Search Page
Showing 1 - 15 of 15
God loves, as His Creation, the whole of the natural world: bright oceans teaming with life, with whales' waterspouts, and waves glinting in the sunlight, as shoals of fish circle underwater. Flocks of birds soar through the bright sky in the sweet, breezy air, and His glory shines over all. God delights in our love for Him even more than He delights in His Creation.
The family which has a roof over its head and a table to eat at is well prepared for everyday life and education. Sound doctrine is like the roof and the table of our Christian life. Those who rely only on feelings and want to picnic all the time have no shelter for themselves or for others, when gales blow, and animals trample the food into the ground.
Someone who follows a humble, quiet, persevering way of prayer and faithfulness to God, is on the Way to Heaven, just as a man on a straight, well-lit motorway is making a safe journey to the city; unlike those who choose to struggle on foot, picking their own route across country, and encountering rabbit-holes, barbed wire and wild animals.
Some people who live in serious sin deliberately seek pleasure by hurting others, act like wild beasts or, rather, deranged animals. They should be treated with caution as well as care.
God created all that lives and breathes - even sharks and tarantulas, and other creatures that kill. Yet everything shows out some facet of His nature - such as the beauty and single-mindedness of a shark - or the extent of His creative power, in the amazing creatures, colours and varieties of means of motion.
The hierarchical ordering of creation is part of the plan of God our Creator, with human beings 'higher' than fish and animals. Man and woman are equally important in God's sight, and designed to come together for a life-long union and the creation of children in a union properly called marriage.
Just as the Ark, in the story about Noah, provided a safe, warm place of safety not just for animals but for a human family, the Holy Virgin Mary was like an 'ark' for Jesus; she was a sinless, warm place of shelter for the Son of God, holding Him in her womb joyfully, and in her love.
No-one can understand the Mind of God - or understand the whole of His Creation. But He created the world and everything on it, in His wisdom and power. He created the first man and woman, though some dispute this. He asks: Why should He not have made animals - including ape-like creatures of high intelligence - whilst making, in another part of the world, human beings with immortal souls? Truly, as the Church says, God created a man, then a woman.
How strange that someone being cruel to animals can be imprisoned but someone who kills children in the womb goes home with a pay-packet.
There are people who tell us how their hearts ache for the sufferings inflicted upon living creatures: battery hens, fish, birds, and dancing bears. How many of them have an equal or greater concern for the suffering of the living babies in their mother's wombs: babies poisoned or dismembered in abortion?
Just as a water-sprite, gazing at the surface of the river from below, has little idea of the magnificence of earthly life with its millions of life-forms and other marvels, or of the vastness and beauty of the planets and the stars in deep space, so we humans on earth have little comprehension of the marvellous, infinitely beautiful and admirable life of Heaven.
When members of the Clergy, or theologians, or other people in the Church urge people to believe that behaviour once everywhere known as sinful is nowadays to be seen as reasonable or even good - such as contraceptive use, or sexual activity outside marriage - they endanger souls. To encourage people to sin is to help them on the way to Hell. The demons lie in wait for careless souls just as wild animals lie in wait for safari tourists who are foolish enough to leave the safety of the path.
We can be certain that advertisements proposed about abortion provision would not be accurate, but misleading. If people cannot bear to see animals treated as vermin, and killed in their presence, how much less likely is it, that people will want to see tiny human beings killed in the womb by poison or dismemberment? This is not what advertisers would show, yet that is what happens in such clinics. Any advert would give a false image: a pleasant building where caring people relieve pregnant woman of the burden of, merely, an 'unwanted pregnancy'.
How to know Jesus Christ
Finding Christ, Finding Life: a talk by Elizabeth Wang, given at the French Church, Leicester Square, London, 2006.
INTRODUCTION.
You probably know that I’m an artist. The project I’m busy with,…
Autobiography of Elizabeth Wang, Part 1
This text forms part of Elizabeth Wang's Falling in Love: A Spiritual Autobiography (1999). It tells the story of her life and of her spiritual journey as she came to know Christ and His Church.
You …
Showing 1 - 15 of 15