@FirstChurchofJerusalem
Today's Early Church Wisdom
“I shall not hesitate also to put into ordered form for you, along with the interpretations, everything I learned carefully in the past from the elders and noted down carefully, for the truth of which I vouch. For unlike most people, I took no pleasure in those who told many different stories, but only in those who taught the truth. Nor did I take pleasure in those who reported their memory of someone else’s commandments, but only in those who reported their memory of the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the Truth itself. And if by chance anyone who had been in attendance on the elders arrived, I made enquiries about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter had said, or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and John the Elder, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from the books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice.
~ Papias of Hierapolis (c. 60–130 AD) From the Preface to his lost ‘Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord’
This week's Psalm is Psalm 31 'My Rock, My Shield, My Song'

The Greatest Message of All

If there is a message or news item that’s more important than any other, it must be the message of God’s love. This is the dearest message to my heart. It’s one thing to know about God’s love, but it’s something else to know that love personally and experientially. Both are part of our healing, for it is by these twin means of Divine illumination and communion that our soul is progressively transformed into the likeness of God. Illumination has to do with knowing about God’s love. When we discover that God loves us, and we believe it to be true, something begins to change on the inside. It’s a healing change. Communion is about knowing God’s love through our experience of it. When we feel God’s love something changes within us. Our knowledge of God’s love, and our experience of God’s love, both serve to destroy two of the greatest lies that we hear spoken about God. These are two infernal lies that oppose the thesis of God’s love: that there is no God, and that if God does exist, He does not care. Reject both today!