16 Nov. 2019
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Saving Abandoned Children
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
In the article Baby Abandoned at Dumpster After Birth Is Now CEO of Company Valued Over $62 Million, you'll find out about Freddie Figgers, a successful young Afro-American businessman whose birth mother abandoned him by a dumpster.
After he was rescued, Nathan and Betty Figgers adopted him, raised him well, and he developed amazing talents in computer and software skills: by age 15 he had his own business, and "before the age of 30 he had his own telecommunications company, Figgers Communications." You never know how someone who others think of as a piece of trash will turn out!
Several similar stories can be told about abandoned little boys in Kenya, Africa: the Ahadi Family Trust has rescued dozens and dozens of orphaned and abandoned boys, raising them in a loving family atmosphere - not in barrack-like dormitories, but four boys to a bedroom. They have personal sponsors in the U.S., get home-cooked meals, are enrolled in schools, and many have gone on to finish their university educations, find good jobs, get married and raise families. My sister Phyllis Masso and her Physics-PhD husband Jon founded Ahadi several years ago after Jon retired from American Optical as V.P. of Research. Jon passed away of heart failure in Kenya a few years ago, but Phyllis, now in her 70s, is still co-managing Ahadi.
In Ezekiel 16:2-6, we read a prophetic parable of how the Lord rescued Israel who had been abandoned at birth, not even the birthing-blood being washed away:
"Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: Your origin and your birth is of the land of the Canaanite; the Amorite was your father, and your mother was a Hittite. As for your birth, in the day you were born your navel was not cut, neither were you washed in water to cleanse you; you weren't salted at all, nor swaddled at all. No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you, to have compassion on you; but you were cast out in the open field, for that your person was abhorred, in the day that you were born. When I passed by you, and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you, Though you are in your blood, live; yes, I said to you, Though you are in your blood, live."
Even though the Lord rescued Israel and made her His own bride, she became unfaithful to Him. Chapter 23 continues this parable of how Jerusalem and Samaria, capitals of Judah and Israel after the split into the southern and northern kingdoms, fell into spiritual prostitution by worshiping the idols of surrounding nations, being drawn in by their military prowess and their economic attractions. As I wrote above, you never know how someone who others think of as a piece of trash will turn out ~~ some turn out amazingly well, others, well, are a disappointment, to put it mildly!
But the story doesn't end there: the prophets of Israel foretold that a Messiah would come. He would set things straight and deliver Israel from her oppressions ~~ which were not, as it turned out, merely external, foreign military oppressors, but rather Israel's own inner transgressions that brought on those oppressions.
The Apostle John wrote in ch. 1:10-11 of his Gospel - "He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world didn't recognize Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own didn't receive Him." Jesus the Messiah first sent His disciples to proclaim the Kingdom to the Jews ~~ but the reception was often lukewarm. Then, in ch. 4, we read how He took His disciples through Samaria, which by that time had become half-pagan/half-Jewish, so the "true Jews" rejected them as worse that ordinary Gentiles. Being tired from the journey, Jesus sat down by the well, then a woman came with a big clay jug to draw some water. Jesus asked her for a drink -
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"The Samaritan woman therefore said to him, 'How is it that you, being a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?' (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, 'If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, "Give me a drink," you would have asked him, and He would have given you living water.' The woman said to Him, 'Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. From where then do You have that living water? Are You greater than our father, Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, as did his sons, and his cattle?'
Jesus answered her, 'Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.' The woman said to Him, 'Sir, give me this water, so that I don't get thirsty, neither come all the way here to draw.' Jesus said to her, 'Go, call your husband, and come here.' The woman answered, 'I have no husband.' Jesus said to her, 'You said well, "I have no husband," for you have had five husbands; and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.' The woman said to Him, 'Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.'" (John 4:9-20)
Do you see what's going on here? Jesus, the Messiah, the Deliverer, isn't merely delivering Israel from her Roman oppressors: He is delivering Israel and Samaria from their internal oppressions of sin! Not like Ezekiel who condemned Israel and Samaria for their spiritual prostitutions, selling themselves too cheap to the surrounding idolatrous nations; Jesus gently drew this loose woman into dialog with Himself to the point where she said -
"'I know that Messiah is coming,' (He who is called Christ). 'When he has come, he will declare to us all things.' Jesus said to her, 'I am He, the One who is speaking to you.' At this, His disciples came. They marveled that He was speaking with a woman; yet no one said, 'What are You looking for?' or, 'Why are You speaking with her?' So the woman left her water pot, and went away into the city, and said to the people, 'Come, see a Man who told me everything that I did. Can this be the Messiah?'" (verses 25-29).
The lights went on! She recognized Jesus as the Messiah! This passage, BTW (by the way), is the longest dialog of Jesus in the New Testament ~~ and with a prostitute, at that! The Ancient Church tells us that this woman, a former prostitute, became a disciple of Jesus and is known as St. Photini (Light).
In another passage of John's Gospel, when Jesus was teaching in the Temple, the Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in the very act of adultery. They reminded Him that the Law of Moses required that an adultress should be stoned to death, and asked Him what He would do. He replied -
"'He who is without sin among you, let him throw the first stone at her.' Again He stooped down, and with His finger wrote on the ground. They, when they heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning from the oldest, even to the last. Jesus was left alone with the woman where she was, in the middle. Jesus, standing up, saw her and said, 'Woman, where are your accusers? Did no one condemn you?' She said, 'No one, Lord.' Jesus said, 'Neither do I condemn you. Go your way. From now on, sin no more'" (John 8:7b-11).
Note carefully that Jesus doesn't condemn, nor does He ignore or excuse sin; rather, He forgives sin. He doesn't say, "Go and sin some more"; rather, He says, "Go and sin no more."
Finally, when the Apostle John tells us about Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday (John 12:12-15), he relates how the day before, six days before the Passover, Mary, the sister of Lazarus whom Jesus had raised from the dead, anointing Him with "ointment of pure nard, very precious" (verse 3). Mary and Martha were beloved disciples of Jesus. Matthew 26:6-7 and Mark 14:3 tell us the same story, saying it was in the house of Simon the Pharisee. But in Luke 7:36-50, the woman who anointed Jesus' feet with ointment in the house of Simon the Pharisee is called "a sinner" - most likely a prostitute. TBH (to be honest), although some Bible scholars deny that a prostitute could be the same woman as Mary the sister of Martha, the disciples of Jesus, IMHO (in my humble opinion) most of the details line up. So here's the third prostitute whom Jesus forgave and who became a disciple of Jesus!
What we have here, then, is the Lord God of heaven and earth Who came down to our level, not to judge us, but to take on human flesh and be tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. Still, He sympathizes with our weaknesses to such a great extent that He laid down His life to wash away our sins by taking them on Himself, dying for us on the Cross, rising again for our salvation, and sending the Holy Spirit for our sanctification and deification: "~~ by which He has granted to us His exceedingly great and precious promises; that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by lust" (2 Peter 1:4).
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
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(11 Nov.) The Orthodox Church of Ukraine is now the only public institution linking Crimea to Ukraine. But under pressure from the authorities, it’s losing parishes, priests and its property. "The Ukrainian Schismatic Church", "The Phantom of the Kyiv Patriarchate", "The so-called 'New Church' of Ukraine" – in the wake of Ukraine's Orthodox Church declaring autonomy in 2019, this is how Crimea's leading media outlets describe the Church's branch on the peninsula.
(14 Nov.) An Almaty court has jailed three pastors in absentia for between four and five years in a case described by one human rights defender as "complete drivel." New Life Church has been told its problems will end if it pays money to officials or collaborates with the secret police.
(14 Nov.) Today, a meeting of the permanent round table "Religion and power in Ukraine: problems of relations" was held in Kyiv, which is organized by the Razumkov Center and the Representation of Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Ukraine. The theme of this meeting: "State and Church in Ukraine-2019: results of the year and prospects for the development of relations." The focus of attention was a large-scale sociological study conducted by the Razumkov Foundation.
(14 Nov.) Young people's lack of awareness of religious traditions makes it possible for extremists to spread their ideas among young people, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia said at the opening ceremony of the 2nd Baku Summit of World Religious Leaders on Thursday.
(25 Oct.) In summer 1909, the Russian chemist and photographer Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky conducted an extensive expedition along the Mariinsky Waterway System linking St. Petersburg with the Volga River basin. The first major component of the system was the Mariinsky Canal, which connected the Vytegra River, which flows into Lake Onega toward St. Petersburg, and the Kovzha River, which flows south into White Lake.
(16 Nov.) The Patriarchate of Alexandria, which holds second place after the Ecumenical Patriarchate in diptychs, has officially recognized the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine as Patriarch Theodore II remembered in prayer Metropolitan Epiphanius of Kyiv and All Ukraine.
