the_carrying_of_john – We Love God!

Envy is not a synonym for jealousy. Synonyms can be used interchangeably; envy and jealousy can’t. If you don’t believe me, try substituting the word “envious” for “jealous” in the phrase: “For I the Lord your God am a jealous God.” Jealousy is possessive and protective; it can be good or bad. God’s jealousy – His possessiveness of His people – is a good thing; it protects us from being plucked out of His hand.

Carol Ruvolo

The most fundamental task of a mother and father is to show God to the children. Children know their parents before they know God. This is a huge responsibility and should cause every parent to be desperate for God-like transformation. The children will have years of exposure to what the universe is like before they know there is a universe. They will experience the kind of authority there is in the universe and the kind of justice there is in the universe and the kind of love there is in the universe before they meet the God of authority and justice and love who created and rules the universe. Children are absorbing from dad his strength and leadership and protection and justice and love; and they are absorbing from mom her care and nurture and warmth and intimacy and justice and love – and, of course, all these overlap.

John Piper

Shredded flesh against unforgiving wood, iron stakes pounded through bone and wracked nerves, joints wrenched out of socket by the sheer dead weight of the body, public humiliation before the eyes of family, friends, and the world – that was death on the cross, “the infamous stake” as the Romans called it, “the barren wood,” the maxima mala crux. Or as the Greeks spat it out, the stauros. No wonder no one talked about it. No wonder parents hid their children’s eyes from it. The stauros was a loathsome thing, and the one who died on it was loathsome too, a vile criminal whose only use was to hang there as a putrid, decaying warning to anyone else who might follow his example. That is how Jesus died.

Greg Gilbert