You know what shook me when I was Muslim?
The story of Hosea. God tells a prophet to marry a woman He knows will betray him.
She does. She runs to other men. She ends up enslaved, sold, used up, worthless to the world.
And God tells Hosea to go BUY HER BACK.
To pay money for his own wife who cheated on him, and love her again. Hosea 3.
I thought it was the most humiliating command in the Bible. Why would any man do that?
Then I realized I was the wife.
I gave my heart to everything but God. I chased other masters. I sold myself cheap. I made myself worthless.
And God looked at me, the betrayer, and didn’t say “you’re not worth it.”
He said, “Name the price. I’m buying her back.”
That’s the Gospel. God doesn’t wait for the unfaithful to come crawling back clean.
He pays to redeem them while they’re still dirty.
Islam told me to make myself worthy of God.
Hosea showed me a God who pays to redeem the unworthy.
The cross was Him naming the price.
Praise the Lord.
A.J. Pierzynski met Pope Leo XIV and gifted him the final out ball from Game 1 of the 2005 World Series, the game he attended.
(via aj_pierzynski_ft • IG)
@stevestone Can't tell you how good it is to watch these kids play for the love of the game. And absolutely love your analysis @stevestone - few are better. Let's roll this season boys!
History Matters....Knowing History REALLY Matters......Courage, Bravery and Character exemplified🇻🇦
When the bishops arrived at Nicaea in 325 AD Constantine was not prepared for what he saw.
He had called the council, the first great gathering of Christian leaders from across the entire Roman world, to settle theological disputes and unify the church. Bishops came from Egypt, Syria, Persia, Spain, Britain, North Africa. Over 300 of them.
And many of them were broken.
The Great Persecution of Diocletian had ended only 20 years earlier. Some of the men who walked into that council hall were still carrying its marks on their bodies. Empty eye sockets where eyes had been gouged out. Stumps where hands had been cut off. Burn scars. Broken limbs that had never healed properly. Bodies that bore twenty years of evidence of what Rome had done to them for refusing to deny their faith.
These were the men the Roman emperor had invited to his palace.
Ancient accounts describe Constantine moving through the gathering and stopping before each scarred bishop. He kissed their wounds. Their empty eye sockets. Their mutilated hands. The burn scars on their faces.
The man who commanded every army in the Roman world knelt before the men Rome had tried to destroy.
Twenty years earlier these bishops had been hiding in catacombs, being tortured in imperial prisons, watching their congregations fed to lions.
Now they were being seated at the emperor's table.
The same empire. Twenty years. And the whole world had turned upside down.
If God could do that in 20 years, imagine what He can do with whatever you're facing right now.
Share this with someone who needs hope today.
"Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy." — Psalm 126:5
Christendom College, known for its strong Catholic identity and vibrant campus life, is now offering a range of free online courses, including Theology of the Body. These self-paced programs allow students and learners everywhere to deepen their understanding of the Catholic faith, studying rich theological content at their own convenience.
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The is The Prayer, in Orthodoxy; the prayer which is prayed “unceasingly,” which is seen in the New Testament in the mouths of those who received their sight again and were healed of their maladies.