The Human Problem

Our Moral Rebellion is at the root of our Human Problem. Human misery is neither a result of Avidhya (Ignorance of our Divinity), nor it is a product of Kama (desire) & Karma ( Past life deeds). It is a result of human refusal to live under the moral authority of our Heavenly Father.
_ from the book, Legacy Of William Carey... Author, Vishal Mangalwadi

Christianity is a philosophy

Unfaith turns Christianity into only a philosophy. Of course, Christianity is a philosophy -- though not a rationalistic one because we have not worked it out from ourselves. Rather, God has told us the answers. In this sense it is the true philosophy, for it gives the right answers to man's philosophic and intellectual questions. However, while it is the true philosophy, our Father in heaven did not mean it to be only theorectical or abstract. He meant it to tell us about Himself -- how we can get to heaven, but equally, how we can live right now in the universe as it is with both the seen and the unseen portions standing in equal reality. If Christians just use Christianity as a matter of mental assent between conversion and death, if they only use it to answer intellectual questions, it is like using a silver spoon for a screw driver. I can believe that a silver spoon makes a good screw driver at certain times. But it is made for something else. To take the silver spoon that's meant to feed you, moment by moment, and keep it in your tool box to use only as a screw driver is silly.

Francis Schaeffer

Death in the City (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press: 1969) 139-40

Such a father as this...

An excerpt from the autobiography of Missioanry John Paton.

My dear father walked with me the first six miles of the way. His counsels and tears and heavenly conversation on that parting journey are fresh in my heart as if it had been but yesterday; and tears are on my cheeks as freely now as then, whenever memory steals me away to the scene. For the last half mile or so we walked on together in almost unbroken silence - my father, as was often his custom, carrying hat in hand, while his long flowing yellow hair (then yellow, but in later years white as snow) streamed like a girl’s down his shoulders. His lips kept moving in silent prayers for me; and his tears fell fast when our eyes met each other in looks for which all speech was vain! We halted on reaching the appointed parting place; he grasped my hand firmly for a minute in silence, and then solemnly and affectionately said: “God bless you, my son! Your father’s God prosper you, and keep you from all evil!”
Unable to say more, his lips kept moving in silent prayer; in tears we embraced, and parted. I ran off as fast as I could; and, when about to turn a corner in the road where he would lose sight of me, I looked back and saw him still standing with head uncovered where I had left him - gazing after me. Waving my hat in adieu, I rounded the corner and out of sight in instant. But my heart was too full and sore to carry me further, so I darted into the side of the road and wept for time. Then, rising up cautiously, I climbed the dike to see if he yet stood where I had left him; and just at that moment I caught a glimpse of him climbing the dike and looking out for me! He did not see me, and after he gazed eagerly in my direction for a while he got down, set his face toward home, and began to return - his head still uncovered, and his heart, I felt sure, still rising in prayers for me. I watched through blinding tears, till his form faded from my gaze; and then, hastening on my way, vowed deeply and oft, by the help of God, to live and act so as never to grieve or dishonor such a father and mother as he had given me.

The hunger for the transcendent remains unabated.

"In spite of the varied and willful attempts made by antitheistic thinkers to undermine the spiritual and to thrust it into the arena of the irrational, or at best deem it a private matter, the hunger for the transcendent remains unabated. After nearly two decades of crisscrossing the globe and lecturing at numerous campuses around the world, it is evident to me that the yearning for the spiritual just will not die. In fact, at virtually every engagement I have found the auditorium filled to capacity and the appreciative response quite overwhelming, even in antagonistic settings. There is no clearer demonstration of this unrelenting hunger than the experiences of Russia and China as each has in its own way tried to exterminate the idea of God, only to realize that He rises up to outlive His pallbearers." -- Ravi Zacharias

Just thinking...

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
- Vincent van Gogh

Individual Responsibility

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

—Rudyard Kipling

In our society we often see this idea promoted at certain levels, suggesting that each one should 'be your own man' and yet it is denied the individual at other times in promotion of 'tolerance'. On the one hand, programing the youth to be accepting of all things, even the intolerable, and on the other hand, forcing all to conform in thought and manner to that which is deemed politically correct.

Being a Christian, I add the following quote:
"The most important idea I ever thought,was the day I realized, that I am personally and individually accountable to God for how I lived."

-Daniel Webster

As Christians, we not only must, at times, abstain from that which society is promoting, not just of our own volition, but because we answer to a Higher One. This will in no way take from our individuality or weaken our convictions. It will make us more resolved to stand against those who would ridicule us when we refuse to be party to their ways. It is what will force us to maintain our principles when times are difficult.

The Bible warns us that the heart is wicked and deceitful above all things and so we can not rely only upon the arm of flesh but must have the knowledge and faith that a personal God will hold us accountable for each and every action we commit while walking on this earth. Only in this manner will the Christian be able to live a morally upright life, separated from sin, without being judgmental or lacking compassion upon others.

This is what will provide true strength of character. Character others will observe and be drawn to, seeing it as genuine. Kipling's "responsibility of owning yourself" paired with the knowledge of being "personally and individually accountable to God."

Food for Thought

 

“If you would not be forgotten

as soon as you are dead and rotten,

Either write something worth reading

or do something worth writing.”

 

Who wrote it?

C. S. Lewis

I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. 

~ C. S. Lewis

Missionary Moment

"Never pity missionaries; envy them. They are where the real action is-where life and death, sin and grace, Heaven and Hell converge." -Robert C. Shannon

 

I have been blessed to be a missionary for most of my adult life. I can't imagine having lived any differently  and do find it to be a rewarding life styl. At times it may be challenging and lonely, but never dull!

I know I have several foreign missionary readers , what are some of the blessings and benefits of  your vocation and ministry?

Father's Day 2009

Thoughts for fathers.

Any fool can be a Father, but it takes a real man to be a Daddy!!
Fathers Day Quote by: Philip Whitmore Snr

"The most important thing a father can do
for his children is to love their mother."
Fathers Day Quote by: Unknown



"Father I will always be
that same boy who stood by the sea
and watched you tower over me
now I'm older I wanna be the same as you"
Fathers Day Quote by: Yellowcard

A father is someone that
holds your hand at the fair
makes sure you do what your mother says
holds back your hair when you are sick
brushes that hair when it is tangled because mother is too busy
lets you eat ice cream for breakfast
but only when mother is away
he walks you down the aisle
and tells you everythings gonna be ok
Fathers Day Quote by: Unknown



My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say,
"You're tearing up the grass." "We're not raising grass," Dad would reply. "We're raising
boys." Fathers Day Quote by: Harmon Killebrew

One father is more than a hundred Schoolmasters.
Fathers Day Quote by: George Herbert, Outlandish Proverbs, 1640

Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.
Fathers Day Quote by: Bill Cosby




It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.
Fathers Day Quote by: Johann Schiller

A father carries pictures where his money used to be.
Fathers Day Quote by: Unknown

The Father of the Bide
My husband our oldest daughter on her wedding day.

Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father!
Fathers Day Quote by: Lydia M. Child, Philothea: A Romance, 1836

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.
Fathers Day Quote by: Mark Twain, "Old Times on the Mississippi" Atlantic Monthly, 1874

Old as she was, she still missed her daddy sometimes.
Fathers Day Quote by: Gloria Naylor

It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't.
Fathers Day Quote by: Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

It would seem that something which means poverty, disorder and violence every single day
should be avoided entirely, but the desire to beget children is a natural urge.
Fathers Day Quote by: Phyllis Diller




Spread the diaper in the position of the diamond with you at bat. Then fold second base down to home and set the baby on the pitcher's mound. Put first base and third together, bring up home plate and pin the three together. Of course, in case of rain, you gotta call the game and start all over again.
Fathers Day Quote by: Jimmy Piersal, on how to diaper a baby, 1968

He didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.
Fathers Day Quote by: Clarence Budington Kelland



Don't make a baby if you can't be a father.
Fathers Day Quote by: National Urban League Slogan

Father of the Groom
My husband with our son on his wedding day.

He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father's wisdom than he who has a great deal left him does to his father's care.
Fathers Day Quote by: William Penn

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong.
Fathers Day Quote by: Charles Wadworth

Small boys become big men through the influence of big men who care about small boys.
Fathers Day Quote by: Unknown



It is a wise father that knows his own child.
Fathers Day Quote by: William Shakespeare

The father who does not teach his son his duties is equally guilty with the son who neglects them.
Fathers Day Quote by: Confucius

Fathers, like mothers, are not born. Men grow into fathers and fathering is a very important stage in their development.
Fathers Day Quote by: David Gottesman

I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection.
Fathers Day Quote by: Sigmund Freud

When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.
Fathers Day Quote by: Jewish Proverb



You fathers will understand. You have a little girl. She looks up to you. You're her oracle. You're her hero. And then the day comes when she gets her first permanent wave and goes to her first real party, and from that day on, you're in a constant state of panic.
Fathers Day Quote by: Stanley T. Banks in the movie 'Father of the Bride'

My husband with our two youngest daughters, daddy's girls!

There must always be a struggle between a father and son, while one aims at power and the other at independence.
Fathers Day Quote by: Samuel Johnson


A man never stands as tall as when he kneels to help a child.
Fathers Day Quote by: Knights of Pythagoras

----------------------------------------------------------------
"When a child is born, a father is born. A mother is born, too of course, but at least for her it's a gradual process. Body and soul, she has nine months to get used to what's happening. She becomes what's happening. But for even the best-prepared father, it happens all at once. On the other side of a plate-glass window, a nurse is holding up something roughly the size of a loaf of bread for him to see for the first time.
Fathers Day Quote by: Frederick Buechner, 'Whistling in the Dark'

I watched a small man with thick calluses on both hands work fifteen and sixteen hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example.
Fathers Day Quote by: Mario Cuomo

My father was a statesman, I'm a political woman.
My father was a saint. I'm not.
Fathers Day Quote by: Indira Gandhi


4 years: My Daddy can do anything!
7 years: My Dad knows a lot…a whole lot.
8 years: My father does not know quite everything.
12 years: Oh well, naturally Father does not know that either.
14 years: Oh, Father? He is hopelessly old-fashioned.
21 years: Oh, that man-he is out of date!
25 years: He knows a little bit about it, but not much.
30 years: I must find out what Dad thinks about it.
35 years: Before we decide, we will get Dad's idea first.
50 years: What would Dad have thought about that?
60 years: My Dad knew literally everything!
65 years: I wish I could talk it over with Dad once more.
Fathers Day Quote by: Unknown


It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.
Fathers Day Quote by: Pope John XXIII



Noble fathers have noble children.
Fathers Day Quote by: Euripides


One night a father overheard his son pray: Dear God, Make me the kind of man my Daddy is. Later that night, the Father prayed, Dear God, Make me the kind of man my son wants me to be.
Fathers Day Quote by: Unknown


When I was a kid, my father told me every day, 'You're the most wonderful boy in the world, and you can do anything you want to.'
Fathers Day Quote by: Jan Hutchins

I talk and talk and talk, and I haven't taught people in 50 years what my father taught by example in one week.
Fathers Day Quote by: Mario Cuomo


"Train up a child in the way which he should go
and when he is old he will not depart from it"
Fathers Day Quote by: Proverbs 22:6

A Few Quotes to Ponder

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

—Rudyard Kipling

In our society we often see this idea promoted at certain levels, suggesting that each one should 'be your own man' and yet it is denied the individual at other times in promotion of 'tolerance'. On the one hand, programing the youth to be accepting of all things, even the intolerable, and on the other hand, forcing all to conform in thought and manner to that which is deemed politically correct.

Being a Christian, I add the following quote:
"The most important idea I ever thought,was the day I realized, that I am personally and individually accountable to God for how I lived."

-Daniel Webster

As Christians, we not only must, at times, abstain from that which society is promoting, not just of our own volition, but because we answer to a Higher One. This will in no way take from our individuality or weaken our convictions. It will make us more resolved to stand against those who would ridicule us when we refuse to be party to their ways. It is what will force us to maintain our principles when times are difficult.

The Bible warns us that the heart is wicked and deceitful above all things and so we can not rely only upon the arm of flesh but must have the knowledge and faith that a personal God will hold us accountable for each and every action we commit while walking on this earth. Only in this manner will the Christian be able to live a morally upright life, separated from sin, without being judgmental or lacking compassion upon others.

This is what will provide true strength of character. Character others will observe and be drawn to, seeing it as genuine. Kipling's "responsibility of owning yourself" paired with the knowledge of being "personally and individually accountable to God."