My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’” Luke 15: 31-32. The parable of the Lost Son has truly allowed me to come home this past summer. I had been wandering away from my faith, but I am back, I have come home to the Father. When I was ten years old, my favorite aunt, Aunt Cindy, died of colon cancer. She was only 42. I knew God had a plan that I would never understand, yet I became angry with Him. I didn’t want to go to, or even talk about, church. I was stripped of my childlike faith. I was going through the motions for years, to the point where service without heart was my …show more content…
Every time Chad spoke, he reminded us to remember “Who we are and Whose we are.” At first, I ignored him, God was speaking to me through Chad, but I shut him out. The band sang every night, and the worship, which once led me to praise and be joyful, reminded me of my anger. They sang about God, but this could not have been the god that put me through these trials. Later in the week, Banning spoke on ending of the Prodigal Son’s story, the son was lost, but now is found, he was welcomed home with love and open arms from his compassionate, loving father, who had been waiting for him. I knew at that moment the I needed to come home, I was not and could never be too far gone. I stayed after the band sang “Good Good Father,” and I sat with God, I felt his embrace in a way I never had before. I was able to speak with Banning, Chad, and my leader Amanda. Their words of encouragement have stuck with me, and given me the confidence to share Christ with the world. Shaver Lake changed my life and brought me home to God and to my church family. I am still not perfect, but I am loved. “Who, Whose, and Why,” has become my motto, as a reminder of Chad and Banning’s words, which came straight from God to save me. God knew those words and those exact worship songs, were exactly what my lost and broken soul needed to hear, needed to sing. I can no longer shut the church, and its people, out of my life. I have renewed faith and I am striving to grow closer to God and allow him to shine through in anything, and everything, I do. I have come back to my “Good Good Father,” and I am loved by
Jesus’s Parable of the Prodigal Son, found in the book of Luke, Jesus extols the power of repentance and forgiveness, as the lost son is welcomed back by his father after he repents.
Bigger Thomas wasn’t just one man but every man Richard Wright, the writer of Native Son, had encounter in his childhood and adulthood. Wright had encountered a nice Bigger, violent Bigger, and a Bigger Thomas who hated the white society. He combined all of these Thomases and created Bigger Thomas in Native Son. Bigger filled with enrage and fear of the whites accidentally kills a white woman and tries to run away, but only to end in a prison cell waiting for his punishment. Bigger’s definition of himself and the white society had limited his possibilities of having a greater future but Bigger could have went to the right path if he had controlled himself and his choicies.
As a young child, Williams was taught through the Mormon teachings to appreciate nature and family, finding God in both. It is through her Mormon faith that Williams is able to survive the pain, suffering and fear cancer causes her. Williams describes the deep-rooted connection between her Mormon faith and her family in the opening pages of Refuge. Through her family, Williams supported her mother and grandmother through their fatal cancers, while acknowledging that her Mormon faith stresses family and community (Williams 13). This provided Williams, her mother and her grandmother with a support network through these difficult times.
In Gwynne Dyer’s article “Anybody’s Son Will Do”, the conversion of civilians to killers is being explained in stages. This articles focuses more on male psychology and malleable people. The author’s belief is that people can be easily brainwashed if they are put in constant stress. To support this idea, the author gives examples of military training around the world which psychologically destroys individual values and loyalties and rebuilds them to make combat troops that will do exactly what has been ordered and defend his groups to the death.
Beginning with the understanding that God as written in biblical text is all powerful, all knowing, and good we then seek to more deeply understand how it is that God allows evil to exist. From the initial text in the Bible referring to the creation of Adam and Eve we are able to see the step-by-step creation of the different elements in our world. With the creation of elements came the assimilation of a guideline or law to follow. Understanding of this initial and key guideline could be one of the main contexts to understanding the first concept of wrong, how wrong came to exist, and why it is allowed to continue. Also the generalizations that are made and the multiple interpretations they hold in different contexts is another example of how we are encouraged to come about our own perception and belief based on what we understand overall of God being good and seeking love for us and from us, and the desire for God to give us the opportunity to learn, make mistakes, and return to him as the prodigal son did. I do not intend
She woke up with a severe pain in her side and began to have difficulty walking. Any kind of ailment was unusual for her as she had always been a healthy person. This particular Friday morning took her and everyone around her by surprise. Her daughter immediately took her to the hospital where they immediately began to run tests. Several hours later the grimed faced doctors said, Mrs. Flores you have cancer all over your body and it would be best to call all your family together. Forty-seven year old Billie, the pillar of her family, was going to die. Within hours Billie and her eldest daughter were on a private medical plane being flown to Houston to receive emergency treatment. Billie had no other words to say other than “God you are in control of my life”. After several hours of flight, mother and daughter landed in Houston where an overwhelming sense of peace embraced on them. Surgery was scheduled for Monday but after the x-rays came back doctors immediately took her into surgery. There they found several tumors, one that caused significant damage. This particular tumor had eaten part of her vertebrae and compressed her spinal cord, leaving her paralyzed. After surgery Billie began to ask God if it was her time to leave. His response to her was, her work was not done. That is all Billie needed to hear, it was time to fight. Billie and her daughter prayed day in and day out. Two
In the parable of the Lost Son Jesus explains that Sinners can enter the Kingdom of God. When does a son inherit his father’s wealth? When the father dies. In the parable of the Prodigal Son the youngest son indirectly wishes his father dead by asking for his dividend of the property. How can the youngest son enter the Kingdom of God, if he wishes his father dead and cares for wealth? Jesus states that “you cannot serve both God and money.” Even though the son sins, he is able to enter the Gods Kingdom because he repented his sins.(Or is it he repents his sins?) The youngest son clearly has committed sins, but these sins are unimportant to god because “one sinner who repents” will bring more joy in heaven than “ninety-nine righteous persons
Jerry Sittser’s book not only brings readers into loss with all its real emotions and pain but it also highlights truths that can be applied to anyone’s life. Sittser’s faith is evident throughout the book and his struggle of finding his faith within his loss and sorrow is encouraging to many. In the end, through his loss, he finds God again and through the writing of his book is now able to offer many insights on the Christian perspectives of sorrow, loss, forgiveness and how mental illness affects families. Sittser inspires readers because they have witnessed that they can too grow and continue living life despite their loss and without forgetting their loss.
For twelve years I’ve tried to hide my pain and fear from you. I’ve been trying to ignore the horror stories, unknowingly blinding myself from the stories of hope. I’m not as bitter as this story may lead you to think. In fact, I am an adamant believer in the statement (overheard three years ago in the Coffee House): “God has never taken anything away from me that he hasn’t replaced with something better.”
...tribute this to the readings and the context of the work. Up to this point I have learned that we all have trials and sometimes can weather some pretty bad waves. But one thing I have learned is that I am not alone. For one I have my bible,that I can always go to for comfort. This is the difference between staying with your faith and giving up because of natures way of letting us know that we are just human and things can happen. One of the most gratifying moments has been that co-workers whom I would never know their religious affiliation will talk to me about personal matters and not feel awkward at all. The old saying that one wears heart ache on their sleeve, perhaps when we believe we also wear our heart on our sleeve
Lastly, Jesus uses the Parable of the Lost Son to make an accurate representation of what it means for a sinner to find Jesus. In Luke chapter 15:11-32, Jesus tells the parable of a father whose son left after receiving money from him. The son “got together all he had, set off for a distant country” (13) and began to live irresponsibly. Quickly the son spent all of his money and then had nothing left of what his father had given him. He began to work and realized after that his father deserved an apology.
Contrasting to this, Your Daddy’s Son (McDonald, 1990) in fact proved that you don’t necessarily have to be of one particular background to be able to technically sing a song. My voice was well suited to this song and although I would never be cast as the role because of my appearance, in terms of vocal timbre this does not apply. Similarly it suggests the reverse of this; you don’t have to be of a specific appearance to sing classically as this song is classical in style but written for a black character, despite the white European history behind classical more legit singing. In fact historically it has been found that black sounds were previously frowned upon and in the Victorian era scores of African singers were ‘reformed to sound more
The above verse in Luke chapter 15 is from the very popular story of the prodigal son. Interestingly though, in the above passage, the father was talking to the elder brother who never went away. More often than not, emphasis is mostly laid on the experience of the prodigal son who went away - his fall from grace to grass and subsequent 'triumphant' return home and rightly so.
The death of a child is the most devastating loss a parent can ever experience. When a parent losses a child, something in the parents die too. The loss not only destroys the parents’, but also leaves an emptiness that can never be filled. The expectations and hopes of a future together are all just a dream now. Burying your child defies the natural order of life events: parents are not supposed to bury their children, children are supposed to bury their parents. Their life is forever changed and will never be the same. The parent not only mourns the loss of the child, but also mourns the loss of their child’s future. Parents will often visualize what their child could have been when they grew up or think about all the potential they had.
I started to cry all the time, even during school. I just couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. I was not the same person anymore. I felt hopeless. I didn’t think that anything would work and no one could do anything about it. I felt so alone and powerless. I kept thinking, "how could God be doing this to me. I 've been in so much pain for so long, when was it going to stop?" I was so frustrated with God that he wasn’t answering my prayers, he wasn 't helping me get through my problems, and I couldn’t help but feeling abandoned by him. This led me to start thinking that he wasn’t there listening to me. I started to question if there really was a God or if this whole Catholic faith was just a joke. I stopped believing in God, because if He was really there, then how could he let his child suffer like this? I would go to church still, but only because my parents made me, but I didn 't sing or say any if the prayers because I didn 't believe in anything they