The Lord's Prayer - Part 2

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     GIVE US THIS DAY BREAD FOR OUR NEEDS

•     At this point it the prayer, Jesus turns His attention from God to us. We are cautioned to ask for our daily bread, for the basics of sustenance.
•      We are not instructed to ask for a banquet. Throughout scripture we are encouraged to be satisfied with “enough.”
•      When we have enough, it is enough, and we need to realize that fact. At this point I usually insert a prayer of thanks for the abundance of food and other things that God has given us: for our family, for the church, for our nation, for our van that just keeps on running (275,000 miles so far), for our health and that of our family.
•      We need to stop, be still and realize that all good things come from God.

  MAKE US FREE OF OUR DEBTS, AS WE HAVE MADE FREE THOSE WHO ARE IN DEBT TO US.

•  On this one He adds a bit of a footnote: “For if you forgive men for their sins, you will have forgiveness from your Father in heaven.”
• But then, as if this weren’t clear enough, He adds the reverse statement: “But if you do not forgive men for their sins, you will not have forgiveness from your Father for your sins.”
• This part of the prayer sounds very important. We are instructed to ask God for forgiveness. He goes on from talking about this part of our prayer to discuss another aspect, then comes back to it with these two notes.
• We are to clearly understand that our forgiveness is conditional. The forgiveness on which our salvation rests is not automatic. We have to do something else – something beyond repentance and even baptism. We must first forgive everyone who has ever sinned against us.
• It is time for an inventory. Be still. Close your eyes. And think.
• Who is still there in your past, unforgiven. Is he or she alone or are there others?
• Now go through the list and forgive each one. One by one. Spend some time with it to be sure the forgiveness is coming from your heart. You may have to do this for several days for it to work.
• And, if they knew that you were holding a grudge, you will have to let the person know that you have forgiven them. That part may be hard, but it will be freeing. It will free you to move on from that relationship

   AND LET US NOT BE PUT TO THE TEST BUT KEEP US SAFE FROM THE EVIL ONE

• What do we know about temptation.
• We know that God doesn’t tempt anyone (James 1:13). He is on our side. For some of us, that may be hard to get your head around, but God really is on our side. If you are having trouble with that concept, you may want to talk with someone about it.
• And we know that our temptations are common to other people – they are not unique to us (1 Cor. 10:13).
• God prepares an escape from every temptation (1 Cor 10:13). But we must look for the escape; it may not always be obvious.
• And the real trick here is that we have to be willing to take the escape route. If the temptation is so great that we refuse the escape route, we have lost the battle
• The bottom line is this from 2 Peter 2:9: “The Lord knows how to rescue the Godly from temptation.” We just have to ask.

The Eagan Church's recent outing to Feed my Starving Children

Adam preparing boxes for the workers to use in making bags of food for the children:

Sealing the bags:

Filling the bags:

Tom McNamara working the warehouse:

All ages filling bags

Labeling bags:

It was great fun and we filled 50 boxes of food for hungry kids.

Latest from Roberta

This comes to us from Jesse Robertson in Henderson, TN, by way of Facebook.

"Today Team 4 is on its way to Port au Prince. Roberta reports that she has already distributed about 50,000 lbs of food, and has several more tons at her house waiting to be packaged for families. The security walls have been closed to a height of about six feet, and gates have been installed at the group house. The church is receiving compliments on its show of Christian generosity, and worship is standing room only. For the next few weeks we will focus on keeping some helpers on hand to facilitate food distribution."

Feed My Starving Children

Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) is a Minnesota based organization that ships food packets all over the world to hungry people. They purchase the basic ingredients for the packets, then invite volunteers in to make the packets. The organization is amazing. They take a group of strangers of all ages, give them a quick briefing and quickly have them making packets like mad. Each session is an hour and a half from the greeting to the prayer over the finished product.

Last night the Eagan church went for our quarterly session there. Here are a few pix:

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Another Good Night for Magalie!

Magalie had an even better night last night. Awoke only for her medication. She is bright and alert this morning, sharing Charlene's cappaccino. We will start trying to wean her from the pain meds today.

She was the only person at Feed My Starving Children last night who had been on the receiving end of the supply chain.

She was an instant celebrity.

For more on FMSC, see the next entry.

Magalie is doing great!

Magalie had a good night last night and a great day today. We all went to make food packets at Feed My Starving Children tonight. Pictures tomorrow.

World Hunger

World Hunger: Twelve Myths by Frances Moore Lappé


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This one really makes you rethink your ideas about humger. The authors take each of the presumed causes and presumed cures for hunger and show why they are not accurate and will not work. Each chapter in well documented, making it a little harder to read, but easier to believe. Toward the end, it begins to feel like a science fiction novel in the vein of 1984. A little scary in that respect.

They assert that the free trade legislation, agricultural trade laws, and even hunger relief efforts go to support the acquisition of more land by the big international corporations, reducing the land owned by individual families. Even when a smaller country is exporting huge amounts of food products, local people are still starving, because it is the international corporations that are doing the exporting, and sending the money out of the country.

The only solutiions, they say, are rather dramatic. They call for land redistribution, and greater sharing by the big international agricultural giants. They call for a balance between the free market and government regulation, in the interest of everyone having a way to produce enough to eat.

I recommend this one for everyone

View all my reviews >>