by joanne guarnieri on September 27, 2009 at 10:30am —
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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)…
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Added by joanne guarnieri on September 23, 2009 at 10:30am —
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Rosh Hashanah begins today at sundown, and in ten days public schools across Maryland will be closed in honor of Yom Kippur. You can study these important festivals in the Jewish calendar in Leviticus.
Leviticus 23:24-25, "
Speak to the people of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a day of solemn rest, a memorial proclaimed with blast of trumpets, a holy convocation. You shall not do any ordinary work, and you shall present a food off…
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Added by joanne guarnieri on September 18, 2009 at 9:00am —
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The greatest battle that goes on in the world today is for the mind.
During the early, formative years of our lives, you and I learned to live independently from God – we were born with this tendency, as has every human being since Adam and Eve, even when you are born to parents who know and love Jesus.
When you became a Christian nobody pushed the delete button in your head to make you forget how to live independently of God. All those thoughts and feelings are still in there, a…
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Added by joanne guarnieri on September 16, 2009 at 3:00pm —
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Paul lays out six principles of God's judgment in Romans 2:2-16
A) Romans 2:2-3 "We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God?"
God's judgment is according to truth, according to things as they really are. God is an utter realist. God sees us exactly as we are. He knows all our secrets.…
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Added by joanne guarnieri on September 15, 2009 at 8:35pm —
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If you’ve been reading the news, and news journals, you know that recently there’s been a lot of research coming out about the brain. One current article says, “The most interesting and complicated frontier in science is the human brain. This three pound universe has seemingly unlimited capabilities, yet in spite of advancements in neuroscience, the brain remains the most mysterious force in existence.”
Research has discovered that
• Men and women think differently because our brains are formed…
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Added by joanne guarnieri on September 13, 2009 at 3:03pm —
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I was reading the news a couple of years ago and came across this intriguing headline:
A Sure, But Bizarre, Path to Happiness
According to the article, and I’m quoting: “If you want to be truly happy with that deep down feeling of utter and complete satisfaction, just work hard. That is the surprising word from a research team at Gothenburg University in Sweden which has determined that working to achieve a goal--even more than attaining it--is what gives people true satisfaction and hap…
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Added by joanne guarnieri on September 9, 2009 at 9:30am —
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Both Nahum and Zephaniah talk about humility, meekness. I looked up “meek” in Webster’s dictionary, and here’s the definition it gave:
1) Patient and mild. Not inclined to anger or resentment.
2) Tamely submissive, easily imposed on;
3) Gentle or kind
Webster’s even gave what the world would define as meek: “too submissive; spineless; spiritless”
In the Old Testament the meekest man who ever lived was Moses and in the New Testament Jesus described Himself as meek. Neither one of those men w…
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Added by joanne guarnieri on September 5, 2009 at 9:11am —
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The following thoughts are heavily borrowed from 2nd Man United (member of Theologica), so he will totally recognize his own material, just condensed. He, in turn, was writing a sort of synopsis from a book that I have not read (yet), called "Organic Community" by Joseph R. Myers. His series on this book is exceptionally good -- I reprinted them on my own blog, but you can go straight to the source
here
He breaks down the organizati…
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Added by joanne guarnieri on July 21, 2009 at 7:00am —
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Spending time in the discussion going on recently on the Forum page got me to thinking about the orthos. Alan Hirsch is the one who got me started. His book ReJesus laid out three orthos, and the way he talked about them made a huge amount of sense to me. Here's what I got --
1)
Orthopathy,
the way of the heart: The Pharisees wanted to check Jesus out, objectify Him, line Him up against their understandings of the faith, and because of this they were judged for the hardness of hea…
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Added by joanne guarnieri on July 20, 2009 at 11:00am —
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The apostle Paul ends Ephesians with the assurance that, in God’s mighty power, Satan’s schemes can be successfully withstood.
It is a fact that an angel named Lucifer was accompanied by a large angelic force in a rebellion against God. Isaiah 14 describes the thoughts that went on in Lucifer’s mind, “I will make myself like the Most High.” He was the most powerful, the most beautiful, of all the angels, his name meant “light-bearer,” “shining one,” “Son of the Dawn,” so he aspired to be like G…
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Added by joanne guarnieri on July 15, 2009 at 7:15pm —
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The spirits were out in the world that year. Sun Myung Moon had been releasing them as he spread his Divine Principle throughout Italy, Germany, Belgium and Holland.
By 1969, two years after my father and I had returned to America, the spirits were spread across the Atlantic, gathered wherever people gathered, like undulating waves of fervor, frothing up ecstatic joy among five hundred thousand worshipers of love, hallucinations and the throb of music in Woodstock, New York. Moving west to Cali…
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Added by joanne guarnieri on July 2, 2009 at 8:30am —
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I'll be gone for a couple weeks (and offline), off to Minnesota for a wedding in the extended family (husband's side). In the mean time, thought I'd tell another part of "my story." Am leaving out some things that happened in Italy, not quite ready for that, so thought I'd bring you with me back to America for two stories, then go back to Italy for one or two other formative events (in the spiritual sense). I'll schedule the second part of this America story to post tomorrow (when we leave for o…
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Added by joanne guarnieri on July 1, 2009 at 8:37am —
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..."Why Small Is the New Big for Today's Church"
Tony and Felicity Dale start their book with this signature story from its title -- the difference between rabbits and elephants. I don't want to spoil the story for you, so suffice it to say, in their words, "
Something that is large and complex is hard to reproduce. Something that is small and simple multiplies easily."
The whole rest of their book is filled with the same kind of refreshingly simple and sound wisdom, astute observation a…
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Added by joanne guarnieri on June 8, 2009 at 11:30am —
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