Day 155: Living Waters

On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.  He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water."  John 7:37-38

I feel like these days there are people who are walking around with earplugs when they go to church or listen to the Gospel.

While we are in the midst of praising God and proclaiming God's name, Jesus invites us to come and drink.  The next part of the invitation is key, though.  Those who come to Jesus to drink will themselves become fountains of living water.

Of course, when we read this statement, we need a definition.  What are living waters?  John gives us a good answer, saying that this is the Holy Spirit.  But even then, we can have issues with understanding this because of the fact that we might not know what the Holy Spirit is.

When we think of the Spirit, we should always remember the breath of life, for spirit and breath are one and the same word in Greek and Hebrew.  And the Holy Spirit is the Lord and giver of life.  And what is life?  Life can be anything that we make of it, but Jesus has been clear from the beginning that eternal life comes from our faith in him.  Therefore, life is following Jesus.

So, if we are coming to Jesus for a drink, should our fountain of living water look like an outpouring of judgment based on the law of Moses?  Certainly not!  As Paul has said, the law reveals death.  Jesus, on the other hand, shows us life.  Jesus, the preacher and manifestation of love, is life.  We cannot forget that fact.  Jesus is the fulfillment of everything we do.  All of our worship, all our prayers, our reading, our preaching, our listening, our learning, our understanding points to Jesus.  Everything points to God's unconditional love for us.

When we go to Jesus for a drink of water, we will begin our transformation, much like a detox diet.  We will start to drink of this life giving water which will cleanse us both inside and out.  Then, through our transformation, we will start to become a fountain of love.  We will know that we are drinking of this fountain, for that will be when we are showing our love forth throughout all of the pain and suffering that exists in the world.  As Christians, we can only claim to be followers of Jesus Christ if we are becoming fountains of Jesus' love.  Otherwise, we are just pedants, proclaiming and sealing ourselves in hatred that closes in on us until we die both in body and spirit.  We need the Holy Spirit.  We need life.  We need love. 

Day 152: The Real Deal

"As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.  This is the bread which came down from heaven - not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead.  He who eats this bread will live forever."  John 6:57-58

As Jesus explains the concept of feeding on him, the imagery becomes more poignant.

Aside from the direct command to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood (which is quite shocking enough in itself), he also begins to draw the connection to the consuming of manna in the wilderness.  And, when he describes that, he says that all of their ancestors died regardless.  That's quite harsh.

The thing is, though, that the manna was given to the Israelites almost as a concession.  The Israelites were complaining to Moses about being in the desert, so God sends down manna for them to eat.  And, although they ate the manna, they continued to complain against God, and they even turned away from God.

But now, Jesus comes into the world on his own divine accord, offering us this heavenly bread of life.  Jesus comes to us in peace, offering us this life, offering us his love.  We have a choice.  Either we can take the offer or leave it.  When it's like that in plain words, it can seem ridiculous for us to turn it away, just as how the Israelites were ungrateful for food that had appeared miraculously in the middle of the desert.

Yet, we allow for many other things to get in the way and blind our view of Jesus.  Rather than seeing Jesus' love for us, we start to see our own lives, which are marred by things such as doubt, pride, anger, and hatred.  When we reexamine our lives, we start to think, in our pride, that we don't want to lower our guards.  We don't want to give up our grudges to follow Jesus.  Following Jesus means to leave our own lives behind, the lives that were defined by society and not so much by God.  We've become so attached to our society-dictated lives that we think that anything that is simply divine is not real.  We start to think that it's too good to be true.  So, we feel comfortable pushing Jesus' hands aside.

We need to listen to Jesus in our lives, and that will only happen whenever we give Jesus our time.  We need to pray in silence, where we hear neither the sounds of the outside world nor of our minds.  We need to listen to God in our prayers and in our bible reading.  We need to see Jesus before us.  When we do that, we will be able to taste and see that the Lord is good.  Of course, once we taste that perfection, we will never want to turn it away.  We will forever feast on the good, life-giving bread.

Day 149: Searching for Jesus

"You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of me.  But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life."  John 5:39-40

This reprimand from Jesus is pretty harsh, but there is an important message that will bring us closer to him.

A page from the Cordúa cookbook

This reprimand reminds me of how cooking works.  There are countless cookbooks in circulation.  Even some high end restaurants will put out books full of their own recipes, some of which must seem to be secret.  And they'll even be in plain sight, where somebody could turn to a specific page and take a picture and have the recipe, for free!  But, no matter the number of resources available, there is still a thriving restaurant industry, and many restaurants that have their own recipes out there are still in business.  Why is that?

Well, none of us are using those recipes!  None of us are taking the time to actually cook them.  Even worse, we don't even know how to do half of the things that are described in them.  Blanch a chicken?  Stir-fry?  Julienne carrots?  Sous vide cooking?  If we learned how to do all of these things, we would no longer need cookbooks.  We would be chefs, rendering both restaurants and cookbooks useless.

But that's where Jesus' reprimand comes in.  We can comb through every single page of the bible, read every single commentary on the bible, learn about every single tradition, but we'd be nothing if we don't go to Jesus ourselves.  The bible testifies of Jesus.  We have so many things to learn about Jesus.  And, all the scriptures point out a focal point of Jesus: Jesus is love.  We have to love if we are going to follow Jesus.  We can talk all we want about the bible, but if we don't put any of the words into practice, we're going to have to keep going back to the same chapters, the same verses, hoping that maybe another time we will learn ourselves.  Our bible is our recipe, our instruction manual.  And there is a lot in there!  We might not be able to put every single thing into practice in our lifetime, but if we continue to put more and more of it into practice everyday, then maybe, just maybe, we will start getting closer to Jesus.  It will be difficult, but Jesus has shown that every step of the way will be glorious.  We will see miracles happen, we will see joy, we will see the Kingdom of God materializing in our midst.  When we love, we will have the eternal life that is promised us by God.

Day 144: Taking the First Steps

"But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?  My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.  And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him."  1 John 3:17-19

This is where we need to start.

We know what love is, but we don't choose to show it.  Instead, we prefer to comfort ourselves by making up stories and trying to qualify our lack of love as a sign of our true love.  That's not what we are taught, though.  As Christians, we are called to show love to every single person.  We need to take down all of our barriers and start loving those around as God has taught us.

Love starts with action, not with words.  Jesus even said, "If you love me, then keep my commandments."  It all starts with living a life where we show love for others.  If all we do is sit around in front of a computer screen, typing everything about loving and not doing a single thing that we teach, we aren't loving others around us.  That's it, plain and simple.  We have to live what we have learned.

Living a Christian life involves lots of self reflection and self evaluation.  If we do not look at our lives through the lens of love, then we aren't looking at our lives in the purest way.  We have come up with systems of mathematics that require precision: taxing, interest, transactions, rent, and even work.  That's what love does for us.  It shows us everything very precisely.  We might not like how our lives look after we look at them through love, but that is the only way we will be able to change.  Our change, our journey, will only start when we get honest with ourselves (for how could we be honest with anybody else if we can't be honest with ourselves?).

When we find ourselves in a situation where someone in need is talking to us, we shouldn't look for a way out of it.  That's not showing love.  Instead, we should look at the opportunity as the greatest gift for us, for through that opportunity, we can express the love that God has shown us for that person.  We can give both a gift to that person, and, even better, give ourselves the gift of knowing that love, the Kingdom of Heaven, is spreading.  We need to be excited to love and to show our love.  We need for that to be just as exciting as our favorite praise song from church!

Day 141: Finding Peace with God

"He who seeks the Lord will find knowledge with righteousness, and those who seek Him rightly will find peace."  Proverbs 16:4

This proverb suggests a progression.

The first part of this proverb talks about the beginning of a life of faith.  In the beginning, we will find out about the bible, the different stories, some of the lessons, and maybe a bit about theology.  We will learn how to pray with the favorites selected from different parts of the bible and from tradition.  All of it, at first, is knowledge.  And this is great for all of us.  We need our minds to be filled with good knowledge, for the mouth only speaks drawing from what the mind and heart know.  Think about a dialect of a spoken language.  The people who speak different dialects do so because of what they are surrounded by.  If there are many people saying "y'all" as a second person plural, then you probably will, too, over time.  I know of many foreigners who adopt "y'all" after living in the South for a while.

The latter part of the proverb gets to a core message.  When we seek the Lord rightly, we will find peace.  Today, we all need more peace in our lives.  We are being bombarded with society telling us what we need to know, how much money we need to make, what job we need to do in order to make said money, whom to marry, what to buy, what house to live in, how to speak, how to live "well".  That's a lot for us to handle.  But, the last thing we need is to go to church, or even to approach the bible, or God, and come out even more stressed than before.  That's not why we are Christians.  We are Christians because Jesus came into the world to bring us peace.  We don't need to worry about what's going on around us.  We don't need to concern ourselves about so many societal rules because our salvation has come for us.  We have a place prepared for us in heaven!

Our faith will progress from knowledge to peace.  The good thing, though, is that we don't have to wait for years to get this.  We can do it now.  We can find peace through our religion.  It all comes down to how we live our life.  We have to live knowing that God is in control.  We have to pray knowing that God is taking care of us and hearing us, and - more importantly - God is speaking to us.  We need to read the bible knowing that there is wisdom that we can apply to everything in our lives.  We have to go to church knowing that God is great and that we will achieve peace through our prayers, our praise, and our love.  We have to take the love that God has given us and spread it all over our lives so that we can make the world that much better.  When we live our faith, we will find peace.

Day 139: Accepting Change

"He who rejects instruction hates himself, but he who gives heed to reproofs loves his soul."  Proverbs 15:37

This comparison cannot be any more extreme than this: hate and love.

Why is this necessary?  Well, if we think about this, it applies to so many different aspects of our lives.  In a general sense, we need to be willing to learn from everything, especially our own mistakes.  We can go forth in our lives doing things the same way we've always done them, but if that is harmful, we only bring ourselves further and further into damage.  When we accept change in our lives, we can turn away from anything that harms us and become better people.

In a spiritual sense, this is important because it is our whole life we are talking about.  Jesus speaks to us every single day.  It's only when we accept the change that Jesus calls for us to do that we will be able to become better people.  Accepting that change will involve not just a confession by word, but also a change in how we live our lives.  We need to live out that change.

In school, I was taught that doing drugs was bad for the body.  It's bad because each use will continue to damage the body, and if done enough times (the amount depending on the individual) it would lead to an addiction, which was very difficult to turn back from.  We learned to point our judging fingers towards those who used drugs.  That's an extreme case, but it still explains this proverb to me, because it's very easy to look at other people and see how they're damaging their lives with their own habits.  We can see when our friends are in destructive relationships, dead end jobs, or making bad decisions for their health.  We say to ourselves, "they must truly hate themselves."  This proverb, though, calls us to point that finger back at ourselves.  We need to investigate all that we do.  Are we willing to accept change?  It's easy for us to point out that necessity in others, and since we already can, can we do that to ourselves?  Can we truly live out that change?

The only way we can love our soul is by accepting and living the change that Jesus calls us to do.  It will involve a commitment, but we have already made that commitment in our baptism that we remember every time another member is added to our great family of baptized people.  We have to remember that we are in this world, constantly resisting the devil, fighting the good fight.  We need to stop hating ourselves and, instead, start bettering ourselves.

Day 132: Direction

"Whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow.  For what is your life?  It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away."  James 4:14

Right off the bat, we should remember that our lives are in God's hands.  God has the ultimate say in everything that goes on.

Imagine how great it would be if we could predict everything that would happen in the next year, next day, or even the next hour.  We would be able to plan for absolutely everything.  But, at the same time, we wouldn't have all too much to live for.  We would have all the answers, and we wouldn't have much else to do.

We live where we can't tell what's going to happen next.  So, we work on ourselves so that we can be ready for absolutely anything.  One of the greatest tenets of Jesus' preaching is, "be ready".  But that's all we can do.  It sounds pretty restrictive at the start.

Our lives our precious.  We can't control everything that affects them.  I like the metaphor of the vapor.  It's similar to smoke.  When you look at smoke, it floats in so many different directions, and I'm sure much of that depends on how the molecules of air are moving in around that smoke.  Then, there are also basic traits of heat, such as the circular motion that comes from the source.  Eventually, no matter which way the smoke goes, it dissipates as it reaches higher and higher.  We cannot grab smoke and manipulate it.  All we can do is prepare everything from the source and hope that things go in the direction that we want it.

Right now, our lives are going.  They are going in so many different directions.  You might get a call for a new job offer.  You may receive a message about the death of a relative or a friend.  You might get hungry.  You might do nothing.  The only thing we can do is prepare ourselves.  The way we prepare ourselves for the future involves realizing where we want to be.  This will involve prayer and meditation.  This will also involve lots of study and practice.  If we don't prepare, things will only go in different directions, whether we like them or not.  We can't complain if they don't go in the way we want them to go.  At the same time, we cannot say that everything will go according to plan.  We just need to remember that our lives are in God's hands.  God is working in our lives.

Day 118: Ultimate Authority

"For this One has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as He who built the house has more honor than the house.  For every house is built by someone, but He who built all things is God."  Hebrews 3:3-4

Here's an important message pointing us towards the source.

There are many things out there in the world today that look very good.  We can even talk about the different buildings that house churches, some that are quite detailed and marvelous to look at.  We can talk about the many different ministries that are out there, doing so much good in the world.  We can refer to different people who are making a difference out there.  All of this, though, can cause us to stray from the source of all the good things in our lives.

Jesus even took time to point this out quite directly.  He pointed to different structures and said that they will all disappear in the end.  In the same way, we can see that all of these different things around us will have their end.  I remember Boston, which had many large church buildings all over, but after the congregations had died out, there were buildings left over.  Many were converted into apartment complexes, rendering the old presence of a once thriving congregation completely dead and out of memory.  We can look at history to find many other stories of great wonders being destroyed.  Talk about the World Wars, when we have lost many great structures in many different places because of conflict.

However, when we see these great successes around us, we need to remember that they all stem from the same source, God.  God is the one who has made all these things great, and God will continue to work.  That will involve a cycle of life and death with buildings, ministries, churches, families, friendships, and many other things.  The most important things, though, is to remember to praise God in every moment.  God has everything under control.  Let's praise God for that! 

 

Day 114: God's Faithfulness

Then he told her everything in his heart, and said to her, "No razor has ever come upon my head, for I have been a holy one of God from my mother's womb.  If I am shaven, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak and be like all other men."  Judges 16:17

The book of Judges is quite a depressing read.  There is a back and forth struggle with the Israelites and their faith.  It always seems that their lack of faith gets the best of them, and there are many stories throughout about what happened when they turned away from God.  Even the more 'heroic' stories are quite gruesome.  The story of Sampson is no exception.

When I read this verse, I thought that it summed up the entire story of Sampson.  He was a man set aside by his parents for God, but he always had trouble with temptations.  In the end, he fell for a woman who was trying very hard to betray him.  He gave into her out of complete desire for her.  And, when he finally renounces his dedicated state, he loses his God-given strength.

I find that this is a great metaphor on how our lives are.  If nothing else, Sampson's story shows us that we have many different challenges to face all throughout our lives, even if we set ourselves aside for God.  In fact, Sampson also shows that just because we are Christians by family association or my title doesn't mean that we are following Jesus or fearing God.

God gives us so many gifts throughout our lives, but it is up to us how we decide to use them.  Some of us will decide to improve on our gifts.  Others of us will try to hide or reject the gifts we are given.  Our rejection of gifts seems to be quite mindless, doesn't it?  I mean, if you're at your birthday party and your friends bring you different gifts, would you reject them right in front of them?  But that's what we do when we reject our own gifts from God - we show that we disapprove of them right before God's eyes.  What's worse is that we then turn away from all the good things that God has for us and head towards something that we think is good for the moment - that pretty guy, that throwaway job, those super expensive clothes.

The interesting, but hopeful, thing about Sampson's story is the sign of God's mercy.  Despite the fact that Sampson does some pretty questionable things throughout his life, he still has that godly strength throughout, right until he outright forsakes God with his own words.  And, even though it doesn't end in the best way for Sampson, God still answers his prayer right at the last moment of his life.  I pray that we will not have to wait until that moment, but it is still an example of the fact that God is always faithful to us, even if we aren't.  God wants us to do well, and God wants to bring us back to God.

Living life will involve lots of decisions, but if we take the time to pray and read the bible, then we will be able to find our way through our problems.  God is always faithful to us; let us be faithful.

Day 111: Concerns

"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  Luke 12:34

It's very easy for us to dismiss this message.

Surely, I live my life in a way where treasure means nothing to me.  All I need in heaven is God.  Why would I be concerned about money?  I mean, aren't we already taught that money is distracting from our faith?

However, that mentality won't get us anywhere.  We live in a world where we will constantly have to face pressure for our money.  We have to work in order to make money.  We need money so that we can provide all the basic necessities for ourselves.  All of these things are constantly nagging at our minds, day in and day out.

So, if we have our life's treasure here on earth, then we will constantly be worrying about it.  If we start to imagine spiritual treasures in heaven, our minds will be concerned with that.

But this message extends so much further than just material worth.  We have many things that are pulling us in so many different directions.  We concern ourselves with our careers, our families, our friends, our health, our spirituality, and many other things.  And, each one of those things is taking us away from another.  If we take Paul's example of living life as running a race, there is a prize at the end of each race.  We are usually running many races at the same time.  Now, I don't know about you, but I have enough trouble running for three miles, let alone a half-marathon or any other race.  Imagine how difficult it would be to have to run multiple races at the same time, taking one step forward, another to the left, then a leap to the right, and then forward again, and then turning towards another and running for quite a distance.  That would be ridiculous!

And that's what we need to remember when we are trying to organize our life.  When we run towards God, towards heaven, towards the Kingdom, we will find our lives just that much easier to live.  The things that we feel are prizes - our job, our money, our house - are just aids on the way, those little snacks that your sponsors - the Trinity - provide as you make it to the end.  Yes, the race will be long and difficult, but we have the hands of God providing for us when we feel that we can't run any farther.

Day 049: Control

"Your glorying is not good.  Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?  Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened.  For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us."                          1 Corinthians 5:6-7

As some of you may know, one of my favorite cuisines is Indian, and I have tried to learn more recipes over the years.  One recipe that I spent a lot of time on was naan, because it was a great accompaniment to many dishes, alongside being a great bread to eat on its own.

Luckily, in this day and age, we have many videos on YouTube from which we can learn how to do so many things.  I found a good video on how to make naan, and I would follow the recipe exactly.  Except, after the first two or three times of doing it, I noticed that my bread wasn't doing much else than just being flatter than flat.  I had the right amount of yeast and yogurt and flower and other ingredients, but the bread would never puff up into a ball like the video.  My first solution: add more yeast.  I'd learned that yeast is what makes bread rise, so it should have made everything better.  The next time I made the bread, though, I saw that the lumps of dough became biscuits instead: alright in flavor, but way too far away from the correct fluffy texture.

Very frustrated, I decided to watch the video in full once more, but this time making sure that I paid attention to every detail.  I learned that there were two things that I did not do.  The first thing was making sure to activate the yeast in water before adding it to the dough.  The second thing was making sure that I left the dough to rise on its own for a few hours.  The next batch of naan I made was exactly what I'd had in the restaurants: fluffy, hollow, and delicious.

Whenever I come across passages from the bible about dough and leavening, they bring me back to my experience of learning how to make naan.  It took me a while to learn that a very little bit of yeast can cause bread to puff up to such a great size.  Paul warns that the same thing happens when we allow sin to grow within us.  Sure, we can create anecdotes of people who live in so much sin that they no longer seem to be living life, such as the dough that has too much leavening in it.  But, we can also start to look at our own lives, where we think that we can start ignoring our own problems.  It's just a white lie.  It's just a dollar from her pocket.  It's just a fantasy.  Then it grows.  The small bit of leavening of sinful nature can overtake us until we are filled with so much sin that we are about to burst.

How do we fix this then?  We first need try to think of ourselves as the ones who prepare the dough, for how else can we purge out the leavening of malice?  Then we need to know that there are so many tempting ingredients in our pantry, but God is also there with us, offering to demonstrate what to do. The lumps of dough are our lives, but they do not have to be the final product.  God gives us many chances to get it right, but it is only by our own efforts that we can truly receive what God wants to give us.

God Hates Figs

"Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, [Jesus] went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. He said to it, 'May no one ever eat fruit from you again.' And his disciples heard it."
Mark 11:13-14

This passage has troubled me for a long time, for it is a harsh curse from Jesus.  Now, don't get me wrong, Jesus does use many strong and harsh statements throughout the gospels, but, for some reason, this one seems to be among the harshest.  Maybe it's because of the fact that it's to a tree, which, in my experience, kind of just does its own thing (of course, my gardening skills are sub-par at best).  Maybe it's because the tree ended up withering away very soon after (Mark 11:20).  Jesus kills a tree with his words.
But, then I remember, God has the final word: the word is Jesus.  So, this has to have some sort of meaning for me, right?  God, Love, speaks to me through Jesus, but I feel stumped with this passage.
In my attempts to understand this, I have turned to other sources to "check" if my own suspicions are right.
But, of course, this unschooled guy here thinks of something that is totally off from what the authorities teach: that this is a prophecy against Israel for not producing fruit.
I don't want to let this passage to be just a prophecy for the Jews of their impending tribulations.  I feel that it speaks to me in this way:
A great tree that bears a promise of good fruit (fig newtons, anyone?) is replete with leaves well before fig-season.  What a gift it is for that tree!  I would be so excited if I saw something like that when I was hungry.  And now we have Jesus, about whom the gospel writers rarely state that he is hungry.  And, he goes to the tree, and there's nothing but leaves.  I already hear the words of a parable, where the sprout of the Gospel grows too quickly with such a small root that it dies out, for that is what this tree is: lots of growth with little to offer.  The tree is just showing off for no reason.  The tree deceives.  And so, Jesus commands the tree to die.  Now, there is no longer a deceiving plant, but shriveled pride.  

"He who has little will have it taken away from him."

The thing that punches me, though, is that Mark writes that Jesus replies to the tree, as if the tree were a person and had spoken something to Jesus. (Frequently, in Mark, whenever Jesus replies to his disciples or anyone else, the Greek phrase ἀποκριθεὶς εἶπεν 'he said in response' appears.)  So, now we have a tree that's like, "Jesus, here I am in all my glory.  Go away from your path and come to me."
Then, I think about how I am.  God has given me many talents, and many times I feel like I am just using them for my own gain.  Sometimes, when I pray, I feel that I am asking for something that is just for me and not for my job in life.  God works through each of us with our talents.  However, God counts on us making a good use of our talents.  So, instead of showing off our talents to lead others astray, wondering why they aren't good enough or why they don't have what another might have (despite lacking in their hearts), we should work together to cultivate each other's talents and incorporate them into the great garden that is the Kingdom of God.  For, we are all seeds that are wandering and beaten through the chaos that is this world, but we have one in heaven who is waiting with a watering can and a shovel to cultivate us into a wonderful tree with many fruits to offer.

Sam van Aken "Tree of 40 Fruit"

My Lady, My Mother

Ὅ τι ἂν λέγῃ ὑμῖν ποιήσατε
"Whatever he says to you, do it."
John 2:5

This message must be pretty interesting to hear, considering that the final phrase is now a meme or a slogan, whichever you choose.  And yet, it has been with us for nearly two thousand years.  What have we learned?
Today, we have many churches, many faithful people, and many services.  However, are we still fulfilling this command?
"My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God, my savior."
These are the start of a hymn of praise that Mary says before the birth of Jesus Christ.
Throughout the gospels, Mary appears in some significant moments in her son's life, such as his birth, his first miracle, and at the foot of his cross.  These are a longstanding example of a great mother, one who loves her son before all else.
The Virgin reminds me of my mother, especially after seeing that she was present at most of the significant events in her son's life; for my mom has been at all of the significant events of my life.  She sings, just as Mary does, and she loves me very much, both through all the good and bad.  Alongside being a great mother, she is also someone who has pointed me to God.
My mom's greatest message and advice to me is, "Get on your knees and pray."  She always points me to God, just as Mary does in the Gospels.  When there was a shortage of wine in a wedding feast, she states the solution: Whatever he says to you, do it.
After seeing these parallels, I can only imagine what a great mother Mary was to Jesus, especially after witnessing throughout my whole life the great mothering from my Mama.  Mary must have sung to him many things, and she must have done so much for him throughout his childhood, just as my Mama has.  She was there with him throughout times of great glory, such as the miracle at the wedding feast, and times of sadness (which approaches embarrassment), the crucifixion.
I intentionally chose to have an ambiguous title with this.  In one sense, Mary, my lady, is my mother.  She has shown a life as an example of pure love and devotion in Christ.  In another sense, there are two women in this post, my lady, Mary, and my mother, Sandra Montes.  And, in yet another, I have my lady and mother, who has never left my side, always leading me to Jesus, just as the Holy, Blessed Virgin Mary does.

The Gospel Centered Life

"But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ." (Ephesians 4:15)
Here's the simple message from Paul, this time, which calls us to love.  The only way we can grow into Christ is through love.  It's simple because the only way we learn anything is through careful practice.  As a musician, I feel like I know this all too well.  For starters, one must practice so much to be good. However, mindlessly spending hours on things only makes a habit, as opposed to perfection.  My teacher always says that I must focus whenever I practice.  Therefore, playing through the things I'm good at only reinforces the things I'm good at, and, consequently, makes everything else glaringly bad.  However, when I focus on a certain issue for a given amount of time, I make my playing all the better.  In the same way, the only way we can make our lives closer to the Gospel is by living in love.  However, we cannot just practice loving those we already love or those who already love us back.  We must practice loving those who may not be easy to love.  We must love those who have hurt us.  We must love those who preach against us.  We must love those who don't understand us.  By practicing what Jesus already did and what God teaches us daily, we will live a truly gospel centered life.