The very concept of “the weekend” is unbiblical. It turns Sunday into a second Saturday. Home Depot may gain, but we lose. It turns Sunday into the day we catch up on the stuff we were too lazy or disorganized to do on Saturday. It also turns Sunday into a day to ramp up for work or school on Monday. It hollows out not only Sunday but our whole week, because it marginalizes God and church and sermons and all the other vital things that happen in our lives only when we make the vital things also the central things. If we accept the world’s concept of “the weekend,” we inevitably end up “fitting God in” rather than centering the practical reality of our every week around Him. We trivialize Him, even as we allow secondary things to hijack the sacred place of centrality, we live soul-exhausted lives, and then we wonder why God isn’t more real to us, why church isn’t “working” for us, why we’re grumpy, and so forth.
Ray Ortlund

RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES BAN SALVATION ARMY

RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES BAN SALVATION ARMY

by Glen on 2001-01-13 11:10:23

The BBC reported: “The authorities in Moscow have refused to re-register the Salvation Army, claiming it to be a dangerous group.

The ban has
fuelled fears that religious freedom in Russia may be in danger, as the Russian Orthodox Church tries to assert its influence across the country. They
may feed the hungry and care for the sick, but to Moscow’s Department of Justice, the Salvation Army is nothing more than a violent paramilitary
group out to destroy the Russian state. The officials’ refusal to re-register it is strange, really. After all, since 1992, when the Salvation Army set up in
Moscow, it has provided humanitarian aid for nearly 900 different city organisations – everything from churches to prisons, hospitals to orphanages”

A government that is not “by the people and for the people” will destroy/ban anything that threatens it, regardless of how much the people and their rights are harmed.