our belief

For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.  Mathew 11:21

This message from Jesus written over 2000 years ago still holds true today.  Do we live in communities of Chorazin, Bethsida and Capernuam or are we more like Tyre and Sidon?  We are ignorant to the words written in the Bible because we feel they were written the people of 2000 years ago.  The Bible is alive to as much as it was when Jesus was preaching 2000 years ago.  We are a people of Chorazin, Bethesda and Capernuam where the Bible is alive and living among us but we are expecting more miracles or more of something from Jesus that will then make us believe.  Our faith comes from his dying on the Cross and three days later his resurrection to new life.  We have the ability to accept or reject the teacher, it all depends on what you want to believe.

From a meditation of Fr. Basil W. Maturin:

“It is undoubtedly true that each of us, men and women, irresponsible and thoughtless as we often are, hold within our hands the happiness and sorrows of others. We cannot help it or escape from it. The power is in us inalienably almost from birth to death—in us, because we are persons—and we are responsible for the use we make of it. Indeed, so mysterious is this power that the very presence of a person who does not realize his responsibility is often the source of the keenest pain of all . . . The failure to exercise the power to give happiness to others is not merely negative in its results; it is the source of the most positive suffering of all. Thus there is no escape from the responsibility involved in the possession of this power. Not to use it where it is due is to destroy all happiness. Strange power, indeed, to be committed to such weak and unworthy hands; yet there could be but one thing worse: that none could interfere with the joys and sorrows of others. We might envy their happiness and pity their sorrows, but we could not help them. It would be a world of isolated individuals wrapped in inviolable selfishness; each must take care of himself and the world must go its way.”