Good News for our Heart for Children foundation.
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Mother Teresa
If you watched our program on Sunday (12h00 on CTV, DSTV ch. 263) you would have heard Mother Teresa being quoted from her “Anyway” poem. Some of you have asked me for the exact text thereof, so here it comes:
People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered: Love them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives: Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies: Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you: Be honest and frank anyway.
What you have spend years building, could be destroyed overnight: Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous: Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow: Do good anyway.
People really need help but may attack you, if you do help them: Help them anyway!
Give the world the best you have, and you may get kicked in the teeth: Give the world the best you have got anyway.
“As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you, says the Lord (Isiah 66:13)”
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; it never was between you and them, anyway…..
Did you pray today?
If Christians really understood the full extent of the power we have available through prayer, we might be speechless…Did you know that during World War II there was an adviser to Churchill who organized a group of people who dropped what they were doing everyday at a prescribed hour for one minute to collectively pray for the safety of England, its people and peace? There is now a group of people organizing the same thing here in South Africa. Shall we join them? I don’t really think the exact time in the day is so important but let us pray every day for the safety of South Africa, its citizens and for a return to God and Godly values.
I just looked up what I wrote before on paper on prayer:
Learning how to pray
1 One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”
2 He said to them, “When you pray, say: “‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread.
4 Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.'”
5 Then he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread,
6 because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.’
7 “Then the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’
8 I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man’s boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs.
9 “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
10 For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
11 “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?
12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?
13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Luke 11:1-13 (NIV)
The disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. Perhaps they thought that it was an art and that once you knew the ‘technique’ it could do a lot of good for you. Jesus illustrates His teaching with what I shall call the story of the three friends. Friendships are important to Jesus. It implies some kind of relationship. It is difficult to have any feelings for someone if you hardly know him or her. There are three persons in the story. The first person is obviously you and me and everyone who hears the story. The second person is a friend who has come to visit you at an inconvenient time. You realize that he is your guest, and, according to the rules of hospitality, you acknowledge that you are accountable for his well-being. At this point, realizing your responsibility, you are reminded: I have nothing to set before him (vs. 6). That you really have nothing with which you can help your friend does not absolve you from your responsibility. On the contrary, rather his need now becomes your need, his problem your problem. It is exactly here where prayer originates: the need of the other person, persons, organization, nations, etc. for which one knows to be responsible and for which you really have nothing else to give but the offering of a prayer.
It may be important to note that we don’t have to feel ashamed of the fact that there are situations where there are no easy answers. ‘I have nothing’ is the point where we must turn to the third Person in this story. We have to knock at the door of a Friend who can give us what we need. At this point of the story Jesus asks the pupils their opinion: will this Friend stand up and give him what he needs? Knowing the rules of hospitality the answer seems obvious to them. Jesus answers the question himself and gives two reasons why he will get what he asks: Firstly because He is his friend, secondly, and this seems to get more emphasis, because of his boldness. The Friend hears whose need it is; it is the need of the other person, the friend’s guest. Our Great Friend knows that our love for that friend is so great that we will not stop knocking until we get what is required.
When a disciple is honest in his wish that a fellow-man will meet in him a man in whom he can experience Jesus and if he realizes: I have nothing to give him, then that disciple may boldly count on an answer to his prayer. This is God’s promise to him in his need for the other. The friend asks for three loaves of bread. That is what he reckons he needs to solve the problem. Jesus says: The Friend gives him as much as he needs. The disciple may count on receiving what he needs to help his friend.
Finally, the disciple needs to ask the Holy Spirit to guide him (vs. 13). He may rely on getting help from Him every time. But what exactly does Jesus mean by that? It almost seems that this part does not fit here in the story. This Spirit looks like something so untouchable, so vague. Certainly, He is untouchable. You don’t get anything in your hands. Yet He is definitely not something vague. He is the Spirit of Jesus Himself; His breath that He blows the moment that He sends us to help the other man. It is almost like the imprint of His image upon us. It is the Godly breath of creative, touchable love. This is what the disciple needs so that he can completely identify himself with his fellow man that is in need or pain. His only wish will then be that the God who is love gives him what he needs to help his friend. The Holy Spirit gives the disciple the courage to speak the truth, no matter what the consequences of that will be to him. Guided by Jesus’ Spirit he then speaks the very words that Jesus Himself would have spoken.
MALE AND FEMALE
Mat 19:3 And the Pharisees came to Him, tempting Him and saying to Him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?
Mat 19:4 And He answered and said to them, Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning “made them male and female”,
Mat 19:5 and said, For this cause a man shall leave father and mother and shall cling to his wife, and the two of them shall be one flesh?
Mat 19:6 Therefore they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.
Mat 19:7 They said to Him, Why did Moses then command to give a bill of divorce and to put her away?
Mat 19:8 He said to them, Because of your hard-heartedness Moses allowed you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so.
Mat 19:9 And I say to you, Whoever shall put away his wife, except for fornication, and shall marry another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is put away commits adultery.
Mat 19:10 His disciples said to Him, If this is the case of the man with his wife, it is not good to marry.
Mat 19:11 But He said to them, Not all receive this word, except those to whom it is given.
In the days that Jesus spoke these words divorce was a major social injustice, resulting in many a woman ending up in the gutter, becoming either a beggar or a prostitute. For the husband it was easy. He could give her a letter of divorce and put her on the street. But there were no laws protecting the woman. And there was little hope for such a woman of ever finding a job. Her family would not always want her back, as she was considered just an additional burden. Women were not allowed in educational institutions so there was no way that she could have learned a trade or anything like that. A woman, like a slave, was merely one of a man’s possessions. Suffer the poor woman that could not bear her husband a child….What Jesus says here was quite revolutionary for that particular time. Proving Moses wrong was considered almost equal to blasphemy and one can imagine that Jesus’ exposure of this injustice was met with little enthusiasm from the predominantly male-orientated society in which He found Himself. Small wonder that Jesus had many female friends. He was the only man who would defend the woman caught in adultery against her male-accusers:(John 8:3-11).
And the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman taken in adultery. And standing her in the midst,
Joh 8:4 they said to Him, Teacher, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
Joh 8:5 Now Moses in the Law commanded us that such should be stoned. You, then, what do you say?
Joh 8:6 They said this, tempting Him so that they might have reason to accuse Him. But bending down, Jesus wrote on the ground with His finger, not appearing to hear.
Joh 8:7 But as they continued to ask Him, He lifted Himself up and said to them, He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her.
Joh 8:8 And again bending down, He wrote on the ground.
Joh 8:9 And hearing, and being convicted by conscience, they went out one by one, beginning at the oldest, until the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
Joh 8:10 And bending back up, and seeing no one but the woman, Jesus said to her, Woman, where are the ones who accused you? Did not one give judgment against you?
Joh 8:11 And she said, No one, Lord. And Jesus said to her, Neither do I give judgment. Go, and sin no more.
A thought that came to me the other day is that it is actually clear from this account exactly what Jesus must have written on the ground: It was the sins of the accusers and it must have been in some amount of detail. For fear of exposure they did not start throwing the stones, as they most certainly had intended to do.
Another thought that came to me after this is that whenever we sin, we are throwing a stone at God. It is this very same situation in reverse. Yet He took the punishment from us, all the thorns and whips that we threw at Him. And the cross. What a horrible way to die. We were the ones who killed Him.
Jesus makes no mistake when He exposes the root cause of the problem on hand: “It was not this way from the beginning” (vs. 8), the “beginning” meaning Paradise off course. Very wisely He chooses to quote Gen 2:24 (vs. 5) to illustrate the argument. One flesh made up of two (equal) parts. That was indeed how it was in the Garden of Eden. It was only after man had sinned that we see the balance of equality being disturbed by a curse of God, positioning the man to “rule” over the woman. (See Gen 3:16). When referring to this passage, many of the subsequent writers of the Bible have thought that this meant that the husband must be the boss of his family and that a man must always be the head of a church. For some strange reason people thought that this particular curse could not be broken. A typical example of this can be found in 1 Tim 2:14 where the apostle Paul argues that a woman may not teach in the church because it was Eve who was deceived, not Adam.
But Jesus clearly wants marriage restored to how it was in the beginning, that is: before the fall of man! (vs. 8). He knew exactly what had happened as a result of sin. (Gen 3:16-19). But He also knew that He Himself would become sin for us so that we could be free of all curses that had resulted from sin (e.g. Gal 3:13, Deut. 21:23). This we may claim, every time. That is His promise to us – that is why we believe in Him. We are free from the curse of sin! We do not have to accept anything that happened as a result of sin; not even death. (John 10:28).
So, in effect, Jesus was indeed the first man who stood up for the rights of women. No wonder that the women of those days liked to listen to Him. And that He was at home with women. They remained loyal to Him, even after His death, and this is most probably the reason why they got to see Him first after His resurrection. But mankind still took more than nineteen centuries to lay claim to the equality of male and female. It was only fairly recently that most churches have adopted the principle of equality for the sexes. Why did it take us so long? It’s a long story. Looking back now, one could argue that most of the confusion was caused by the otherwise very honest – and very truthful apostle Paul. I think we must forgive him this oversight. One must not forget that there is a big cultural difference between the people then and modern man. Also, traditions are not easily broken and Paul was strongly influenced by the Jewish traditions.
Anyway, let us forget about the old arguments. There is light in the tunnel at last. I cannot help but getting excited whenever I notice Jesus’ teachings finally becoming the accepted norm.
Reed dance for Zulu king is unlawful
Posted by Henry Pool, on 26/06/2017
Perhaps some of you have read my letter in Rapport of 04.06.2017? Click here (to read in Afrikaans):
Unfortunately it did not receive much prominence and I doubt if it will have the effect of what we want, namely an end to the “Reed dancing” for the Zulu king.
I am asking you to forward this letter or this post to the social media and to let your voice of protest be heard at the department of Arts and Culture. The English text of my original letter was as follows:
“I read with astonishment that the department of Arts and Culture has apparently approved the Zulu’s king’s plans to build a special place that will reportedly cost almost 1000 millions Rand to hold his annual Reed dance event. Some of the features of the facility involves special security measures that are apparently required to prevent girls being violated, especially after the dancing. Apparently this has happened in the past.
To be sure you understand: this is an event where young girls, mostly of minor age, are required to dance naked or half naked in front of “their King”. Despite numerous attempts by the King’s men to depict this event as ‘cultural’ it would be clear to anyone that it is not. Going back to the days of Jesus, we know that King Herod liked it to watch Salome dancing naked in front of him and we all know that in the end nothing good came of it….. People who believe in Christ know that evil will thrive if good men and women do nothing against it…..
In fact, I would go as far as to say that encouraging under aged girls to participate in such an event, either for the King’s pleasure, or even as some kind of ‘tourist’ attraction’ – as perhaps the department thinks it is – or for whatever purpose, e.g. striptease dancing, is strictly illegal, if it involves under aged girls, in terms of how I understand the law and our constitution. I am sure there are no exceptions to this rule, not even for a King or the Department of Arts and Culture.
I am amazed that in a time where we call for an end to the violence of girls and women and an end to sexism in general, we still have a department of Arts and Culture choosing to support the antics of the Zulu and Swazi kings and waste such an enormous amount of our tax money…..”
Henry Pool, PO Box 912887, Silverton, 0127
Cell. 836297690
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