DuaneFriesen.com

Recently I have been seeing some horses and buggies. They amaze me. My fiancée is amused… I guess I must be a tourist.

Recently a teacher was teaching the youth, and ask them if they knew why God created us. One boy popped out the answer, “So we can be slaves of His love.”
Though this is an interesting way of explaining the purpose for our existence, I do like the imagery of being a slave to God’s love. I never want to free from this “slavery.” The oxymoron is that it is only in this slavery that I am free.

Sometimes you have to wonder what kind of theology our Tuesday night teachers have. I asked a first grader grader what her lesson was on, and her story was something like this:

One day an old man (Elisha) was walking when he came upon he came upon some children. They made fun of him and hollered out to him saying, “Come over here you bald headed. Come over here you bald headed.”
The next day these forty children came out of the woods with knives. They cut the old man into forty pieces. The old man died.

I need to make sure her teacher’s theology is straightened up. For those who want to compare this to the actual story, click here.

“I don’t think that you care,” were the quiet words of a homeless man.

My heart hurt when I heard these words that were directed at me. I knew he was right. Oh yes, I do have bad feeling at time for those who were suffering, but did I care from my heart? If it doesn’t produce action, is it caring? If I don’t get involved in their world and fight for their cause, do I really care about them?

People will only know we care, if they can see it flow from our hearts into actions.

We know what we are against. We tend to be critical with anyone who views things differently then we do. It seems the early church also had this problem. In Romans 14 Paul writes about how the weak are judging the strong and the strong are despising the weak. Paul calls the Romans away from this critical looking at each other and shows then a better way. He points them to look out for the good of their Christian brothers/sisters and not do anything that would make them lose their faith. He calls them love unconditionally.

In another letter Paul commends the Ephesians for the love. He says in Ephesians 1:15 that when he heard about how they loved each other, it caused him to pray and praise God for them.

At a later date, John also addressed the Ephesians. It was while he was exiled in Patmos, that he wrote a letter in which Jesus told him to write some words specifically addressed to the church at Ephesus. He mentions in Revelation 2 how they cannot “bear those who are evil.” He also mentions how they exposed people who falsely claimed to be apostles, as false.

Wow, this sounds great. They had taken their stand; they had fought for truth.

Jesus; however, had something against them–they had left their first love. Ray Vander Laan explains “first love” as not meaning the one they should love first (God), but as the first way that they express their love (to fellow Christians). Paul earlier had commended them for their love, and now Jesus is calling them back to that love.

I am sure that God wants us to be passionate about orthodoxy. He wants us to have our theology right. But he never wants us to do this at the expense of love. The Ephesians were passion about what they were against but they had lost the first way that people see that we are followers of Christ–by the love we have for each other.

The call of Jesus is to return to a loving orthodoxy.

Finally, my site is back up! It was down, due to misconfiguration on my .htaccess file.

It was a frustrating, but learning experience.

Following are some pictures I took of lights in the city. For larger images try clicking on the thumbnail. I am experimenting with lightbox. I downloaded this WordPress plugin from http://www.stimuli.ca/lightbox. The lightbox plugin will allow me to post larger pictures to my blog. I hope you enjoy this plugin and the pictures.

Wow, it is an awesome privilege and honor to have a woman give you all of her heart. As you could have guessed, I am engaged. Though it was a cold evening at Rittenhouse Square, our hearts were warm. I love this girl, and can’t wait to marry her. I am a blessed man to be able to be engaged to Lucy.

Here is a picture taken soon after the event.

Here are some pictures of the Thanksgiving Parade. It was great. The weather was actually very nice.

Garfield sends Christmas greeting to you.

There were bands there from different parts of the nation.