Night with ebon pinion ...

"Night with ebon pinion / brooded o'er the vale...".

Beautifully poetic words, in a beautiful song. But how many people know what the phrase means? I do, because as a kid I looked up the words and managed to put it together into plain English (which I then penciled into my song book at church for future reference). But I daresay that many people have sung this phrase all their life and don't have a clue what it says.

Nothing wrong with beauty; nothing wrong with poetry. Until it gets in the way.

What then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will also pray with my understanding. I will sing with the spirit, and I will also sing with my understanding. - 1 Cor 14:15

Three Proverbs

1. Two people can look at the same thing and see it differently.

2. A rich person is not the one who has the most, but is the one who needs the least.

3. You can't make anyone love you.

Christians Against Christ

Michael Cecil writes in an online forum:

Christianity is a specific set of doctrines, not merely the claim that a person is following Jesus.

And, if it can be determined that there is a conflict in Doctrine between what Jesus taught and what Christian theology teaches, then Christianity becomes the manifestation of the denial of the Teaching of Jesus.

Saved By Love

Phil Comer writes:

Your salvation depends on how much you love God? Good luck with that. My salvation depends on how much He loves me.

Forgiving the Adulteress?

Every once in a while an epiphany hits you that's been staring in your face for thirty years.

In John 8, Jesus did not forgive the woman who was caught in adultery. Rather, he maneuvered her accusers into dropping their charges against her. Different thing entirely.

With no eyewitnesses to testify against her, there was no case, and she was acquitted (or rather, pardoned - she was guilty, after all).

Yet Jesus perceived that she really was guilty, so he did the only thing left for him to do: he told her to "Go, and sin no more."

The story wasn't about her being forgiven by God; it was about saving her life in the culture's legal environment. Jesus wasn't asking the accusers to forgive her; he was asking them to cool off enough from the mob mentality to make sure they really wanted to testify in a case that would lead to the death of a fellow human being who in retrospect wasn't any more sinful than they themselves were.

A Wise Saying

MamaBear writes on Yahoo! Answers:

Things should be believed in because they are true, not the other way around.