O outono passou
Já é inverno
Mas nos sentimos bem
Então, por que o frio?
O frio não é o frio do ar
É o frio do mar
É o frio da imensidão
O frio da alma que já não sabe
Que luta e reluta
Mas que tem certeza
Certeza do que vê
Do que sente
Certeza de onde está
Certeza de com Quem está
E, aí, o frio, o inverno já não é
Que bom, que conforto.
There is a time in our lives
That we don't know exactly what to do
So, it's a time for reflection
A time to stop doing something
But sometimes we don't want to stop doing that
And time is passing by, passing by
How difficult it is to start again
To feel motivated to
I simply cannot think the way I used to
The beautiful things I used to see
Are in fact not so beautiful anymore
But there is hope
Yeah, I have not forgot Him
Você encontra este texto em português em postagem anterior (20-07-2009, Jesus não escolheu outro caminho).
It came about that Jesus was in Southern Judea and decided to come back to Galilee, probably to Capernaum.
Normally, when Jews went from Jerusalem to Galilee they traveled either by the seashore road, The Way of the Sea (also called Via Maris) or by the road across the Jordan river.
To reach Galilee through the Jordan River Way, the traveler had to go down the Mount of Olives, go to Bethany, cross the Jordan River, travel along the East Jordan bank towards the North, passing through Pereia, Decapolis and at the Galilee sea enter the Galilee land.
Through The Way of the Sea, the traveler would get to Galilee going from Jerusalem to Lyda, to Joppa and to Caesarea. From Caesarea he or she would shore the Carmel Mount and enter Galilee.
The Third Way
Jesus didn’t choose any of those ways. He took a different route, called The Way of the Center. It was a shorter way to get to Galilee.
The Jews avoided The Way of the Center because it passed through Samaria. The Jews didn’t come along with Samaritans to the extent that they preferred to take tiresome and longer routes. They would walk longer, if necessary, to not run into Samaritans on the way.
When Jesus decided to go to Galilee, he chose the road of the center, an option Jews would think twice to make.
Jesus didn’t avoid the embarrassment of meeting a Samaritan because in him there was no prejudice. For him there wasn’t anybody avoidable, anybody inferior. For him misunderstandings should be understood. For him there was no subterfuge, shortcuts, and pretense. If there were a point, he would go to it.
He took the road of the center because it is in the center that he is. He is in the center, to unite, to make things clear, break barriers, to save.
If he had taken the road of the seashore or the road of the Jordan River, he would be reproducing and validating what was already religiously established, that the Samaritans were nothing, fruit of ethnic mixture, impure. Doing this, Jesus would be just one more religious Jew.
In the Way of the Center he would show the meaning of the Gospel how he did many times: God making up with humankind, humankind making up with God, freedom from guilt, from shame, new life for the present and for the future through him.
Through the road of the center he got to Sycar where the well of Jacob was located. All his truth came out when he took the road of the center, tearing apart what was not life and had been shown as such, a kind of situation represented in the woman’s life.
A Samaritan woman with a questionable life, under suspicious eyes, frustrated after several loving disencounters, and family clashes, things that made her cheerless. She was a knower of religious matters (it is what her talk to Jesus reveals – John, chapter 4). She had her life restored by the power of Jesus’ truth, he who walks in the center.
Happy was that woman, that region, that day because fewer steps were made, distances were shortened in order to make hope, peace and strength for living longer. The place where that Samaritan lived was changed by Jesus’ action, with which he said to her, and with her attitude in response to what she felt.
What can we take from this story of the way of the center?
That Jesus may come and meet us, may help us with his real truth to find out who we are and may he heal us, relieve us from the burdens we alone are not able to get rid of. May Jesus make us to understand that the barriers that, in our eyes, separate us one another, from everything, from him, are nothing.
Meet us Jesus.
The following text is part of chapter 2, page 46, of the book The Case for Chirst, A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (1998, Editora Zondervan) by Lee Strobel. Chapter 2 deals with controversial biblical issues such as the supposed contradictions in the narrative of the sypnotic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). In the excerpt bellow, we have Doctor Craig L. Blomberg, an important authority on the biographies of Jesus, author of several books, responding Lee Strobel’s questions about those gospel contradictions.
(Strobel’s book can be purchased at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+case+for+for+christ&x=14&y=19
Coping with Contradictions
I began with a well-known story of a healing. “In Matthew it says a centurion himself came to ask Jesus to heal his servant,” I pointed out. “However, Luke says the centurion sent the elders to do this.
Now, that’s an obvious contradiction, isn’t it?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Blomberg replied. “Think about it this way: in our world today, we may hear a news report that says, ‘The president today announced that …’ when in fact the speech was written by a speechwriter and delivered by the press secretary – and with a little luck , the president might have glanced at it somewhere in between. Yet nobody accuses that broadcast of being in error.
“In a similar way, in the ancient world it was perfectly understood and accepted that actions were often attributed to people when in fact they occurred through their subordinates or emissaries – in this case through the elders of the Jewish people.”
“So you’re saying that Matthew and Luke can both be right at the same time?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” he replied.
That seemed plausible, so I posed a second example. “What about Mark and Luke saying that Jesus sent the demons into the swine at Gerasa, while Matthew says it was in
“Well, don’t shut the case yet,” Blomberg chuckled.” Here’s one possible solution: one was a town; the other was a province.”
That seemed a little too glib for me. He appeared to be skimming over the real difficulties that are raised by this issue.
“It gets more complicated than that,” I said. “Geresa, the town, wasn’t anywhere near the
“Ok, good point,” he said. “But there have been ruins of a town that have been excavated at exactly the right point on the eastern shore of the
“Well done” I conceded with a smile. “I’ll surrender on that one. But here’s a problem that’s not so easy: what about the discrepancies between the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke? Skeptics often point to them as being hopelessly in conflict.”
“This is another case of multiple options,” he said.
“Such as?”
“The two most common have been that Matthew reflects Joseph’s lineage, because most of his opening chapter is told from Joseph’s perspective and Joseph, as the adoptive father, would have been the legal ancestor through whom Jesus’ royal lineage would have been traced. These are themes that are important for Matthew.
“Luke, then, would have traced the genealogy through Mary’s lineage. And since both are from the ancestry of David, once you get that far back the lines converge.
“A second option is that both genealogies reflect Joseph’s lineage in order to create the necessary legalities. But one is Joseph’s human lineage – the gospel of Luke – and the other is Joseph’s legal lineage, with the two diverging at the points where somebody in the line did not have a direct offspring. They had to raise up legal heirs through various Old Testament practices.
“The problem is made greater because some names are omitted, which was perfectly acceptable by standards of the ancient world. And there are textual variants – names, being translated from one language into another, often took on different spellings and were then easily confused for the name of a different individual.”
Blomberg had made his point: there are at least some rational explanations. Even if they might not be airtight, at least they provide a reasonable harmonization of the gospel accounts.
O poema abaixo tem uma importante mensagem, que é a de que há tempo para tudo. Tempo de crescimento, de maturação, de produção, de dar o que se produziu, e de recolhimento e preparação para tornar a produzir.
Na vida espiritual é assim, não temos tudo a oferecer o tempo todo. Há momentos em que parece não haver fruto. Mas esse não haver fruto faz parte do processo da vida de quem dá fruto, o processo da realimentação para o fruto, como a planta do poema.
Há quem não entenda o recolhimento por que, às vezes, alguém está passando. Pensam que somos despensa sempre cheia e disponível aonde simplesmente se chega e se pega o que se quer. Para se dar algo é necessário que se tenha esse algo, e não se pode tê-lo, sem que se despenda tempo em construí-lo, alimentá-lo, prepará-lo para que alguém o receba, ou apanhe e desfrute.
HOW AN APPLE TREE GROWS
You are a very small apple seed under the cold ground.
It is winter and you are sleeping.
Above you, frost covers the ground.
It is dark under the ground.
Now it is spring.
It is warm.
You start to wake up.
It rains in the spring time.
It feels good.
You are strong with the water and the warm earth.
You come above the ground and feel the sun.
You are small, but you are happy to be outside.
The sun feels good.
You feel strong.
The rain feels good.
You grow slowly.
Now it is a few years in the future.
You are now a small tree, about the size of a young person.
You have beautiful green leaves.
There is more sun and rain.
You grow taller.
Soon you have apples on your branches.
You are a happy strong apple tree.
It is fall (autumn).
You have big apples on your branches.
Your branches feel heavy with so many apples.
You see some children.
The children pick your apples.
Your branches feel light.
Almost all of your apples are gone.
But you will grow more next year.
You thank the children.
You know they will enjoy the apples.
The children will eat the apples.
Some of the seeds from the apples might grow to be new apple trees.
Now it is winter.
All of your leaves are gone.
But you know you will grow more leaves next spring and apples for the fall.
Now it is time to rest.
You rest.
