@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'

Useful & Beautiful

In these present end times, marked by spiritual confusion, moral instability, fear, and increasing hopelessness, the call of Matthew 4:19 (“Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men”) remains urgent and prophetic, for Christ still seeks disciples who will trust Him enough to leave the familiar shores of comfort and cast the gospel net into a desperate world. Yet this calling is not only for today but for tomorrow, because every generation must hear anew the invitation to follow the risen Lord in faithful dependence, courageous witness, and holy expectancy of His return. Thus, Jesus’ words ultimately reveal that the Christian life is not passive belief but active trust: a continual yielding of heart, mind, and future into the hands of the Saviour, believing that as we walk and talk closely with Him each day in prayer, obedience, Scripture, and love, He Himself will shape us into instruments through whom others may encounter and receive eternal life. Let us trust our lives into the hands of the Potter, who alone can fashion us into vessels both useful and beautiful.