Ozark Oddments: Overcoming the Darkness

Monday, March 24, 2008

Overcoming the Darkness

For Christians, the resurrection of Jesus is a big deal, or at least it should be. I mean, it is one of the major foundations of the faith. To paraphrase what the Apostle Paul has to say about it, if there is no resurrection, then there is no hope. I suppose it is because I am studying about spiritual warfare that I have been thinking a lot recently about the importance of the resurrection as the crowning event in Jesus’ ministry of destroying the works of the devil. The devil and his followers thought they had scored a victory by arranging for his death; but it says in the scripture that He disarmed them all and made a spectacle of them by stripping them of their authority. There is a great sense of security knowing that we have access to the same power that brought Jesus up out of the grave in our own personal battles against the enemy. And there is great comfort in knowing that even when the devil wins a skirmish now and then, he will never truly win...

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thoughts to ponder

Most of us go through life so absorbed in the cocoon of ourselves that we rarely stop to consider the other. Of course, we think that we do; indeed, we may pride ourselves on our capacity for empathy; we may be considerate and thoughtful in our dealings with others, but how often do we stand before them. so to speak, and experience what it is to be them?--Domenica Macdonald

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, by Alexander McCall
Smith

+++

Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering -- because you can't take it in all at once. --Audrey Hepburn

+++

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all, I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.--Agatha Christie

+++

Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got not to forget to laugh.--Katharine Hepburn

+++

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

"Two people... told me that the word "Christian" would turn people off. I wouldn't mind if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it is. I wouldn't mind if, when a group of Christians meet for bread and wine, we might well be interrupted and jailed for subversive activities. I wouldn't mind if, once again, we were being thrown to the lions. I do mind, desperately, that the word "Christian" means for so many people smugness, and piosity, and holier-than-thoughness. Who, today, can recognize a Christian because of "how those Christians love one another"?--Madeline L'Engle, "A Circle of Quiet"