Skip to main content

Perfection, complete, at shalom

I am loving my year bible. I think I am managing consistency better because I understand how to do it. With all things in life read the instructions, they are there for a reason. One of the cool things about things about doing the bible this way is that you reading over things you have maybe read over a thousand times but you are required to read the section as they are laid out and there are no headings and subheadings to distract one from what is there. It is important to read things in there context. Anyway, what I want to share with you is this from Matthew 5
47”You have heard the law that says ‘Love your neighbour’ and hate your enemy.44 But I say love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! 45 In that way you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and unjust alike. 46 If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. 47 If you are kind only to your friends, how are your different from anyone else? Even pagans do that? 48 But you are to be perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect.”
The first time I read this I was like wow! The Bible actually uses the word perfect. I believe we are supposed to esteem to perfection. If we believe that we are esteeming to be like Christ (otherwise what are we doing?), who is perfect and without blemish, then we are to be perfect. Catch my train of thought? So when I read this I did a little dance (I’ve been told before perfection is impossible). My theology student husband as something called an exeGeses bible, which is a parallel bible. So I decided to check the Greek to make sure I wasn’t getting excited over nothing.
Matthew 5:48
“So be complete/ at shalom, exactly as your Father is in the heavens is complete/ at shalom”
The perfection used in the King James (not used but in the exeGeses ) and in the New Living Translation means to be completed, at peace. Wow!
If you are go back and read over the whole portion we are to love even our enemies. Love seems like it really important to God, so it should be really important to us.
This was just something I thought was cool that I wanted to share.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Longing for Winter

"It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are." — E.E. Cummings  "Unbeing dead isn't being alive." — E.E. Cummings "We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit." — E.E. Cummings   I had not intended to start with anything like the above quotes, but aren't they amazing?  What I had wanted was to find a poem about winter.  In the spider-webbed, cardboard-boxed-up mind of mine I remember something and I decided it was e.e.cummings but even though the internet is oh wow! I can't find it. Or maybe it's the dust.   My husband needs all of the credit for this post.  We discuss our life continuously.  We look at the good and the bad, what we are doing right and what is going horribly wrong....

First glimpses of our Japan

 The first pic is of...well...me packing and my little brother watching a movie. This next one is of Alexander snuggled up on the plane.  We flew with Emirates and it was amazing!  The Dubai airport at 1am is, however, overwhelming.                                                                               Our first experience of a Japanese supermarket.                                                                                  Takashi and Tiffany are a couple from the church.  They picked us up from the airport and then took us to the store. ...

Walking

I wrote this entire post out on my husbands phone two days ago and just before I could post it the phone died, only to restart immediately.  And I was writing so smoothly and beautiful.  I still want to share what I was going to share, but it may sound nothing like my first attempt.  Here goes: My husband and I walk most of the places we need to go.  He pushes Alexander in the pram and I have Beatrice strapped to me chest.  The walking is not our first choice.  Up until mid last year we had a car.  It was stolen and our insurance didn't pay out enough for us to buy anything decent, so we decided to wait.  We also knew that God was giving us the first big lesson in our road to financial health and good finacial stewardship and that was not to go into debt by taking a loan.  So we walk. The walking as been both amazing for us and hard.  We have been exposed to so many different things that flying past in a car we have almost ...