Devotional for friends // Devocional para as amigas

 Is that for real? Is that a school or a jail? Do we really want our kids to grow up like that? Isso é verdade: É uma escola ou uma prisão? Nós realmente queremos que nossas crianças cresçam assim? I have no intention of making this post something political. But in light of the last happenings, I think we should at least think about what to expect of our society. They have been removing God from school little by little. Did that help the children's safety? What about their relationship with one another? where are they getting their moral standards from? They say it would make the school more inclusive. Did it really happen? I'm just saying that in the last few years, we have seen more shootings than ever... has anybody compared the number before and after the religious (Christian to be more precise) teaching was removed from the syllabus? Did it make it any better or worse? Indeed it was in a Christian school, but how many Christian schools have been targeted by shootings? Have...

From Dietrich Bonhoeffer –  Life together . “ Many people seek fellowship because they are afraid to be alone. Because they cannot stand loneliness, they are driven to seek the company of other people. There are Christians, too,  who cannot endure being alone, who have had some bad experiences with themselves, who hope they will gain some help in association with others. They are generally disappointed. Then they blame the fellowship for what is really their own fault. The Christian community is not a spiritual sanatorium. The person who comes into a fellowship because he is running away from himself is misusing it for the sake of diversion, no matter how spiritual this diversion may appear. He is really not seeking community at all, but only distraction that will allow him to forget his loneliness for a brief time, the very alienation that creates the deadly isolation of man. The disintegration of communication and all genuine experience, and finally resignation and spir...

  I look around today and see how much hate there is, especially toward Christians. Sometimes I wonder what is so bad about being a Christian to deserve that much hate. That much despise.  There are several types of persecution against Christians. There are religious people, atheist people, and political people.. maybe in every category of people, there are those who hate Christians.  Jesus warned the disciples about the persecution. I understand if you don’t feel like being a Christian because you want to avoid all the trouble. It is comprehensible. Jesus said, “ If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the would love you as its own, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you ”. (John 15:18-19) I don’t get it. Is it because of the truth? A true Christian doesn’t know or choose not to lie. We will tell the truth, is that it? Because we won’t lie to make anyone happy or “protect” anyone with a lie...

“Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build and bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose, all the days of the Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia. (Ezra 4:4)”   I have been discouraged many times. Sometimes there are people who come into our lives to stop us from doing things. Because of envy or because they just don’t believe in us, they think they are protecting us from ourselves. They think they know us better. Maybe. Sometimes, it is essential to have a little bit of fear, so we don’t believe we are invincible or that we can do whatever we want without thinking it through.   How to discern among the right amount of fear, wisdom, and boldness.  I like saying that if we don’t try we will never know what we are able to do. That doesn’t mean that I’ll do whatever I put my mind to. It is a thin line here. We cannot let just any people say what we can or cannot do, but we ca...

  People lately love saying that they are moved by reason, that they are sensible. I think to myself, really? It doesn’t sound like it. I mean, you hear all the time people praising and motivating others to “follow your heart”, tell me how is that sensible?  In this context, “the heart” means emotions; and emotions mean unstable. What are emotions? According to a dictionary from Oxford languages,  emotion is a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or relationships with others . Important words from this definition: instinctive, deriving, circumstances, mood.  None of these words reflect something reasonable. They all relate to something temporary. How can instinct be related to reason, if reason is something that separates us from the animal world? We are able to reason, the animals are not. We can build a train of thoughts, we keep a conversation. We argue. We defend our position. All these are based on reason. Therefore, “follow...

  Another day I was watching a priest talk about idols. It was very interesting. But the thing that really caught my eye was something he said: “God comes and accepts you the way you are, why aren’t you accepting the way He is?” Let me rephrase, I have talked about this once or twice. We try to get God to do what we want, the way we want, at the time we want.  So, why do we bother having a God? What we really want is a slave with superpowers that can give us whatever we want, whenever we think it is best.  People ignore His laws, but somehow, they still have the sense of Justice God has put in us. But it is only justice if we are the ones feeling unjustified. God sees it differently. James 1: 2-8 tells us a lot of things. You see, there is no passage in the Bible saying that the God to be God will do everything to keep you from problems, sadness, misfortunes, and tragedies. On the contrary, Jesus said, “in the world, you will have tribulation”. James teaches something mor...