Once Upon a Faith Pt. 2

Episode 22; Emma has eyes opened by faith. The message of True Love defeating all curses rings in her ears, and throughout the episode... and I can't help but think: God's Love is like this.

The truest form of Love. Caring for us before we are born (Psalm 139:13), while we do evil (Romans 5:6) and when we become his heirs (Matthew 7:9-11). He lived for us to know, died to be with us forever and came back to Love us all over again. His Love breaks any curse (sin) that holds sway over our lives, any difficult path we must follow to stay on his path (temptation) His Love makes everything right and new again ().

Just as the true Loves kiss Snow White received brought her new and happy life; so does following Christ in everything that we do. So does caring for God as our first Love (Jeremiah 2:2) always will.

The Sin of Galadriel

Sin. Mine's the Love of Money. Everytime God and I go through this particular sin together all I can see is the scene in Lord of the Rings with Galadriel.

Frodo offers her the ring and she is tempted to take it. To rule with the power that it possess. In the middle of the scene we have Galadriel, flush with power and declaring that we would have a Queen, beautiful and trecherous as the sea. Just the idea of the power burns through her so much that she is momentarily transformed into the powerful Queen of Darkness that she would become upon the acceptance of the ring. In the end, she is able to deflect the temptation for ultimate power and go with her people.

Galadriel shows in those few scenes the way sin burns through all of us.

We give in to the particular ring of power that holds us down. Be it the ring of money, jealousy, lust, love of something more than God, immodesty, pride. We can be glad {Matthew 5:12} just as Galadriel is, because not only is there always a way out of that temptation {1 Corinthians 10:13}; it matures us and moves us on to the next land of plenty and peace that awaits us.

Sticking Together

I've recently been sick. As a result, I have been firing up the good old Netflix and watching Star Trek: The Next Generation while fighting sleep and and my fever. I was watching The Naked Now {Season 1 Episode 4} when something Jean Luc Picard said struck me as something you find all throughout the New Testament. Here is what he said:

"I put it to you all; I think we shall end up with a fine crew. If, we avoid temptation."

You can see many of the concepts in The Bible presented in his show. The one that is present in this episode follows along with the ideas found in Mark 14:38 and Luke 22:40; "Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak." Reading 1 Corinthians 12:20-25 you can see as Christians we are the crew of the Enterprise. We are all on a mission to boldly go where no one has gone before, to seek out a new life with Christ. Every Christian around you is your ship mate on the same mission; using our jobs in either command, engineering, counseling, security, or sciences to support each other. In this episode the crew of the Enterprise got out of their drunken haze with focus and the knowledge that what they were doing would save everyone from falling from the same fate as some. In the end they had to stick together and find the way out of their temptations. Just like 1 Corinthians 10:13 says, "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. " Christ is here to support us through out temptation, to make sure we don't give in, to be sure we see the way out and run to it.