Heart Hope by Olga

Overheard in the office last week was: “She’s not speaking to me…I don’t know why she is mad at me.” Both women are church attendees, which makes it even worse in my opinion. How does it look to the outside world if Christians can’t get along with one another? I have never understood why two people would stop talking to each other. If you have a problem with someone, can’t you just work it out?  If someone were to stop talking to me, I would at least make an effort to see if I had done something to cause them harm or to upset them and then try to make amends. And I don’t think I have ever gotten mad enough at someone to keep me silent for more than a few minutes.  Maybe it comes from my grandfather teaching his granddaughters that we were not to let the sun go down on our anger (Ephesians 4:26). While walking down the office corridor after hearing the comment, I began wondering what it would be like if God acted that way towards us.   It might look something like th...

The week started with a celebration; Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem riding on a donkey. People were so excited that they took off their cloaks and laid them on the road along with branches so that He could pass in honor. They even shouted praises of “Hosanna” to Him which means save in Hebrew and “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” The entire city was stirred wondering who this man was that deserved such acclaim, but within a week He had been killed. What went wrong? How could God have allowed this to happen? In reality God had His perfect plan in place and this included the cruel murder of His Son. In fact it was the very reason that Jesus left His home in heaven and gave up His rights as God. He knew that He was coming to pay for my sins and it would involve some horrific experiences. On the last night of His life, Jesus shared a meal with His twelve best friends and told them how they would celebrate His life in the future—the bread was His body broken for us ...

While watching the Today Show a couple of weeks ago, I was fascinated by one of the guests, Michelle Philpots. This young woman lost her short term memory due to a couple of head injuries that she suffered from vehicular accidents and since 1994 has not been able to remember the events of the previous day. She is living in a real life “Groundhog Day” situation with no chance of waking up from it. She can participate in everyday activities, such as driving a car and carrying on a conversation, but she does not recall the social memories--the interactions that she has with other people. This situation must be terribly frustrating for her and her husband, who knew Michelle before the accidents and memory loss, but married her even when he knew she would not be able to remember their life together. Now I would never wish to lose my memory or want it to happen to anyone else, but I do think that there are things we can learn from Michelle’s experience. If we could train ourselves to erase t...