Looking eastward

  Text - Matt  4:1-11 The Gospel passage selected is famous and is the account about our Lord’s temptations in the wilderness. This occasion happened after the Theophany, at His baptism, and then the Holy Spirit led our Lord Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  Now, this is a familiar passage, we must remember that our Lord was fasting 40 days and 40 nights after which He became hungry, and it was then that the tempter came to tempt Him.  Temptations come when we're vulnerable - The Lord Jesus was tempted when He was hungry. St. Peter reminds us that our adversary the devil is like a roaring lion, seeking to devour (1 Peter 5:8). He will seek to tempt us when we are vulnerable. That means, it is when we are frustrated, angry or deprived of certain things we long for, that we will be tempted. And that is the most dangerous time. So let us be sober, as St. Peter reminds us always, watching and praying without ceasing, as our Lord Jesus said, that ...

  Text :  Ephesians 1:3-14 The chosen text - Ephesians 1:3-14 – deals with the work of the Holy Trinity in our salvation. In the beginning itself, the blessed St. Paul talks about the joyful privilege we have been given with as the children of God - " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ."    Indeed, God has blessed us so much, and hence the Christian life is a response to God’s initiative, especially that of the Father but also that of the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. The heavenly places talked about here, are the presence of Christ and the Holy Spirit within us, which are experienced in Christ, that is when one is joined with Christ in baptism. This is the born-again life, the eternal life that we experience in the present because the Kingdom of God is now within us. Because this is a lifestyle that can only be experienced rather than describe...

Psalm 91 is one of the most comforting of all the psalms. My parents had me memorize the same when we were kids, and I would recommend that all Christian parents do the same for their children. It is a powerful psalm that talks about how God protects His people from all dangers, just like a mother hen protects her chicks under her wings.  Anybody casually reading this psalm in modern times may feel disconnected from the verses. After all, a lot of the terms used are connected to ancient times - fowler's snare, arrows, pestilence etc. But when you read the psalm in its entirety, you will understand that this is a psalm of praise - from one who has experienced God's complete protection from all harm - war, enemies, opponents, diseases, wild animals and all other kinds of things that can cause us hurt. If you've seen the 'Final Destination' series of movies, you will understand that we can experience calamities at any moment in time from a multitude of factors, even as...

Selected Text for Meditation - Isaiah 49:7-13 Many times life is filled with ups and downs. Now, while we’re quite happy about those up times, those down times are what we dread because they seem to go on for forever, especially when we are in the midst of them. But years later when we look back on them, we realize that they don’t seem so bad now in retrospect. We sometimes wonder as the purpose of those bad times. Why does God allow us to go through difficult times? When we search the Scriptures for answers, we often find that these times do have a purpose. Sometimes God allows them so that we will learn lessons and become stronger, and sometimes these are a punishment for our sins. And the Israelites knew this well because they had faced these down times so many times.   But we must remember that God doesn’t punish His people for punishment’s sake. He does it so that His people, His beloved children can be restored. And that’s what we see in the many of the prophetic books – ...