Little Children, It Is the Last Hour

I was browsing through a Coptic Orthodox site yesterday and came across one of those asinine discussions that made me launch CopticDadandMom.com in the first place. People were arguing about something of so little import that I had to walk away from my laptop to keep from writing a short and scathing reply:"Brood of vipers!"It's easy in a faith full of rich tradition to get dragged down into the minutia of a tradition instead of allowing the tradition to buoy us up to heaven instead. The point of tradition is NOT to preserve tradition. The point of tradition is to lift us and support us and surround us to make our journey up the ladder of divine ascent SAFE.But the devil is truly in the details. Not just that details can be problematic, but that the details are an easy net used by the devil to tangle us up and drown us in anything other than God Himself.This is where Coptic Dad and Mom comes in. This is meant to be a refuge from minutia. This not a place for deep (or dense) theological discussions. This is not a place for hearty hour-long debates.It's a monastery of sorts. It's a place of quiet and truth. It's a place for stillness and reflection. Or a place for good works that bear good fruit.If you already love God, if you already feel tied to His Church ("as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners" C.S. Lewis), come grow here.I want you to sweat the small stuff. Not the details of a tradition but the minutes of your life. How many minutes of the day are devoted to God, Godly works, thoughts of God, prayers to God, and Bible reading? Strive that the small minutes of your life add up to an icon of Christ.Walk away from something today to prefer God instead.Skip that episode, ignore that link.Instead of opening the Facebook app, open the Bible app.Instead of browsing Amazon, give to HOPE.Stand in prayer, sit in reflection, whisper hymns at work.When you find yourself trapped in a minutia loop (as we all sometimes do), take a step back, take a deep breath, remember that God is LISTENING IN on your conversation and that you wouldn't want the Creator to be dismayed at best--horrified at worst--at what you're saying.Sweat the small stuff that makes up your life--the minutes that are passing by while you are negligent on your bed of sins.Christ is RISEN! Christ has ASCENDED!YOU are His representative on earth.Glorify His name with your words and actions and the minutes of your very brief life (which, like grass "today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven" Matthew 6:30).Let us set aside our little quibbles about nothing and set our eyes on things above, for sake of our own salvation.I speak to myself first."Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour." 1 John 2:18

Some VIPs get the whole week's posts sent right to their inbox in a digest form. [thrive_2step id='2329']I want in![/thrive_2step]

Have you heard about the Hope Association's new Mobile Health Clinics?