timeforINRI

 The focal point of Jesus' work of salvation was sacrifice.  The four verbs he used at the Last Supper put salvation into action every time we sit down for a meal. The words are words of sacrifice. We deliberately set ourselves in God's presence at the Lord's Supper so that we might become like Jesus.Our lives, like his, are to be  sacrificially lived- taken, blessed, broken, and given to others. Eugene H. Peterson Isaiah 53

 The fulfilment of God's promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way and simply embracing what he does. God's promise arrives as a pure gift. That's the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is the father of us all. He is not our racial father - that is reading the story backwards. He is our faith father. We call Abraham "father" not because he got God's attention by living  like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn't that what we've always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham " I set you up as a father of many peoples"? Abraham was  first named "father" and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do only what God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding not to live...