Love

[Quaesitor]

Just as I was reflecting on human brokenness and suffering I found this quote by Reformer and it explained my feelings so well I had to share it.
Thanks James.

In the commercial meat generating facilities there are rows upon rows of cages, sometimes several floors of cages.  The chicken in the cage with about a dozen others had the pointy tip of it's beak clipped by a hot wire when it was about 3 days old so it couldn't peck the other chickens.  It gets the space of only about 1 page of typewriter paper to inhabit for it's entire life.  In some states they've managed to pass laws to stop such intensive production techniques in order for the birds to have a more "natural" lifestyle.  California has something like that to go into effect in maybe a decade to make it easier for farmers to adjust.  It will drive up the prices of meat considerably.  The process of adapting to the change may mean much more imported chicken.  While the bird I mentioned has stresses unique to it's caged life, because it has never known anything else it can be reasonably proposed that it can't miss what it never had.  Do you realize the way some children have been treated they are in a lifestyle if wickedness, whether violence or deviant sexuality,or whatever.  They perpetuate on their own children what was done to them.  They don't know there is another life outside their cages, a life that exists as potential within their own life.  This is very important for our spiritual understanding.

Jesus on the cross said of those responsible for putting Him there, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."  Many Christians are fearful of falling into some kind of gnostic heresy if they allow themselves to believe that people really don't understand what they're doing.  To know that the most wicked of people will one day understand and cast themselves at Jesus feet, imploring Him to have mercy, works a softening in our own hearts towards them now, while they're in their ignorance.  Surely the inworking of the love of God toward the ungodly for whom Christ died bears witness to the truth of God's ultimate salvation of all.  We all, born in Adam, suffer being amputated from God.  My entire self is an amputation.  The restoration of the rest of our lost being, our being enabled to partake of the Divine nature from which we were cut off is the story of the gospel applied to our life.  "For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bone." (Ep 5:30)  We are the flesh of God in the earth.

Oh Father, show us these people and manifest your love for them trough us, Christ's body, that the world may know that you've sent Him through us to deliver the message of reconciliation, consolation and restoration.
Because you so loved the WORLD that you sent your own SON to save it!
Oh how I love you Father!

Love you brothers and sisters, I pray that LOVE may be perfected in you all!

[jabcat]

i think this may have been from James (reFORMer), but if it's good, use it!   (The other James.)  :Sparkletooth:

[Cardinal]

 :cloud9: Amen it is good.....missed reading that one somehow...... :thumbsup:

[Quaesitor]

Oops corrected it.
=)