Scriptures Of The Day: "Matthew 22:1-46".

Matthew 22New International Version (NIV)

The Parable of the Wedding Banquet

22 Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying:

 ² “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 

³ He sent his servantsto those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.

⁴ “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’

⁵ “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. 

⁶ The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. 

⁷ The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

⁸ “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 

⁹ So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 

¹⁰ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.

¹¹ “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 

¹² He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.

¹³ “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

¹⁴ “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”

Paying the Imperial Tax to Caesar

¹⁵ Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. 

¹⁶ They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are. 

¹⁷ Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?”

¹⁸ But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? 

¹⁹ Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius, 

²⁰ and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

²¹ “Caesar’s,” they replied.

Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

²² When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

Marriage at the Resurrection

²³ That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. ²⁴ “Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. 

²⁵ Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother.

²⁶ The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. 

²⁷ Finally, the woman died. 

²⁸ Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?”

²⁹ Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.

³⁰ At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 

³¹ But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you,

³² ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”

³³ When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching.

The Greatest Commandment

³⁴ Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together.

³⁵ One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 

³⁶ “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’

³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment.

³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Whose Son Is the Messiah?

⁴¹ While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, 

⁴² “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?”

“The son of David,” they replied.

⁴³ He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,

⁴⁴ “‘The Lord said to my Lord:    “Sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies    under your feet.”’

⁴⁵ If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” 

⁴⁶ No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.



Bride Presents Certificate of Virginity To Her Dad On Her Wedding Day To Honour Him.

When half the world’s teenagers are getting fascinated and captivated by the media’s representation of love and while almost all are losing their virginity by seconds, Brelyn Bowman, chose a different course as early as the age of 13, to remain a virgin until she enters into wedlock.

The bride presented her father with a 'certificate of purity' on her wedding day to prove she was a virgin. Brelyn Bowman gave the framed document to her proud father, who is a pastor, before tying the knot with her groom Timothy earlier this month.

The statement on the signed certificate confirmed that her 'hymen is intact', citing a passage from the Bible that some Christians interpret as instruction to abstain from sex until marriage.

The bride Brelyn Freeman – Bowman shared this photo of herself and her dad dancing at her wedding on instagram and wrote that she presented a ‘certificate of virginity’ to him, basically proving that she was a virgin on her wedding day. The groom, Tim Bowman Jr, and Brelyn are devout Christians. The bride’s father is Pastor Michael Freeman, founder and pastor of Spirit of Faith Christian Center (SOFCC) in Maryland.

The certificate, which Mrs Bowman gave to her father pastor Michael Freeman on October 10, contains this passage from Corinthians 6:20.

It reads: 'Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.'

The document was signed by both Mrs Bowman, who is in her twenties, and her gynecologist, who appears to have conducted tests to check whether she is a virgin.

The certificate reads: 'On the 10th of May 2006, I, Brelyn Freeman, made a vow to glorify God in my body and spirit which are God's because I have been bought with a price (Jesus).

'I have kept this commitment and present this certificate to my father Dr Michael A. Freeman to show how I have honored God and my earthly father in my body by maintaining my purity and that my hymen is intact on this 10th day of October 2015.'

Brelyn admirably calls her dad, her “first love”. She was so elated that she posted the certificate on her Instagram page.

“I was able to present a certificate of purity to him signed by my doctor that my hymen was still intact,” she said. “Also the covenant he gave me when I was 13. When you honor God, your life will automatically honor others! I love you daddy.” 

Mr Freeman told BuzzFeed that he was not expecting to be presented with the certificate and was caught off guard when he was asked to stand during the wedding reception. 

Her father, Pastor Mike Freeman, admitted to Buzzfeed that he had reached an agreement with his children that they were to maintain their virginity until marriage. So, when Brelyn got married on October 10th, 2015 and presented her dad a “certificate of purity”, which was authenticated by her doctor (meaning that her hymen was still intact), Pastor Freeman was not surprised but was gratified.

“She wanted to honor me by not allowing any man to touch her before her husband,” Mr. Freeman said.

 

He said: 'I was totally unaware of what was about to take place. During the remarks, she shared that she wanted to honor me by not allowing any man to touch her before her husband.'

The pastor added that all of his children said they would save themselves for marriage, with his eldest daughter Brittany presenting him with a similar document at her wedding six years ago.

He added: 'It's not about what they did for me, rather what they did for themselves.'

Mrs Bowman faced criticism online, with many finding it strange that she chose to share such intimate details about her sex life with her father. 

When the story broke on the social media, streams of reactions poured in all across the digital space. Some were commendations and many others were fiery and downright castigating, both for Brelyn as well as for her father.

Some blamed the young wife and her dad for holding strong to what they referred to as near medieval standards for women’s sexuality.



Scriptures Of The Day: "Numbers 23:1-30".

Numbers 23

New King James Version (NKJV)

23 Then Balaam said to Balak, “Build seven altars for me here, and prepare for me here seven bulls and seven rams.”

² And Balak did just as Balaam had spoken, and Balak and Balaam offered a bull and a ram on each altar. 

³ Then Balaam said to Balak, “Stand by your burnt offering, and I will go; perhaps the Lord will come to meet me, and whatever He shows me I will tell you.” So he went to a desolate height. 

⁴ And God met Balaam, and he said to Him, “I have prepared the seven altars, and I have offered on each altar a bull and a ram.”

⁵ Then the Lord put a word in Balaam’s mouth, and said, “Return to Balak, and thus you shall speak.” 

⁶ So he returned to him, and there he was, standing by his burnt offering, he and all the princes of Moab.

⁷ And he took up his oracle and said:

“Balak the king of Moab has brought me from Aram,
From the mountains of the east.
‘Come, curse Jacob for me,
And come, denounce Israel!’

⁸ “How shall I curse whom God has not cursed?
And how shall I denounce whom the Lord has not denounced?⁹ For from the top of the rocks I see him,
And from the hills I behold him;
There! A people dwelling alone,
Not reckoning itself among the nations.

¹⁰ “Who can count the dust^[a] of Jacob,
Or number one-fourth of Israel?
Let me die the death of the righteous,
And let my end be like his!”

¹¹ Then Balak said to Balaam, “What have you done to me? I took you to curse my enemies, and look, you have blessed them bountifully!”

¹² So he answered and said, “Must I not take heed to speak what the Lord has put in my mouth?”

Balaam’s Second Prophecy

¹³ Then Balak said to him, “Please come with me to another place from which you may see them; you shall see only the outer part of them, and shall not see them all; curse them for me from there.” 

¹⁴ So he brought him to the field of Zophim, to the top of Pisgah, and built seven altars, and offered a bull and a ram on each altar.

¹⁵ And he said to Balak, “Stand here by your burnt offering while I meet^[b] theLord over there.”

¹⁶ Then the Lord met Balaam, and put a word in his mouth, and said, “Go back to Balak, and thus you shall speak.” 

¹⁷ So he came to him, and there he was, standing by his burnt offering, and the princes of Moab were with him. And Balak said to him, “What has the Lord spoken?”

¹⁸ Then he took up his oracle and said:

“Rise up, Balak, and hear!
Listen to me, son of Zippor!

¹⁹ “God is not a man, that He should lie,
Nor a son of man, that He should repent.
Has He said, and will He not do?
Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?

²⁰ Behold, I have received a command to bless;
He has blessed, and I cannot reverse it.

²¹ “He has not observed iniquity in Jacob,
Nor has He seen wickedness in Israel.
The Lord his God is with him,
And the shout of a King is among them.

²² God brings them out of Egypt;
He has strength like a wild ox.

²³ “For there is no sorcery against Jacob,
Nor any divination against Israel.
It now must be said of Jacob
And of Israel, ‘Oh, what God has done!’

²⁴ Look, a people rises like a lioness,
And lifts itself up like a lion;
It shall not lie down until it devours the prey,
And drinks the blood of the slain.”

²⁵ Then Balak said to Balaam, “Neither curse them at all, nor bless them at all!”

²⁶ So Balaam answered and said to Balak, “Did I not tell you, saying, ‘All that the Lord speaks, that I must do’?”

Balaam’s Third Prophecy

²⁷ Then Balak said to Balaam, “Please come, I will take you to another place; perhaps it will please God that you may curse them for me from there.” 

²⁸ So Balak took Balaam to the top of Peor, that overlooks the wasteland.

²⁹ Then Balaam said to Balak, “Build for me here seven altars, and prepare for me here seven bulls and seven rams.” 

³⁰ And Balak did as Balaam had said, and offered a bull and a ram on every altar.



Are you being you? James Martin on realizing your true self.

James Martin

Before coming to know the true self, one must confront the false self that one has usually spent a lifetime constructing and nourishing. ~James Martin

From the outside looking in, James Martin was living the good life. He was 29 years old and had a nice job working for a Fortune 500 company. He had a fancy apartment, hip friends, wore stylish suits to work and had begun to climb the corporate ladder. But there was a problem: he had the gnawing feeling that something wasn’t right.

When James began taking a closer look at his life, he came to a realization he had long tried to suppress—he was miserable. In his words, he was “overworked, stressed and lonely.” While some saw him as a successful young business professional, he viewed his life as having no meaning or purpose.

Yet, wasn’t he living the American dream? He had graduated from a top-tier college and landed a good-paying corporate job. And just like his peers, if he stayed on the straight and narrow, he would get married, buy a big house in the suburbs and raise a family. Only, Martin had determined that:

This way of living simply wasn’t for me…my heart knew that as much as I wanted to want this, I wasn’t made for the life I was supposed to want.

He found a solution to his crisis when he stumbled upon Thomas Merton’s autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain. Martin was captivated. He had found a kindred spirit, “a man roughly my own age, who had struggled with the same things I did: pride, disappointment, confusion, doubt, sadness, loneliness.” There was one passage that was especially resonant, when Merton asked:

Why do we have to spend our lives striving to be something we would never want to be, if we only knew what we wanted? Why do we waste our time doing things which, if we only stopped to think about them, are just the opposite of what we were made for?

In the book Becoming Who You Are, James Martin details his early adult life and how he came to believe he was living a lie. He writes “the person I had presented to others—the person interested in climbing the corporate ladder, in always being clever and hip, in knowing how to order the best wines, in attending the hottest parties, and in getting into the hippest clubs, in never doubting my place in the world, in always being, in a word, cool—that person was unreal. That person was nothing more than a mask I wore.”

So Martin made a bold move. At the age of 29, he left the corporate world to become a Jesuit priest, effectively shedding his false self in order to fully realize his true identity. Almost 25 years later, Martin is still a Jesuit priest. During the intervening years, he has written numerous religious books that have received widespread acclaim, while remaining true to his Jesuit vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience to Christ and the Pope.

So why did Martin pursue the role of corporate “suit” in the first place? Martin says that he had created a persona that he thought would be pleasing to his family and friends. His “false self” was sure that a life in corporate America was the right path. He points out, via the words of Richard Rohr, “Our false self is who we think we are. It is our mental self-image…which most people spend their whole lives living up to…or down to.”

Much like Martin, many of us adopt the mannerisms and persona of the “false self” each day we walk out the door and head out into the world. I know because I have worn “the mask” myself for years, climbing the corporate ladder until one day I stopped to take in the view up ahead—and not liking what I saw, began the slow descent back down from whence I came, a process that continues today.

What might be most puzzling in the whole process is this: what is our true self and how do we find it? While Martin does not answer these questions directly, he believes that our true self “is the role that God wants us to play”, which means it may be in direct opposition to the role society expects from us.

In Martin’s words:

God desires for us to be the persons we were created to be: to be simply and purely ourselves, and in this state to love God and let ourselves be loved by God…the more we live out our true selves, the more we become the person whom God intended, the more we see the spectacular effects of a well-lived vocation .

It’s important to note that Martin believes that our path may be quite different than his and doesn’t have to entail leaving our everyday lives to join the priesthood or enroll in a Buddhist monastery. According to Martin, the paths we are called to are all different, all unique in their own way:

The path to sanctity for a young mother is different from that of an elderly priest. Moreover, the path to sanctity for an extroverted young man who loves nothing more than spending time with his friends and cheering on their favorite baseball team over a few beers is probably different from that of the introspective middle-aged woman who likes nothing better than to sit at home on her favorite chair with a good book and a pot of chamomile tea. One’s personal brand of happiness becomes clearer once the true self is revealed.

And once this true self is revealed and realized, it becomes harder to live a life that is guided by the false self, the self-created by the pull of society and our peers. As Richard Rohr says, “Once you learn to live as your true self, you can never be satisfied with this charade again: it then feels so silly and superficial.”

Some parting sage advice comes from Fanny Brice, an American singer and actress, who passed away in 1951. She was once quoted as saying:

Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you?

Scriptures Of The Day: "Jeremiah 17:1-27".

Jeremiah 17

New King James Version (NKJV)

Judah’s Sin and Punishment

17 “The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron;
With the point of a diamond it is engraved
On the tablet of their heart,
And on the horns of your altars,² While their children remember
Their altars and their wooden images
By the green trees on the high hills.³ O My mountain in the field,
I will give as plunder your wealth, all your treasures,
And your high places of sin within all your borders.⁴ And you, even yourself,
Shall let go of your heritage which I gave you;
And I will cause you to serve your enemies
In the land which you do not know;
For you have kindled a fire in My anger which shall burn forever.”

⁵ Thus says the Lord:

“Cursed is the man who trusts in man
And makes flesh his strength,
Whose heart departs from the Lord.⁶ For he shall be like a shrub in the desert,
And shall not see when good comes,
But shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness,
In a salt land which is not inhabited.

⁷ “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
And whose hope is the Lord.⁸ For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters,
Which spreads out its roots by the river,
And will not fear when heat comes;
But its leaf will be green,
And will not be anxious in the year of drought,
Nor will cease from yielding fruit.

⁹ “The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?¹⁰ I, the Lord, search the heart,
I test the mind,
Even to give every man according to his ways,
According to the fruit of his doings.

¹¹ “As a partridge that broods but does not hatch,
So is he who gets riches, but not by right;
It will leave him in the midst of his days,
And at his end he will be a fool.”

¹² A glorious high throne from the beginning
Is the place of our sanctuary.¹³ O Lord, the hope of Israel,
All who forsake You shall be ashamed.
“Those who depart from Me
Shall be written in the earth,
Because they have forsaken the Lord,
The fountain of living waters.”

Jeremiah Prays for Deliverance

¹⁴ Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed;
Save me, and I shall be saved,
For You are my praise.¹⁵ Indeed they say to me,
“Where is the word of the Lord?
Let it come now!”¹⁶ As for me, I have not hurried away from being a shepherd who follows You,
Nor have I desired the woeful day;
You know what came out of my lips;
It was right there before You.¹⁷ Do not be a terror to me;
You are my hope in the day of doom.¹⁸ Let them be ashamed who persecute me,
But do not let me be put to shame;
Let them be dismayed,
But do not let me be dismayed.
Bring on them the day of doom,
And destroy them with double destruction!

Hallow the Sabbath Day

¹⁹ Thus the Lord said to me: “Go and stand in the gate of the children of the people, by which the kings of Judah come in and by which they go out, and in all the gates of Jerusalem; 

²⁰ and say to them, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, you kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, who enter by these gates. 

²¹ Thus says the Lord: “Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the Sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem; 

²² nor carry a burden out of your houses on the Sabbath day, nor do any work, but hallow the Sabbath day, as I commanded your fathers. ²³ But they did not obey nor incline their ear, but made their neck stiff, that they might not hear nor receive instruction.

²⁴ “And it shall be, if you heed Me carefully,” says the Lord, “to bring no burden through the gates of this city on the Sabbath day, but hallow the Sabbath day, to do no work in it, 

²⁵ then shall enter the gates of this city kings and princes sitting on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their princes, accompanied by the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and this city shall remain forever. 

²⁶ And they shall come from the cities of Judah and from the places around Jerusalem, from the land of Benjamin and from the lowland, from the mountains and from the South, bringing burnt offerings and sacrifices, grain offerings and incense, bringing sacrifices of praise to the house of the Lord.

²⁷ “But if you will not heed Me to hallow the Sabbath day, such as not carrying a burden when entering the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle a fire in its gates, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched.”’”