Category: Gospel

Jesus’ Word

When ‘God Bless You’ Is the Only Reward

If you are like me, I want credit for doing the right thing. Maybe it goes back to the Boy Scout challenge “to do a good turn daily.” There is a part of me that wants someone to notice and say something out loud when they catch me “doing something good.” Yet I also know that my character is most often best revealed when no one is watching. Frederick Douglass in a letter to Harriet Tubman once said:

“Most that I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every step of the way. You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way … most that you have done has been witnessed by a few trembling, scared, and foot-sore bondsmen and women, whom you have led out of the house of bondage, and whose heartfelt ‘God Bless You’ has been your only reward.”

When was the last time ‘God Bless You’ was your only reward? What is the treasure you received in that simple blessing?

What Happens on Palm Sunday?

On Palm Sunday:

Joy suddenly turns to sorrow; exaltation to defeat, hosannas to “Crucify him!”

Within the very liturgy of Palm Sunday the tension is evident; traditionally, it is the only day with two Gospel readings—the enervating triumphal entry, and the tragic narrative of crucifixion. Palms turn to passion. It is the way God has designed it, for he “did not count equality with God something to be grasped.”

-Brian Rhea

This is true perfection …

This is true perfection: not to avoid a wicked life because we fear punishment, like slaves; not to do good because we expect repayment, as if cashing in on the virtuous life by enforcing some business deal.

On the contrary, disregarding all those good things which we do hope for and which God has promised us, we regard falling from God’s friendship as the only thing dreadful, and we consider becoming God’s friend the only thing truly worthwhile.

-St Gregory of Nyssa

via Simply Orthodox ☦.