This Week With Jesus

Have you noticed how angry so many people in the world seem to be? They are angry with themselves, with their jobs, with their governments, with other people, with stores, with products with life, with their surroundings, in short nearly everything. According to the Gallup Global Emotions Report, anger around the world has been rising since 2016, with 23% of respondents now feeling angry on any given day. That's about 2 billion people being angry every day. Wow! What makes people angry though? Harvard Health says one of the main reasons is a sense of powerlessness. But a kind of overarching reason maybe the difference between what we expect and what we get in life. This is not to say one can't have dreams to work towards, dreams are goals, not expectations. Problem is the outcome of anger only leads to more trouble and holding it in causes health problems. So what do we do? Let's see what the Bible says . The Bible showcases expectations not just as the anticipation of an o

                                                 *Image taken from Wikipedia Adapted from the KJV devotional. "But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you"; Matthew 5:44 KJV Easier said than done! What does it take to forgive someone and love them despite of what they have done to us? "When Jesus says to love your enemies, does that mean allowing them to continually abuse you, maltreat you, or claim access to your life? Jesus Christ specifically gave us healthy tips on how to show God’s agape love to our enemies: to speak blessing upon them when they curse us, to pray for them that use us and persecute us, and to do a good thing for them when they are in need, even if they hate us. We can powerfully show God’s love with healthy boundaries toward our enemies. Loving them doesn’t mean allowing them to step all over us or abuse us . (But it also means we do

Today is the 12th of March 2024 .  Today, at 12 am, 2020, 4 years ago, the world officially went on to face a pandemic, of proportions unknown by these three generations which are present here today. The pandemic called Covid.  Worse than the Spanish flu, it went on to claim  7,004,732 lives as of March 2024. That is more than 7 Million!  To give you an idea of the depth of the tragedy, o n November 5, 2020 , Neapolitans woke up to discover a provocative white marble sculpture placed at the center of their most important square, Piazza del Plebiscito (Plebiscite Square): a chained baby lying down in a fetal position. Naked, with closed eyes and looking tired, the baby’s name is Homeless. Appropriate for this time of COVID lockdowns, the sculpture is called “Look Down” and invites each passerby to stop and look down at the human condition, chained by the health emergency and by the economic crisis heightened and exasperated by the ongoing pandemic. (Sage Journals) And yet, here we are.