gifts added to insult

9/20/06
1258pm
But others made fun of the believers, saying "these people are drunk" ~acts 2:13

Its odd to think of faith as a cross even though Jesus said it would be. He promised us great affliction great struggle and our own crosses.

He promised pain where other faiths promise escape.

If they insult you, remember they did it to me first (paraphrase of some gospel).

Insults. We're to expect them and embrace them as the Fool embraced and kissed His cross.

But how hard it truly is to embrace something our dignity rejects, and that our sense of rights, our feelings of justice finds utterly detestable.

Especially when it comes from the very place He said it would, from the faithful (they will persecute you in my name). Perhaps instinctually one wants to assume that it is only "in name" and not "in reality" that they persecute us in His name, but perhaps our instinct is wrong! Perhaps it is just as he said "in my name", for is it not so that all things come from God?

And that is precisely where the persecution and insults of true believers are clearly seen as gifts, truly great gifts of humiliations.
113pm