#Light of the world Jesus Christ

[dramoor]

~O come let us adore Him~

[apenitentialprayer]

In Christ, YHWH Himself Becomes the Accursed One, by Christopher Powers.

According to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, nothing good happens to Jesus once he is put on the cross. All the signs are against him. He has been mocked, and the mockers have asked for a sign that he is the Son of God. Well, the sign has been given. Here is the sign that Jesus is the Son of God: darkness. God has pulled back.

Reader, do not miss the point. Everything turns against Jesus: the cosmos, the political world, his compatriots, his fellow religionists, his chosen companions, nature itself. There is no mercy. There is no grace. There is not even a fragrant breeze.

And have you ever thought about this? There is no silence.

One might hope to come to one's death in peace, to have a calmness and quiet about you within which you could compose yourself to face your end. Jesus had no peace. Not only did he have the pain from the nails and the agony of suffocation; he had the horror of screams. A crucifixion scene is a scene of screaming. Raymond Brown says that crucifixions were "particularly gruesome" because of "the screams of rage and pain, the wild curses and the outbreaks of nameless despair of the unhappy victims." There was screaming around Jesus for hours from the others, only a fragment of which is recorded in the Gospels (their taunting of Jesus). And finally, in the end, Jesus himself screamed.

Yes, Jesus screamed out in the midst of his pain, not in rage, not in a curse, but in a loud cry. The Word of God incarnate does not merely speak; it is a screamed-out question, and it is his death cry. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? What does it mean?

It means, I think, the obvious thing: that Jesus died in the worst way possible, that he died in unimaginable pain, and that his physical pain was accompanied by the mental and emotional pain of being abandoned by God. He entered into our human condition; he came down from heaven and was begotten by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary and was made man. And then he went down further. He entered into the saddest and lowest human conditions; he entered into griefs and degradations and betrayals and tortures. He entered into them, he went down, and then he went down further. Jesus plumbed the absolute and literal depths of what it is to be human. He wept, sometimes with us and sometimes over us. He visited our tombs. And —it sounds trite but it's literally true— he shared our pain.

This, to be honest, is good news for us. There are no depths to which we may have to descend that Jesus has not already descended. However bad your life gets, Jesus will be with you. He can be with you, because he has gone down even further.

[... A]ll of us know that we have untested limits. For Jesus there were no untested limits. And with trembling in our bones we can voice the sacred truth, that it is . . . good . . . that Jesus was so completely tested. For when Jesus screamed, it was, as I said, not in anger, not in rage, but in: a prayer. Although screamed out, the words My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? are a prayer.

Jesus feels nothing but abandonment from God, and yet nonetheless he prays to God. He no longer feels any intimacy with God — less than twenty-four hours earlier he was praying to his "Father" that he be spared of all this; now he cannot pray to his Father, but he can still pray like any human being can pray, to "God," to indeed "my God." He screams, yes, he cries out, yes, but it is a question that he cries, and a question rests upon a relationship, on the reality of one to whom a question is addressed. Jesus goes all the way down to the very bottom of human existence, and even at the bottom, even in the midst of all the pain in the universe, even in the absence of any sign at all that he has a divine Father, even there at the bottom a human being can still pray to God, can still ask, if nothing else, why this God, to whom he is speaking, why this God has forsaken him.

We find God by going down this road, down the road that goes down. Leonard Cohen, in his song "Suzanne" (which Susan used to sing to me), saw deeply, if not perfectly, when he said Jesus realized "only drowning men could see him." Jesus saw this from the cross (I think this is what Cohen means by "his lonely wooden tower"), where, Cohen says, he was "forsaken, almost human."

No, that last modifier is wrong: forsaken, fully human is the point. Yet it may be true that only drowning people can see Jesus. We who have suffered the depths can catch sight of him, I think, because Jesus was fully human all the way down: in the darkness, beyond the darkness, forsaken, fully human, he sank (as Cohen almost says) beneath God's wisdom like a stone.

Rev. Canon Victor Austin (Losing Susan: Brain Disease, The Priest's Wife, and the God Who Gives and Takes Away, pages 135-136, 137-138). Italics original.

There is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still.

Betsie ten Boom, as recorded by her sister.

[nicollekidman]

“i don’t want to protect you from the world i want to show it to you” as buffy’s season six realization while spike is off seeking his soul…. yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah x100

[thelordismylightandmysalvation]

Salt and Light

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Graphic via Verse of the Day - Matthew 5:14

[aniah-who]

What are we doing? Really, church. What are we doing? We are the salt of the earth, but what good is salt if it's lost its savor? Why have we gone back to the snares that God once delivered us from? Why have we turned back to the sin that Jesus already freed us from? We've placed our candles underneath bushels in hopes of avoiding persecution. Our spirit has grown deprived while our flesh is yet to still be satisfied. We've been filled with everything but the Spirit and lulled to sleep in the comfort of our own sin. We are the light of the world, saints. It's time that we start walking in this truth.

[christliche-kunstwerke]

Christus als das Licht der Welt, c. 1550 von Paris Bordone

[fionnaskyborn]

Was tagged by @oceancamp to post my current five favorite songs! (They should invent a stages-of-grief-esque model that encompasses and accurately describes both types of anguish I had to go through making this list - the one of limiting myself to only five songs, and the one of trying to put as little videogame music on here as possible so that I don't end up looking like an absolute goddamn geek, which... I am... Oh well!)

Thank you so much for tagging me - here are the songs!

Heaven Pierce Her - War Without Reason

Tatsuro Yamashita - Love Space

This specific arrangement of Death And Republic + Meet Again

Winger - Junkyard Dog (Tears On Stone)

The Protomen - Light Up The Night

Is it courtesy to tag other people after you've been tagged in a post like this? If that's the case, I'll tag @spiralled-fury, @solradguy, @swamppossum, @five-by-five, @northstarring, @ineedmoredragons and @tbonechessor!

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Jesus Brings Us Out of Darkness

John 1:9 This was the true light that enlightens every person by his coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him. Yet the world did not recognize him.

11 He came to his own creation, yet his own people did not receive him. 12 However, to all who received him, those believing in his name, he gave authority to become God’s children, 13 who were born, not merely in a genetic sense, nor from lust, nor from man’s desire, but from the will of God.

14 The Word became flesh and lived among us. We gazed on his glory, the kind of glory that belongs to the Father’s unique Son, who is full of grace and truth. 15 John told the truth about him when he cried out, “This is the person about whom I said, ‘The one who comes after me ranks higher than me, because he existed before me.’”

John 8:12 Later on, Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. The one who follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” — John 1:9-15 and John 8:12 | International Standard Version (ISV) The International Standard Version of the Holy Bible Copyright © 1995-2014 by ISV Foundation. All Rights Reserved internationally. Cross References: Psalm 85:9; Isaiah 53:3; Ezekiel 37:27; Hosea 1:10; Matthew 3:11; Matthew 5:14; Luke 11:36; John 1:3-4; John 1:7; John 3:18; John 19:27; James 1:18; 1 Peter 1:23; 1 John 2:8

[wp4per]

✝️ Jesus wallpaper.

[justana0kguy]

2024 APRIL 24 Wednesday

"Whoever believes in me believes not only in me but also in the one who sent me, and whoever sees me sees the one who sent me. I came into the world as light, so that everyone who believes in me might not remain in darkness."

~ John 12:44-46

[dramoor]

"When one passes through those times of pain which wring the heart, one is called not to break down but to break through. Just as there is a sound barrier, so there is a kind of praise barrier, and one breaks through the darkness by offering praise to God. Praise at such times is not offered as the fruit of a contented and happy mood. Such praise is not the result of a feeling. It is offered in the teeth of feelings of pain, and in spite of emotional numbness which such feelings of pain can bring.

Such praise is offered to God as a pure act of obedience, as a naked act of the will. It comes from a place deep down, from the heart which lives beneath the daily swirl of feelings. Such acts of praise are acts of defiance, through which we defy the darkness, and confess our faith in God who lives above this vale of tears and who calls us to Himself.

That is why, perhaps, such praise breaks through. When one is able to praise God in such circumstances, one is acknowledging that one is not the Center of the universe, and that one’s pain and loss, though personally difficult, have not displaced the cosmos, or changed the faithfulness of God. Like Job looking to God who appeared to him out of the whirlwind, we lift our eyes from ourselves to behold the Lord, and find a whole new perspective and peace. We acknowledge that although our life is temporarily in tatters, God remains on the throne, and He will make it all right—either in this age or the next."

~Archpriest Lawrence R. Farley, on the Akathist to Jesus, Light to Those in Darkness

(Photo © dramoor 2024 Continental Divide Trail, Colorado)

[rosie-love98]

We down, but we ain't out!:

I know, I know, it's been a long while since I've posted but boy! Do I have some good news for you...

Turns out the Salvation Poem Project is making a new 2-D film, "Light Of The World" that's set for the summer of 2025! I know I shouldn't get my hopes up (I don't even think a single preview/trailer is out yet). But considering that some of the folks behind this had worked on "Beauty And The Beast", "Emperor's New Groove", "Mulan" and "The Lion King"...how can you NOT be hyped? Anyway, the original pics can be found here: https://twitter.com/michaelperrigo/status/1818280328769012067 https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/there-is-another

[thelordismylightandmysalvation]

Verse of the Day - John 8:12

[yeslordmyking]

Isaiah 9:2 — Today's Verse for Monday, September 2, 2024

[christliche-kunstwerke]

Das Licht der Welt von William Holman Hunt (1900)