Silent Time

What did Mary think when she stood at the empty tomb?

Sadness, fear and worries filled her heart.

The resurrection seems to be impossible and too good – and yet it is true and real.

What does your heart fill today?

What a joy it must have been for Mary, when she understood.

Distance and proximity.

Do you also know both in your life?

At times, we want to come close to the Lord.

And many other times we are drawn away from him by various things of this world, its glamour and so forth.

What is the purpose of the mouth and the lips?

What is your slogan of life?

Usually people will reply with their dreams and goals.

Or they define oneself by the group they belong to.

Or someone might say “I try to become a better person”.

But hardly anybody would describe oneself as “dedicated”.

Do you get harmed by other people?

Do you suffer from their behaviour?

Or do others at times suffer from your selfishness?

Even in good times, people harm each other.

Let alone the severe injustice in crises, such as war times.

Yet, “Love is patient and kind, not irritable”.

Holiness – what comes to your mind?

Is it something old fashioned?

Is it something only for special people?

Nobody can become holy by oneself. We are all far from perfect.

But God in his holiness is patient.

And in Jesus the victory over all evil has already been won.

Is it better to be religious or not?

What would you say?

The bible reports of times, when the air was filled with incense and many altars available.

The people were very religious.

We would expect that God was pleased with the people of that time.

The decisive point is not about the outside but about the inside.

Not about how many religious practices we follow.

Rather, what is the priority inside the heart.

What is the priority in our hearts today?

In everyday life, the need to persuade others is quite common:

Sales people need to persuade customers to buy the product or service.

Managers need to persuade the employees of new structures.

And in so many other situations, people need to convince others.

By contrast, the bible does not try to convince us.

It is different than the structures in the world.

There is no attempt to persuade.

It simply tells us, what is.

Whether we like it or not.

How do we react to the Good News?

Where do you stay? In your home? Or far from your home?

In a certain way, we are all far from home.

Wherever we live on the earth, our soul lacks a real home, as long as we are far from God.

We try to find input from all kinds of sources and opinions of others and get even more confused and disappointed.

Real peace can be found when returning to the Lord.

How would you complete the sentence:

“A person who has done wrong, needs to be …”?

Punished?

Praise the Lord, that he uses another logic.

God does not want to punish us.

He calls us back.

He calls us back with words of love.

Despite we have done wrong and walked away from him.