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I myself have asked many questions:

What if these Christians retract their faith in the midst of their tortures, would God be saddened by such a decision?  Is God not saddened seeing them suffer that way?

On the other hand, why do Christians persist in defending their faith?  Is this some legalistic concept of salvation?  Is this some heroic act of defending an invincible All-Powerful God?

The understanding of such conditions depends on the premise one takes.  If one takes the purely logical process, one can't help but think there is really no benefit gained by such Christians from their suffering and that the God they worship is either not really present, or not a loving God at all to be able to allow such inhuman treatment to be inflicted upon the ones He professes to love.

It is only by taking the premise of love that one can have some insight within the hearts of these brave men.   If one sees that these people have really loved God with all their heart, as a lover does, one can understand how they have found in Him something more precious than anything else in their lives.  Losing such a thing is synonymous to losing their lives and living a life apart from Him cannot even be imagined as they have become one with Him, being empty without Him, being lost, being dead.

Now as to the reason why God does not intervene in this matter (apart from spiritual Grace), there are such Laws that even God cannot break and will not break, seeing the better good that will arise out of it all.

It might be beneficial to first review what causes suffering in the world:

• sickness of imperfect body
• death of others due to imperfect body
• pain inflicted by sin of others
• pain inflicted by sin of self

In other words, suffering is caused by imperfect body and soul, by SIN that brings about death. 

Now how to remedy it?

• Sickness and death eradicated thru resurrection, by way of being born into the new incorruptible body Paul mentioned in the Bible.
• Emotional pain caused by others relieved thru forgiveness and total surrender to the God.

Now, going back as to why couldn't God intervene more

• As to remedying sin, Love cannot be forced
• As to remedying physical death, it would be a curse to give immortality to those who have not learned of love.

What might happen if He does intervene?

• God stops us from getting sick
• God stops us from dying when attacked by others
• God stops us from sinning
• God stops others from sinning against us

As a result, the world we know today will no longer be the same kind of world.  Freewill shall no longer be.  God would dictate everything and we succumb to the level of a slave or a robot instead of a lover who can freely respond to His love.

This world is not yet perfect.  This isn't heaven yet.  Ours is a world of duality, of both light and darkness, of love and hate, of bliss and suffering, and of the many choices in between.   God can surely pull out the weeds, as the Gospel says, but He will not do so for fear of pulling out even the good wheat, of the many good things this world can accomplish for our eternal soul.  In patience then do we wait and in joy do we live for the moment given us here, growing in virtue and in love, shining forth what little light we can give, until the seasons of the earth are over, and the night shall be no more.

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Very few realize what burdens geniuses carry their whole lives - what of Van gogh, of Edgar Allan Poe, of the mathematician John Nash?

Very few realize how hard it might have been to constantly manage and control that great power that they possess, to undertake it all alone, ostracized by the society that fails to understand them intellectually, and to sympathize with them as normal human beings who also need to be understood and to belong.

 People may not realize the efforts that they made in order to reach out.  On the other hand, people may look at them as snobs who can get by on their own and need not anyone else to fellowship with their whole life.  Others may even envy them and shy away from taking their company for fear that they might lose their self esteem in their presence.

Indeed, the greater the power given, the greater also is the cross and the task of harnessing it to the full.  May God help us all attain our full potentials, and may He help us find good friends who can lend us a warm hand along the way.

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We can't love like that.  Our love, however good is still conditional.  We want something in return because we are not perfect, and we try to get from others what we lack.

That is the reason Jesus gave us two commandments, why we needed to love God first.  In truth, it is a command to allow God to love us, to be so embraced and ensured that we couldn't ask for anything more.  In that way only can we love others truly as God has loved us.

That kind of love is therefore not waiting for any condition or reward.  That love is also not boastful, self righteous or looking down upon another person because it knows that whatever love it can give has come not from itself but from God, like the moon reflecting only the light cast upon it by the sun.

It is hence our first duty to seek God's love, to know, to believe, to feel, to be enveloped in the Light of God's marvellous compassion.  All else that follows are but mere expressions of our gratitude for the priceless gift we have received.

Whenever I feel injured or angry against another, it is most likely because I felt unloved at that time and the solution is not to continue seeking it from the person concerned but from God Himself.

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-Albert Einstein

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Life is not at all a game of accumulating everything you need and maintaining a certain level of happiness, for happiness after all cannot be maintained.  Life is a constant flow, of touching and growing and moving on.  Life is either experienced or not, in joy and in sadness, in anger and in despair.  Those who choose not its sorrows choose not its happiness as well; and those who choose not to live fully choose only to crumble and to die.  - www.itakeoffthemask.com

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1. THE RICH

Because the rich will have bought the idea of positivism to the extreme to the extent that they have learned to focus only on themselves and their needs, excluding everyone else that may get in the way of their perfectly established lives. The rich would have become indifferent, already possessing everything they thought they needed to live their lives to the full.

2. THE POOR

Because the poor would have thought of himself as being unloved, comparing himself to the rich one whom heaven has blessed far beyond the necessities he prayed for.  He would have lost his hope or grudgingly accepted his lot.  The poor would have grown a rage that consumes all of his soul.

3. THE RELIGIOUS

The remaining people who claim to be religious would have become the self righteous judgmental people who neither understands the poor nor prays for the awakening of the rich.  The religious would judge the poor and the rich for their sins, but see not the dust in their own eyes.

There may soon come a time when all these would come to be, when the hearts of people have grown so cold as to forget the most important thing of all... authentic love.

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Given the chance to accept such a gift,

a brand new car perhaps

a beautiful house and lot

a precious jewel,

how many among us would refuse

something totally for free?

Following are some of the things I thought would prevent us from receiving the blessings/ gifts the good Lord has meant us all to receive:

1. Hostility/ doubt towards the giver

It doesn't matter sometimes how beautiful or precious a gift is as long as we do not approve of the giver.  Who would ever receiver a gift from someone she doesn't trust?  From someone with a vested interest perhaps?  From someone scary?  From a monster?

 We are unable to receive many gifts because we do not approve of the giver.

2. Feeling of unworthiness

Even if we believe in the giver, we oftentimes refuse our gifts because we do not believer ourselves worthy of them.  We think we do not deserve a new car because we have not studied well, we do not deserve to be forgiven because we have been so bad in the past.

But have you ever considered what the giver is giving the gift for?  Maybe it has nothing to do after all with what we did or not.  Maybe it is being given just because the giver would be happy to see us receive the blessing.  Maybe it is because of his generosity.  Maybe it is because of his unconditional love.

3. So much focus on other things
as not to see what is being given

How do you receive a gift you do not even notice?  If we are so busy doing something else, talking to this and that, taking care of this and that, worrying, fretting, anxiously thinking of our fears, would we ever have the time to even think someone's waiting for us, intending to give us something beautiful?

4.  lack of confidence
to be able to use the gift

If we do not know how to operate a personal computer, having not even a slight interest in learning to do so, would it matte at all that someone's giving us a top of the line PC, complete with accessories, software and technical assistance? 

If we think we'd have no use nor skill for something, we may refuse something being given us.

5. ignorance on the nature and worth
of what is being given

Our ignorance on the nature of the gift being given us hinders us from receiving it open arms.  Instead of gratitude, we have doubt.  Instead of excitement, we have apathy and we care not whether we receive the blessing or not at all.

6.  ignorance of one's needs
that can be fully satisfied
by the gift

If we do not know our selves and our needs, we may not be aware of what good the blessing before us is going to give us.  An abundant feast may have been set before our eyes, yet if we do not even know we're hungry, it wouldn't satisfy us a bit.  We may even look for other things we think we need.

7.  comparing one's gift to the
gift given to others

How many times have we refused our blessings because we deem it lesser than the gifts we saw given to other people?  Our blessings may be the best for us, yet oftentimes, we look at bigger packages given to another.  We know not that inside the small package is a precious jewel waiting to be revealed if only we'd have opened our hands to receive it rather than whine about how small it is compared to what our neighbors have received.

Have you found your blessings yet?  Have you prayed and received not the answer?  Reflect for a moment and consider, you may have refused the very blessings God has placed before you all the while.

This article was written by Jocelyn Soriano at ITAKEOFFTHEMASK.COM

You are free to redistribute this article as long as proper attribution is given to the author and a link back to this site is provided. For more free stuff and blog ideas, visit ITAKEOFFTHEMASK.COM

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Yet have you noticed how many people today find no more satisfaction in the simplest activity of all?  We get anxious with our vacant hours and we try to fill our days with as much activity as we can just so we can avoid that time when we have nothing to do but be with ourselves.

I recently had colds and it necessitated a leave from work as well as a leave from the many activities I enjoy, including writing.  How I prayed that it be over, how I desired to get back to my normal routine.  But the body it seems, knows when to go on and when to take a pause, when to wake up, and when to get some time to sleep.  It's the rhythm of life, the ebb and flow, the natural course of nature that keeps everything in balance, and that makes everything fresh and renewed.

But why the unnatural response from many of us?  Why the difficulty in surrendering to rest?

1.   We've lost our ability to wait.

The modern times have provided us with so many tools and gadgets we need that make our life easier.  It has enabled us to do things in an INSTANT, in a single click of a button.  We do things real FAST! 

Rest is waiting.  It is downtime, a healing time both for the body and the spirit.  We just couldn't accept the fact that we are not after all as perfect and as powerful as we thought we could be, that we can be on the go 24/7 much as we wanted to.

2.  We've lost our ability to trust.

Rest and healing is doing nothing necessarily active on our part, but trusting that our body knows what it is doing to repair itself, to grow, maybe even to be better than before.  We believe that only our conscious efforts can accomplish something, and if we're not doing anything therefore, we're already doomed!  We don't trust anybody, not even our own body when we know we are not consciously in control.

3.  We've lost our ability to receive.

Our culture has impressed upon us the necessity to give; giving is a concrete sign of being alive, of being of value.  When we are not able to give or to do anything productive, we quickly lose our self esteem.  Our self worth is so connected in doing what we do, that when we're unable to do anything, we feel empty and worthless inside.

We  do not realize that receiving is also an integral part of being.  Receiving is actively cooperating to the one healing us, actively acknowledging that we are worthy of help, of being assisted in times when we couldn't help ourselves.  Receiving is honoring ourselves as being worthy of notice and honoring others as being able to endow upon us something that is an important part of themselves.  Receiving, like giving, is being able to share and be a channel of the flow of life.

I've learned that even times of sickness and unproductiveness can teach us something.  I've learned that in times like that, it's quite okey to wait, to trust the way of life, and to receive healing from the God who never abandons us whether we're living our lives energetically, or whether we're merely trying to while away our time sneezing and teary eyed in the comfort of our cozy beds.

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People often see me as I quiet person, one who rarely cracks a joke, one that can comfortably sit in a corner and have a good time reading a book or listening to good music. But that doesnt mean I couldn't engage in good conversation. That doesn't mean I couldn't comfort a grieving soul. That doesn't mean I couldn't share the kind of happiness that comes from things the world hardly notices in its race towards unreachable dreams. I am the kind of person God has masterfully and lovingly made me to be. I am happy. I am beautiful. I am unique!

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