I Am Adopted
My family is a little nuts about genealogy. One of my cousins dove into the records and apparently my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was William the Conqueror. (That's 25 greats, if you were counting.) Before ol' Bill in the line is Charlemagne at some point, and after him comes guys like King John of England (the dude that signed the Magna Carta). So, theoretically, I have royal blood in my veins. Kinda nifty, even though I have no plans of ever ascending the throne over in London. Adoption Let's shift focus a bit. If you know anyone who has both biological children and adopted children, you know this to be true: they love their adopted child just as much as they love their biological child. Now here's the interesting bit: I am adopted I am adopted. I can hear the protestations now: "but you look so much Iike your dad!" Yup. I'm adopted. So are you. See, when Christ died on the cross, God adopted us as His sons and daughters. "Ohh that," you're probably thinking to yourself. And you're right. We hear that all the time. All. The. Time. It gets a little stale after a while and we forget to think about the significance of it. How often do you stop and think of what that actually means? If a parent loves an adopted child just as much as a biological child, then God loves you just as much as He loves His Son. God loves you just as much as He loves His Son. The Father loves you with the same intensity, the same love with which He loves...
Mother Teresa: She’s Not What You Think
A teacher in a school near me has a poster on the wall. It has a picture of Mother Theresa and then a picture of a woman giving a kid a pile of what appears to be firewood. “Lend a hand!” the poster says. “Generosity. Sharing. Cooperation. Helpfulness.” And then, in small print: “Mother Teresa devoted her life to helping others.” I saw that and didn’t think anything of it until later, when it hit me: it’s not really true. Mother Teresa did not devote her life to helping others. There. I said it. Now before you start throwing rocks at my head, let me explain. Mother Teresa did not devote her life to helping others for the sake of helping others. She was not a philanthropist or a do-gooder. It wasn’t that she liked helping the poor people or the sick or anything like that. Mother Teresa didn’t devote her life to helping others. Mother Teresa devoted her life to Jesus. There is a story of a man who spent some time with the Sisters of Charity. Once, while bathing an old man covered with sores and filth, he saw the man’s face transformed for a split second into the face of Christ. Mother Teresa noticed his reaction and said simply, “You saw Him too?” Once, she said, “By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus.” "As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus." Now...
How to Be a Saint
We all want to be saints. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. If you want to get started on being a saint, here are three things you’ve got to do.
How to Read the Bible and Get Something Out of It
How do you read the Bible?
Bible roulette? Where you just close your eyes, flop open the book and start reading? Or maybe you follow the readings of the day and skim through to kinda refresh your memory. Or maybe you don’t read the Bible at all (tsk tsk). After all, it is a rather old bit of bound wood pulp and it can be tough to get anything out of reading it.
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