Pilgrim progress- a disciple on a journey!

Picture by a Muslim child depicting the destruction of churches in Egypt today and yesterday. Today’s Gospel is not the easiest to understand. It contains uncomfortable words. Cutting words. Words we are inclined to cut out of our Bibles as we stay with warmer sentiments and more harmonious thoughts. At first reading, it seems that Jesus want to bring fire to the earth, disrupt and divide families. Yes, there are occasions in the Bible when ‘bad’ fire did fall from heaven. Fire and brimstone fell from heaven upon Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24-25) and destroyed those towns and all who lived there. One of the ten plagues against Egypt was fire and hail from heaven (Exodus 9:3). The prophet Elijah called down fire from heaven that incinerated soldiers sent from wicked King Ahaziah (2 Kings 1:9-17). Lightning is sometimes described as fire from heaven in the Bible (Psalm 27:9; Psalm 144:5-6). All of these fires from God, however, were destructive fires. And it is the destructive...

On the eve of the Baptism of the Lord, here is a prayer for parents: Dear God, I need to talk to you for a minute about these kids you gave me. First of all, let me make this clear. I adore them. They amaze me, a million different times throughout each day. They are clearly your creation and not my own. And for this, I am thankful. I could have never come up with something this wonderful, even if you had asked me to write out what I had in mind on paper before they were born. But, I want you to know that I am scared. The world looks to me, as their parent, to teach them and protect them, raising them to be successful adults. I wonder why, then, must the world work against me on every step? As a little girl, my precious daughter – well, actually, she is Your precious daughter – happily skipping through her day, treasuring each moment and believing anything was possible. But somewhere along the way to being a teenager, she lost her joy. Now, her days are filled with paralyzing self d...