Devotional for friends // Devocional para as amigas

  Psalms 103 with my thoughts in italic   Bless the LORD, O my soul,  And all that is within me,  Bless his holy name! Bless the LORD, O my soul,  And forget not all his benefits,    So you can ask: what are the benefits?   O my soul, He , the LORD, who forgives all your iniquities  O my soul, He , Who heals all your diseases,  O my soul, He , Who redeems your life from the pit, ( O my soul!) O my soul ,  He, Who crowns you (O my soul) with steadfast love and mercy,  O my soul , He, Who satisfies you with good  (see? O my so ul), so that your youth is renewed like eagle’s   My soul, did you know?   The   Lord   works   righteousness      and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known his   ways to Moses,      his   acts to the people of Israel. Remember my soul tha t The   Lord   is   merciful and gracious,    ...

  You see, I read the Bible. And if you want every day the Bible (Word of God) has something to tell you. Are you listening? Today, I made a simple question. “What did God want to tell me?” I read the end of 1 Samuel when David got the news of Saul’s death. You know the story. If you don’t, let me brief you quickly. Saul was chosen by Samuel to be the first king of Israel. Great. All he had to do was to obey God. Guess what? He couldn’t. God told him to go to war against some nasty people and destroy them all. He couldn't and, even worse, blamed the people (his soldiers) who spared the best of the sheep (among other things) saying it was for sacrifices. Because of that disobedience, God decided to give the reign to someone else. David.  David was a simple guy, who was often forgotten by his family maybe because he spent too much time away from them taking care of the sheep. He was a shepherd.  Suddenly his life changed. He was a valiant little guy. He faced alone a g...

Tudo tem beleza, mas nem todo mundo a vê. (Confucius)   I have told on another occasion the story of David’s anointing. Samuel went down to the house of Jesse, the place where God sent him, to anoint the next king of Israel. When Samuel got there and Jesse lined up his sons, the oldest was tall and handsome, and in Samuel’s eyes that one was to be the king. Samuel judged the boy by his appearance. Then the LORD said to Samuel, “ Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as a man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart ”. (1 Samuel 16:7) His words, not mine.    I know and it is not recently that people are always very worried about how they look. Yes, I agree that showering every day, putting on clean clothes, and combing the hair are important things. Of course, there is more than just that. But when appearance becomes something to be regarded as the most important t...

I know the holy week just ended but I felt compelled in writing this, last week, just the day after I had written the last week’s post.    Where have you been? Your feet take you everywhere. You have been to several different places. Good places, bad places, places that you regret, and places that you wish to return to. You have walked smooth roads, straight and tortuous ones, and climbed up and down some hills. You have arrived at good destinations, beautiful scenery, and uglies and dirties too.     Now Imagine... if someone could just wash away all your bad places in the past, the ones you repented and leave just the good ones… and show you that, in the future... although you may have hard roads, rocky roads... all of them will take you to a beautiful place. A place that you will never regret. You will look back and see how many ways you've walked, and got through. How hard it was that path. But you also noticed that you weren't all alone. Someone guided ...

  If I could say that I don’t like one book in the Bible, I would say it is the book of Judges. But I can’t say that. So, the book I like the least is Judges. However, there are precious teaching in there too, although it is a ruthless book. I don’t particularly like the last chapters. But every time I read, I try to get something good out of it. Why? Because it is in the Bible, so there must be a reason for it.    When I read these last chapters and reflect on this world that we live in today I see so much in common.    We see violence, we see very disturbing things going on and what it is worse is that the people are so used to it that nothing seems to bother them. And what before was abhorrent to everyone’s eyes, now it is not so much.    Two phrases that we see in the books of Judges and Kings and Chronicles that I think they are pretty much connected. 1. There was no king in Israel (in the book of Judges) and they did what was right in their own e...