Soul Sister Time

Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.             Once again this prayer teaches us how to orient our souls by thinking about heaven.   As we move forward in our reflection of these amazing words from the most famous prayer, we find ourselves considering heaven.   The world is so intoxicating—the good and bad aspects of it—that we often overly focus on and dismiss the unseen reality of heaven.   Jesus left heaven so that He could bring heaven to us.             Praying for God’s Kingdom to come and His will to be done is in fact, praying for heaven to intersect with our lives beginning in our hearts.   When we ask for the Kingdom to be in our midst, we are inviting the virtues and justice of heaven to govern our hearts and lives.   The best way to make sure that you receive everything you really need for each day on earth is to keep your focus on heaven.   Matthew 6:33 says:   But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things wi

The Lord’s Prayer —Thy Name, Thy Will, Thy Gift, Thy Victory, Thy Protection             For the next five weeks, I would like to unpack the five main phrases of what we call The Lord’s Prayer, The Our Father, The Prayer Jesus taught us to Pray, The Model Prayer , found in Matthew 6:9-13.   I hope to help us reflect more deeply on the phrases many of us know by heart.   Jesus did not teach them to us to pray without considering the meaning behind each word and phrase.               Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name ….what a beautiful way to begin.               Our Father : Jesus is the one who taught us to think of God as our Father.   God gave this image of Himself with mankind in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 1:31; Psalm 103:13; Malachi 3:17) but it was not until Jesus that we began to comprehend that God wants us to think of Him as our Father during prayer.   I love that Jesus didn’t teach us to pray to His Father.   Jesus calls God our Father.   Je

            The reason I love studying the Bible with a group of people is that they teach me things I don’t know.   I love it when I don’t know the answer to a question.   That is how I learn.   So when someone recounted the ugly tail of Dan’s idolatry in Judges 18 concluding with the passage in Judges 18:30-31 :   There the Danites set up for themselves the idol, and Jonathan son of Gershom, the son of Moses, and his sons were priests for the tribe of Dan until the time of the captivity of the land.   They continued to use the idol Micah had made, all the time the house of God was in Shiloh. I wanted to know if that could possibly be true that the Danites never ever worshiped God!   How could that be?             Before I had a chance to settle that question, someone in the class read the passage from Revelation 7 where the tribe of Dan was omitted.   I never considered that!   I never realized that a whole tribe of Israel was not found in the New Testament.   What could that

            One way or the other everybody will pray.   This was driven home to me on the finale of the much talked about show Breaking Bad .   It was my little secret that I became a huge fan of the show.   It’s not a show for the fainthearted, and it might shock you that I liked it.   I’m sure most of my readers don’t watch it so let me sum it up for you.   The show is about an overqualified high school chemistry teacher who gets cancer and due to his pride devises a scheme to pay his medical bills and give his family a nest-egg after he dies.   The strategy involves cooking meth and ultimately becoming a drug lord, overthrowing the cartel.   There is a lot of violence, drug use, illicit sex and murder.               Though the show taught me a lot about depravity, I never thought that I would see the main character praying.   That is what is so great about the show; it is always shocking you and taking twists you never saw coming (even though you tried to guess).   Walt praye