In Jin Moon
September 25, 2011
Good morning, brothers and sisters. This side of the room: I think you had a big breakfast this morning. I'm glad to see all of you. As you know, our True Parents are still in Korea, but they will be joining us soon, next week. I want to thank the American movement and all of you for coming together in heartistic unity with our True Parents last week to proclaim your loyalty and devotion, taking the courage to stand up for what is the right thing to do as eternal sons and daughters of God. I want to thank you this morning and would like to give all of us a round of applause. Thank you.
Every Sunday morning when I get up and think about preparing for the sermon to be shared, I like to take a little time of meditation and reflection. Often I can feel the spirit of our Heavenly Parent and the spirit of our True Parents all around me. Today is no exception.
Once again I was thinking about how richly blessed we are to have this man and woman in our lives. This man has gone through amazing odds, devastating suffering: six times in and out of prison, and two of those times he was thrown out for dead. And by his side, every step of the way, we have our beautiful True Mother. For the first time in history, we have a man and woman working together, giving their all to save humanity from self-destruction, to inspire all people to be loving and peaceful sons and daughters of God who can welcome a whole new millennium of peace.
Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han at Hoon Dok Hae, July 18, 2011
Being given the chance to call them our Father and Mother is a profound blessing. I think often about them, their lives, all they have shared – and our Father being well into his 92nd year, but still going strong. The last couple of days he gave a Hoon Dok Hae session that was 22 hours long – from 5:00 a.m. until 3:00 a.m. the next day. Can you imagine a 90-some year-old-man, without a drop of water, talking and giving out his heart in such a desperate fashion? It is absolutely astounding.
"Give It a Bit of the Feminine"
When I sat down at the dining room table, took out a box of Special K cereal, and poured some of it into my bowl so I could enjoy a quiet breakfast time, I saw on the cereal box some advice on how to manage your health, your weight, and your life. I thought, "Let's see what Special K cereal has to say in terms of helping me manage my health and my life." When I thought about the word manage, I thought it was quite interesting that Webster's dictionary defines manage as Number One, to handle something; Number Two, to control something; and Number Three, to direct something.
When you're thinking about managing your life, you want to handle your health and your lifestyle. You want to control your health and your lifestyle, and also your weight. And you want to direct your health and your lifestyle in a certain way so that you can be a satisfied and healthy individual. When you look at the word manage, you see that it's made up of two words. Being a woman, I always ask myself, "Why is it that certain words have man in there? Why is it when you want to handle, control, or direct, you find a masculine word man in there and age? It's almost as if in order to manage things properly, in order to exercise management of a particular situation, it helps to be a man and it helps to have a bit of age.
But being a woman, every Sunday when I'm asked to give a sermon, I ask myself, "Why can't a sermon be a hermon?" And why can't history be herstory? Why can't manage be woman-youth? These things are going through my mind. I am thinking, "I want to manage my life, my health, my weight, by handling the situation – controlling what I eat and directing a certain type of nutrition to follow." I thought, "If we think about this in a different way… If we give it a bit of the feminine, then we can think in terms of "What about woman-youthment of your life, or your nutrition, or your lifestyle?"
Then perhaps the word manage, which dictates that we handle, control, and direct our lives, our health, and our weight, could be understood more in a feminine context as well. For instance, the word handle could then become something that we don't just handle, we don't just take care of a certain thing and be responsible for it – we actually care.
I have many friends in the industry who go to every lunch and dinner with a calorie chart, almost like a little program that dictates how much they can and cannot eat. I think it's great to have a guide, but to have something that's totally controlling your life must be quite miserable. Many of my friends are extremely handsome and beautiful, but they are controlled by this computer or this little measurement chart – and they are uncomfortably unhappy.
Instead of controlling our life, what about guiding it by following guidelines to a healthy lifestyle and a weight we are satisfied with? Instead of feeling we have to totally control everything about our self because we are so awful, what about enjoying it a little and allowing God into our lives. What about knowing the rules that are going to yield us a healthy body, but at the same time using the rules as a guide in that we allow the flexibilities of everyday life to entertain us, to perhaps inspire us in ways that we've never been inspired before?
Instead of managing our lifestyle in terms of directing or commanding, what about if we think about the word man-age and turn it around and use the word woman-youth? And instead of directing or commanding, what if we embrace and focus on what we want to accomplish in our lives?
Basically we would be doing the same thing. We would be taking care of and being responsible for our life, wanting a healthy lifestyle and a weight we can be comfortable with. But by infusing a bit of the feminine, life can become much more beautiful, compassionate, and holistic. That's really the beauty of having the living paradigm of true love with us in the persons of our True Parents, a man and a woman. We don't just have to have the masculine man-age, we also can have the feminine woman-youth. And perhaps with a bit of love, compassion, and kindness we might get there faster. We might reach our goal more effectively, and our result might be more long lasting in that it is something that we can realistically live with, grow with, and learn from.
A Positive Mind Leads to a Positive Life
One of the great things about being the senior pastor is I get to spend wonderful time with lots of young people. The most interesting thing for me is getting a group of elementary-age men- and women-to-be – beautiful bright-eyed little girls and boys – and asking them very simple questions. When I asked a group of elementary school students, "What do you want out of life," they all raised their hands, and I asked one for his answer. Bobby relied, "I want happiness." I asked, "What else do you want out of life?" Mary answered, "I want love." "What else do you want out of life?" "I want to be successful." "I want to be president of the United States." Another said, "I want to be prosperous."
These are the cute responses from a group of elementary school students. Basically when you ask them a simple question, "What do you want out of life", they want things that tend to be positive. They want happiness. Happiness is something positive in one's life. They want love. Love is something positive in one's life. They want to be successful, something that's positive in their life. They want to be prosperous, something that's positive.
When we ask the kids, "What do you not want to be in life," their questions and answers tend to be something that they see to be contrary to what is happiness. If you ask them, "What do you not want to be?" after asking them, "What do you want your life to be?" they say, "I don't want to be sad, or miserable." When we ask a child and the response is, "I want love in my life," and then ask, "What do you not want in your life," the response is, "I don't want hate in my life."
When we ask a child, "What do you want to be," and the child answers, "I want to be successful," and then we ask, "What do you not want to be," the child will say, "I don't want to be a loser." When a child answers, "I want to be prosperous in my life," the answer to "What do you not want to be," will be, "I don't want to be a failure in my life."
Looking at the answers the kids give, we realize that every divine human being, every eternal son or daughter of God has a certain concept of the kind of life we would like to have. We would like that life to have all these wonderful, positive ingredients, like happiness, love, success, and prosperity. But many times in the course of our lives even though our goal of wanting something positive in our life never changes, the means of getting there sometimes gets thrown out of whack.
One of the things that our True Father and True Mother teach over and over again, and a lesson they have taught my brothers and sisters and me ever since we were little, is that a positive life cannot be had with a negative mind. In other words, if we want the positive life, we have to think positively. If we have the ability to conceive what we want and that conception of what we want is a positive life, then we have to be willing to actualize it in our life by thinking positive thoughts. As the Bible says, "As you thinketh, so you shall be. [Prov 23:7 KJV only]" In other words, what we think is what we become. If we want a positive life, we have to think positively.
If we don't think positively, and instead think negatively, we cannot get to where we want to go, and we cannot achieve what we intended or what we conceived in our mind, which is a positive, happy, loving, prosperous, and successful life.
The Vertical Connection to God
That thought leads to me to this section in the Good Book, Zechariah 9:12, which says "Return to the stronghold, you prisoners of hope. Even today I declare I shall repay you a double portion and promise you prosperity." So what is the Bible saying when it asks all of us to return to the stronghold? It's basically saying that a positive life or all the great things in life that we want start with God. If we don't invite God into our lives, if we wait for everybody else to do the homework for us, then we become prisoners of our own wishful thinking, in that because we're constantly waiting and wishing, we're not living in the now. We're not living the life and loving the life that God, our Heavenly Parent, has bestowed on every one of us.
Life is a gift and a blessing, and every one of us – from every different corner of the world and from different racial, cultural, religious, and economic backgrounds – is a child of God, who wants us to be happy, to have love, and to be successful and prosperous. But we have to be the agent of change. We have to liberate ourselves from ourselves. We are the ones who keep ourselves prisoners of constantly waiting and wishing. What the Bible is saying with the expression "Return to the stronghold" is "Return to God. Return to yourself. Discover the treasure within. Discover the mountain that is you. Discover the love that is already there."
I always thought it was interesting that when you think about positive and negative, the symbol for positive is two lines, the vertical and horizontal, and the symbol for negative is just a horizontal line. When I think about these two symbols in terms of an attitude or lifestyle, it makes me think about a couple of things. When our life is infused with God, when God is active in our lives, the vertical takes shape.
In our relationship with our Heavenly Parent, the vertical is there. And then we can concentrate on the great relationships that we can have with each other – with our spouses, our children, and humanity. But if we only think about humanity, we will never have the combination of the vertical and the horizontal. Only when we have the vertical and the horizontal in place with dynamic give and take action of true love in process will we experience the circular motion or the circle of life: the full, holistic, and completed picture of life as God intended for all his and her eternal sons and daughters.
If we think only about the negative and the horizontal, if we think only about our relationships with each other and not about the vertical relationship that we need to maintain with our Heavenly Parent and True Parents, then we become forever wider, but we never really fully take shape. Human beings are beautiful in that we are made of all that is horizontal and vertical. But watching just the horizontal relationship is almost like popping a water balloon and watching it deflate as the water expands and covers the whole table but at the same time knowing that we will never see that circular water balloon again.
We need God in our lives for us to be able to start taking steps into being the kind of person that we want to be. If we want to have a positive lifestyle, then we have to have God in there together with our humanity, engaged in this dynamic relationship of true love, constantly turning, constantly evolving, constantly changing and growing. And in that way we can become outstanding sons and daughters of God who are not inhibited by concepts of impossibility – or by concepts of cannot, will not, or should not – but who are empowered by the concepts of we can, we will, we shall, we are.
When we really think about it, we all want a positive lifestyle. We want all things wonderful, and we realize that one of the things we must always be on guard about is how to tackle this negative mind that is going to interfere with the positive and inspired life that we would all like to build for ourselves.
A couple of things come to mind. When we tend to be negative, it's first and foremost because we don't have a relationship with God in our lives. We are almost like this deflated water balloon, forever expanding but never really finding our mast, our balance, or our focus.
Set Aside Doubt, Worry and Self-Pity
We realize that when we want to be great people, there are a couple of things we should always be on the lookout for. One of the main ingredients of a negative mind is the word doubt. When we don't have God in our life, many times it is because we doubt. But if we understand that God is our Heavenly Parent, and our True Parents are my own True Parents, we can also realize that when we decide to understand or believe, our mind goes through a wonderful affirmation process.
When we look at the word doubt, we see that it also is made up of two words – do and out. When we doubt, we are doing out with God. We are doing out with faith. We are doing out with the ability to believe in ourselves as an eternal son or daughter of God, who was put on this earth with a divine purpose and goal – to bring forth beauty and love, and to share with and be inspired by others.
When we do out with God we are doing what is implied by Vine's Dictionary when it defines doubt as "standing in two ways." We are trying to do two things at the same time. We are trying to be a daughter of God, but at the same time not being a daughter of God. We're trying to be a son of God, but at the same time not being a son of God. It's almost like trying to sit on a fence while your world is falling apart. You've got to decide what to believe in. You've got to decide what your goal in life is.
The great thing about inviting God into our life is that when we decide to let our Heavenly Parent into our lives, everything starts to fall into place. We realize that we as their eternal sons and daughters have a specific purpose and vision in our lives that we must accomplish. We come to know that it's our duty, responsibility, and honor to live a life of altruism, serving other people, living for the sake of others. We understand that our life is an opportunity to be the compassionate son or daughter of God. Our life is an opportunity for us to tell each other in this cold, fragmented, compartmentalized, modern world of today that we care and we love, and we believe that God cares, God loves, and God believes in us.
Beyond being an excellent man or woman of God who is defined by our internal characteristics, if we're a truly beautiful man or woman of God exhibiting the moral character that is so fundamental to a person of integrity, then everything that we do will be blessed, anointed, and touched by heavenly fortune.
We see it happen again and again in the life of our True Parents, regardless of how many people have mistreated, persecuted, and accused them of things left and right. When we are channeling the power of true love and the divinity within, we can be the agent of change to make the world a better place than we found it. Not only that, but we can help all humanity engraft onto the true lineage of God through the Blessing ceremony, where people from all over the world come together into the common family of God through our True Parents' gift of the blessing.
How else do black and yellow become one family? How else do Muslim and Catholic become one family? How else does a princess become one family with a pauper? It's the magic of the Blessing that our True Parents bring to all of us, which reminds humanity we need each other. We are interdependent on each other, and we need to work together to build this world of peace. Our True Parents are here to say that it starts with all of us. It starts with a decision to believe. It starts with a decision to understand and to love.
When we are plagued with negative thinking, it's this word doubt that always leaves us stranded in the state of abeyance, where we are neither black nor white, neither light nor dark, and we don't know who we are. But if we bring God into our lives, the focus becomes clear.
Another main ingredient of negative thinking that prevents us from achieving a positive lifestyle is worry. To an Asian ear, the word worry is interesting because the first syllable sounds like war. It's the battlefield of the mind. When you worry, you are constantly at war with your own mind, with yourself. The Bible says that peace depends on the fruit of the spirit [Gal 5:22]. But when you are at war with yourself in your mind, what you have is not peace. War becomes the fruit of your spirit.
God is asking all of us to believe in God, set our worries aside, stop fighting with ourselves, and stop being the control freak who needs everything figured out. Leave room for God to work his and her mysterious magic in our lives. Let's give ourselves to God and let ourselves go to God. That is what our Heavenly Parent is waiting for us to do.
If we are to look at another component of a negative mind, not only is it filled with doubt and worry, but the next main component of a negative mind is self-pity: "Poor, poor, pitiful me. I'm a victim of my circumstances, my family, my society, and my economic class."
But if we invite God into our minds and understand that God is our Heavenly Parent, we realize that whatever situation we were placed in is not an end or goal of our lives. Sometimes God puts us in very difficult situations because God knows that as God's eternal sons and daughters – divinely gifted, creative, and strong individuals – if we have the power to believe in God and in ourselves, it doesn't matter whether we were born in the poor streets of New Delhi, it doesn't matter whether we were born in one of the rooms of the White House, it does not matter whether we were born as one of these girls who are bound to be sold as slaves to human trafficking. If we can recognize the divinity within and that our life has a purpose, we will find the strength within to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps, to become God's beautiful image as the eternal son or daughter whom God is waiting for us to become.
Once we invite God into our lives, we don't have to handle our doubt or control our worry or direct or command our self-pity away, and manage our life in that way. When we invite God back into our lives, we can replace doubt with the understanding that we are this incredible son or daughter of God.
Instead of doubt, we can decide to respond with heart. Instead of doubting all the most important things in our lives and therefore doubting the possibility that we can be happy, successful, and prosperous while living in love, we can have a positive life. If we get rid of the negative mind and truly respond with our heart (and responding with our heart means not responding with our ego or our head, and not responding to all the hurt we experience in our lifetime) then we can do amazing things.
Sometimes we may be so consumed negatively by worry that we are so at war with ourselves that we can never accomplish anything meaningful in our lives. But God is asking us, Number One, to respond with heart; and Number Two, to open up ourselves. God is telling us, "Don't be afraid. Stop worrying."
Let's stop being the prisoner of hope in that we don't see ourselves as our own agent of change. We are stuck in the prison that we created for ourselves. Get rid of the fear. We need to open ourselves up, even though it might be scary. Making ourselves vulnerable to another person is painfully scary, but only by doing so do we earn the trust of another person, and therefore give the same in return and experience the deepest, most profound, and enduring love that we've ever experienced in our lifetime.
We need to open ourselves up to God. And instead of being consumed negatively by self-pity, we need to transition ourselves into thinking about how to respond to doubt with heart. How do we overcome worry by deciding to believe and open ourselves up to God and all the good that is waiting for us? And third, instead of being consumed by self-pity, we need to concentrate on how to stop thinking with the arrow pointing in -- because that's what we're doing when we say, "Poor, poor victim me." What we need to do is point the arrow outward. "Yes, my life, my situation might not be ideal, but what can I do to help other people who may be less fortunate than I am, who have less food than I have, who experience less love than I do?"
By turning the arrow outward and concentrating on how we can serve and take care of others, we can transform the negative mind of suffering under the victim mentality to a new mind of thriving in the knowledge that, regardless of what I'm going through, the divine person within me wants to come out and express him- or herself in a great and inspired way.
So, "What can I do to inspire or serve or love another person?" If we ask that, we soon realize that when we respond with heart – and not with ego or head or all the things that have hurt us along the way – we begin to woman-youth our life in that we decide to care and we begin to care. When we decide to let go of our worry and open ourselves up to God and to his and her mysterious working in every day of our lives, we leave ourselves open for God, our Heavenly Parent, to guide us in many ways that perhaps we've never thought about before.
Instead of just thinking about ourselves – self-pity – if we live for the sake of others and with God in our lives, we begin to embrace everything around us, focused on what we need to accomplish and what we need to do with our life to leave this world a beautiful place.
Love Life, and Love Each Other
When our True Father and True Mother teach that the family is the cornerstone for every great society, nation, and world, it's poignant and profound because we realize that in every family the responsibility of being a building block rests on you and me. The positive life that we want depends on you and me.
When Zechariah 9:12 says, "Return to the stronghold," the Bible is asking us to return to that mountain. A positive life is like a mountain. God placed each mountain in every one of us in that we're always thinking we need to go out to climb the mountain, we need to find love, we need to seek love, and we need to strive for love. But God is saying that that rich reservoir of love, like the mountain you have been striving for, looking for, and pursuing is nowhere other than within yourself. The mountain and everything that we seek are within every one of us. They're not without. We won't find love when we look outside ourselves.
The whole meaning of true love is that when you truly love somebody, you don't get married because you want that person to complete you: You get married or blessed because you want to share your love with the person. You want to give your love to the person. And if the other person has a like-minded vision and goal, then you can develop into a beautiful family and create an environment that is wonderfully conducive to successful, prosperous, loving, and happy children.
Our True Parents come to liberate us from the whole concept that Christian piety has shared with us all around the world because Jesus was crucified on the cross. If instead, he would have had the opportunity to fulfill his mission, he would have found a beautiful wife, created a beautiful family as a living testament of God, as a living paradigm of true love, and inspired all humanity to love each other as members of the family of God.
Reverend Moon is famous the world over for all these mass weddings, and blessing people is exactly what Jesus Christ would have done 2,000 years ago if had he not been crucified on the cross. If he would have had a wife, we would realize that the paradigm of Christian piety is more than just to live a life of denial, sacrifice, and misery.
When we see the completed picture we realize that Jesus came to be the lord of all lords, and the king of kings. He came to show us how to love life and how to love each other. He didn't come just to show us how to be miserable, sacrificial Christians; he came to teach us how to be a great father, a great husband, a great son, and a great brother. And through the beautiful wife of Jesus we would have seen and experienced how we can be a beautiful mother, a beautiful daughter, and a beautiful sister. In that way we would have had the completed picture of how we as true Christians should live a life being fulfilled, and having the happiness, love, success, and prosperity that many good Christians have denied themselves because they wanted to live a life of Christian piety.
If we understand Jesus' mission in terms of what he could have been, what he really came to do, and not the fragmented or cut-short version of what Jesus' life was all about, we realize that he was supposed to have a beautiful loving relationship with his wife so he could show all people what a loving relationship is like.
I'm sure that for Jesus, just as for you and me, creating an ideal family would not be a walk in the park. Building families is the hardest work that anybody can do. Being a parent in an ideal family means that I am committed to deal with my family issues -- to deal with myself, my children, my in-laws, and all my relatives -- while somehow creating the beautiful family that is going to be the cornerstone, the building block, of the peaceful world we so long for.
This is the reason why our True Parents are so precious to all of us. They are that living model. The amazing thing about them is, regardless of what happens in their lives, they don't allow room for doubt, worry, or self-pity. They are truly a man and woman who have been the paradigm of what it means to respond with heart, to open yourself up to the whole world, whether the world understands you or not.
They show us the example of being steadfastly committed to opening yourself up and being courageous enough to share the truth and be the prophet who makes people uncomfortable in order to help them wake up. Reverend Moon and our True Parents come not to make us feel all good about ourselves but to remind us we can be better if we work a little bit harder. They come to make us feel uncomfortable at times because they know that we can be so much more. They truly have been the kind of woman and man who have given themselves ceaselessly to the mission over and over again.
Autumn Is off to an Awesome Start
I have five beautiful children, and my oldest is finishing up his graduate degree at the London School of Economics. My second son and my only daughter have just graduated from Harvard and are engaged in public service. I have Truston and Paxton, who are still looking forward to college. One of the things I taught my children from a very young age are the words thank you and awesome. When they were little, I would say, "We have God as our Heavenly Parent. Isn't that awesome?" And the children would say "aw-tum" because they couldn't quite say "awesome."
They would look at pictures of True Parents and say "aw-tum." They would look at pictures of our brothers and sisters, Yankee Stadium, Washington Monument, Father inaugurating the Washington Times, Father cutting ribbons at a hospital in Japan. The pictures were showing all the things that their grandfather and grandmother have done to promote interfaith dialogue, to promote an understanding that we belong to the same parent. My kids used to look at all those photos and say "aw-tum."
And I thought, how fitting because here we are closing off the month of September, looking to October. We're in the season of autumn. This really ought to be a season of awesome autumn in that not only is our Heavenly Parent aw-tum, but our True Parents are aw-tum, too. We as their children, by default are also aw-tum in that we are awesome sons and daughters of God.
So the only thing that's holding us back and keeping us a prisoner of hope who is wanting something that's out there, constantly hoping and waiting for something that's out there, is our not realizing that we are the awesome sons and daughters of God. We are that mountain that we're climbing each and every day, so one day we're going to be standing on the top, truly inspired and enjoying all the things that our Heavenly Parent has blessed us with.
All we need to do each day is to continually walk up the mountain because in our efforts to be better people we have to realize that we cannot have a positive life without being one with God. We have to be one with God. We have to have God in our lives in order to have a positive life because when we have God in our lives, we have a positive mind, and the mind determines our actions. Our mind determines our outlook. Our mind determines the possibilities and opportunities as opposed to the hindrances and obstacles, or the potential setbacks or failures. And even if we feel that sometimes life has a way of giving us a setback, that's just preparation for a great comeback, brothers and sisters.
This is an anointed time and a blessed time. We are living, breathing, and walking with our True Parents. So go inspired, and go with a grateful heart knowing that we are God's eternal sons and daughters. So God bless.
Notes:
Proverbs Chapter 23 [King James translation only]
1: When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee:
2: And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite.
3: Be not desirous of his dainties: for they are deceitful meat.
4: Labour not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom.
5: Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.
6: Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty meats:
7: For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee.
8: The morsel which thou hast eaten shalt thou vomit up, and lose thy sweet words.
9: Speak not in the ears of a fool: for he will despise the wisdom of thy words.
10: Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless:
11: For their redeemer is mighty; he shall plead their cause with thee.
12: Apply thine heart unto instruction, and thine ears to the words of knowledge.
13: Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.
14: Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.
15: My son, if thine heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine.
16: Yea, my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips speak right things.
17: Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the LORD all the day long.
18: For surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall not be cut off.
19: Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way.
20: Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh:
21: For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.
22: Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old.
23: Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.
24: The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice: and he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him.
25: Thy father and thy mother shall be glad, and she that bare thee shall rejoice.
26: My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways.
27: For a whore is a deep ditch; and a strange woman is a narrow pit.
28: She also lieth in wait as for a prey, and increaseth the transgressors among men.
29: Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?
30: They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.
31: Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.
32: At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.
33: Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.
34: Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast.
35: They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.
Zechariah, chapter 9
1: An Oracle The word of the LORD is against the land of Hadrach
and will rest upon Damascus.
For to the LORD belong the cities of Aram,
even as all the tribes of Israel;2: Hamath also, which borders thereon,
Tyre and Sidon, though they are very wise.3: Tyre has built herself a rampart,
and heaped up silver like dust,
and gold like the dirt of the streets.4: But lo, the Lord will strip her of her possessions
and hurl her wealth into the sea,
and she shall be devoured by fire.5: Ash'kelon shall see it, and be afraid;
Gaza too, and shall writhe in anguish;
Ekron also, because its hopes are confounded.
The king shall perish from Gaza;
Ash'kelon shall be uninhabited;6: a mongrel people shall dwell in Ashdod;
and I will make an end of the pride of Philistia.7: I will take away its blood from its mouth,
and its abominations from between its teeth;
it too shall be a remnant for our God;
it shall be like a clan in Judah,
and Ekron shall be like the Jeb'usites.8: Then I will encamp at my house as a guard,
so that none shall march to and fro;
no oppressor shall again overrun them,
for now I see with my own eyes.9: Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on an ass,
on a colt the foal of an ass.10: I will cut off the chariot from E'phraim
and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.11: As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you,
I will set your captives free from the waterless pit.12: Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;
today I declare that I will restore to you double.13: For I have bent Judah as my bow;
I have made E'phraim its arrow.
I will brandish your sons, O Zion,
over your sons, O Greece,
and wield you like a warrior's sword.14: Then the LORD will appear over them,
and his arrow go forth like lightning;
the Lord GOD will sound the trumpet,
and march forth in the whirlwinds of the south.15: The LORD of hosts will protect them,
and they shall devour and tread down the slingers;
and they shall drink their blood like wine,
and be full like a bowl,
drenched like the corners of the altar.16: On that day the LORD their God will save them
for they are the flock of his people;
for like the jewels of a crown
they shall shine on his land.17: Yea, how good and how fair it shall be!
Grain shall make the young men flourish,
and new wine the maidens.Galatians, chapter 5
1: For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
2: Now I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.
3: I testify again to every man who receives circumcision that he is bound to keep the whole law.
4: You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.
5: For through the Spirit, by faith, we wait for the hope of righteousness.
6: For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love.
7: You were running well; who hindered you from obeying the truth?
8: This persuasion is not from him who calls you.
9: A little leaven leavens the whole lump.
10: I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view than mine; and he who is troubling you will bear his judgment, whoever he is.
11: But if I, brethren, still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? In that case the stumbling block of the cross has been removed.
12: I wish those who unsettle you would mutilate themselves!
13: For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another.
14: For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
15: But if you bite and devour one another take heed that you are not consumed by one another.
16: But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.
17: For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would.
18: But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law.
19: Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness,
20: idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit,
21: envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
22: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23: gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.
24: And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
25: If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.
26: Let us have no self-conceit, no provoking of one another, no envy of one another.