"One of the most common vindications of God's love is found in the fact that, as much as humans suffer, they enjoy more. We are told that there is a great balance of pleasure over pain, and that it is by what prevails in a system that we must judge of its author. This view is by no mens to be overlooked. 

It is substantially true. There is a great excess of enjoyment, of present good, in life. The pains of sickness may indeed be intenser than the pleasures of health, but health is the rule and sickness the exception. A few are blind, or deaf, or speechless; but almost all of us maintain through the open eye and ear, a perpetual communication with nature and with one another. Some may be broken down with excessive toil; but to the great mass of humanity, labor is healthful, and invigorating and gives a zest to repose, and to the common blessings of life. We all suffer more or less from our connection with imperfect people; but how much more good comes to us from our social nature, from the sympathies and kind offices of family, friends, neighbors, than of pain caused by those who want to do us wrong. The world is not a hospital or an alms house, nor a dungeon. A beautiful sun shines on it. Flowers and fruits deck its fields. A reviving atmosphere encompasses it." Channing. 

Rev. Dr. Tuckerman

   

     Discourse on the life and character of the Rev. Dr. Tuckerman

  "Having laid a good foundation by study, an unerring instinct taught him that study was not his vocation. His heart yearned for active life. He became more and more penetrated with the miseries and crimes of the world. As he sat in his lonely study, the thought of what men endured on the land and the sea withdrew him from his books. He was irresistibly attracted towards his fellow-man, by their sufferings, and still more, by a consciousness that there was something great beneath their sufferings, by a sympathy with their spiritual needs.

In a favored hour the thought of devoting himself to the service of the poor of this city entered his mind, and met a response within which gave it the character of a Divine monition. So deep was the sympathy, so intense the interest, which the poor excited in him, that it seemed as if a new fountain of love had been opened within him. This was no blinding enthusiasm. He saw distinctly the vices which are often found among the poor, their craft, and sloth, and ingratitude. His ministry was carried on in the midst of their frequent filth and recklessness. The coarsest realities pressed him on every side. These were not the scenes to make an enthusiast. But amidst these he saw, now the fainter signs, now the triumphs, of a divine virtue. it was his delight to relate examples of patience, disinterestedness, piety, amidst the severest sufferings. These taught him that in the poorest hovels he was walking among immortals, and his faith in the divinity within the soul turned his ministry into joy. 

  Much of this success was undoubtedly due to his singleness of heart; but much, also, to his clear insight into the principles of human nature which rendered the poor open to good influences, and into the means by which human beings in their condition maybe most effectually approached. And this shows his insight into the temptations, perils, and hearts, of the depressed and indigent; and, whilst exposing their errors and sins, he breathed a never-failing sympathy. 

It is easy to see in these that the great principle which animated his ministry was an immovable faith in God's merciful purposes towards the poor. Their condition, never for a moment, seemed to him to separate them from their Creator. On the contrary, he felt God's presence in the narrow comfortless dwelling of the poor as he felt it nowhere else.  

  His perpetual recognition of the spiritual, immortal nature of the poor, gave to all his intercourse a character of tenderness and respect. He spoke to them plainly, boldly, but still as to the children of the same infinite Father. He trusted in man's moral nature, however bruised and crushed; he was sure that no heart could resist him, if he could but convince it of his sincere brotherly concern. He always spoke encouragingly. He felt that the weight under which the poor man's spirit was already sinking needed no addition from the harshness of his spiritual guide. He went forth in the power of brotherly love, and found it a divine armor. 

He taught us that men in the most unpromising conditions, are to be treated as men; that under coarse jackets, and even rags, may be found tender and noble hearts; and that the heart, even when hardened, still responds to the voice of a true friend and brother. He was indeed too wise a man to give them an abstract form, or speak in technical language. His words were steeped in his heart before they found their way to his lips; and flowing warm and fresh from this fountain, they were drunk in as living waters by the thirsty souls of the poor. 

  A great secret of Dr. Tuckerman's success lay in his strong interest in individuals. It was not in his nature to act on masses by general methods; he threw his soul into individual cases. Every sufferer whom he visited seemed to awaken in him a special affection and concern. He made the worst feel that they had a friend, and by his personal interest linked them anew with their race. 

  Let me add another explanation of his success. He sought for something to love in all; he seized on anything good which might remain in the fallen spirit; on any domestic affection, any generous feeling, which might have escaped the wreck of character. If he could but touch one chord of love, one tender recollection of home, one feeling of shame or sorrow for the past, no matter how faintly, he rejoiced and took courage, like the good physician who, in watching over the drowned man, detects a flutter of the pulse, or the feeblest sign of life. His hope in such cases tended to fulfill itself. His tones awakened a like hope in the fallen. "He did not break the bruised reed, or quench the smoking flax."  

William Ellery Channing; photo by Cedric Hayes, on the streets of Portland Or. 

 

  "If I were asked what strikes me as the greatest evil inflicted by slavery I should say, it is the outrage offered by slavery to human nature. Slavery does all that lies in human power to unmake men, to rob them of their humanity, to degrade men into brutes; and this it does by declaring them to be Property. Here is the master evil. Declare a man a chattel, something which you may own and may turn to your use, as a horse or a tool; strip him of all right over himself, of all right to use his own powers, except what you concede to him as a favor and deem consistent with your own profit; and you cease to look on him as a man. You may call him such; but he is not to you a brother, a fellow-being, a partaker of your nature and your equal in the sight of God. You view him, you treat him, you speak to him, as infinitely beneath you, as belonging to another race. You have a tone and a look towards him which you never use towards a Man. Your relation to him demands that you treat him as an inferior creature. You cannot, if you would, treat him as a Man. That he may answer your end, that he may consent to be a slave, his spirit must be broken, his courage crushed; he must fear you. A feeling of his deep inferiority must be burnt into his soul. The idea of his rights must be quenched in him by the blood of his lashed and lacerated body. Here is the damming evil of slavery; it destroys the spirit, the consciousness of a man. 

I care little, in comparison, for his hard outward lot, his poverty, his unfurnished house, his coarse fare; the terrible thing in slavery is the spirit of a slave, the extinction of the spirit of a man. He feels himself owned, a chattel, a thing bought and sold, and held to sweat for another's pleasure at another's will, under another's lash, just as an ox or horse. Treated thus as a brute, can he take a place among men? A slave! Is there a name so degraded on earth, a name which so separates a man from his kind? And to this condition millions of our race are condemned in the land of liberty."  William Ellery Channing.

  "When one becomes a mother, guilt almost always rears its ugly head. And to be truthful, our lives as humans are filled with mistakes ranging from trivial to catastrophic. But here is the secret about guilt; it is actually pride. Guilt says I could have done better. I should have done better. I am going to be better next time. But that is still self-reliance masquerading as humility. And it paralyzes every one of us if we let it."

Alice Mills , Poema Chronicles. 

Acceptance

Oh to know acceptance

In a feeling sort of way;

To be known for what I am --

Not what I do or say.

It's nice to be loved and wanted

For the person I seem to be,

But my heart cries out to be loved

For the person who is really me!

To be able to drop all the fronts

and share with another my fears,

Would bring such relief to my soul,

Though accompanied by many tears.

When I find this can be done

Without the pain of rejection,

Then will my joy be complete

and feelings towards self know correction.

The past to feeling acceptance of God.

Is paved with acceptance on earth;

Being valued by others I love

Enhances my own feeling of worth.

Oh, the release and freedom He gives

As I behold His wonderful face --

As Jesus makes real my acceptance in Him,

And I learn the true meaning of grace.

A pity it is that so late we find

his love need not be earned;

As we yield to Him all manner of strife

A precious truth has been learned.

Then, as we share with others who search

For love, acceptance, and rest;

They'll find in us the Savior's love.

And experience the end of their quest.

C.R. Solomon

 

Forgive me while I reminisce: the sixties, for all it's rebellion and evil, sowing the wind, and now reaping the whirlwind, there was a freedom and a seeking the unknown, testing the bounds of reality, that indelibly left a mind-set that I would hate to see fade completely or never have experienced.

  If you have never read Francois Fenelon, you are missing a great man of God's insights and wisdom. He lived from 1651 to 1715, a Bishop and wise scholar and teacher. Here is an introduction to what he believed, well worth the read. 

 

  "What then are Fenelon's characteristic views?  We begin with his views of God, which very much determine and color a religious system, and these are simple and affecting. He seems to regard God but in one light, to think of Him but in one character. God always comes to him as the father, as the pitying and purifying friend of the soul. This  spiritual relation of the Supreme Being is his all comprehending, all absorbing attribute. He constantly sets before us God as dwelling in the human mind, and dwelling to reprove is guilt, to speak to it with a still voice, to kindle a celestial ray in its darkness, to distill upon it His grace, to call forth its love towards Himself, and to bow it, by a gentle, rational sway, to chosen, cheerful, entire subjection to His pure and righteous will. Fenelon  has fully received the Christian doctrine of God. He believed in Him as the Universal Father, as loving every soul, loving the guiltiest  soul, and striving with it to reclaim it to Himself. This interest of the Creator in the lost and darkened mind, is the thought which predominates in the writings of the excellent man." 

Black and White

https://www.facebook.com/neededencouragement/videos/588175645713264 

The link above should take you to a short,  insightful, animated video about racial struggles.

Dying to self

 

  In many churches I've attended, there is such an emphasis on our sinful nature that I feel it can lead to self-loathing and self-hatred. Personally I find it repellent and I don't think it's what Jesus meant when He spoke of dying to self. The following is a piece that describes the good within us that God implanted when creating us in His own image. I think it has a balance that rings true. 

  "It is not true that self-love is the worst thing about us or our only driving force or principle, or that it constitutes ourselves any more than other principles, and the wrong done to our nature by such modes of speech, and thinking, needs to be resisted. Our nature has other elements or constituents, and vastly higher ones, to which self-love was meant to minister, and which are at war with its excesses. 

For example, we have reason, or intellectual energy, given to us by God for the pursuit and acquisition of truth; and this is essentially a disinterested principle; for truth, which is its object, and is of a universal, impartial nature. The great province of the intellectual faculty is to acquaint the individual with the laws and order of the divine system, a system which spreads infinitely beyond himself, of which he forms a very small part, which embraces innumerable beings equally favored by God, and which proposes as it sublime and beneficent end, the ever-growing good of the whole. 

Again, human nature has a variety of affections, corresponding to our domestic and most common relations; affections which in multitudes overpower self-love, which make others the chief objects of our care, which nerve the arm for ever-recurring toil by day, and strengthen the wearied frame to forego the slumbers of night. 

Then there belongs to every man the general sentiment of humanity, which responds to all human sufferings, to a stranger's tears and groans, and often prompts to great sacrifices for his relief. 

  Above all, there is the moral principle, that which should especially be called a man's self, for it is clothed with a kingly authority over his whole nature, and was plainly given to bear sway over every desire. This is eminently a disinterested principle. Its very essence is impartiality. It has no respect of persons. It is the principle of justice, taking the rights of all under its protection, and frowning on the least wrong, however largely it may serve ourselves. This moral nature especially delights in, and enjoins, a universal charity, and makes the heart thrill with exulting joy at the sight of hearing of magnanimous deeds, of perils fronted, and death endured, in the cause of humanity." W. E. Channing. 

Christian symptoms of abuse

  It's not uncommon for Christians that are survivors of Complex Trauma from child abuse or domestic violence to display certain symptoms and behaviors before and even after they have been saved. A child, who lives in an abusive home, lives in constant distress, they are victims of profound relational betrayal and profound deception, which is usually repeated and chronic. It's the result of exposure to an inescapably stressful event that overwhelms a persons coping mechanism. Intense fear, helplessness, loss of control, and threat of annihilation. Frequent, lasting trauma. Differing from one traumatic event, but rather repeated danger, that continues. 

  So as a result of chronic and interpersonal trauma, this individual will be extremely vigilant, very watchful for danger all the time, constantly expecting it. This is caused because Brain Development is "use-dependent". What we use gets stronger, and the areas of the brain focused on survival act first and faster than our thinking brain. So our stress response, which is involuntary and automatic, can be based on a learned emotional association, referred to as "fear conditioning." So this fight, flight or freeze response in trauma survivors is hyper-vigilant, scanning for danger, sensing threat, real or imagined, and reacting to threat or danger. So in the Christian survivor they will often have a heightened concern for the dark side, for the satanic, the demonic and all principalities and powers. They have a pessimistic outlook on life because they were victims of profound relational betrayal and profound deception, so if you can't trust your caregivers, who should be devoted to your well-being and should love and nurture you, how then will you ever trust anyone? So every person, party, denomination, political movement different from them is seen as a threat and a danger, they are the enemy. Like the saying, "There's a devil behind every door."  

 So, if this is so, is there no up side? Is there nothing positive? Oh yes! Survivors of abuse have great advantage! A person that had all the benefits of a loving family will see the love of Jesus as an extension of their parents love. It's kind of like watching movies in regular color and then getting H.D., it is a vast improvement and wonderful. But to the trauma survivor, finding the love of Jesus is like going from black-and-white to Blue Ray!!!!!!  The contrast is so great that the hunger and thirst for more of Christ is bursting out of them! They have never felt this love and it changes everything! They have more zeal, more ambition, more willingness to sacrifice, more love and more hope, in Christ. God will not be a debtor, and if His child has suffered greatly, He will bless even more greatly! Of course I'm speaking in generalizations now, for some, they find it a long and slow process to put their trust in God, whom they can't see, when those that they could see betrayed them, but for others, it is literally a death to life experience.  

Sharing

 

I'm struggling to read the Bible! 

This is a universal problem, there are times when the Word is on fire and jumps from the page, and other times it lays there as though it's frozen. I think the two most common causes are, sin we refuse to repent of, and hiding your talent in the ground. 

Repentance of a known sin we are struggling with can cause the Holy Spirit to withdraw leaving the Word cold, and secondly,  if we are not using our "talent" by which I mean our 'ability and capacity to love,' we will also find the Word cold. The two together cause a synergy; when we are involved in a ministry where we can express the love God gives us it will create a hunger for the word, and as we read the Holy Spirit will "highlight" the verses applicable to your work of love. And when we are actively, personally involved in loving people our prayer closet will be charged with God's presence and we will have many to pray for. Isaiah 58:6-12 explains that in detail. 

Now, the third thing we should do is to always have a Christian book that inspires us by our side. We should always try and have a book that will get us out of bed an hour early because we are hungry to get back to it. 

The classic Christian literature is packed with scriptures and if you look up all their scripture references, you will find so many hidden and tucked away verses you never knew existed. 

Iron sharpens iron, so let your choice of iron be from the Christian men and women who have helped change the world for Christ. Few voices today come close to matching Newton, Fenelon, Jeremy Taylor, William Law, Hannah Hurnard, Elizabeth Elliot, Hannah Whital Smith, C.S. Lewis and countless other classic Christian works, without which I'm sure I would have died on the vine long ago LOL

  

  "It is one of our chief privileges as Christians, that we have in Jesus Christ a revelation of perfect love. This great idea comes forth to us from His life and teachings, as a distinct and bright reality. To understand this is to understand Christianity. To call forth in us a corresponding energy of unselfish, disinterested affection, is the mission which Christianity has to accomplish on the earth. 

  There is one characteristic of the love of Christ: He loved individual man. 

Christ loved man, not masses of men; He loved each and all, and not a particular country and class. The human being was dear to Him for His own sake. Nothing outward in human condition engrossed the notice or narrowed the sympathies of Jesus. He looked to the human soul. That He loved. That divine spark He desired to cherish, no matter where it dwelt, no matter how it was dimmed. He loved man for his own sake, and all men without exclusion or exception." 

William Ellery Channing. 

“Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.”

The Scythian's were the most Savage of the Barbarians, here's a description:

“In what concerns war, their customs are the following. The Scythian soldier drinks the blood of the first man he overthrows in battle. Whatever number he slays, he cuts off all their heads, and carries them to the king; since he is thus entitled to a share of the booty, whereto he forfeits all claim if he does not produce a head. In order to strip the skull of its covering, he makes a cut round the head above the ears, and, laying hold of the scalp, shakes the skull out; then with the rib of an ox he scrapes the scalp clean of flesh, and softening it by rubbing between the hands, uses it thenceforth as a napkin. The Scyth is proud of these scalps, and hangs them from his bridle-rein; the greater the number of such napkins that a man can show, the more highly is he esteemed among them. Many make themselves cloaks, like the hooded cloaks of our peasants, by sewing a quantity of these scalps together. Others flay the right arms of their dead enemies, and make of the skin, which stripped off with the nails hanging to it, a covering for their quivers. Now the skin of a man is thick and glossy, and would in whiteness surpass almost all other hides. Some even flay the entire body of their enemy, and stretching it upon a frame carry it about with them wherever they ride. Such are the Scythian customs with respect to scalps and skins. 

When I read of such barbaric behavior it makes me wonder if one of the reasons the Old Testament was so filled with Divine threatening’s of destruction was because of the times and what methods would reach a people such as these? 

 What an inspiring photo! In a time when marriages fail and fewer are choosing it, as well as having faith in it. Well, some still thrive.