It is always nice to find people on the net who are influenced by Jesus Christ, the sent of God.
Throughout our lives, we are often first guided by things we think are important, but are not so important in our own right. It is only later in life that many learn to see the true facts of things and begin to understand that they are better to follow the master storyteller from Nazareth.
In addition to the teachings of that Jewish NazareneteacherJeshuaben Josef, better known as Jesus Christ, the teachings of his heavenly father are even more essential. But with that teaching and with that Heavenly Father, many people still struggle in this world. Fortunately, for us there is that son of God who shows us the way to his Father. If we listen to him carefully and think further about what he said at the beginning of our era, we will be able to grow further and really change in the right sense.
Lots of people may find work to be a curse. But work should not at all be a curse. Everything you do in life you should do with pleasure. Though we do agree that for the present generation that is not easy at all.
In the beginning, God created also work. Lots of people seem to forget that or do notice it. One of the first things we learn about how God made us is that he designed us for work.
“Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28),
God said. And just so we didn’t miss his point, the author tells us,
“Jehovah, The Lord God, took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (Gen. 2:15).
That we have to take care of the earth, most people have forgotten. They mostly misuse the earth. These days and in the coming years, we shall feel the consequences of how man mistreated mother earth.
Throughout the Scriptures we can read how people treated their surroundings.
God shows us that work is part of His perfect design for our lives and the Bible tells us that one day we shall be able to find the restored paradise.
In fact, work is as much of a basic human need as food, beauty, rest, and friendship. Sociological studies show that without meaningful work, people suffer emotionally, physically, and spiritually. The loss of work is harmful to us because God specifically designed us for work.
Our work helps us discover part of what it means to be a human made in the image of God. It also helps us understand our own abilities and gifts. Working also allows us to feel useful and get satisfaction for those things we manage to achieve. Moreover, work is one of the main ways that God uses us to bless other people. He designed the world so that our work benefits others.
If you think of all the things you own and use — from toothpaste to highways to clothing stores — you will see that you have been immensely blessed through the work of countless people. Work is such a wonderful thing!
But we can safely admit that a large majority of people are not so happy with the work they do. Work doesn’t always feel good.
In fact, polls show that seven out of ten people “hate” or “strongly dislike” their jobs.
Why is that?
Why do so many of us despise what God created us to do, and which God uses to bless the world?
You probably already know the answer. The problem is not with work, but with us, human beings. We are sinful, which is not just a description of our guilt before God. To say that we are sinful also means that our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions are backwards, upside-down, twisted, polluted, and every other word we might use to say that our hearts and minds and souls and bodies are just plain broken. We can find people on this earth who misuse other people or let other people work for them, those doing all the work not gaining as much as the one who let the others work. In many companies, there is inequality between employers and workers. A lot of people are exploited and have to work at a pittance while the employer manages to line his pockets with the much-earned money on the backs of those workers.
On May 1, Labour Day, those relationships between employer and employee are discussed in many places. It is a day to think about the work that does need to be done.
Each of us bears responsibility for the work that belongs on this globe. Provision must be made that everyone can eat and sleep well, but that none of this happens by overburdening nature, through overfishing or overhunting, for example.
If everyone showed respect to the person, plant and animal around him or her, there would be no reason at all to be displeased for what one can do to advance the other as well as oneself.
Each time that our jobs seem stressful, difficult, taxing, boring, un-fun, hard, etc., we ought to remember why this is the case. How was it possible that it could come so far. Who or what is the cause of the burden of work.
For those who misuse other people, we should talk to them and try to bring them to other ideas.
If we know that goods are produced under poor conditions or made by child labour and/or at too low a wage, we should certainly not buy them in order to stop exploitation. As long as consumers choose the cheapest goods, they contribute to the exploitation of people and make themselves sinful according to the Laws of God.
We ourselves when we look for work, we must always check whether the work is responsible and whether the employer also gives his workforce the necessary respect. Someone who cannot show appreciation for the people who help him earn a living is not worth being helped. So, it is up to us first and foremost to do the right work so that we can make or accomplish worthy things under worthy conditions.
It is also notable how certain people have started to shift emphases in their lives. By focusing largely on accumulating as much material gain as possible, they have lost sight of the real values of life. As a result, work can sometimes be harder than it should be. Their materialism then kills them.
We should remember that no honest job is too hard, too insignificant, or too boring if done for the glory of God and for serving His son. That is why Paul exhorts us,
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving” (Col. 3:23-24).
Regularly, some body technique is promoted. Since the 1980s, techniques have thus passed where the utmost of the body was demanded, while other techniques focused on just a few parts of the body. In addition, yoga techniques have come and gone only to reappear in a different form.
In recent years, many even went so far as to make exercise an essential part of their lives or even came to adhere to a body cult. Thus, in the early 21st century, a kind of new religion or body cult began to replace traditional religions.
People wished to feel good in their skin and were willing to go very far in this and even invest a lot of time, energy and money in it. But there were also many who actually wished to distance themselves from money and matter. For them, materialism was the enemy of our society and dependence on the matter was reprehensible and one had to train the mind to become master of the body again, through appropriate exercises on both spiritual and physical fleets. Several people were convinced that all facts (including facts about the human mind and will and the course of human history) are causally dependent upon physical processes, or even reducible to them.
Fitness, a United States-based women’s magazine, focusing on health, exercise, and nutrition, launched in 1992.
As we entered this century, a lot of health mags found the publishing market while only fitness magazines left the magazine shelves. Though there appeared men’s and women’s magazines which also centred largely on well-being, body form, exercise, nutrition, health, and beauty. For a while, wellness was the fashion word. Lots of magazines presented several adverts for wellness farms and all sorts of wellness programs.
After all the years of hard, intense exercise with a lot of sweating, place was made for gentil exercises and feel good cures.
An aerobics class
All the brutal violence of the 80s with Aerobics, among others, now seems to have been pushed under the carpet for good. It has finally dawned on several people how bad such ‘good sweat and suffering’ programmes are bad for the body. It has taken several medics years to rid people of such techniques that do more harm than good.
However, a large part of the population has become aware that one has to take care of the heart and treat the body respectfully to know how to handle multiple things smoothly. One came to see that for doing cardio or cardio-respiratory exercise there is no need in such high intensity exercises but has to come to low-intensity enough that all carbohydrates are aerobically turned into energy via mitochondrial ATP production. Medium- to long-distance running or jogging, swimming, cycling, stair climbing and walking, have proven to be more effective and less damaging than the overpopular Jane Fonda Workout or Aerobics. The American actress, political activist, and former fashion model spawned imitators and sparked a boom of women’s exercise classes, opening the formerly male-dominated fitness industry to women, and establishing the celebrity-as-fitness-instructor model. The horrible “Feel the burn!”, became a common saying lots of people really started to believe, along with the proverb, “No pain, no gain.” The exercise motto that promises greater value rewards for the price of hard and even painful work, has been luckily now pushed in the corner. It is true that one has to put in the effort to achieve something and it is not all that simple. Effort is a must, but it should not be at the expense of a healthy body.
Something of a revelation to devotees of hard, intense exercise, Zone 2 is one of this year’s key fitness talking points. Influential US well-being podcasters such as the American neuroscientistAndrew Huberman and the Canadian-American physician Dr Peter Attia who focuses on the science of longevity, have been recommending Zone 2 to their many thousands of listeners.
In January 2021, Huberman started the “Huberman Lab Podcast”, focused on neuroscience and science-based tools.In those podcast s he gives attention to breathing/breathwork and the visual system influence the autonomic nervous system, stress, and other brain states, including sleep.
On his podcast Huberman said:
“Getting 180-200 minutes of Zone 2 cardio per week has enormous positive effects on longevity and general health.”
Stress, he says, is not just about the content of what we are reading or the images we are seeing. It is about how our eyes and breathing change in response to the world, as well as the cascades of events that follow. Both these bodily processes also offer us easy and accessible releases from stress. By doing body exercises the wrong way we build up negative stress.
If you need to run and catch your train, you want all the things that go along with stress to go pursue that train. But if the stress response is spontaneous or excessive, it can start to feel pathological.
In the previous decades those exuberant fitness programs won terrain because lots of women wanted to lose weight.
“Despite reaching epidemic proportions, obesity has been wandering in the wilderness of medical lexicon.”
says Attia.
It is striking and distressing to see how several fat people have been added in recent years. Notwithstanding so many fitness programmes and all kinds of diet items and drinks, obesity has increased enormously. (Today the definitions of overweight and obesity are based primarily on measures of height and weight—not morbidity.) Since obesity is often the on-ramp to cancer, heart disease and even Alzheimer’s, we sincerely need to do something against this worrying increase.
The prevalence of overweight and obesity varied across countries, across towns and cities within countries, and across populations of men and women. In China and Japan, for instance, the obesity rate for men and women was about 5 percent, but in some cities in China it had climbed to nearly 20 percent. In 2005 it was found that more than 70 percent of Mexican women were obese. WHO survey data released in 2010 revealed that more than half of the people living in countries in the Pacific Islands region were overweight, with some 80 percent of women in American Samoa found to be obese. {Encyc. Britannica}
The fattening population has everything to do with culture and lifestyle habits among which eating and exercise habits are the main ones.
People need to be aware that it is not about being physically engaged to the point of giving up. On the contrary, one should exercise in a balanced way and not overload the body. It comes down to finding the right balance.
Zone 2 training means exercising at a level of exertion where your body is working, but not very hard – at this level your body is able to use fat as fuel rather than carbohydrates. As you work harder and move up into Zone 3 and beyond you will switch to using carbohydrates, a quite different state in which your heart, lungs and muscles are under stress and will need time to recover. (You know this switch is happening when breathing becomes harder and you are gasping or panting.)
Thanks to its turbocharging effect on our cells’ mitochondria Zone 2 cardio exercises have a very positive effect on the metabolism, improving blood sugar levels and reducing insulin resistance.
The cardio is linked to lower rates of a whole raft of diseases including type 2 diabetes, dementia, stroke and heart disease.
Dr Richard Blagrove, senior lecturer in physiology at Loughborough University, says:
“In terms of both health and performance, Zone 2 training can be really advantageous. I don’t feel bad about getting on my stationary bike and reading a book for an hour.”
Yes, even in a simple and not too strenuous way, one can train their body and work on it. Of course, it is even better to get out now and then, say twice a week, to fully focus your mind on movement in, say, a beautiful green environment. Though such ‘biking’ can lay down an “aerobic base” before one goes training further and build to more intense modes of exercise for competition later in the year.
For the rest of us, Zone 2 can be transformative.
Blagrove points out.
Former professional cyclist and fitness coach at ATP Performance Andy Turner lost 24kg through this kind of movement.
“Zone 2 makes you better at utilising fats as a fuel source and it can help level out your blood sugar. Longer-duration aerobics work can sometimes be forgotten, now it’s all about time-efficient, 30-minute, High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).”
HIIT cannot be done every day without strain and risk. It can take 48 hours or more for your body to recover from a session and unsurprisingly this does not speed up as you grow older, whereas Zone 2 provides its many benefits in a sustainable way.
Zone 2 works best in a mix with some high-intensity training – three Zone 2 sessions a week with two HIIT blasts is a good mix.
Zone 2 is the place where your body is working, but not very hard. Technically this is 60-70 per cent of your maximum heart rate, but I would recommend an easier way, namely to check the Talk Test. If one trains properly and performs breathing correctly, one should be able to simply converse without getting out of breath. If you were to call someone during a Zone 2 workout, you should be able to use complex sentences, not just sentiments such as “Help!” or “Taxi!”.
I hope now some more people will put aside that wrong thought of having to suffer to have some successful training. One should not do penance for having sinned by going to a dinner or party. Physical exercise should never continue as a punishment. It should be an enjoyable activity so that it is also a liberating activity.
Always take of your body, because it is the only one you got.
For weeks now many people have found themselves bounded to just a few square metres of their living quarters.
In the lockdown many people found themselves obliged to find ways to keep themselves busy and not pulled down by isolation. In this world of exuberant consumerism and going out for relaxation and meeting people, we were bounded to the modern tools of the internet to have virtual contact with each other.
Everybody now got some weeks just for themselves, enabling each of us to reflect on their life, but also on the way our society goes on with her materialistic life.
It seems this virus is giving the world an opportunity to re-evaluate and change the way we live, work, produce, and distribute goods and services. Travel, work, food, and manufacturing may have to dramatically change.
By lockdown hearing nature to revive, hearing more the sound of singing birds and seeing more animals going around free in nature.
Let us think about new and better ways to continue our life in the future.
**
For thought
The key is how we respond to this new challenge.
“All over the world people are slowing down and reflecting.
All over the world people are looking at their neighbours in a new way.
All over the world, people are waking up to a new reality.
To how big we really are.
To how little control we really have.
To what really matters.
To Love.
So we pray and we remember that
Yes, there is fear, but there does not have to be hate.
Yes, there is isolation, but there does not have to be loneliness.
Yes, there is panic buying, but there does not have to be meanness.
Yes, there is sickness, but there does not have to be disease of the soul.
Yes, there is even death, but there can always be a rebirth of love.
Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now.
Today, breathe.
Listen, behind the factory noises of your panic.
The birds are singing again.
The sky is clearing,
Spring is coming,
And we are always encompassed by Love.
Open the windows of your soul and sing.”
-from Richard Hendrick (Brother Richard) in Ireland, March 13th, 2020
Human beings have grown away from nature and from the Divine Creator.
Their debauchery and carelessness about how to deal with the things before them are now killing them.
It has come so far that humans are to blame for the extinction of many beautiful creatures. According to a 2014 study, current extinction rates are 1,000 times higher than they would be if humans weren’t around.
Example of a significant historical pandemic: the Black Death, which originated in China and spread across Europe in the 14th century;
All through history we also can see when there were too many people able to destroy their environment, nature took charge and eliminated lots of people. In the past, there were many awful battles, wars taking the lives of many. After the Great War it did not seem yet enough. The influenza pandemic of 1918–19, also called Spanish influenza pandemic or Spanish flu, was the most severe influenza outbreak of the 20th century and, in terms of total numbers of deaths, among the most devastating pandemics in human history. It resulted in an estimated 25 million deaths, though some researchers have projected that it caused as many as 40–50 million deaths. Nothing compared to the Sars-CoV-1 infection. Sars and Ebola frightened many, but now the Sars-CoV-2 or CoViD-19 brings these 21st-century people also on their knees, fearing for their lives.
The influenza pandemic of 1918–19: temporary hospital A temporary hospital in Camp Funston, Kansas, during the 1918–19 influenza pandemic. Courtesy of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Washington, D.C
Today the majority of people have become so materialistic their first concerns is to protect the economy. Still, too many politicians dare to tell their citizens they should continue to go to work and have the factories working, not having to be so afraid to come close to each other. There are even politicians who do find more money should be spent on the economy instead of providing health workers with the necessary protection.
We can only hope this pandemic is going to awaken many and bringing many changes to how we shall go to work and move around.
Fundamental shifts in the way we interact and live, in our interpersonal and business relationships, in the way we treat our families, each other, and ourselves, shall have to take place.
A few months ago most people took not the time to think about their way of life and how mankind played with mother nature. Since many weren’t able to find the time to get to meditate about our way of living, along comes this virus, which certain politicians still do not take seriously enough to take the necessary protection measures.
Where there is a lockdown, people now can find time to come back to themselves. It does not seem to be easy for many, to be confronted with so much time for themselves. But they shall have to rethink their lifestyle at the moment. CoViD-19 gives us all the time we need, forcing us into this shift = a shift, in our consciousness, our way of thinking and living, of learning, and loving.
*
To remember
The guestwriter of today thinks the planet is trying to tell us something:
fundamental shift in way we interact + live > interpersonal + business relationships, way we treat our families, each other, + ourselves
use this time to think about what your hands can do that will benefit your better well-being + that of those around you.
things to tackle > free time => use it >> view less as isolation => more as a Roto-Rooter for the Soul =>work miracles in your life.
safe in your home = shelter-in-place => give thanks < homeless population > no shelter = among most vulnerable among us.
extra time
look at movies
do gardening
choose giving
Instead of loneliness > choose levity.
Stay connected.
Instead of solitude > institute “bring your dog or cat to work” day.
Enjoy the shorter commute.
Take time for walks.
Practice walking meditation > take some time to meditate on kind of world you would like to be living in when this is all over => first dream it into being
It’s been a hell of a few weeks and it looks like it will continue for a bit. At the risk of sounding both blasé and alarmist at once, I think the planet is trying to tell us something.
In the process, we have created so much pollution with our lifestyles that our climate has become inhospitable and our CO2 levels will reach critical mass in the next couple decades without a complete overhaul of how we do business.
We’ve gotten into an only money matters mentality, and the stock market’s precipitous weeks’ long plunge not only put a hurting on most people’s retirement funds but eroded faith in the economy. That event may keep us working longer…
Lots of our brethren and sisters do not dare to come in the open. Most Jeshuaists prefer to stay in the darkness of this world hidden. They are afraid of being discovered or unmasked as Jew or Jeshuaist.
Many of our friends wonder how we live life when the world seems to be spinning in ways we did not expect it to be and where so many are against other religious people. Many Jews in Belgium and France are afraid. Several already left these regions, because they did not find it safe any-more for their kids to grow up here, and remembering what happened to those who wanted to leave Europe in the 1930ies too late.
Perhaps we should go to the Scriptures to find some advice, for being able to cope with our fear.
The first chapter of the book of Habakkuk is essentially a long complaint followed by God’s response. It then continues with yet another complaint and another response from God. The book concludes with a prayer or a Psalm from Habakkuk. This book was written, proceeding the fall of Babylon, yet the date of composition of the book cannot be guaranteed just by perusing the book itself. Most likely, individuals who lived after the fall Babylonia in 539 BCE understood much of this book is a meditation on life in an unjust world. They wondered how to relate to God when nations “slays nations without pity,” and “seize homes not their own.”
Today we can see many places in the world where nations are slain. We can see that political leaders do not mind what happens to those living in their country. Some even not having a blush on their face when they use gas-bombs on areas where many innocent people (inclusive many children) live.
We find lots of places where there are people who say they fight in the name of Allah (= God) but do the most atrocious things one can think of. Often they say it is the suffering people their own fault, not trusting in the right god.
What do we do when individuals do not place their trust in God, and how can a pious person deal with this unwieldy situation?
God responds that the answer is clearly written on tablets, perhaps as described in the book of Deuteronomy.
“Lo, his spirit within him is puffed up, not upright, But the righteous man is rewarded with life For his fidelity.” (Habakkuk 2:4)
This verse, initially describes a person whose life is swollen with not good things and who lives a twisted or unjust life. Perhaps it is one full of deception or one full of egotism. It then moves to a pious person whose faith is in God even under the most dire circumstances. Even though they must live life where justice is delayed or denied, that time according to God will be short-lived. Habakkuk goes on to draw a parallel with Isaiah chapter 11:9, that there will be a time when everyone will know God…
Today sometimes it looks like we are living in a world where everything is permitted, as long as it is not a matter of religious expression. Then suddenly no religious symbols are allowed or persons are not allowed to wear what their religion demands. In several countries we can see demonic people offering themselves as the leader who shall make their nation great again. With the stroke of a pen those men think they themselves can play for god and decide what to do with other people and with other nations. Every occasion, be it even the national day they use for putting themselves in the picture and throwing hate words against others.
Today many people are confronted with difficulties to come around, not earning enough, but working hard enough to have not much time for the rest of the day. Several people in Europe are wondering and struggling, what can they could do to make this world a better place and to assure it to make Europe a safe haven for all sorts of people.
In a world of greed, where materialistic values often take first place, money or financial gain and pleasure have become the gods of today next to the many starlets and idols from entertainment and sports.
In this world today there seems not much place for integrity, the moral value that makes people the same on the inside as they are on the outside — with no discrepancy between what they say and what they do, between their walk and their talk. Many people around us prefer to wear a mask and present themselves differently on social media than they are in reality. that is also an important factor why so many in our community are so afraid to show themselves in public.
Though I believe we should not hide, but come out of our cocoon and show people that it might go different ánd better. The answer is that the most impact we will have is on those who surround us. It is their lives that we can make better. We can and should speak up when we see injustices, and we can remove blind spots by becoming more aware of the world around us and the systems that work in it – systemic poverty and racism for example. We need to focus our energies on walking in the footsteps of God as a community. The book of Habakkuk ends by saying:
“my Elohim Hashem Jehovah is my strength: he makes my feet like the deer’s and lets me stride upon the heights.” (Habakkuk 3:19).
You should know it is inside of us all that God is found and when we unite our hands together we can bring the divine into this world through our very actions.
Those who believe in God should join hands and show the world their unity. It may not always be easy to live our lives full of tackling difficult and challenging issues, but let those experiences cause ourselves to grow and become better individuals and communities more focused on God and assisting those around us.
Artists are the voice of or for society. They are the ones who look at things, analyse the situations and try to warn the people around them.
At 1:00pm on Tuesday, May 9, 2017 at Radio City Music Hall the New York City’s School of Visual Arts had activist and icon Gloria Steinem spokeeaking urgently on the state of the union at the College’s 41st annual commencement exercises.
On Tuesday, beginning around noon, a sea of buoyant figures in swirling red gowns descended on Rockefeller Center in New York City. Slowly disappearing into Radio City Music Hall, the some 1,170 students were gathering for commencement and graduation from the School of Visual Arts. In the auditorium, their robes billowed out over the velvet-red seats; the resulting camouflage effect seemed symbolically appropriate as a nod to their shared experience at SVA, in a last, unifying moment before they dispersed to start the next chapter of their lives.
Kicking off the program was a speech by Allison R. Schaller, soon to be an alumna with a BFA in Photography and Video.
“As artists, we can think up anything. But it’s the creating, the doing that’s important,”
Schaller said.
“We know many of the world’s problems, and largely the actions we need to take, it’s acting on that knowledge that’s challenging. But luckily for us, we now have a leg up, as we are armed with an education. Find a cause you believe in, find something you are great at, find a passion and make it yours. And please do so with empathy for others.”
SVA President David Rhodes spoke about how citizens in a democracy have an obligation to parse out the truths in the deluge of information circulating in public discourse.
Writer, lecturer, political activist, and feminist organizer Gloria Steinem when stepping up to the podium remembered that she grew up in Toledo,
” hoping, praying to be a Rockette.”
“I want to say to my 10-year-old self, I’m on the stage of Radio City Music Hall, and this is better!”
she declared to a cheering audience.
Addressing the students, Steinem implored them to realize their power as visual artists — namely, in their ability to appeal to sensations, even instincts, shared by all humans.
“To be universally understandable is to have the potential of bringing diverse people together, undivided by different languages or degree of education,”
she said.
The work that writers do, in contrast, takes shape internally, subject to the whims of consciousness, which are as fleeting as they are inscrutable, she implied.
“My joy in writing comes from having an idea and then from finally achieving it,”
she explained.
“But not so much from the tactical, visual and sensory processes in between.”
It was not lost on the room that Steinem’s calls for unity had uncommon urgency.
Women’s March in Washington – worldwide protest on January 21, 2017, to advocate legislation and policies regarding human rights and other issues, including women’s rights, immigration reform, healthcare reform, reproductive rights, the natural environment, LGBTQ rights, racial equality, freedom of religion, and workers’ rights.
“We are in a time of maximum change. On the one hand there is great danger, and I am not for a moment diminishing how great that danger is, and on the other hand, we are woke! I have never in my life seen so much organic, sustained, enthusiastic, inventive, created, and fan-f..cking-tastic activism as I did doing the March on Washington.”
I think we have come to a time where artists of all breed have to come out stronger again. It is perhaps not bad we can see a movement again like we had when we went on the barricades in 1968. Our egocentric capitalist society needs again some voices to bring awareness about climate change and our way to live.
Steinem looked back at the more recent march and said
“What we remember are the symbols, the hats! It’s a rebellion of the visual arts, the arts of the heart, the arts that are not limited by language, not limited by technology. There’s so much to be learned if you go beyond your boundaries and now is the time we need to blast those boundaries.”
Steinem called the graduates
“the arts of the heart,”
and cautioned them that from her experience, revolutionaries have to proceed in a way that will renew a world they want to be a part of.
“If you want to have fun and laughter and sex and poetry and music at the end of the revolution,”
she said, beaming at the cheering graduates and their families,
“You have to have fun and laughter and sex and poetry and music on the way.”
Reacting against the bad way our society is moving should not limit us to have fun at the same time that we react against the wrong going. By our creative work we can give criticism and can show a reflection of how our world is evolving, treating its past and showing where it wants to go. We need more artists who hold the mirror in front of us, like Rabirius does, for example.
Reflection to awaken the people around us. By all the social media and advertisements they have been taken asleep. So many are not any more interested in the welfare of animals and plants and think
“It will not be so bad”
Many like the present president of the U.S.A. are not interested in bringing the truth and are more concerned about their own positioning and ‘shining’ in the world. Many are even prepared to walk over corpses if necessary to create a better position for themselves. Others are just happy when they have their gadgets and daily fun.
Today we also can see lots of people are looking for the communal fun, to feel the vibration of togetherness, having the idea they may be between like minded people. Lots of festivals are “in”. It reminds me of the time we had also the many festivals, Woodstock being our ‘greatest one’. Now the Belgian organisers of ‘Tomorrow Land‘ manage to create a magic world and incredible worldwide feeling of unity again. They claim
We believe in enjoying life to the fullest without having to compromise everything. We are responsible for the generation of tomorrow and respect each other and Mother Nature. Respect, Health, Nature, Responsibility and Innovation are the five circles of Love Tomorrow. The Heart is the inner circle, representing passion, love and respect.
We can only hope that those who go and visit such Fantasy World festival shall come to think further their than the entrance gates of their magic world and shall rally spread that love and respect.
Let us hope they may meet others from all over the world to keep contact with and to exchange ideas, but also to get a preparedness to react to our present world and how politicians are screwing the people where they are standing next to them.
In any case it has become high time for the artists to let their political and world views be shown in their work again to bring a ‘voice to think’ again.
By the English daily newspapers we may find The Guardian which has an eye for the way human beings fit in the universe and how we can look at what is around us. They have in the week several themes looking at a certain aspect around building up the human being and about man’s relation with his environment.
For them it is necessary that man does something seriously to avoid climate change bringing us down. Without a balanced, comparative assessment of strategies to align energy use and industry with inescapable climate action, we won’t be able to choose the best possible future. Man also has to come to see how nature is an essential part making it possible for us to live nicely.
Stretching to a Full Harvest by Dan Frugalberg, talking about God Who tests us beyond our expectation but never beyond our strength.
Materialism in all its ghastly guises is pulling man down. To get them to better senses we need to show man the beauty of what is already there provided by the Divine Creator. We are pleased that there are also several bloggers on the net who appreciate what is around them and who do not want to keep it just for themselves but want to share it on their blogs which are available in a lot of countries. We can recommend a.o. Cindy Knoke, Dan Frugalberg, Pete Hillman, Mike Bizeau and Purple Rays (Jonathan Udo Ndah) who present regularly an insight on what nature has to offer to mankind. On the net several dreamers with some creativity in writing, who love nature and who are feeling very close to it, can be found. One such person who enjoys life and want to share his arts with each other brings the blog Magic nature poem. He recognises that we are are surrounded by energetic creatures and writes
Humans, animals, plants, earth, universe within planets, suns, stars, moons, everything.
We are all parts of something very big.
Everyone is a part of a very big energy.
We all seem to be seperate
But that is not true.
We are all connected by our energies.
A network consisting of our individual energies.
We fulfill the universe. {Energy #4}
While the world goes around and around we have to find our position in it, making sure that we are not pulled down by the ravishing electronic speed and pushing commercial consumer society, where people live in a world, which lives faster and faster. In that world we have to stand strong on our feet, with our mind focussing on the right things. In that hectic life we do have to find moments to enjoy nature, to watch colours changing, flowers growing, animals jumping or flying around.
It is for people who want to reach their dreams, their plans that such writers and photographers may bring something enlightening. On this site we can not bring many photographs because our funds our very limited (not to say non-existent) but we would love to recommend to enjoy watching the above mentioned sites and the links we regularly offer you (our readers).
Each year the media looks at the magnitude of photo’s made and newspapers and press agencies present their photographer of the year.
American photographer Tim Laman was named winner of the prestigious annual competition for his image Entwined Lives, showing a critically endangered Bornean orangutan in the Indonesian rainforest. The award is given for a story told in just six images, which are judged on their story-telling power as a whole as well as their individual quality.
Here you can view the winning images selected by the international jury. Wildlife Photographer of the Year champions ethical photography. Images are chosen for their artistic composition, technical innovation and truthful interpretation of the natural world > Gallery 2016
Adult and young awards
Browse the award-winning images from across the competition
Tim is a field biologist and wildlife photojournalist with a reputation for returning from the wild with shots of nearly impossible subjects. His pioneering research in the rainforest canopy led to a PhD from Harvard University and the first of many articles for National Geographic magazine. His work has garnered numerous awards, including many in Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
Gideon’s interest in nature began in his garden and soon spread to his local park and further afield. From the first moment he paid attention to nature, the natural world has never failed to amaze him. He hopes to have a future in conservation as a wildlife photographer to help raise awareness through photography.
Dear readers, for those who are new, we like to repeat our aims and about the idea behind our sharing.
Sharing Writings and linking
This website wants to bring an overview of interesting articles which were published on the worldwide internet and present some additional views on how we could come to a better world. Up until now we also wanted to bring additional literature in sight of our readers. For that reason we have, up until a few days ago, included several links into the articles, which opened automatically in a new window. But somehow WordPress changed the way to include url links and made it more difficult or time consuming, not allowing the enclosure feature to remember the previous used url codes and having each link to be separately indicated to open in a new window, instead of remembering it for all links on that page. This means we always have to look again for certain links and have to do much more work to include them. This makes writing our articles even more time consuming. For that reason we regret from a few days ago we did not include so many links any more and from today onwards you shall have to chose how to open the link. Until we do not find a solution to keep the fill in for the links remembering what we filled in previously, we shall have to limit such linking to tags and other articles than those of the particular website (in this instance From Guestwriter).
Secondly, we also received regularly complaints from people that we linked to their website or article and had to undo such links or write a letter first explaining why we included that link and asking what they wanted we did with it. Though most agreed then to have the link staying on the article, we had lost lots of energy writing back and controlling everything.
For that reason we are going to refer less to outside articles, but still use Zemanta for presenting some articles, but this time we are going to choose more those sites we do know and for other sites we are not always going to read them all, before placing the Zemanta link, and will withdraw them directly when a complaint or request for “why linking” is presented to us. (Simple as that.)
Now you know also why one or an other site shall be linked to more than others. Those who would also liked to be linked to, can always ask us to examine their website and to follow their writings, so that we can may have a choice out of their articles as well.
Authors sharing their writings
Concerning the writers on this platform, we still wait for more writers willing to share their ideas. Many who we have contacted wanted money to write or to help this site evolve.
We are very limited in funds and as such can not pay our staff. We also believe not everything has to be arranged by money. A money-free future is perhaps not possible, but lots of things could and should be done without money in the back of the head.
We still can do with people writing about the history of way of living, to show us how our lifestyle changed by the years of technological evolution. We also would love to find an author who want to talk about nature and show the world the beauty of it and/or can let our readers now what is important to look at at a certain moment in the year. (Parks to visit, special exhibitions, etc.)
A political and economical analyst is also welcome.
Because of our interest how human beings should try to make the best out of living with each other, we also could use some more writers who talk about keeping the family healthy, spiritually and health wise. Talks about marriage, brining up children are more than welcome.
Not everything for money
All That Money Wants (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We are convinced there are many benefits for not having everything in return for money. Most reasonable people will have no trouble accepting a money-free where people want to share with each other out of brotherly love. That will give better quality of life for all, less inequality, poverty, crime, greed, corruption, pollution and waste; greater health, education, trust, respect, awareness, sustainability, community values, technological advances, etc. Most people want these things, but are they convinced of the feasibility. How is a moneyless society possible?
I am convinced that there is a misconception about the need of money.
Imagining a world without money usually raises the following objections immediately, each of which is linked to a particular lifelong held belief (in brackets):
1. You need to have exchange (You can’t get something for nothing) 2. No-one would do anything (money motivates people) 3. People would take advantage (greed is human nature) 4. I will lose everything I have (fear of loss, ownership) 5. Chaos and violence would ensue (society requires control) 6. Society would stagnate or regress (markets fuel progress)
The good news is that all of these objections can be overturned quite easily using just plain common sense and basic observations.
Something for something or nothing for something
I do agree that most people want something for something else. For generations we people are brought up with that idea. Even worse, often people consider somebody not right in his head when he just wants to do something, not requiring anything in the place. Naturally we all need something to eat and we need a roof above our head, whilst we can not all have the same skill. Not everybody has enough competence to do the things he need. So we often are for many things dependent on others.
I am a believer in the Divine Creator and I am convinced He created all beings in His image and with the idea that all creatures are there for some good reason and to complement each other. Rabbi Jeshua, better known today as Jesus, reminded his listeners to look at the birds who have no money but manage to have their food and everything they need to live.
The master teacher and the prophets of God asked the people to look at nature where we can see what man came to call “symbiosys“. Everywhere in the creation of the Most High where man did not interfere there is balance. We can see that in nature two species benefit each other (the bee taking nectar while helping the plant to pollinate is the most obvious example), but there is no intentional transaction taking place. Both species are ignorant of the desires of the other. Some look at it as purely an accident of evolution that has caused both species to survive and flourish. In nature we can find many plants or animals which make use of each other, but not really demanding a return as such, and most of all not being repaid by something we can compare with money. We invented that idea of intentional exchanges as an essential ingredient to life or to community, to cope with scarcity in more primitive times, and with more complex needs.
Motivation by money not the best motivation
Serious Money (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The money / value system that we humans operate in has its origins in more primitive times, but which has now made us hell-bent on keeping score and accounting for everything in a numerical sense, and at the expense of common sense and sustainability. It is true that people are motivated by money, and that the communist system failed because of people being too egocentric and not willing to work together for a communal idea, building up a society where everybody could live on the same terms and being considered of equal value. We love to have a hierarchical system and I do agree somebody who is just lazy and does not want to co-operate in the system can not have the same advantages as somebody who works hard.
But like in nature those animals not having money, we as humans also do not nervelessly need a currency to provide payment, which proved not always to bring that luck hoped for.
We all have look at “Money” as a handy tool or a commodity accepted by general consent as a medium of economic exchange. In industrialized nations, portion of the national money supply, consisting of bank notes and government-issued paper money and coins, provides a value or currency. Everybody expects everything to be “prized” and expresses the value of things in currencies or in money. In the so called “third world” or among less developed societies, we can see that currency encompasses a wide diversity of items (e.g., livestock, stone carvings, tobacco) used as exchange media as well as signs of value or wealth.
Human motivators Better values
We should come to see and understand that there are much better values than money. Think about the many other human motivators:
the desire to love and be loved, to meet people, to have children, to help others, to improve ourselves and our surroundings, to look good, to feel good, to learn, to challenge ourselves, to express ourselves, to innovate, to demonstrate our skills, etc.
Every person alive is motivated by these desires to some degree. Because, after survival, these desires are what give our lives value and meaning.
Nature doesn’t keep score and why should we put everything in figures and balance it out to get even? Do you find it normal that people would seek exchange in their families or in their circles of friends? So why do we seek exchange in others? Among our loved ones, loving people shall tend to help each other out when they can and no-one will keep score.
Permitting exchanges between people having prices
Trying to get everything for yourself is not a natural instinct but a created attitude which can be transformed back to the innocent position we have a s a toddler. At the beginning of life the human being only asks and takes what it needs. Greed is not a basic element of human nature – it is even a deformed desire to stockpile something what the person may consider scarce and which he need to live, or a wrong attitude having come into the personality by the envy looking at others and comparing to others.
Like a squirrel collecting nuts, some may find greed makes good sense – because we don’t know what the future will bring. In a monetary world, the greatest scarcity is money itself, so it makes sense to accumulate it, and, since there is no upper limit to the money and property you can have, there’s no reason to stop accumulating it.
Map of the global distribution of economic and physical water scarcity as of 2006
Price systems may be considered the result of scarcity but for the first time in history, we have the technology to eradicate scarcity (or paucity) and to create an abundance of necessities for all humans on Earth with minimal physical effort. Primarily by coordinating the decisions of consumers, producers, and owners of productive resources people have taken refuge with their monetary system. Prices have become an acceptable expression of the consensus on the values of different things, and every society that permits exchanges between people has prices. Because prices are expressed in terms of a widely acceptable commodity, they permit a ready comparison of the comparative values of various commodities.
Machines to do the work of man
Normally we have enough technology to make work light for man. For lots of jobs the machines could do the work for man. What is going wrong today is that certain people, who do not do much work, can earn more than 300% than those who do the dirty work. And that is too much inequality. Such a difference should not exist. This way not having people being rightly paid according to what they do or which responsibility they take at a reasonable reward, prevents a nice way of living for everybody, as it intrinsically requires scarcity to perpetuate itself.
Ownership
Throughout history mankind has tried out several systems which all failed in a certain way. I as a Christian am convinced no human system can bring the right solution, but until the return of the Messiah we have to find ways to make life as smooth as possible and to have the creation in balance, not demanding too much of nature and not destroying so many things around us, which we have in loan and do not own. And there is the difficulty of it all, too many people think they “Own” and want to possess more. It is their fear of loosing what they “own” which makes them behave this way and often makes them blind for the way others (other humans, animals and plants) have to live.
The whole notion of ownership should be revised altogether.
We all need privacy and a certain amount of exclusivity, right?
Who wants to share their toothbrush, or have strangers walking around their home, for example?
Our normalised belief tells us that we define who uses what through something called ‘ownership’. Our laws define and protect ownership, with the threat of punishment to those who disobey (ie. stealing).
But where does this concept of ownership came from in the first place? Did we own nothing before someone wrote the law?
Given in loan
We think we own something and that the earth is ours. Believers in God do know that it is a gift from the Divine Creator and that we have received this earth in loan. It is not ours, it is God’s.
Growing up we make things our own. We create our personality. Growing up we collect certain things we consider our own. But we should know that once we die, the breath of life goes out of us, and we shall be nothing any-more with those treasures we collected. We can’t take those treasures with us in our grave, to an other life. It shall be of no purpose in our death. We shall just decay and become dust like many of those goods also shall become dust.
The point is that most things in the community belonged to no-one. Whatever items within the community that were not morally or logically entitled to anyone were used and shared by all.
So without ownership, what stops people from stealing? What actually stops people from stealing from each other is that it is anti-social, disrespectful and invasive, and people who do so are liable to become deeply unpopular. This social incentive for certain behaviour is far stronger than any rule could ever be, as it is dictated by how we feel about ourselves and our position in society. Yet we commonly mistake the rule of law as being the only thing that governs this behaviour.
Crimes, violence and Respect, privacy and exclusivity
Value for Money (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If we understand that respect, privacy and exclusivity are, in fact, already hard-wired into our social psyche – not dictated by external controlling forces – then we can begin to move beyond the traditional inefficient limits of ownership and with it, any fear of loss.
Throughout history we can see that it was the desire of power and the greed of certain people that brought misery to others. The last few moths I encountered many who said religion is the base of violence. When they would look closer at what really happened in history they would see that most criminal acts where done by non-religious people for political reasons and on second place or by people who used a religion as an excuse for their war of conquest. Today we see this by ISIS who present a similar war as the crusaders and do the same atrocities as the inquisitors a few centuries ago. Their killing had a duration of more than one century, whilst ISIS is only busy for a few years. Their terror is as abominable as the terror other terrorists bring. They bring fear and terror in the hope increasing their power. But most crime and violence is driven by desperation through lack of basic requirements for living, ie. theft, armed robbery, burglary, etc. and by having a low moral. Almost all other crimes can be seen as the secondary effects of poor upbringing. ie. where parents are poor, over-worked, unemployed, frustrated, depressed or disillusioned, etc. – all factors that can contribute to an unstable and unloving environment for children, who may later turn to crime as a result of low self esteem or maladjustment.
No incentive for crime
When you succeed into taking away the inequality and create a world where everyone will have free access to good food, housing, education and technology, it still won’t be perfect or eliminate all crime, but if everyone has a good quality of life and free access, then crime will have little or no incentive.
Driven by passion
In our commercialised society we are so used that everything is valued by a currency and money. The economists or entrepreneurs look at the system we are used to and cite economic incentive and competition as good for progress. Have you ever wondered with what they compared their luxurious system? Might it not be that because they start of with a false key that they come to false conclusions?
Are we really to believe that all innovators, inventors and artists will down tools the moment someone calls time on money? Obviously not, since we all know so many creative people that never achieve financial success, it shows us that they are not driven by money, but rather by their passions and desire to innovate.
Sharing people
I would love to call onto people to come to think about sharing more.
Often I do meet people who are very much afraid of a sharing system and think we can not do without money, though they themself use lots of tools without paying for them. We can find lots of people who are using Open Source Applications, which they take it for granted they can use them because everybody is using them. Often they do not see other large scale innovative projects which are becoming the optimum means of production without a monetary incentive.
Lots of people behind the screens try to invent things which can be used by others, and use themselves things others created. Lots of people do forget that many computer programs like Linux, Chrome and Android have been developed freely by enthusiasts in their spare time,. It ware those people who were willing to spend their precious free time to create something for the good of the whole community and not just for themselves or to gain lots of money. The computer industry has led the way on this, but of course, there is no reason why ‘open source thinking’ cannot be applied in agriculture, crafts, construction or education, etc.
Difficult to get people to share something which they consider of their own
The big problem we are facing today is that there has been created a generation of people who mainly think about themselves. Their ego comes on the first place and they look for gaining as much as they can for their own, often at the cost of others.
In the past the economical factor, being of wealthy parents of a having a privileged background was the creating facility for equanimity or for daring taking risks. Comfortable upbringing, access to good food and education, often provided the luxury of time – not labouring for their keep – but spending it on developing their ideas and skills instead. But we also find lots of creative minds who had no financial security, though created masterpieces.
Having money does not mean being smarter. If society can work better without money, then all potential young Einsteins and Mozarts will have the optimal opportunity to exercise and advance their talents.
If we create a society where talents are recognised and stimulated and people can receive equal opportunities, so much more can come off the ground.
Why not believing in a a moneyless future?
You can see that money does not bring that happiness many people hoped for. It is not a bad tool to be used in exchange for things, but we should not put all our hopes on it.
We should go back to the natives. We best dare to look at those living in the Amazon or other not yet by capitalism spoiled places. We too can learn from populations where money is not the key factor to order their way of living.
We should also come to understand that in our society we do have so many things we do not need or do not need any-more. Why not giving that stuff away that is filling your cupboards? If you have certain talents, why not sharing them with others and letting them also enjoy them?
In case a moneyless future seems something interesting to think about or when you like the idea, why not join “a movement of believers”?
Please have a look at the underneath brief introduction to the charter for a truly free world.
On 2014 April 26 we started offering a readers digest to you. We wanted to have different writers presenting their selection of most interesting articles found on the net. We regret we did not find enough people interested in co-operating to create a free lifestyle magazine where people could find uplifting stories.
On the first of January we, like many others looked back at the previous year and presented our first review: 2014 in review.
Our first year we got visitors from 71 countries in all. 13 countries were added in 2015 bringing the total to 84 countries in all, with most visitors again coming from The United States (2467). Netherlands (351) & United Kingdom (341) were not far behind. Based in Belgium we only could get the attention of 181 viewers in Belgium in 2015, which is not much, but which can be caused by not many writings being in Dutch, French or German. We are pleased we also got 141 viewers from Down Under.
Knowing that we need light on our path in life, near the end of 2015 we also started placing some reflections or meditations texts, which we shall continue to do. Because we did so often got questions why we referred to some ones website article, or got requests to take some listed article out of the list of “Further reading” we shall enter less references or note lesser further readings. Normally you would think people would be pleased when there is placed a link to their site, but at several of our websites we got an other impression, hearing people not being pleased they being mentioned on one of our sites. Not being appreciated we bringing others to their writings or commenting on their writings, plus they not understanding we are helping them to get more readers and to get higher on the Google ranking, whilst we take them away from our own website, we will not any more invest so much time in looking for appropriate articles worth mentioning. Therefore in the future you will find lesser links and we shall be pleased keeping you more to our own websites.
“Stockholmsfyrens” ungefärliga utseende vid Ropsten med vy från hotell Forestas entréplan på Lidingö. Det runda 187 m höga tornet innehållande både bostäder och kontorslokaler är föreslaget att uppföras omkring 2014-2015. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Throughout the year on this and our other sites we wanted to bring to understanding that we do have to come in a good relationship with others and with the Most High, even when we sometimes have to deal with the silence of God.
In 2015, there were 295 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 525 posts. On the 12th of January in total 534 articles have been published on this site.
We are thankful that you came along on this site and do hope to find you more than once at this and some other of our sites. We wish you all the best for 2016 and do hope you may be like a tree planted by streams of water.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,300 times in 2015. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.
The wisdom teacher of Ecclesiastes says, there is a time for all things under the sun, no to agree with the excess man loves so much, but as a warning how to behave and how and to what to focus.
For those who want to celebrate Christmas for whatever reason they want to give, Christians should remember that it is originally a pagan festival and should better abstain from it. But we do agree in Wintertime it is ideal to socialise at the dark hours and it may be lovely to exchange presents around the turn of the year.
When we provide presents for others they should be given with joy and when it brings such a stress like we hear many tell on television, than there is certainly something wrong.
In so called Christian countries, we also see lots of Christmas markets, but at those ‘great events’ there is not much to see about what they call would be the “reason of the season”. At most Christmas markets there are not many stall about the nativity of the NazareneJew nor about that man’s ransom offering. Jesus Christ his birth they often call the reason for the season, but we can not see him much in that season or in people’s homes. Also the attitude of those people gathering at those markets does not speak of such an attitude that master teacher asked from his followers. Most people strolling around at those markets are more concerned about the food and drink opportunities and in buying (ridiculous) gadgets and not to expensive presents.
So many feel obliged just to find an other gadget or an other extra surprise and do hope they themselves also will receive many presents.
In this society where excess has become a way of life, for many it might well be also a way of understanding the world, a way of being and interacting in the world, but for sure many chapters in the bible warn for such an attitude and ask us to focus on the more important immaterial things.
Those who call themselves Christian should wonder where they fall in the consumer trap of the capitalistsociety and why they do not keep to the festivals ordained by the Most High? the festival for the goddess of light and a celebration for a Santa Claus for sure are no part of those.
*
To remember
Thanksgiving here + gone > too much to eat + drink = Excess = regular part of natural order
Excess > consequences = plays important role in survival process
ancestral winter seasons > forebears rejoiced in gathered harvest, savored freshly slaughtered meat, + delighted in new beer + wine.
Northern Hemisphere ancestors celebrated = winter solstice = December 21 = marking the rebirth of the sun = traditionally been associated with feasts + festivals replete with excesses => secular Christmastime holiday = direct descendant of these revelries.
Roman Saturnalia + misrule, centered on feasting + gift-giving > societal role reversals where servants + peasants became lords + ladies for a day or short season => usually steady tables of fortune turned for a moment
misrule (common in European societies and colonial America) individuals of low socioeconomic status demanded wealthier neighbors + patrons treat them – the servants + peons of society – as if they were the wealthy + deserving
Puritans of Massachusetts infamously outlawing Christmas in late 1600s =/= legendary anniversary of the Savior’s birth > simultaneous misrule celebrations that exalted excesses, some acceptable + others decidedly distasteful.
1800s, misrule evolved > new type of social inversion > persisted to our own day => Christmas made for children
children = miniature adults = occupied bottom rung of social hierarchy along with peasants + servants
Modern secular Christmas – family celebration – created at this time with children becoming focus of charity + goodwill
starting with Black Friday Eve (used to be called Thanksgiving) + continuing through New Year’s Day celebrations = unmatched devotion to consumerism, materialism, consumption, waste, and over-indulgence.
Thanksgiving, once again, is here and gone. I know I had too much to eat and drink. How about you?
Excess is a regular part of the natural order. Our bodies turn excess calories into fat cells – technically, stored energy for later use. Most excess weight, however, is simply lugged around serving unwittingly as a contributing factor to health problems. Alcohol, on the other hand, is eliminated by the body. But a morning-after dehydration headache, caused by excessive drinking, lets you know you overdid it. Long-term excessive drinking, of course, will kill you.
Excess has its consequences.
Excess, nevertheless, plays an important role in the survival process. You and I are here thanks to an excessive amount of spermatozoa, from which emerged one little victor to join forces with an ovum. Survival of the fittest and the fertilized! And not only that, some of the plants which provide food, oxygen, and beauty upon the earth produce seeds for their own reproduction numbering in excess of hundreds…
A thermometer in the proverbial mouth of society would measure a high temperature. We are all feverish. Psychiatrist Dirk De Wachter calls our society ‘borderline‘. Are we aware of a kind of collective delusion? ‘Hypermarkets’ , that offer up to 30.000 articles, have increased their turnover from 616 to 4.823 billion euro. A good and strong pupil who perfectly meets our economic model of better, faster… and always more.
The supermarket is a temple of consumption. Every product cries out to be bought . With an agressiveness that borders on hysterical, our advertising boys try to convince us that margarine produces a more harmonious family life and that coca cola creates friendships. They shamelessly use insights of psychology to encourage people to consume. And they do not spare anyone, not even children.
The energy that is required of human beings to produce 30.000 articles, to distribute them and to sell them is colossal. This whole chain mobilises gigantic forces and realises this with such passion, that it betrays the conviction that to produce and consume material things will give us what we are looking for.
Does it still surprise you that we are drawn into consumption with forever stronger stimuli , at the cost of other things ?
It is a kind of psychological materialism that makes that we are more preoccupied with ‘having’ than ‘being’. If there even is time for ‘being’. Recently a study with 8000 students at the Catholic University of Leuven has shown that 1/7 has serious emotional problems: fear, depression, suicidal thoughts. Philosopher and author Hein Stufkens said in an interview :
” People that think about suicide, do not really want to stop living, they want to stop living ‘in this way’. They want to live differently. They are looking for real life “.
These are hard facts that in the West we are strongly ego-centric. Isn’t it high time that we look beyond the borders of the ego? One can maybe buy a lot in the supermarket, but you do not buy friendship there, no hope and no trust. Just like it is impossible to buy happiness, which is a good thing!
The actions we undertake daily and seem to be such ‘little things’ we do in our everyday life, go further than we anticipate in solidifying or weakening the relationships in families. At the end of the track they proof to be very important and a necessity to have been structured in solid clay.
Many may think that annual family vacations have to be going abroad and that we all have to be partakers of worldly traditional feasts, like Christmas celebrations and Valentine’s Day gift-giving practices which have become integral consumption rituals in contemporary families. These man made artificial celebrations are no guaranty to family happiness. It is a wrong idea to think a family can not be happy when it does not celebrate Christmas, Easter or any other heathen or so called Christian feast.
Those who want to keep to God’s Will and as such abstain from the heathen feasts like Halloween, Christmas, Easter, still can enjoy very happy moments together. All the material presents may be very nice surprises with bring joy, but they also can be given at other moments. And all family members should be aware that it is not the material which brings happiness, but the feeling of being together and sharing a happy time with each other.
We have been socialised by media, family and other social institutions to dedicate more attention to these rather conspicuous consumption experiences and have gradually become less concerned of the importance of the mundane, everyday consumption behaviour to our relationships and overall family wellbeing.
In many families we can see that parent buy their children. When divorced and one parent gives something the other parent want to give something more expensive and bigger.
we fail to recognise and appreciate the underpinning significance of these frequently taken-for-granted consumption experiences to happiness, satisfaction and stability in our family relationships. Instead we seek to construct family bonding through perhaps rather superficial, conspicuous consumption acts such as buying expensive gifts for loved ones, committing to elaborative annual family holidays and following extensive Christmas rituals.
In the previous articles we have spoken about the world clinching to material wealth like velcrostrips hoping to have all luck in the world.
The materialistic desires have conquered the world. Those who know were they come from and Who they should honour do know they should not give their love to material things.
15 Do not love either the world or the things in the world.+ If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him;+16 because everything in the world—the desire of the flesh+ and the desire of the eyes+ and the showy display of one’s means of life*—does not originate with the Father, but originates with the world. (1 John 2:15, 16)
The love of money or the desire to amass riches and possessmaterial things can corrupt the heart, leading a Christian to do things that go against God’s will. A few have become dishonest at work, have cheated others, or have even stolen money or objects that do not belong to them.
Lots of people do have many things of which they want to boast of is this. Lots of people also do think man is full of wisdom and that they have ‘most’ wisdom’. They do not want to look into their conscience which might bear witness. They are full of fleshly wisdom.
Material pursuits may bring on anxiety. For example, some complicate their lives by living beyond their means. Others have been enticed by get-rich-quick schemes and risky financial investments. For others, secular education as a means to attain financial success becomes a snare. The Bible warns: “Those who are determined to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and many senseless and hurtful desires, which plunge men into destruction and ruin.”
9 However, those who are determined to be rich fall into temptation+ and a snare and many senseless and hurtful desires,+ which plunge men into destruction and ruin.+10 For the love+ of money is a root+ of all sorts of injurious things,*+ and by reaching out for this love some have been led astray from the faith and have stabbed themselves all over with many pains.+ (1 Timothy 6:9, 10).
Essential to not being drawn into a materialistic way of life is cultivating the ability to distinguish between right and wrong when making decisions. This ability is developed by regularly partaking of ‘solid spiritual food belonging to mature people’ and by ‘having our perceptive powers trained through use.’ (Hebrews 5:13, 14) Making sure “of the more important things” when setting priorities will also safeguard us from making wrong choices.
9 And this is what I continue praying, that YOUR love may abound+ yet more and more with accurate knowledge*+ and full discernment;*+10 that YOU may make sure of the more important things,+ so that YOU may be flawless+ and not be stumbling+ others up to the day of Christ, 11 and may be filled with righteous fruit,+ which is through Jesus Christ, to God’s glory and praise.+ (Philippians 1:9,10,11).
A materialistic life-style can blind us, leaving little or no time for spiritual pursuits.
How can we examine ourselves and avoid being ensnared by such a life-style?
We need to consider prayerfully how and to what extent we can simplify our life. King Solomon of ancient Israel said:
“Sweet is the sleep of the one serving, regardless of whether it is little or much that he eats; but the plenty belonging to the rich one is not permitting him to sleep.” (Ecclesiastes 5:12)
Does taking care of unnecessary material possessions consume a lot of our time and energy? The more we own, the more we have to maintain, insure, and protect.
Could it be to our advantage to simplify our life by freeing ourselves of certain belongings?
Lennon (right) performing “All You Need Is Love” with The Beatles in 1967 to 400 million viewers of “Our World”. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We think life can much be easier when not loving the material things and not focusing on the world and its worldly life.
On the other hand, by cultivating a healthy fearof displeasing Jehovah, loving justice, and being determined to hold a good conscience, we show that we love “purity of heart.” That love moves us to continue to “conduct ourselves honestly in all things.” (Hebrews 13:18)
18 Carry on prayer+ for us, for we trust we have an honest conscience, as we wish to conduct ourselves honestly in all things.+19 But I exhort YOU more especially to do this, that I may be restored to YOU the sooner.+ (Hebrews 13:18
When we act uprightly, honesty can result in a fine witness.
Emilio, an Italian Witness who works as a driver for a public transport company, found a wallet containing 470 euros ($680, U.S.). To the surprise of his colleagues, he handed the wallet to his supervisor, who later gave the wallet to the person who had lost it. Some of Emilio’s colleagues were so impressed by his conduct that they became interested in the Bible and started to study. As a result, seven people from two families have accepted the truth. Yes, behaving honestly from a pure heart really can move others to praise God.—Titus 2:10.
Materialism may not seem to be an issue of loyalty, but it is. Do we trust in Jehovah’s promise to provide what we really need?
33 “Keep on, then, seeking* first the kingdom and his righteousness,+ and all these [other] things will be added to YOU.+34 So, never be anxious about the next day,+ for the next day will have its own anxieties. Sufficient for each day is its own badness. (Matthew 6:33-34)
5 Let [YOUR] manner of life be free of the love of money,+ while YOU are content+ with the present things.+ For he has said: “I will by no means leave you nor by any means forsake you.”+(Hebrews 13:5)
Rather than striving to obtain at any cost some of the “better” things in life that are presently beyond our reach, can we do without them? (Read Philippians 4:11-13.) Are we tempted to forgo theocratic privileges in order to get what we want now? Does loyal service to Jehovah have first place in our life? Our answers will largely depend on whether we are wholehearted in our service to God or not.
“It is a means of great gain,”
wrote the apostle Paul,
“this godly devotion along with self-sufficiency. For we have brought nothing into the world, and neither can we carry anything out. So, having sustenance and covering, we shall be content with these things.”—1 Timothy 6:6-8.
In a revelation to the apostle John toward the close of the first century, the glorified Jesus Christ delivered a message to the congregation located in Laodicea, Asia Minor. It was a warning message against materialism. Though materially rich, Laodicean Christians were bankrupt spiritually. Instead of continuing to walk by faith, they allowed material possessions to blind their spiritual vision. (Revelation 3:14-18) Materialism has a similar effect today. It weakens our faith and causes us to stop ‘running with endurance the race’ for life. (Hebrews 12:1) If we are not careful, the “pleasures of this life” can smother spiritual activities to the point that they are “completely choked.”
14 As for that which fell among the thorns, these are the ones that have heard, but, by being carried away by anxieties and riches and pleasures+ of this life, they are completely choked and bring nothing to perfection.+(Luke 8:14).
Time ran out for the world of Noah’s day, and it will run out for the present system of things. The apostle Peter assures us:
“Jehovah’s day will come as a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a hissing noise, but the elements being intensely hot will be dissolved, and earth and the works in it will be discovered.”
Neither the symbolic heavens — wicked governments — nor the symbolic earth — mankindalienated from God — will survive the heat of God’s burning anger. Indicating how we can prove ourselves ready for that day, Peter exclaims:
“Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of persons ought you to be in holy acts of conduct and deeds of godly devotion, awaiting and keeping close in mind the presence of the day of Jehovah!”—2 Peter 3:10-12.
A key to spiritual protection is contentment rather than the use of this world to the full and the enrichment of ourselves materially. (1 Corinthians 7:31; 1 Timothy 6:6-8) We as such do not have to look so much at the world of mankind or the kingdom of mankind but at the world of the Kingdom of God. When we walk by faith and not by sight, we find joy in the present spiritual paradise. As we partake of nourishing spiritual food, are we not moved to “cry out joyfully because of the good condition of the heart”? (Isaiah 65:13, 14) Moreover, we take delight in our association with those who manifest the fruitage of God’s spirit.
22 On the other hand, the fruitage+ of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness,+ faith, 23 mildness, self-control.+ Against such things there is no law.+24 Moreover, those who belong to Christ Jesus impaled* the flesh together with its passions and desires.+ (Galatians 5:22, 23)
How vital that we find satisfaction and refreshment in what Jehovah provides in a spiritual way!
Some questions we do well to ask ourselves are:
‘What place do material things occupy in my life? Am I using the material possessions I have to live a life of pleasure or to promote true worship? What brings me the greatest satisfaction? Is it Bible study and fellowship at Christian meetings, or is it weekends away from Christian responsibilities? Do I reserve many weekends for recreation instead of using such time for the field ministry and other activities in connection with pure worship?’
Our regularly attending Christianmeetings and sharing in preaching the good news are included among the necessary acts and deeds of godlydevotion. May we perform them with heartfelt devotion to God while we wait patiently for Jehovah’s great day. Let us “do [our] utmost to be found finally by [God] spotless and unblemished and in peace.”—2 Peter 3:14.
Walking by faith means that we keep busy in the Kingdom work, with full trust in Jehovah’s promises.
58 Consequently, my beloved brothers, become steadfast,+ unmovable, always having plenty to do in the work of the Lord,+ knowing that YOUR labor is not in vain*+ in connection with [the] Lord. (1 Corinthians 15:58).
Lindsay Felderman confesses she is a person that likes to shop and buy new things. Over the years she has accumulated a lot of stuff, from clothes to shoes to hats to Apple products to video games and more, like so many people have gone from one shop to an other or looked at the internet shops to find their liking.
Though many focus on gaining material wealth her eyes may have gone open by two life events that have happened/are happening now that are making her come to the realization more and more, that things are just things, and that what is more important is creating memories with people that you love.
What may be the changing elements that people come to see that they have to live more simply.
She writes:
if we haven’t used/seen/worn something in the past year, it’s out of here. Going to charity or the garbage. No need to keep so many physical items around. I have learned over the years and the amount of times I have moved, that stuff is just stuff, but every time I settle down, it seems I collect more and more. Well, not this time. I am getting rid of the clutter and starting fresh. {The Meaning of Material Things}
Today lots of people have lost track of the necessities of real life making issues. Several youngsters are clinging to the idea of having the most recent newest thing brings happiness, and want to do everything to get the new hipe. They have no idea any more that material things are nothing without real people behind it that get their love from those around it.
For many people it takes a lot of time before they come to see what Lindsay came to see and feel when she and ‘her’
Samantha and I’s families met for the first time, Ever, in almost 3 whole years.
She came to feel one of the most elementary things for building up a real ‘home’ and a real ‘family’ and got to see what
transpired that day was truly magical, it was so special,
that she will never forget
Each one of us only brought certain family members to the event for various reasons. But each one of our family members meshed in a way that I couldn’t have planned myself. Every one was laughing and joking, and conversations were flowing all over the place. Every one truly wanted to learn about the other. There was not one dull moment. It was honestly the way that family should be. No drama, no fighting, just pure love, honest and true love. I know this is really mushy, but if you know anything about the history of Samantha and I, you will know that this was a moment we were not sure would ever come. {The Meaning of Material Things}
It is incredible how many broken families we can encounter today. At school we find classes where there is not one kid who still lives by both its parents. Divorce seems to be the key word of this contemporary society where not many want to take time to talk with each other and to make it worthwhile living with each other instead of living next to each other.
Lindsay Felderman got reminded that family is what you make of it, but also came to see how it is possible for others to be there for you and how valuable this is. This is the most precious treasure so many do not seem to find, though it is so close at their doorstep.
Much more people should be there for each other, willing to share their love and time for each other, with comprehension and with patience. It is so important
That people who truly love you, will be there for you. That they will love you no matter what, that they will take you in their arms and hug you because you are special and unique and just You.
But to come to such a position people do have to be wiling themselves to be just their own and not somebody who fits the common trend of homogeneous people, wearing those clothes that shops and fashion magazines dictate.
When a person is really just herself and is willing to give her self openly to somebody else and to share herself with others than the doors may go open to build a good relationship and to build real ‘family’.
It is unbelievable what that lady could gather in whatever time it took to collect more than
18, 30 gallon trash bags, filled with clothes, shoes, hats, purses, and accessories galore. … They were just taking up space in our closet for no other reason than to take up space. That wasn’t all we gave away though, just the 1st round. I would say by the end of it, we had close to 30 bags that we donated, and a bunch of boxes of DVDs and books as well. It felt great to get rid of so much Stuff. That is all it was, just stuff, taking up space. {Do What You Say}
She also recognises that this doesn’t even include the amount of crap she had collected by the years and dared (at last) to threw away. We do not know if it would have been wise to throw a way her school projects she did when she was a kid, even to her high school yearbook, because in our country (Belgium) a student has to keep the school material for ten years, because it can always asked a s a proof of studies and work done.
She went with the mantra that,
“I will always have the memories”.
but has forgotten that perhaps one day in history she perhaps would have children and later grandchildren and than she will not have anything to show and to share.
Naturally there is no need to continue to lug around physical items to remind oneself of those memories, as long as they are not destroyed. For the moment she thinks it is impossible that her memories can ever be destroyed, but then she forget that accidents and illnesses are possible to wash away any sort of memory and by then it can be useful to have some materials to bring back the memory. (The writer of this article your reading, speaks of experience, having had a memory loss after a very serious car-crash.)
Though lovely to hear Lindsay Felderman immediately felt lighter as she packed and got everything moved to her new place in one weekend.
But the point of this all,
she writes, is
I did what I said I was going to do. I didn’t just talk the talk, I walked the walk.I wrote about how material things aren’t the true meaning of life, that I was going to start to purge the majority of mine and I did it.
We are taught from a young age, that actions speak louder than words. But many of us still grow up to be big talkers. We talk about our dreams and what we could be doing. But very few of us actually act on those dreams. We let life get in the way, and we let our words speak louder than our actions instead of the other way around. {Do What You Say}
Today we do not find many youngsters with aspirations and when we encounter people who say they want to do this or that, we see that they are not really taking steps to do so. Not many want to do what they say, but it seem Lindsay took the courage to do so.
Can you do it as well?
She concludes
You gain more credibility in life when you just do what you say you are going to do. Plus it feels better, you say something and you do it. People around you begin to trust you, they believe that you will do the things you talk about. When you only sit around and talk about it, you just become a talker, you become noise in their ear. Much like the “wamp, wamp, wamp” noises that the adults in Charlie Brown made every time they were talking to the kids. You don’t want to be that person.
Be someone who makes a difference, makes a change, follows your dreams and most importantly: do what you say. {Do What You Say}
“constantly striving to develop lives of meaning without any outside recourse. The soul is increasingly insulated from the world outside our heads.” {Against Kant and Consumerism}
but today lots of people strive to enrich themselves with material wealth and consider their live worthwhile when they can be more wealthier and better showing off than others. Lots of people think they miss enough money or enough gadgets to enjoy fully life. For many everything seems to turn around the gathering of as much money as possible.
Lots of people do not look for the depth of meaning of life and are not so much interested in the others around them and the influence or necessity of them for them.
The American Conservative in the May/June 2015 article speaks about Matthew Crawford his books “Shop Class As Soul Craft” plus “The World Beyond Your Head” and looks at ‘the subtitle to his latest book which promises a look at our “age of distraction“.
The article says:
The premise of Crawford’s book is that our distractedness is merely symptomatic of a deeper cultural defect, a misrepresentation of the self that has permeated our society. He traces this back to Enlightenment philosophy, especially the thought of Immanuel Kant. Enlightenment thinkers of the late 17th and 18th centuries presented a view of the person that contrasted drastically with medieval and ancient thought: they put unprecedented emphasis on the rational individual as separate from society or community. They posited new theories about freedom founded upon reason and self-determination, with epistemological roots in ideas such as Descartes’s famous claim that “I think therefore I am.” Kant believed that knowledge and ethics must necessarily be situated within the mind—that existence must be interpreted through the autonomy of the individual.
The writer thinks
The soul is increasingly insulated from the world outside our heads.
Whereas in the real world, Crawford writes,
“we are subject to the heteronomy of things; the hazards of material reality,”
and continues
what Kant has given us is our modern identification of freedom with choice, in which choice is a “pure flashing forth” of the individual will.
that identification of freedom with choice has been there already from the period of the beginning in the Garden of Eden. Man had the choice either to follow his Creator His Will or to go his own way. Man choose the latter.
Thousand of years later, many think the world around them limits them and nature is to block their leg.
dumb nature is understood to be threatening to our freedom as rational beings, it becomes attractive to construct a virtual reality that will be less so, a benignly nice [reality] where there is no conflict between self and world
How many people do not want to be on their own and have the world turning around themselves. For many it is most important that everything turns around their own “I” so that they can say with proud: “I am“.
The associate editor of The American Conservative Gracy Olmstead writes:
Consumer culture tries to destroy the discomforts and imperfections that are necessarily part of life.
Is not there one of the greatest problems of our present society, which has put most of its hopes on the material things it can require to make its own. It is not that they want to hoard things, but they love to gather all the newest things so that they can show off against others who have to do with older things.
Though the writer of the article finds that modern cars are designed in an insulating and distracting way, we more see them as copies of each other not having any more the specific personality or difference as the cars had in the 1950ies, when each car looked so specific and really could get its fans for one or another model and each model with its own flashy personal colours. to us it looks like that car owners lost the interest to have a car or any other object (clothes, houses) that look very personal and have their won story to tell. People do want all the same and are willing to cue for the latest gadget. Everybody else has to be able to see that they have this or that brand and can afford this or that mobile or i-pad, which has to be of the latest and newest ‘invention’.
Concerning the cars we could agree with the idea the critic has
Everything within a car is constructed to give a sense of isolation and ease.
When the author would mean that the person who is driving the car would like to have the feeling to being his own world, having his own little world where nobody else around is being part of it. When the music can play loud it does not matter that others can hear it in their bathroom or are whipped out of bed. It is there music and everybody else should have to hear that is the best music to listen to.
Naturally the cultivation of “me-worlds” extends beyond auto-mobile design, but form men this might still be the thing to make their ‘me’, though the i-pad has taken a lot of that place.
Olmstead finds that Crawford spends a good deal of the book arguing that an Enlightenment approach to epistemology leads to narcissism: an understanding of the world that revolves entirely around the self and writes
The narcissist “treats objects as props” and struggles to comprehend them as objects with a reality of their own. The fantasy of autonomy, when full-grown, results in a “project of open-ended, ultimately groundless self-making.” {Against Kant and Consumerism}
Interestingly, Crawford identifies our treatment of others as the root of online narcissism in the age of Facebook:
“We increasingly deal with others through representations of them that we have,” he writes. “This results in interactions that are more contained, less open-ended, than a face-to-face encounter or a telephone call, giving us more control.”
Automobiles, the reviewer says
“can foster circumspection—literally, looking around for others and regarding oneself as an object for others in turn—or a collection of atomized me-worlds.” Our experience becomes ever more “mediated by representations, which remove us from whatever situation we inhabit directly, as embodied beings who do things.”
Throughout the ages the world has received its many distractions. The tools may have changed but the aim and way has stayed the same. Today “virtual reality” allows many to find back lost friends or schoolmates and gives the opportunity to interact with more, and more diverse, people, not fewer and not more homogeneous.
For American society to emerge from the distractions of consumer culture and virtual existence
Ms Olmstead finds
we must look beyond the symptoms and consider the disease: the shroud of individualism that prevents us from fully embracing the real world.
The individuals looking for themselves to acquire as much material wealth as possible have to come to see that they would be better to work at their social contacts spending more time to be with each other in real life than in chat sessions, never going deep in a conversation. For sure we we must
cultivate an awareness of—and love for—the world beyond ourselves.
To get somewhere it certainly needs not a short-sighted vision. There has to be a plan somewhere in the head, or for sure a will and hope to reach a point, where one wants to strive for.
At first the foundation may be to reach something for the self. Self-interest at the base, does not mean it has to put the interest of others at the side or to ignore it.
Today we may see lots of people trying to pursue their dreams by short-sighted and hurtful means, like trying to shape wood into a beautiful statue by shooting it with a pistol, which is possible but for making a chair would utterly be doomed to failure.
What is wealth? Are we today really so much better off than those people who had no intercom, no telephones, no television, no electronic gadgets to divert their thinking?
It may be very handy to have the kitchen robots, but are there better things made with than the housewife’s did centuries ago?
We would agree that materially we are better off than years ago, but spiritually and socially it seems we are developing to a mess if we are not careful.
Who is willing to present himself to help others? Who is willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of others? and would such acts make the person happy? Often we see at the end that the person has become more disillusioned and/or frustrated. Lots of times those who wanted to help the poor, the needy, or wanted to get the crooks on the right path, got so many disillusions that they are not happy and have to confess they could not reach their dreams.
To get a place in life, to make yourself respectable and to build up a nice life, the person has to think about himself and about those around himself (partner and children). There is a need of a certain selfishness, because otherwise the self is shuffled in the corner and will possibly drown in the battle of those around him/her, who want to find a place for themselves in this world. finding a good balance is important. Placing the ‘I’ in a good perspective. Working on the ‘I’ and the ‘I am’ without destroying the other.
As Ayn Rand may have seen that there is another way of life that involves the destruction of no one, we are to try to build a life in respect to all other beings around us (plants, animals, humans).
It would be nice if we could see our society growing to a way of life that enables all good individuals to prosper, with no victims. Lets Go for it!
The definitions of the terms we use have consequences for our ability to think and communicate clearly.
Imagine for a moment that your friend told you that he defines “carpenter” as “one who shapes wood by shooting it with a gun.” You’re baffled and you ask him what word he uses for someone who shapes wood by other means, such as a saw, lathe, and/or sander. He says that he really has no word for this. He has a couple of synonyms for “carpenter,” but they also carry the implication that the person shaping the wood used a gun.
Hopefully, you can see that the problem with this hypothetical situation is not merely that you and your friend are using terms differently: shooting wood with a gun is a terribly impractical way of shaping it into useful forms. If the only concepts you have of wood shaping mean using a…
People do like to have things for themselves. Contemporary day gadgets play on the consumer market to win the eyes and greedy hands.
Students and scholars can study a wealth of materials and artifacts available at the Broadcasting Archives. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Lots of people are convinced that luck lies in having enough things. Many have put their hope in having enough material wealth. They are convinced having enough money will bring them luck and everything they want. Their head believes material wealth shall bring them peace and heaven on earth.
We would agree that some objects can bring intrinsic joy. We also would agree there are man made things which can serve us to have an easier life.
But, we also want to warn our readers that many man-made things can be utterly dangerous for man and for nature as well. Lots of things man create ruins mother earth. Lots of people do have no respect at all for the environment and waste a lot of things making it for the generation coming after them, more difficult to live properly in a healthy environment.
May we lift a veil of reality?
Land of Wealth (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Is it not better that we are conscious of what we eat and drink and of what we buy and use? Is it not better that we more would ask ourselves: Where is this made under which condition?
Should we not take more notice of the hidden facts?
We all should remember that there are lots of things which seemingly look very attractive, and can tempt us to buy it. But will they contribute to a better life?
Man may make lots of things but not all of those things are good for him. Several things, instead of bringing peace, welfare, bring despair and death.
Those that bring despair and death often promise intrinsic joy and life but deliver despair and death. Fame, sex, and money are objects that often promise intrinsic joy and life. When they serve us, they do deliver what they promised. {Joy in Submission}
Those who continuously look to enrich themselves do not have as such an eye for others; Their interest in themselves.
To make the best of life it is a matter to be able to set yourself, your own “I” at the side.
A joyful living springs from thinking of ourselves less and others more. In such moments where we think of ourselves less and others more, we are supremely joyful. Consider the moment when a loving father meets his newborn or a wanderer sees a sunrise and feels a spark of warm sunrays on her skin after a long and dark winter. In such moments, time stops. Though the quantitative time continues, the qualitative time everlastingly stops. In those joyful moments we reign by serving. We reign through serving by submitting to the moment. Submission is joyful. Supremely joyful. {Joy in Submission}
Summertime seems to have difficulties to show her face this year. Over a few days the days will shorten again and we did not have yet some real good nice warm days.
In the supermarkets they feel the consumption of meat not taking off like they want and therefore they are presenting special bargain prices, advertising against other trying to present the cheapest products. If they would be the best products would be an other matter. Also if they would be produced in a decent ethical way is for many of no concern.
Real teachers do find it necessary to help others. Bob James also is firmly convinced that all of us need to be more proactive in helping others.
We need to help them when disaster strikes, when they are recovering and then when developing their lives to be the people that God intended them to be. We are meant to be independent of all except for God. On Him alone should we be dependent. Thus, as I seek to help others, I seek to move beyond mere relief and am focusing on rehabilitation and reconciliation. We are to be reconciled with God, with our fellow human beings and with our environment. If any one of these is missing, we will have problems. This is a tall order, but I will always seek to bring reconciliation. {About Me}
He, like many teachers are daily confronted with the non-interest for God, is probably also seeing that today the kids, but also their parents, have made new gods and have more interest in the material belongings than the spiritual.
The Human Use of Human Beings (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In previous articles on this blog we pointed out to this behaviour which is destroying our society like CO poisoning, not seen, not smelled, not heard. We are living in a society where eyes are directed on gaining capital, even if we need not to take notice of necessary protection for man or do not mind bringing shortage or harm to others, to get more money.
Our economy is based on consumerism. Ads are designed to appeal to people like me and make me not just want, but Need, the latest thing – whether that be a soft drink or the latest model car. {June 8 – What I Really Need}
In the years straight after the World Wars people seemed to know again the value of the necessities of life. Folks appreciated again the small things. (We remember sitting with three on a bench, having one study book, which we savoured like the best we could have to receive knowledge. We never wanted to have it for ourselves alone and where pleased when we could share things with others.) They were pleased with what they could get. They also wanted to show to others who they were and used their cloths to present their identity.
Today everybody seems to be hiding behind their clothes. They now have to be from one or the other brand, design and colour which is in fashion. All want to belong to the group and hide their own self behind brands which are ‘in’. Everything must be dictated by the market. Nobody wants to go against what the market dictates.
RedEye Sailboat one of the things people like to have for enjoying themselves and to show off (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In Summer this is made even more clear by everybody wanting to go in the garden and show off with what the market advertises and wants to press on everybody. As such, once it is beautiful weather, we can not sit outdoors without having to smell all the combustion products, from the people who do not know how to use properly those advertised and bought barbecue sets.
Having holiday also became equivalent to travelling. When people to day are saying they go on holiday, they mostly mean and want the other person to think they are going to travel abroad. For many taking a holiday in the own garden or in the own country is not having a holiday any more. The market made them to believe to relax and to take vacation or to take leave has to be going abroad and spending a lot of money at enjoyment, entertainment parks, luxury meals and pampering and health treatments.
People have to believe they only count in this society when they can show that they are using the latest gadgets and are ‘by the time’. All people who have not the newest things are ‘old’ or ‘out of date’. They best are ignored or put aside, as not being the right people to associate with. Or they are laughed at as old fashioned or ‘nerds’.
Bob James remarks:
How easily we buy the latest thing and throw away the old. One of the problems is that we not only throw away things, we also tend to throw away people or relationships if they don’t “meet our needs.” {June 8 – What I Really Need}
Those needs have become very selfish. Everything is directed to the ‘I’ and to the ‘what can I gain from this relationship’. Most people want to associate with other people in such a way that they may be sure others will find them interesting for the knowledge and acquaintances of such people. Most relations are build on the use they can provide for the self. Not the giving away has become important, nor the meaning something for some one else, but the meaning for the person him or herself, has become the landmark.
Clearly the focus of most people came on to the wrong things. This also made many relationships not last and break down. Often we see the other person has become of no real value, when not usable any more. We see that at work. As son as a person gets to ‘old’ or to ‘experienced’ and to ‘expensive because of ‘seniority’ he is made redundant.
But also the material things do not get time to stay in use as valuable. As soon there is a new model, the old one is considered as ‘passée’ .
Most people have placed their mind on things which are disposable.
What we should be focusing on more than anything is our relationship with God. {June 8 – What I Really Need} (Though in his article gives a quote about focussing on Jesus, who is not God but the son of God, but who also deserves our attention.)
Today, we can see that a lot of people who are debtors to the material things of this world. Most have forgotten that their body should be a temple, a place for clean things. Natural products for many are a laugh-stock. Biological products for many are either for the ‘loonies’ or have become a way to show off, because they are much more expensive and a way to proof they can afford it and belong to such a class of people, having enough money to buy such things.
Instead of respect for nature and respect for the Creator of all those things man shows more interest to the highly perishable idols presented on television and more and more on the internet, which brings totally new sorts of idols in the living room. All those living according to flesh, often forget that they too, like anybody else, are going to die, but if in spirit they kill the deeds of the body, and that they have much better prospects. For those who live in the spirit can find real intense worthwhile life.
Part of our problem with this issue is that our desires have been made to seem like needs. If we began each day with a focus on Jesus Christ, many of those things we think are “needs” would be shown to be desires. {June 8 – What I Really Need}
Christ Jesus is the man of flesh and blood who gave the world an example how to live according to the will of the Only One God, Whom we should consider the Most High and the Most Valuable. Jesus knew he could not do anything without God. Jesus never did his own will but always wanted to do the Will of God. Today most consider God a flaw or useless invention.
Lots of people, having all those modern gadgets still do not feel happy. Having so many things they do not yet feel satisfied. They still have a hunger …
They are starving for the real better thing which they do not seem to see by the mist of consumerism. Lots of people are running into problems when they work so hard to take care of all their desires for material things, that they forget to spend more time to build up good relations.
Most people do not see or forget about what they really need.
This world needs to find the way back to God. It has lost connection with the Creator. The world has become strayed. We have to take care we become not astray by the temptations around us.
Lots of people wonder why they live and have to struggle so much. More people do think they can enrich their life with several gadgets and do think when they live without caring about the rest they may enjoy it most.
The materialistic mind shall not find peace and a state of peace is far away from those who only think about themselves.
We should not go to try to find meaning behind every bit and piece of the day. We should be aware that we do live in a time system which shall always be imperfect. No government shall be sufficient to bring everything all right for every body. Only the governing system that shall come after World War III or Armageddon shall bring relief. though we do not know when that final point of the world-system would come, at the time that the masterrabbiJeshua (Jesus Christ) will return, we can already work on a better system to take into account every creature and to give it the full respect it deserves.
The world is created out of chaos and the void but got turned over by mankind and filled with a lot of rubbish, trash defiling nature. In case we work at it to get again some order we also will find a better way of living.
Peace is in every bodies hand. It is there to make easily when the person wants to put aside his own individual egoism. when we let go of all the bothering things, the struggles we have in us and we do encounter each day, than we shall find ‘soulavement’ mitigation of all inner and outer pains, alleviation of ‘ourselves’.
It was material desire and greed which brought sin in the world. This materialism has grown unto unseen proportion; But this also means we are coming closer to the end times and to the point that some may think there is reached the point of no return, but at the other hand where is reached the point that more people their eyes shall be opened and who will find the way to a better life, making the relation of the in God’s image created human being back into a good relation with the rest of the creation.
A New Life (birdchirp.wordpress.com)
The putting on the new man is the counterpart of the putting off the old man, and what that is Paul explains when he says, ‘that ye put off concerning the former conversation–that is, concerning your former way of life–the old man, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind’ (Eph. 3:22, 23). Our old ways and character are to be laid aside, and therefore to put on the new man is to assume a new character and new ways. To put on the Lord Jesus Christ is to make our own His character.” – Marcus Dods, D.D.
I’ve heard many answers to the existential question about the meaning of life.
And as with everything else, each individual has his own view according to his beliefs and experience, things he wants and is going through right now.
But there is one problem – he puts meaning in every little detail of his average day and sometimes that affects his version of his mission in life, and eventually his actions.
Life is about more than the daily worries, fears, people that come and go, and things we pay too much attention to.
And in this – finding meaning in life – we’re all equal, because the goal is one.
Peace of mind.
Life is about finding peace inthe chaos, silence in the noise, meaning in every event and wisdom in hardships and grief.
Because peace is the highest happiness.
It’s hard to find with all the distractions around…
Lifestyle and Readers Digest Magazine founded by Marcus Ampe on the 26th of March 2014
Translate – Vertaal – Traduction
Welcome
New to this site. You may like to read this first
If this is your first time you visit us, you might like to know about our aims and intentions.
This site does not want to be a specific religious site, though now and then religious articles may be presented. The main interest on this site is about worldly matters, social affairs and the behaviour of human beings in this universe.
Our aim is to bring first articles about our responsibility in the progress of human relations and peace involvement.
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Thoughts by and a Look at the world by Marcus Ampe on: Marcus Ampe's Space
Over the past two weeks I have been trying to get some order again in my office and under a fierce tidying session have thrown all unnecessary papers out the door. This morning, as I sat at the breakfast table and watched the paper collection drive by, I suddenly remembered that I had put all […]
In de afgelopen 2 weken en heb ik geprobeerd weer orde in mijn bureau te krijgen en heb onder een hevige opruimingssessie alle onnodige papieren de deur uitgegooid. Deze ochtend toen ik aan de ontbijttafel zat en de papier ophaling voorbij zag rijden, dacht ik er plotseling aan dat ik al mijn diplomas en certicifaten […]
Britain is a rampantly competitive society. The story goes that Great Britain has evolved from an aristocratic dystopia built on slavery to a civilised democracy with a welfare state. Britain might be more accurately described as a proletarian nation overseen by a cosmopolitan elite. The Big Island is not the only one just looking at […]
JetPack raises a question where I am now putting down something that would belong in a private diary. But I have never maintained a diary. Now, at a more mature age, perhaps we get homesick for certain times or memories come to cloud the mind again.So here is a writing that could have been plucked […]
How has technology changed your job? Modern technology For sure, without modern technology, I would not be here already for a long time. For years I would have been under the sole, having become dust in the earth. After two near deaths, and three heart attacks, I have now once more the opportunity to revalidate […]
Men zou me best kunnen plaatsen onder de overgevoelige types. Al van kleins af was ik erg gevoelig en trok me veel te veel dingen aan. Zelfs als ik een film bekijk kunnen tranen over mijn wangen rollen. Heel wat zaken waar ik geen vat kan op hebben, raken me toch zodanig, dat ik er […]
One could best place me among the hypersensitive types. Since childhood, I was very sensitive and attracted far too many things. Even when I watch a film, tears can roll down my cheeks. A lot of things I can’t control nevertheless affect me to the extent that I sometimes get frustrated. On the other hand, […]
An other look at the world by Marcus Ampe on: Some View on the World
For months now, we have seen the rise of far-right thinking in several countries in Europe. Several politicians are also trying to make people believe that Europe is a bad thing for their countries. The future of the EU is being jeopardised by people stirring up social tensions for short-term political gain, Spain’s environment minister […]
The past 12 months have been extremely dangerous for journalists, from those on the ground in Gaza and Ukraine to others risking everything to share stories of environmental destruction. Last week the Guardian has been marking World Press Freedom Day with a series of reports about journalists working in the face of immense danger. They […]
In de vroegere Sovietgebieden roert het nu en dan redelijk verontrustend. In bepaalde landen, zoals in Georgië wil de regering er op toe zien dat er geen buitenlandse inmenging kan plaats vinden. Men zou kunnen zeggen dat zulks een goede wet is, maar het kan ook bepaalde beperkingen inhouden die de bevolking niet ten goede […]
Shortages and funding cuts are causing a “full-blown crisis” in special needs education for children and young people in England, according to school leaders who say they are struggling to give pupils the support they require. Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the school leaders’ union the NAHT, accused the government of treating schools as […]
Recent Posts on the other Lifestyle Magazine: Stepping Toes
The Israeli military has established a new mountaineer unit tasked with carrying out operations across the country’s hostile borders with Lebanon and Syria amid worsening tensions over the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. “We are in a multi-front war—Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria, and Gaza, and also farther away,” IDF Chief of the General […]
The Times, January 24, 2024 Event Two cargo ships sailing close to the Gulf of Aden came under attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on Wednesday night, the White House said — forcing the US navy to intervene as the Iran-backed militia intensified its maritime assault on commercial shipping. Houthi forces fired three anti-ship ballistic […]
The Independent, January 19, 2024 Event It is hard to escape the impression of a theatre of military conflict that is inexorably growing – to the east and the south, if not yet to the north and the west. And if you look backwards, rather than forwards, the Hamas massacres of Israelis on 7 October, and Israel’s all-out […]
VOA, January 12, 2024 Event Thursday’s retaliatory attacks by U.S. and British forces on Iranian-backed Houthis inside Yemen have prompted support and condemnation from the international community. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani “strongly slammed the military strikes by the U.S. and Britain,” in a statement, calling it “an arbitrary move” that “clearly breached Yemen’s […]
The Times, January 12, 2024 Event Explosions were heard across Yemen late on Thursday night as British and US forces launched strikes on Houthi targets, after the Iranian-backed group ignored warnings to stop attacking ships in the Red Sea. Rishi Sunak, who had authorised the military action hours earlier and briefed ministers in an emergency […]
Event Guardian, October 20, 2023 Joe Biden has drawn a direct, provocative link between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s attack on Israel as he urged Americans not to walk away from their role as “a beacon to the world”. In only the second Oval Office address of his presidency, Biden said he would ask […]
Hamas launched a surprise attack Saturday morning unprecedented in its scope and deadly impact. The phrase “It’s chaos” was heard repeatedly, from newsreaders, from families and occasionally from people caught in the raids, whispering desperately into their phones. Event The Times of Israel, October 7, 2023 Hezbollah praises the massive Hamas operation against Israel, and […]
One can never reach true self-knowledge without having come to a knowledge of the world. We cannot come to a knowledge of the world without self-knowledge. Neither can we attain self-knowledge without a knowledge of the world. It is like the beating of a pendulum which must swing back and forth. […]
* “Praying together:Two peoples, one land,Three faiths, one root,One earth, one mother,One sky, one beginning, one future, one destiny,One broken heart,One God.We pray to You:Grant us a vision of unity.May we see the many in the one and the one in the many.May you, Life of All the Worlds,Source of All Amazing DifferencesHelp us to […]
Last Sunday we were happy to meet three new brethren who got walking with us on the water laid in front of us. They with us can sing “Teach my your way”. In Newbury, they saw a sort of likeness between brother Marcus and Elija and were pleased to have new brethren and sisters join […]
So that Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts; in love being rendered firm, and the foundation laid, (Eph 3:17) Paul restates the prayer’s central appeal, identifying the presence of Christ with the empowerment of the Spirit (Eph 3:16). Just as the Church is becoming a holy temple for God (2:21–22), so the individual […]
Whaw! What a nice swimming pool! Not for swimming, though, but for the first baptisms in the very young ecclesia in Anderlecht. Before the start of the ceremony, overlooking the program. We were delighted to find those who started to train with members of the Brussels-Leuven ecclesia to become the first members of the recently […]
Na het proper maken van het huis, het programmablad voor morgen klaar te maken, en boodschappen doen, zit ik nu in mijn luie zetel. Ik dacht er nog aan een herinnering te sturen, dat we morgen allen de dienst bijwonen in Anderlecht, in plaats van in Leuven en Mons. Iedereen is uitgenodigd op de doop […]
Each year during May the Mental Health Foundation promotes Mental Health Awareness Week. In the Corona period and after Covid-19 many of us were blessed to have received kindness from others, on countless occasions and in countless ways, and we would all acknowledge the benefits it brings. Beyond the benefits of receiving kindness, research has […]
Recent Posts by the Brethren in Christ: Broeders in Christus
Reuters, April 4, 2024 Event Russia and NATO are now in “direct confrontation”, the Kremlin said as the U.S.-led alliance marked its 75th anniversary on Thursday. NATO‘s successive waves of eastern enlargement are a fixation of President Vladimir Putin, who went to war in Ukraine two years ago with the stated aim of preventing the […]
The Times, February 23 , 2024 Event Israel wants operational freedom throughout Gaza “without a time limit” as part of its postwar plan for the territory, Binyamin Netanyahu has told his war cabinet. In his long-awaited “day after” plan outlining Israel’s post-war intentions for Gaza, the Israeli prime minister also called for a “demilitarised, deradicalised” […]
Jerusalem Post, February 19, 2024 Event Russia has invited Palestinian groups to Moscow, which could bring together Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and other terrorist groups*. Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said over the weekend that Russia invited Palestinian factions to meet in Moscow at some point in late February, the latest Russian move to […]
Arab News, February 15, 2024 Event Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has spilled over into neighboring countries and sent shockwaves across the wider region, transforming Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen into battlefields in an escalating proxy war between the US and Iran. This mounting instability has wrought havoc on the economies of the […]
Washington Post, January 27, 2024 Event The International Court of Justice on Friday ordered Israel to do more to prevent the killing of civilians in Gaza but did not call for a cease-fire, disappointing Palestinians who had hoped the court would endorse their pleas for immediate relief from the violence. At a closely watched hearing […]
Gemeenschappen hebben ruimtes nodig om te vertoeven. Als men gezinsleden heeft gaan die uitbreiden en zijn meerdere huizen nodig. Ook voor geloofsgemeenschappen is het zo dat die best uitbreiden en aldus nieuwe plekken vormen om samen te komen. In 2023 werden er enkele mensen in de ecclesia Brussel-Leuven voorbereid om ook tot onze gemeenschap toe […]
Het getuigenis van de apostelen De geschriften van het Nieuwe Testament laten geen ruimte voor het geloof dat niet God maar Christus de Schepper was. De apostel Johannes beschrijft in het boek Openbaring een hoogst symbolisch gezicht dat hij op het eiland Patmos had gezien. “Er stond een troon in de hemel en iemand was […]
Het geloof van de eerste gemeente Het is heilzaam deze ontwikkeling in de gemeenten in de heidenwereld te beschouwen vanuit het gezichtspunt van de eerste volgelingen van Christus in de eerste dagen van zijn gemeente in Israël. Zo filosofisch gezind als de Grieken waren ze helemaal niet. Zij waren gewoon van kindsbeen af zich toe […]
In de Griekse stad Athene, waar de altaren van een menigte góden te be zichtigen waren en een kakofonie van filosofen te beluisteren was, klonk Paulus’ verkondiging van de levende God als een heldere klaroenstoot. “God, die de wereld gemaakt heeft en al wat daarin is, die een Heer is van hemel en aarde… daar […]
What change, big or small, would you like your blog to make in the world? Looking at the world, being sad, noticing that so many people are misled by big institutions that claim to be the only right church, whilst they do not follow at all the Bible teachings, nor Christ his teachings and do […]
Bible prophecies do not deal only with the ancient past. They also accurately foretell events that are taking place in our day. But at the moment we focus at numerous prophecies preserved in the Hebrew Scriptures (commonly called the Old Testament) which long before the man was born told about events which would happen in his time and around him, his betrayal, humiliation, torture, execution, death, and burial. From those writings of the Old and New Testament nobody should have doubts who that man is who is called Immanuel, the son of man and Messiah, born out of the root of Jess in the tribe of king David.
In Scripture, all things are directed towards a man who was a servant of servants, in whom people should come to have faith. First we saw the connection with Eve and her seed, and in this article you may see the connection with Abraham.
Already in the Old Testament we find the focus on a son of man who is called the son of God, who shall be the most pure set apart (holy) servant of God who was been told about in the Garden of Eden, to be the one bruised.
Many Old Testament writers wrote about the prophet to come, about whom is spoke in the book of Moses and who shall be the special “Seed of a woman” given by God and who will bruise Satan’s head whilst his heel would be bruised with nails on the wooden stake.
Recent Posts: Belgian Biblestudents - Belgische Bijbelstudenten
Review Questions on Chapter Five Who became “fishers of men”? What accusation did the Jews bring against Jesus? How was Levi called and what happened? What illustrations does Jesus use? + Preceding Luke 5 – The Nazarene’s Commentary: Luke 5:1-11 – Fishermen Follow Jesus Luke 5 – The Nazarene’s Commentary: Luke 5:12-16 – Healing a […]
Luke 5:33-39 – The Old and the New || Matthew 9:15, 16;[1] Mark 2:19;[2] John 3:29[3] LK5:33 Now these said to Jesus: “The disciples of John fast often with prayers just as the Pharisees, but your disciples [only] eat and drink.” LK5:34 Jesus asked them: “Can you force the friends of the bridegroom to fast […]
Luke 5:27-32 – Tax-man Levi Called || Matthew 9:9-12;[1] Mark 2:13-17[2] LK5:27 Now later Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax office. Jesus said to him: “Follow me.” LK5:28 So Levi rose, and leaving everything behind,[3] he followed Jesus. LK5:29 Then Levi arranged a great banquet for Jesus […]
Luke 5:17-26 – Who Can Forgive Sins? || Matthew 9:1-8;[1] Mark 2:1-12[2] LK5:17 Now it occurred during those days when Jesus was teaching some Pharisees and teachers of the Law were sitting around – for they had arrived from every village in Galilee and Judea, including Jerusalem – and YHWH’s power was with him to […]
Luke 5:12-16 – Healing a Leper and Then Privacy || Matthew 8:1-4;[1] Mark 1:40-45[2] LK5:12 Now it happened while Jesus was visiting one of the villages, look, there was a man full of leprosy.[3] When he saw Jesus he fell on his face before him and begged: “Master, if you are willing and able cleanse […]
Recent Posts by bible Scholars: Bijbelvorser = Bible Researcher
Beth Snider on the Odd News Show writes about a mysterious large green stone discovered at the Temple complex in Hattusa, the capital of the ancient Hittite Empire, standing on a raised platform and measures 215 by 140 feet (65 by 42 metres). The Hattusa Green Stone is a roughly cubic block of nephrite standing […]
Did Lamech kill Cain? What happened to Cain in the Bible? In the Book of Genesis, we are told about Cain’s birth, his violent act of fratricide and his subsequent exile. We learn that he married and had descendants, but the Bible is strangely mute about his death. How did Cain die? If he did […]
Read Elie Wiesel’s essay on Cain and Abel in the Bible as it originally appeared in Bible Review, February 1998. First republished in BHD June 1, 2015. Cain and Abel: The first two brothers of the first family in history. The only brothers in the world. The saddest, the most tragic. Why do they hold […]
Op maandag 22 april zal onze broeder, Marcus Ampe ter operatie in het ziekenhuis Gasthuisberg te Leuven verblijven. Hierdoor zal hij in de ecclesiae van Brussel-Leuven, Anderlecht, Mons-Lille de avonddienst voor 14 Nisan niet kunnen voorgaan. Wij hopen dat onze leden in hun kleine kringen het vergaderen niet zullen nalaten en Jezus laatste avondmaal in […]
“In vain do they worship Me, teaching as teachings the commands of men.” (Matthew 15:9) SPECIALS SPECIALS SPECIALS SPECIALS Every 10 You Order You Will Get 5 Extra Free Copies. Greetings Supporters, If you are not aware of the existence of this book, it would do you service, to all those who sense something not […]
First of all to come to a good relationship with some one, one has to talk with that person and has to listen to what that person has to tell. God talks to the people by the way of His Word, presented to mankind by the many Bible translations, so that most people can read […]
The One Who created everything and Who gave His Word, did all He did with a purpose and out of love. The Bible teaches us that “God is love.” (1 John 4:8) Everything God does is motivated by love. Out of love created man in His image also with the intention to have a good relationship […]
In the previous writings we saw that the Divine Creator gave His Word to the world so that people could come to know Him. The Bible is a gift from God. It gives us information that we can’t find anywhere else. For example, it tells us that God created the heavens, the earth, and the […]
Over the last six months, the Israeli war against Hamas has escalated significantly. In May 2021, violence erupted between Israeli security forces and Palestinian protesters in East Jerusalem, leading to a series of rocket attacks from Hamas militants based in the Gaza Strip. This led to an 11-day conflict in which Israel launched a series […]
Israel News, February 29, 2024 Event The Iranian regime has given Hezbollah the go-ahead to launch a large-scale attack against Israel within certain parameters, fearing that Israel plans to attack Lebanon in the near future, the Arabic Post reported on Wednesday. The Lebanese terror militia and Israel have traded blows since Hezbollah began its daily attacks against […]
Reuters, February 18, 2024 Event Israel on Sunday formalised its opposition to what it called the “unilateral recognition” of Palestinian statehood, and said any such agreement must be reached through direct negotiations. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brought the “declaratory decision” to a vote in cabinet, which unanimously approved the measure, according to a statement. Netanyahu […]
The Telegraph, February 14, 2024 Event Israeli fighter jets launched the deepest airstrikes yet on Lebanon, reigniting fears of regional war. The series of deadly strikes, amid months of cross-border violence, came after rockets from Hezbollah killed a woman in a town in northern Israel not previously affected by daily border clashes. One woman was killed and eight […]
The Times, March 21, 2024 Event Binyamin Netanyahu has told senior US Republicans that Israel “won’t stop” its planned Rafah offensive, even if it lacks American support. The Israeli prime minister spoke to senators at a lunch in Washington via videolink, after earlier admitting “disagreements” with President Biden over the potential military operation in the […]
Daily Telegraph, February 23, 2024 Event A Hezbollah “military compound” in Lebanon has been hit by an Israeli strike amid ongoing cross-border fire as tensions intensify in the Middle East. Hezbollah claimed that two paramedics affiliated with the group and one of their fighters were killed in a “direct” attack on a civil defence centre […]
From older news, which should not have been missed: The Telegraph, January 29, 2024 Event Are we on the brink of a third world war? In the age of “peak apocalypse”, it is easy to laugh off such a question. After all, we already find ourselves on permanent pandemic-watch, are besieged daily by predictions of ecological […]
Israel World News, January 21, 2024 Event Israel is giving Hezbollah ten more days to move away from its border and then its military will significantly escalate its reactions to the terrorists’ rain of rockets on northern Israel, The Washington Post reported Friday. Although the end-of-January deadline isn’t absolute, according to officials cited by the paper, the Israelis […]
Israel News, January 16, 2024 Event In an ominous sign of an expanding regional war, Jordan has been seen moving its army closer to the border with Israel. Israeli towns along the Jordanian border have reported gunfire towards their communities from the Jordanian soldiers. With the Hamas war raging and the potential for Israel’s North becoming […]
Dit jaar zijn er nog 2 sjabbatot tot Soekot en is er voor elke sjabbat een parasja en de sjabbat voorafgaande aan Rosj Hasjana lezen wij nu de de parasja Nitsawiem.
Verwonderlijk kreeg ik vandaag het bericht van WordPress dat ik tegen een jubileum mag aankijken. Gefeliciteerd met je jubileum bij WordPress.com! Je hebt je 5 jaar geleden geregistreerd op WordPress.com.Bedankt voor het gebruiken van onze service! Ga zo door met bloggen. Wat zijn die vijf jaren voorbij gevlogen. Voordat mijn pen al mijn gedachten kon […]
Met Rosj Hasjana denken wij aan de wondere scheppingsdaad van de Allerhoogste. Spijtig genoeg moeten wij toegeven dat de mensheid van die schepping een janboel heeft gemaakt.
Recent Posts: Unmasking anti Jehovah sites and people
What change, big or small, would you like your blog to make in the world? In Christendom there are lots of denominations but oh such a few, keep really to the biblical teachings. A lot of churches claim they are the only right church. In case they would follow all the teachings of Christ Jesus, […]
The apostle Paul wrote about the dispersion, the dispersed House of Israel. They had been “without covenant“, but Paul was sent out to recover them. So they were “grafted in again“ (Romans 11/23). Or, Grafted back in“. If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been […]
Rob Mac wonders when the door to door will return? He wrote this a while back, and went sharing it again. Many Jehovah’s Witnesses hate the door to door ministry, although they won’t readily admit it. Many Jehovah’s Witnesses have developed ‘creative’ ways of counting their time doing this work, and many strategies for avoiding actually […]
Constantine wanted unity in his realm, and his call in 325 C.E. for a council of his bishops at Nicaea, located in the Eastern, Greek-speaking domain of his empire, across the Bosporus from the new city of Constantinople was in a certain way his goal to achieve some agreement by which many could live. Constantine […]
Superstition, misunderstanding and hatred caused the Christians trouble for many generations, and governmental repression they had to suffer occasionally, as a result of popular disturbances. No systematic effort was made by the imperial authorities to put an end to the movement until the reign of the Roman emperor (249–251) who fought the Gothic invasion of […]
When having many questions an interesting blog to look at: their old and more recent Posts: Questiontime - Vragenuurtje
Babies don’t come with instructions. It’s a learn-as-you go game. Trial and error along the way. Babies don’t come with instructions. Childhood scars and sweet memories Layered with guilt, regret and love. Babies don’t come with instructions. It’s a learn-as-you go game. Instruction Manual
God heeft de wereld van Zijn woord en Zijn profeten voorzien, maar niet altijd wensten de mensen van die leiders of profeten weten, waardoor er verscheidene groeperingen ontstonden die elk dachten of denken de juiste aanbiddingswijze te hebben.
Does one need proof to come to a certain belief? We can look at the signs in nature and find out what happened to certain people in the past, such as Noah and Paul. With the Book of Books, Allah has provided the world with His Interpretative Word.
Heeft men bewijzen nodig om tot een bepaald geloof te komen? Wij kunnen naar de tekenen in de natuur kijken en nagaan wat er in het verleden met bepaalde mensen, zoals Noach en Paulus is gebeurd. Met het Boek der boeken heeft Allah de wereld van Zijn Alzeggend Woord voorzien.
When we speak about “Faith” (iman) we look at acceptance of the Belief in the existence and oneness of God (Allah).and the existence of the Book of books of which God is the author, existing of five main parts, the Torah (revealed to Moses),,the Psalms (revealed to David).and the Writings of Kings and prophets as well as the Gospel (revealed to Jesus) with the writings of his apostles,
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Biblestudents – Bijbelstudenten
A Google Site presenting the Biblestudents with articles in English and Dutch – Voorstelling van de Bijbelstudenten met artikelen in het Nederlands en Engels
Christen Focus
Vanuit de Bijbelonderzoekers oogpunt kijkend waarop de mens hoorrt te focussen
Getuigen voor Christus
Tegenover de Getuigen van Jehovah zijn er ook de Getuigen voor Christus die Getuigenis afleggen voor Christus en zijn God Jehovah.
Relating to God wordPress Blog
Proving there is Only One True God which should be honoured and followed and how we can come in a better relationship with Him by following His only begotten son Jesus Christ as the Way to God.
Unmasking anti-Jehovah people
Debunking all the false sayings of those who fight against non-trinitarian groups and people
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Hoop tot leven
Platform van Marcus Ampe voor hulpverlening en hoop geving
Christadelphian
Belgian Christadelphians
Google site with articles in English from the Belgian Brothers in Christ or Christadelphians
C4All
Christ For All – Presenting ways to find Christ in your life
C4U – Christ for you & Christadelphians for you
Site of Brothers and Sisters in Christ, who love the Creator and His creations and want people to show who is the way to Him and to His Kingdom where there shall be peace for ever.
Our World
News and thoughts about what is happening in the world, brought by the Free Christian Marcus Ampe. – Een kijk op het wereldgebeuren vanuit het standpunt van de Vrije Christen Marcus Ampe
Relating to God wordPress Blog
Proving there is Only One True God which should be honoured and followed and how we can come in a better relationship with Him by following His only begotten son Jesus Christ as the Way to God.
Immanuel Verbondskind
A site where issues of Judaism, Christianity, Islamism, their search for continued authenticity and relevance for today are discussed and looked at the position of the Jeshuaist community wrestling with the non- or anti-religious world
Jeshuaisme
Het Jeshuaisme brengt volgers van de Nazareense rebbe Jeshua (door velen beter gekend als Jezus Christus) te samen en verenigd Jehudiem (Jehoediem) of Joden zowel als goyim of niet-Joden en doet een oproep naar alle soort gelovigen en niet-gelovigen om Je
Jeshuaist
Personal pages of a Flemish Jeshua-ist – Persoonlijke paginas van een Vlaamse Jeshuaist
Jeshuaist communities
A community of real followers of Christ, assembling for sharing the Good News of the works of the Moshiach Jeshua and his heavenly Father the Elohim Hashem Jehovah.
Jeshuaist Focus
Uiteenzetting hoe eenieder tot het Volk kan behoren dat het Koninkrijk van god zal mogen binnentreden
Jeshuaisten – Jeshuaists
Een plaats van en voor liefhebbers van de Joodse Nazarener rabbi Jeshua om het bijbelkennis te versterken. – A site of and for lovers of the Nazarene Jewish rabbi Jeshua to strengthen their knowledge of the Scriptures.
Jeshuaists (or Yeshuaists)
Jeshuaists (or Yeshuaists) are followers of the Nazarene rebbe Jeshua who presented himself as a sent one from the Adonai Most High Elohim, Hashem Jehovah.
Jeshuaists for Jehovah
Followers of the Nazarene rebbe Jeshua witnessing for him and his God, the Only True God of Isrrael, the Elohim Hashem Jehovah.
Our World
News and thoughts about what is happening in the world, brought by the Free Christian Marcus Ampe. – Een kijk op het wereldgebeuren vanuit het standpunt van de Vrije Christen Marcus Ampe
Some View on the world
Marcus Ampe presenting general and religious newsitems. – Wereldse en religieuze nieuwsfeiten bekeken onder de loep van Marcus Ampe.
Stepping Toes
A Lifestyle magazine which can be for some a provocative site created by Marcus Ampe
However, a large part of the population has become aware that one has to take care of the heart and treat the body respectfully to know how to handle multiple things smoothly. One came to see that for doing cardio or cardio-respiratory exercise there is no need in such high 
Writer, lecturer, political activist, and feminist organizer 
Tim Laman, USA
BlogMas
Every product cries out to be bought . With an agressiveness that borders on hysterical, our advertising boys try to convince us that margarine produces a more harmonious family life and that coca cola creates friendships. They shamelessly use insights of psychology to encourage people to 
18, 30 gallon trash bags, filled with clothes, shoes, hats, purses, and accessories galore. … They were just taking up space in our closet for no other reason than to take up space. That wasn’t all we gave away though, just the 1st round. I would say by the end of it, we had close to 30 bags that we donated, and a bunch of boxes of 
alsowritten
Belgian Biblestudents - Belgische Bijbelstudenten
belgischebroedersinchristus
Bijbelvorsers
Christadelphians
Guestspeaker
Immanuel Verbondskind
jeshuaist
Vragensteller - Inquirer
lizaborstlap
Marcus Ampe
Success Inspirers' World
obligingworldviewer
Fan of Pequeña Sudamérica
Relating to God
From guestwriters 