Looking for treasure? Sarah Young

As you sit quietly in My Presence, let Me fill your heart and mind with thankfulness.

This is the most direct way to achieve a thankful stance.

If your mind needs a focal point, gaze at My Love poured out for you at the cross.

Remember that nothing in heaven or earth can separate you from that Love (Romans 8:38-39).

This remembrance builds a foundation of gratitude in you, a foundation that circumstances cannot shake.

As you go through this day, look for tiny treasures strategically placed along the way.

I lovingly go before you and plant little pleasures to brighten your day.

Look carefully for them, and pluck them one by one.

When you reach the end of the day, you will have gathered a lovely bouquet.

Offer it up to me with a grateful heart.

Receive My peace as you lie down to sleep, with thankful thoughts playing a lullaby in your mind.

You have filled my heart with greater joy than when  grain and new wine abound.

I will lie down and sleep in peace, for You alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety.

                   -- Psalm 4:7-8

From Sarah Young, Jesus Calling

May I have a refill, please?

The Bible talks a lot about cups -- the cup of God's wrath, mostly, throughout the Old Testament and several times in John's Revelation; and then in Jeremiah, the cup of consolation, which will not be offered to the disobedient.

But in another passage I ran across a different cup -- in Psalm 116:

How can I repay the LORD

for all His goodness to me?

I will lift up the cup of salvation

and call on the name of the Lord.

--Psalm 116:12-13

I can't turn away from this...it is attached to my brain like an important sticky note.....

Does this mean we repay the LORD for His goodness by lifting our cup and asking for more?

Can that be? (That's what we usually lift our cups for...for refills...)

We give thanks to Him by asking Him to give us more?

More of His bounty? More of His presence? More of His abundant goodness? More of His water of life? More of His manna from heaven?

I guess it's because it speaks of our grateful hearts. And it shows our parched throats begging for His true living water.

It shows we are needy and desperate!

And where else can we go? For He has the eternal, never-ending supply of all that is good.

A man dying of thirst on the desert, when rescued, is told to drink small sips of water at first, and then he gulps down every drop, drains the cup, and holds it up for more.

And who, with water available, would deny him?

As the deer pants for streams of water,

so my soul pants for You, O God.

Psalm 42:1

This is my plan for today - I will drain that cup of blessings -- I will drain it dry -- to the very bottom of the cup -- thanking God each moment for His goodness - and then raise it up again and ask for more!

What a great way to live!

It's got to be the best deal in the universe - He gives me His presence and His presents .... I just say thanks and ask for more...how could anyone turn this down?

(It almost feels like cheating!)

Fill my cup, Lord, I lift it up Lord,

Come and quench this thirsting of my soul

Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more

Fill my cup, fill it up, and make me whole!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Just recently I has having lunch with my sister and two of her grandchildren. I noticed that about mid-way through the meal, the server approached our table to ask if we needed anything.

My six-year-old nephew held up his glass and politely asked, "Sir, may I have another Sprite, please?"

I was impressed, first of all with his politeness, and secondly, because of his confident, expectant attitude as he held up his glass, and thirdly, because he knew precisely who to ask....it was an example to me of the way we look to God -- with respect and reverence, with expectance and confidence, knowing He is the only one who can give us what we need and want!

Could I please have a re-fill?

Love Exercise - For Valentine's Day

Someone recommended this exercise to me. I don't do very well on it.


1 Corinthians 13


Love is patient
Love is kind
Love does not envy
Love does not boast
Love is not proud
Love is not rude
Love is not self-seeking
Love is not easily angered
Love keeps no record of wrongs
Love does not delight in evil
Love rejoices with the truth
Love always protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres
Love never fails


1st part of exercise...


Place Christ's name in each phrase......Christ is patient, Christ is kind, Christ does not envy.... etc.


So far, so good....all true...




2nd part of exercise..


Now place my (your)  name where Christ's name was....Results: I'm pretty good at hoping; in fact, I  am really quite proud of my hopeful non-cynical approach to life....so that should give me a few points..(otherwise I have a big fat zero)....but since I am proud of it, that will take away points, and that will then leave me in the minus column...


This "test on love" is not for wimps!


BUT.....for the good news!

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9.

Our Daily Bread - Part 4 - Kenneth Bailey

Concluding thoughts on

Give us this day our daily bread

From Kenneth Bailey in Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes....

"Fear of not having enough to eat can destroy a sense of well-being in the present and erode hope for the future. I am convinced that the Old Syriac is correct and at the heart of the Lord's Prayer Jesus teaches His disciples a prayer that means, 'Deliver us, O Lord, from the fear of not having enough to eat. Give us bread for today and with it give us confidence that tomorrow we will have enough.'"

There are more treasures in these words.

1. In this petition we ask for bread, not cake.

Consumerism and the kingdom of mammon and materialism have no voice in this prayer. We ask for what sustains life, not for the frilly extras.

2. We ask for ours, not mine.

Mother Teresa in Calcutta gives us this example:

I will never forget the night an old gentlemen came to our house and said that there was a family of eight

children and they had not eaten and could we do something for them.

So I took some rice and went there. The mother took the rice from my hands, then she divided it into two and went out. I could see the faces of the children shining with hunger. When she came back I asked her where she had gone.

She gave me a very simple answer: 'They are hungry also.' And 'they' were the family next door and she knew they were hungry also....she knew, in her suffering, that next door they were hungry also.

The woman might not have known the Lord's Prayer, but she understood that there was only our rice, and not my rice.

The prayer for our bread includes our neighbors. It is our Father and it is our bread.

3. Bread is a gift. The one who prays this prayer affirms that all bread comes as a gift. It is not a right and we have not crated it. All material possessions are on loan from their owner - the God who created matter itself. This perspective on the material world is critical for the joyful life portrayed in the Gospels.

Give us this day our daily bread

Our Daily Bread - Part 3 - Remarkable Solution

Another Look at Our Daily Bread - Part 3

Here's Kenneth Bailey's answer to the problem of the meaning of the phrase:

In the 19th century a copy of the Old Syriac version of the gospels was found. In fact, two copies were discovered, and one is now at the British Museum and the other is at Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai.

This was an important discovery. They date back to the second century. This version stopped being used

(and became known as the Old Syriac) in the 4th century when the Syriac community produced a new updated version known as the Peshitta. The Old Syriac disappeared from history until the remarkable discovery of two copies were found.

"This Old Syriac translation of the Gospels is probably the oldest and earliest translation of the Greek New Testament in any language."

Jesus Himself spoke Aramaic, and Syriac is closely related to Aramaic.

"Syriac Christians, as they translated the Gospels into Syriac, were therefore taking the words of Jesus out of Greek and returning them to a language very close to His native Aramaic. Most words are the same in these two languages and the Old Syriac translation of the Lord's prayer reads Lahmo ameno diyomo hab Ian (lit. 'Amen bread today give to us').

"Lahmo means 'bread.' Ameno has the same root as the word amen, and in Syriac ameno is an adjective that means 'lasting, never-ceasing, never-ending, or perpetual.'

"This Old Syriac means, therefore, 'Give us today the bread that doesn't run out.'

Is there a greater daily concern for people throughout history and throughout the world than the fear of economic deprivation?

Will we have enough for tomorrow? Will our food - money - run out? What if I lose my job and can't feed my family? What if I can't work? What if insurance runs out? How will we survive?

"One of the deepest and most crippling fears of the human spirit is the fear of not having enough to eat...

"Perhaps in the Lord's Prayer Jesus teaches His disciples to pray for release from that fear. To pray for bread without ceasing is to pray for deliverance from the existential angst that there will not be enough. This fear can destroy the human spirit."

If Jesus is teaching His disciples to pray 'Give us this day the bread that does not run out,' doesn't this meet the meaning of all of the four earlier interpretations of the phrase give us this day our daily bread?

I think so.

1. the bread of today (time)

2. the bread of tomorrow (time)

3. the bread sufficient to sustain us (amount)

4. the bread we need for well-being (amount)

The idea that we ask God to give us bread without ceasing covers all the options found in the early church.

Further treasures in give us this day our daily bread...see Part 4



Our Daily Bread - What I am Learning - Part 2

Part 2

Give us this day our daily bread.....

Conclusion of Part 1 ~~ Since the actual meaning of the Greek word epiousios, which English scholars have traditionally translated daily, is unknown, how do we resolve the problem of what daily bread means?

Here's what Kenneth Bailey suggests:

The early fathers of the church had two basic solutions to the mystery of this word's meaning, and each solution contained two alternatives.

Solution 1:...some early Christian writers suggested that this word referred to time. But what kind of time?

     1a. Some interpreted epiousios to refer to today.
That's how our English versions have translated it
and Cyril of Jerusalem in the 4th century, and others, held this view.

     1b. Some interpreted epiousios to refer to time, but to tomorrow, not to today. So their translation would be "Give us our bread of tomorrow." Latin scholar Jerome, who  said he had a Gospel of the Hebrews, written in Hebrew, endorsed this view.

This view works well with the story of the Hebrews in the wilderness and their gift of manna from God. And later it came to mean the bread we will eat with Messiah in the promised great banquet of all believers at the end of history. With this interpretation, the bread of tomorrow became the bread of the Lord's Supper.


Solution 2:...Other church leaders concluded that the phrase had nothing to do with time at all. It had to do with amount. So how much bread should we pray for? 

     2a. Some said the faithful should ask for just enough to stay alive, the bread of subsistence.

That is the way most Arabic-speaking Christians in the Middle East pray the Lord's Prayer today. Origen himself leaned toward this interpretation, as did Chrysostom, the great 4th-century Greek preacher of Antioch.


     2b. The Syriac Church of the Middle East agreed that epiousios has to do with amount, not time, but
opted to translate the word to mean the bread we need, not just the amount we need to stay alive.

This would mean that we might need just a small amount to stay alive, but for our sense of well-being we would be better off if we had some more in the pantry. This alternative is found in the 4th-century Syriac translation of the Gospels, call the "Peshitta."


So from no solution to understanding epiousios we now have four possibilities:

1. the bread of today (time)
2. the bread of tomorrow (time)
3. just enough bread to keep us alive (amount)
4. the bread we need (amount)


Since each of these ideas was found in the early church, how do we choose?




[I remember listening to a missionary to Korea many years ago. He had served in Korea following the Korean Conflict on the 1950's. His ministry was to the vast numbers of Korean orphans. He founded many orphanages for them, and, as a part of that great ministry, formed them into choirs and they toured the US for years as "The Korean Orphan Choir."

Anyway, I remember he said that they gathered up the children from the streets, brought them into the orphanages and fed them immediately. Most were literally starving to death.

The missionaries noticed that the children were still anxious, and slept poorly. They decided to give each child a small loaf of bread to clutch in their hands when they tucked them into bed each night. Holding that piece of bread was security for them-- they knew they had food for the next day -- and they began to sleep peacefully!]

A really remarkable answer - see Part 3

Our daily bread -- Kenneth Bailey -- Part 1 --What I am Learning

Give us this day our daily bread....

This petition is in the center of the prayer Jesus presented to His disciples when they asked Him to teach them how to pray.

The first three petitions relate to God....Holy be Your name....Thy Kingdom come...Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven....

The three following requests relate to man, and this first one is about daily bread.

The Jews had 18 daily prayers - they were called Amidah - standing prayers, because the Jews prayed them while standing.

These prayers existed while Jesus was living on the earth.

In the middle of the 18 prayers, number 9, is a petition that the year may be fruitful.

Bread is the staple food for the Middle East, and much of the world, and  symbolizes all the food we eat.

Give us this day our daily bread....

Interesting and provocative insights from Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, by Kenneth Bailey:

"But the word daily presents a problem. In English it is traditionally translated, "Give us this day our daily bread."  The phrase this day is clear. We are not asking for bread for next year or for retirement, but for "this day."

"The problem is with the word epiousios, which for centuries English versions have translated daily.

"The problem is that this particular word appears no where else in the Greek language.

"Origen, a famous Greek scholar of the early third century, wrote that he could not find this word in use among the Greeks, nor was it used by private individuals.

"The only way to discover the meaning of a word in any language is to see how it is used. But if a particular word appears only once in the entire history of that language, the translator has a special problem.


"...If in the third century Origen did not know what the word meant, what hope have we in the twenty-first century? Keep in mind that Origin lived in Alexandria, Egypt, which was one of the two great centers of Greek learning in the ancient world."


Is the problem unsolvable?

More in Part 2...

Joy Meets Joy - Sarah Young

When you seek My face, put aside all thoughts of anything else.

I am above all, as well as in all; your communion with Me transcends both time and circumstances.

Be prepared to be blessed bountifully by My Presence, for I am a God of unlimited abundance.

Open wide your heart and mind to receive more and more of Me.

When your joy in Me meets My joy in you, there are fireworks of heavenly ecstasy.

This is eternal life here and now -  a tiny foretaste of what awaits you in the life to come.

Now you see only a poor reflection as in a mirror, but then you will see face-to-face.

 -- From Jesus Calling, by Sarah Young



I have told you this so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  John 15:11

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 1 Corinthians 13:12