Monday, August 11, 2014

Seeking For Meaning


   On Sunday I heard that the other person I was thinking to add to this blog as an author has decided to start off with another organization. He is no longer available to blog with me. So it is just a one person blog.
  I wasn't always a Christian. Before I was I belonged to the Roman Catholic Church. A Roman Catholic has all the facts but the final step, that of asking Jesus alone to save them from the penalty of sin and give them assurance of going to heaven when they die.. that part is missing.
   If belonging to the right group (There is none) and believing my security was in man and good works which I have done to get me to heaven, than I would have been okay. There would have been no reason for the resurrection.
   Yes. It was the resurrection that sealed the truth. Not the death alone. A dead person has never been able to save another.
    I was born a Roman Catholic. It wasn't something that I chose. I was educated in a Catholic environment through grade school.. And still my paternal grandmother said "if only you had stayed you would have understood." when it came to, what?
   Salvation is not in a church group.
    When I was twenty one and away at school , this was when I got hold of a Bible and read it for myself. I wanted to know what it said, not what a priest said it said.   About this time the Vietnam war was still going on. My brother was killed in that war. He was so young.
   I realized that young people died not just the elderly. And If I were to die, where would I spend eternity? And how could I be sure?
   I sought answers. I was seeking for meaning.
   Now, being a Roman Catholic is not all bad. The facts were all there. The application was not. Not the way that will draw you to seek answers outside the church.  Nor would my saying a Roman Catholic have made the truth apparent to me as my paternal grandmother was no doubt trying to say.
    A personal encounter with Jesus Christ and the resurrected Savior who took the penalty for my sins.. which was eternal separation from God, was needed.
   

Friday, August 8, 2014

Grafted Into The Vine


 This past Tuesday, 5 Aug, was held the national evening to thank the police and other organizations of service in the community. It was a night of food, dancing, booths where we could see what our police department and fire department and other service organizations were up to.
   There was a good attendance. Also there was the Jewish organization of Chabad.
    I was asked twice if I were a Jew. Now, I don't look Jewish. But I guess they ask all males.
    While I am not a Jew I am grafted in to the vine. That vine is attached to the Abrahamic promise of blessing. It is the same vine from which the Jews come and the Messiah.
     To pick up the trend. The Olive tree was mentioned by Saul of Tarsus in what comes down to us today as the letter to the Romans found in the second half of the Bible. The gentiles ( Non-Jews) can be grafted in as a wild branch. They can be grafted in when they have a relationship with God through the blood of Jessu Christ. This union grafts them in with the same privileges as a Jew. That is a true Jew.
    What makes one a true Jew? In today's parlance that would be a Jewish individual who has found their Messiah.
    But for us non-Jews we have to be grafted into the vine. It is not hard to do.