One thing that surprised me and at the same time pleased me about the March in DC was the large number of the youth that turned up. It is nice when we old fogeys march but the message that thousands of young people sends in staggering! We are raising a culture now that will not support abortion. I hope and pray that they will never have an abortion. That is how we change the culture.
We change the culture by preaching what the church teach no matter if it is in vogue or not. The church is not politically correct in fact we are the opposite. As Orthodox we say that we preach the true faith, well let’s start doing just that.
In the Gospel for today we read about Zaccheus going up the tree. We went up the tree so he could see Jesus and low and behold Jesus saw him. Our life in the church is the same. We cannot see Jesus is we stay in the same place doing the same thing. We need to climb a tree, go out on a limb and be seen. This is not an easy thing to do for many people. Most of us just want to be part of the crowd and not stand out. That’s fine and we need people like you as well not all of us are called to activism.
But there are trees that you can climb and help to make a difference. Climb the tree of prayer and climb this tree everyday. Zaccheus had a conversation with Jesus, he looked in Jesus eyes and Jesus looked in his. Talk to Jesus don’t just sit and recite all of the prayers that we think we are supposed to say, just have a conversation. And part of that conversation is listening.
Climb the tree of Scripture. Like prayer we need to be people of the book. We need to immerse ourselves in God’s Holy Word and understand and apply it to our lives. Scripture is an important part of our lives as Orthodox and we need to get into it more.
Climb the tree of learning. Get informed and make others informed. Read, read, and then read again. Write letters to the editor and begin, ever so slowly to educate people. We did not get here overnight and we will not get out of this pit overnight.
Remember Sanctity of Life means more than just opposing abortion it is the whole rang of things from the womb to the tomb from conception to natural death.
Here we are 25 days into the New Year. There is still time for resolutions. Let’s make a resolution that we will climb a tree this year and make a difference.
the teens you saw at the march were followers of a religion. they have morals ,values, family and faith.unfortunitly there are many teens who have none of the above and those are the ones with the problem. many of these teens have very little family interaction and are raising them selves by way of their friends.its not the churched
who are in need of help its the unchurched.We have a new president in office who wants to expand the abotian laws and has already signed into law,the other day, a bill that lets money being sent to other countries be used to help fund abotions.so now what?linda
The problem with torture is that is has been found to be unreliable and more often then not testimony obtained by torture is thrown out of court and cannot be used in the prosecution of the accused.
It is interesting that you are assuming that terrorist detainees will be subject to criminal trials. (At least I think that is your assumption, correct me if I am wrong. The mistake President Clinton made, which directly led to 911 was to treat terrorism as a law enforcement matter. It appears that President Obama is heading in that direction, and a bit scary that he won’t tell us that.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the 911 mastermind, was one of three detainees waterboarded. As a result he gave up information that saved thousands of American lives. Under the calculation that “torture doesn’t work” can we now conclude that waterboarding is not torture? If not, will you agree that it works at least a third of the time?
What next you ask? We change the culture, one person at a time.
i’m with you on changing the culture one at a time.Change on a larger scale is not with in our grasp at present.linda