This is how it feels like when you read a message in all caps-lock form :)
Peter is making clear that his faith in Jesus didn’t just begin with Jesus. It began with the Patriarchs, the great Jewish fathers. The God who blessed them also raised Jesus from the dead, even though Jesus had been executed in the most heinous and degrading way possible for a faithful Jew — he was nailed to a cross, something that was both illegal and a sign of being cursed under Jewish Law. He raised Jesus from the dead and exalted him and made him our Savior and our Lord. Praise God!
Prospective Facebook buttons.
So what do you prefer?
After capturing the hearts of the crowd, Jesus now calls another disciple, Levi (Matthew). Two things are significant about this calling. First, Jesus called someone no other religious leader would have chosen, a tax collector and Roman sympathizer — to any Jew of Jesus’ era, Matthew would have seemed very much like a traitor to his heritage and to his faith. Second, the tax collector followed, leaving behind his livelihood and his fortune. This is a powerful reminder that there is no one we should write off as unreachable with the Gospel and as unusable by our Lord.
Jesus forgave a man who was lame, then showed he had authority to forgive by healing him. As exciting and important as this healing was, the most important thing was the reaction of those who witnessed it; they praised God out of a sense of amazed awe. They recognized that Jesus had come to minister as God’s very presence. When we understand who Jesus is and what he has done for us and will continue to do for us, we do the same thing today; we offer our praises with a sense of amazement and awe.
I’d like to believe that even though we are truly in an age where print is diminishing and reading a book has nothing to do with turning a page… by jove, if you create something that is meant to be touched — folks wanna touch it! AdHouse Books, Sing Statistics, Nobrow, Koyama Press—those peeps are my heroes! I want to see Ferocious move beyond its quarterly issues and start publishing the “Short Works” stories on paper, put a comic in print, publish a work of poetry, publish a work from our friends and collaborators… I want to go broke and I want to be surrounded by the smell of offset ink and uncoated paper. I believe in it.
A great interview in The Fox Is Black with Nate Utesch, founder of Ferocious Quarterly. I love that he used a national tour with his band to scout which bookstores and comic book shops could carry his magazine.
All about Domo!
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An Array of “Angry” Cakes :)
Looks yummy… :p
