Dear Lord; Happy Meditations Mon\u2026 Um, Tuesday Father!<\/p>\n
Well Father, to begin with I want to thank You for a lovely three-day-weekend.\u00a0 Other than some much-needed housecleaning, we were Blessed to enjoy quality time with friends, have a fun \u201cDate Night\u201d<\/em> out, and help another of our friends celebrate her 40th<\/sup> birthday by hosting a surprise party at the house.\u00a0 All-in-all it was a very pleasant few days respite, and I\u2019m very grateful for that time.<\/p>\n As we\u2019ve discussed many times Lord, Shannon and I consider our friends one of Your most amazing Blessings in our lives.\u00a0 As I was running around on Monday morning picking up supplies for the birthday party we hosted, it dawned on me how amazingly diverse our group of friends really is.\u00a0 Truly, nearly every walk of life is represented in some fashion; each person a beautiful, unique thread in the tapestry of our \u201cextended family\u201d<\/em>.<\/p>\n In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul discusses the importance of diversity in Your People along those same lines.\u00a0 In his example, the diversity comes from the varied Spiritual Gifts You bestow on us through the Holy Spirit:<\/p>\n \u201cThe body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.\u00a0 For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body\u2014whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free \u2014and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.\u00a0 Now the body is not made up of one part but of many.\u00a0 If the foot should say, \u201cBecause I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,\u201d it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.\u00a0 And if the ear should say, \u201cBecause I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,\u201d it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.\u00a0 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?\u00a0 But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.\u00a0 If they were all one part, where would the body be?\u00a0 As it is, there are many parts, but one body.\u201d \u2013 1 Corinthians 12:12-20 (NIV)<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Paul makes a marvelous point in that in Christ, there is no ethnic, cultural or social distinction; each individual member is a loved and important part of the Whole.\u00a0 We all have roles to play, and gifts to share in the Body of Christ, and each is as important as the others.\u00a0 You created us all to be exactly what You intended us to be; fearfully and wonderfully made, and designed to offer the unique and precious gifts You\u2019ve granted us for the benefit of Your Family.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a very powerful lesson Lord, and one I know we could all stand to implement more effectively in our daily lives.<\/p>\n Heavenly Father, I thank You for the wonderful people You\u2019ve brought into our lives; each a unique, beautiful, and Blessed thread in our family\u2019s fabric.\u00a0 Please help us see through any improperly perceived barriers between one another, and to reach out with our Spiritual Gifts to further the business of Your Eternal Kingdom.<\/p>\n In Jesus\u2019 Name we pray,<\/p>\n Amen.<\/p>\n ~Phather Phil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Lord; Happy Meditations Mon\u2026 Um, Tuesday Father! Well Father, to begin with I want to thank You for a lovely three-day-weekend.\u00a0 Other than some much-needed housecleaning, we were Blessed to enjoy quality time with friends, have a fun \u201cDate Night\u201d out, and help another of our friends celebrate her 40th birthday by hosting a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[1835,350,1699,1123,851,207,1829,168,256,12,1446,516,129,321,625,915,1832,541,1830,1831,228,24,208,966,1836,1450,427,593,916,592,900,737,269,222,78,133,422,206,1325,1083,1525,1833,587,572,217,463,315,881,227,117,1834,114,1432,738,481,791,379],"class_list":["post-1343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-emails-to-god","tag-1-corinthians","tag-amazing","tag-amazing-blessing","tag-apostle-paul","tag-beautiful","tag-birthday","tag-birthday-party","tag-bless","tag-blessed","tag-blessings","tag-blessings-in-our-lives","tag-business","tag-celebrate","tag-christ","tag-date-night","tag-dear-lord","tag-diversity","tag-example","tag-extended-family","tag-family-tapestry","tag-friend","tag-friends","tag-gift","tag-god","tag-gods-family","tag-gods-kingdom","tag-grateful","tag-heavenly","tag-heavenly-father","tag-holy-spirit","tag-importance","tag-individual","tag-jesus","tag-joy","tag-life","tag-love","tag-loved","tag-meditation","tag-meditations-monday","tag-monday-morning","tag-niv","tag-pauls-first-epistle-to-the-corinthians","tag-power","tag-powerful","tag-pray","tag-quality-time","tag-rant","tag-respite","tag-shannon","tag-son","tag-spiritual-gifts","tag-thank-you","tag-three-day-weekend","tag-unique","tag-week","tag-whole","tag-wonderful"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Cross-Fabric-1-Cropped.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p18mMc-lF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1343"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1345,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1343\/revisions\/1345"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}