truth's verdict; john 3:16

Truth's Verdict… day 75/90... John 3:16

You could say I've been highly engaged in the process of "soul searching" over the past year. So much of my life is different from one year prior... I can either surrender and give in to the pressures and end my sorrows selfishly or I can continue to search... I continue to search...

I've been reading, "Gift from the Sea" by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. A passage was used in a wedding ceremony that Jenny, Janel and I recently sang in. Jenny recommended the book to me.

One thing has impacted me today in my Bible readings alongside the book's reading... Anne Lindbergh says that the life of multiplicity "leads not to unification but to fragmentation." Our problem, she adds, is "how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life: how to remain balanced, no matter what centrifugal forces tend to pull one off center: how to remain strong no matter what shocks come in at the periphery and tend to crack the hub of the wheel."

She also adds that one of the answers is to "find a balance somewhere, or an alternating rhythm between solitude and communion, between restraint and return." She recommends periods of retreat in which hopefully one can learn something of the inner spirit which one can take back into worldly life. Vacations are often useless since we carry the complexity of our lives with us, or else we plan them with far too much activity scheduled in too short a period of time. Surely we ought to be able to live in the two worlds at once, the world of simplicity and complexity; the world of the one and the world of the many.

"There is no easy solution to this finding of the eternal presence in the midst of the temporal. Somehow this presence ought to grow from year to year, but in order to grow it has to start. As Jesus said to Nicodemus, "Ye must be born anew." One interpretation of these words certainly is that the new man of whom Jesus spoke is a person who can live in the temporal world while at the same time can feel the under-girding of the world of the Eternal Spirit. It has to begin, and why should it not begin today?

The process of soul searching, when it is translated into its religious dimension, involves the realization that when one finds his own soul he will discover to his joy that it is only a part of a greater soul, that his individual self is a part of a Greater Self." - Walter Donald Kring; The Process of Soul Searching

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Very truly, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."

“… we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still people do not accept the testimony.”

“I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him."

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.

This is the verdict:

Light has come into the world…
but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil…

All those who do evil hate the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed...

But those who live by the truth come into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God…


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... for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life...
john 3:16