Ponder This Today

“I find it refreshing that Jesus Christ met people where they were. His words touched nerves…He met people as they were, not as they “ought to” be. Angry young men, blind beggars, proud politicians, loose-living streetwalkers, ignorant fishermen, naked victims of demonism, and grieving parents were as clearly in His focus as the Twelve who hung on His every word.”

-Chuck Swindoll

I simply argue that the cross be raised again

at the center of the market place

as well as on the steeple of the church,

I am recovering the claim that

Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral

between two candles:

But on a cross between two thieves;

on a town garbage heap;

At a crossroad of politics so cosmopolitan

that they had to write His title

in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek…

And at the kind of place where cynics talk smut,

and thieves curse and soldiers gamble.

Because that is where He died,

and that is what He died about.

And that is where Christ’s men ought to be,

and what church people ought to be about.

-George MacLeod

 “When it comes to relationship poker, a hand of mercy beats a hand of judgement — everytime.” 
James 2:13 

-Paraphrase from Pastor Dan Nold

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Painting:  The First Meeting of Christ and Mary Magdalene’ by Henryk Siemiradzki, 1873