St. Seraphim of Sarov Orthodox Church
872 N. 29th St. Boise, ID
an American parish of the Russian Orthodox Church


The weekly homilies are now also available on YouTube in video format:  Homilies

3/10 - Fulfill Your Destiny


Matthew 25:31-46

The first book of Moses starts out, “In the beginning God created…” A beginning implies an ending – or at least the possibility of an ending.  God created the cosmos and all that exists with both a beginning and an end.  Even though the end has not yet arrived, still we know with certainty that it is coming and that it will arrive.  Our Lord many times spoke of this event – the end of the world and the Great Judgement that would bring the world to its close.  Just before the end, we look for the resurrection of the dead – not just some of the dead but all of the dead, everyone who has ever lived, will be resurrected in order to stand before the throne of God and be judged.  This event is so huge and awesome that it is beyond our ability to imagine it in its fullness.  Every description of the end is incomplete and only shows a small bit of what it will be in its fullness.

We, however, don’t need to comprehend the enormity of the Judgement – the only thing that matters is that we will be judged.  Each one of us will stand before the throne of God and be judged by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.  We do not often think of Jesus as the Great Judge of the universe – we look at Him as one full of mercy and compassion who forgives all our iniquities and cleanses us of all unrighteousness.  But this is exactly what makes Him our judge, for He will have given us each every possible opportunity to repent, every possible tool and help for the working out of our salvation, every aid and assistance in overcoming the evil that is within us and developing the virtues of grace and righteousness that God has planted in us.  He will evaluate us to see whether or not we took advantage of those opportunities to repent, the assistance of His grace that He gave to us, and whether we followed the path that He set out before us and walked ahead of us. 

Of what then will this judgement consist?  In the Gospel today we are given a clear picture of this judgement – perhaps not a literal picture for that is still beyond our comprehension, but a clear icon of the essence of this judgment.  All of humanity standing before the throne of the Great Judge are divided into two groups – one He sets on His right hand and the other on His left.  To those on His right, He says, “Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” To those on His left He says, “Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”  What is the difference between these two groups? Those on the right fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, sheltered the stranger, clothed the naked, visited the sick and comforted those in prison. And in doing so they did it unto Christ Himself for He said that, “inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”   Those on the left did not do this and so rejected Christ in that they rejected the least of His brethren.

There is a double meaning to this judgement – the material and the spiritual.  The material meaning is clear – our Lord calls us to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, shelter the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick and comfort those in prison.  In other words He calls us to be compassionate and kind to others, no matter who they may be.  If we love our neighbor, then we will also love God.  If however we neglect our neighbor, or worse yet are unkind, cruel and devoid of love, then we have no love for God for we do not love our neighbor.  This past week we have been reading the epistles of the Apostle John and he reminds us that if we do not love our brother who we can see, then we cannot love God Who we cannot see.  The heart of this judgement is love – not the love of the world, but the divine love of God.  If the Judge sees His love in us, then He will set us on His right hand; if however, He sees no love, then we will be consigned to His left.

In addition to this material meaning, there is a spiritual meaning to the judgement depicted here.  This is expressed in the saying, “inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these my brethren…”  The “least of these brethren” describes the fruit of the grace of the Holy Spirit in us. God created us in His image and planted in the garden of our heart the seeds of His likeness. When our first parents sinned, that garden was overrun by weeds and wild animals – that is by our passions and by the demons. It was trampled and dug up and everything was overturned.  But God will not be overcome and so some of those seeds were preserved and remained ready to grow, needing only the light and water of the grace of the Holy Spirit to fall upon them.  This grace is given to us in our baptism and those seeds of divine fruit began to put forth sprouts and shoots. We are now given the task of nurturing these tender shoots and sprouts to maturity that they might bear fruit.  These are the “least of these brethren”, these little seeds and sprouts in danger of being overrun and uprooted by the weeds and beasts of the passions and demons.  And so, in the words of St Nicholas (Velimirovic), “If our mind hungers for God, and we feed it, we have fed Christ within us; if our heart is bare of every good and noble thing that is of God, and we clothe it, we have clothed Christ within us; if our soul is sick and imprisoned by our evil being, our evil  actions and we are mindful of it and visit it, we have visited Christ within us.”  Therefore, it is our task to feed the hungry soul with the divine food of the Word of God, to give it to drink of the grace of God, to shelter it under the protection of the Providence of God, to clothe its nakedness by the covering of our repentance, to visit and comfort it with the tender care and compassion of a righteous life.  This is how we bring forth the fruit of grace from this garden of the heart.  If, on the other hand, we neglect this little garden of our heart and allow the passions to grow unchecked and the demons to roam at will then whatever seeds and sprouts might be found are trampled, broken, uprooted and so never bring forth this fruit for which the Great Judge seeks.

Therefore, let us be diligent in loving our neighbor, whoever he may be. Let us be kind and compassionate towards all mankind, treating every person with whom we come into contact as our Lord Himself – for is this not the outer material meaning of the parable.  In loving our neighbor, we love Christ and we enter into the inner garden of the heart; feed and water the little sprouts of grace, protect and nurture them, sheltering them from every attack from within and without.  We nurture them to maturity and the fruit of the grace of the Holy Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and faith – blossom in our hearts ready to be offered into the searching hand of the Great Judge.  Seeing these fruits in us, He will then call us to come with Him and enter into the kingdom prepared for us from the foundation of the world.

Let us finish by contemplating this kingdom.  This is not a “reward” for “being good” that God threw together after the fall as an enticement to be earned by following His rules.  No this kingdom has been prepared from the foundation of the world.  God is restoring to us that which we lost in our sins.  He meant us to occupy this kingdom even before He created us.  The Garden of Eden in which our first parents were placed by God is the forerunner of this kingdom.  In that paradise, they walked with God, spoke with Him as a friend, partook of His generous provision, drew their life from Him and enjoyed the sweetness of His grace.  This is precisely the kingdom to which we are called – to the paradise where we walk with God, commune with Him, speak with Him as a friend, partake of the riches and sweetness of His grace, draw our life from Him, the One Who is life itself.  This is not a “reward” – this is our destiny, it is what we were created for.  However, it is up to us to choose to fulfill our destiny; we have the freedom to turn our back on it to try to make our own destiny.  This was the rebellion of the devil.  He broke away from God’s love and care for him in order to set up his own destiny – but as a result he only inherited the destiny of everlasting fire – likewise prepared by God specifically as a punishment for the devil and his angels.  Those who rebel against God, who reject the destiny that God has placed before them and go off to make their own destiny follow in the same path established by the devil and inherit their punishment – that is the lot of those on the left.

Brothers and sisters, let us then choose to fulfill our destiny – to nurture the seeds of grace planted in the garden of our heart.  Let us love our neighbor, let us feed, clothe, shelter and comfort the “least of these” the brethren of Christ both in the material world and in the garden of the heart.  Let us labor to bring forth the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our hearts that the Great Judge might not find us barren.  Let us fulfill the destiny of our Lord Jesus Christ and enter into that kingdom which He has prepared for us from before the foundation of the world.

3/3 - All Earthly Cares - Fr. Matthew Garrett


This morning, we heard in the gospel about a son who, moved by desire for the things of this world, asked his father for the portion of goods that falls to him. He was asking for his inheritance not as a last gift of his father, but as a birthright that was due to him. He then took this wealth and his belongings and departed into a far country where he lived according to his desires and passions. Like so many of us, he didn’t set out trying to be evil, just to live his life to the fullest, to experience all of the enjoyable things of this world. So he would have feasted on fine foods, and drank the best wine, sought out the most beautiful women, and the friendship of important or influential people. But because he focused on these temporal and fleeting things rather than on eternal things, he soon found himself without food and drink, without companionship or friendship. He was alone with no one who would help him, and hungering and thirsting for that which can actually satisfy – he found himself empty of any good thing.

So the prodigal son, who before had collected his belongings to hasten to a far off land to live the “good life,” now comes to himself, he collects all that is still redeemable in his soul, and he determines within himself to go back to his father and ask to be made as one of his father’s hired servants, that he might at least have bread for himself and to be near to the one good person he knew, his father. To his surprise, his father has been awaiting his return and accepts him back with great rejoicing, not as a servant but as a son who has died and been brought back to life.

Finding his father celebrating the return of his son, the prodigal’s brother becomes angry. Why celebrate someone who had been so wasteful with the gift he had been given? We see from his reaction that he too wants the finer things of this life. He is not satisfied with just what he has in his father’s house which is an abundance of good things. He wants to spend his life feasting with his friends, enjoying fine foods, the best wine, and the company of men and women. This other son, is no less prodigal for having stayed with his father, because he still desires the things of this world more than the company of his father. He has departed in his heart, even though he did not depart bodily.

In the Church we are instructed time and again not to be attached to the things of this world, which divert us from our proper course, confuse us about right and wrong, weigh down our minds and hearts, and weaken our will’s ability to choose good stunting our spiritual maturity. We must not let ourselves be torn away from our Father by the various passions and temptations that war against us in our bodies. It is curious, then, that the father in this parable throws a huge celebration for a son who had lived according to all his worst desires. Why should the father throw a feast for a son who chased after feasting? Because the father does not live this way all the time. He knows that it is right to live soberly and simply, but to still celebrate the return of his son who is alive again, who had been lost but is now found.

The Church calls us to restrain our passions and appetites, to fast – at times very strictly, to give our wealth into the hands of the poor that we might have treasure in heaven. But the Church also calls us to feast and celebrate the truly wonderful things that have given us life again, that have brought us back to our Father in Heaven.

We stand at the threshold of Great Lent, and we are being called to prepare ourselves to give less care to the needs and wants of our flesh that we might be governed by our spirit and led by God into His Kingdom. To do this, we must repent of the hold that all of these things have had on us. Sometimes God makes this happen by allowing us to suffer loss through no action of our own: we are stricken with sickness, we lose jobs, homes, family; and in these moments we can choose to accept the loss of these things as the prodigal eventually did. We can see in our deprivation a call to return to the one eternal source of all good things. But for most of us, most of the time, we must choose to willingly deprive ourselves, not because we are called to live as miserable unhappy beings, but because none of those things last and are actually cruel masters which keep us from returning to our good and loving Master.

So in the coming days, even before we begin Great Lent, begin to cut off your attachment to worldly possessions, and cast off the things that burden you in this earthly life: the worries and anxiety you have about temporal things, the busyness that traps you in doing things that bring no true profit, the vanity of being important or liked by men, the service you offer to every indiscriminate desire that pulls at your heart, and the lack of faith and hope you have in God’s providence.

And then turn yourself toward God, and begin to journey back to His loving embrace. Seek Him in prayer, seek his instruction in the word of God, and in spiritual labors leading to the acquisition of the grace of God. We are afforded a great many opportunities for such things during the Lenten season, but we must reach out and take them with the same fervour that we currently show toward acquiring worldly things. Seek the bread which comes down from heaven instead of earthly food, exchange your free time for moments of eternity in prayer and attending some of the extra services, and seek to enrich yourself by giving to the poor man.

The Church is not telling us we have to avoid certain foods, drinks, or entertainment because they are inherently evil. As Saint Paul tells us this morning, “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.”

We must not be brought under the power of food and drink, under the power of the passions of the flesh. To do so is to separate ourselves from the Body of Christ, it is to try to join the members of the Body of Christ to a harlot, one who takes everything from us under the guise of giving something to us. If we are to be inheritors of the Kingdom, we must be Christ’s and not live for ourselves. We will have every good thing that we need in this life, we will still celebrate, eat and drink, we will have friends and companionship as God wills, but we will not be enslaved to the pursuit of them.

Perhaps you have heard similar words before, maybe last year and the year before, maybe you even tire of heeding the same call to repentance and fasting only to find that you can’t seem to rise above the passions and achieve perfection. But such thoughts ought to give some cause for rejoicing. When we see the passions working within us, we are more able to make a determined effort to fight off these attachments and to run toward God with nothing hindering us. Great Lent alone will not bring us to perfection, but it shows us the ropes and chains that bind us to this life, making us captives; and it gives us the tools to try to disentangle ourselves, to cut the ropes and break the chains and to run to our Father.

It is not easy to leave behind the things that have held us captive for so long, but it becomes easier when we see that there is nothing good here in our sin, that the good is only found in the house of our Father. Unlike the prodigal, we know that our Father patiently watches and lovingly awaits our return. Come to yourself, rise up, leave behind the filth and deprivation of your sins, and go, seeking only to serve and be fed.

2/25 - Confess and Repent


Luke 18:10-14

There once was a woman named Thais.  She was a prostitute and since she was also beautiful, she was very popular and became very wealthy.  Once, the elder Paphnutius came out of the desert to try and convince her to give up her sinful life.  He took a gold coin and went to her home pretending that he wished to sin with her.  She took him into her room and the elder asked if perhaps there was a more private place.  Thais replied that if he sought to hide from men, her room was very private and no one would see them there. However, she said, if he sought to hide from God, that would not be possible because God sees all things. The elder was surprised at this response and asked if she knew about God. She answered that indeed she knew of God and of the kingdom of heaven and the rewards prepared for those who love God and also of the eternal punishments that God prescribes for sinners.  The elder asked her, if she knew this to be true, then why did she continue to sin and to draw others into sin with her and so incur eternal sufferings for herself and for those with whom she had sinned.  At this moment, something awakened in her heart and she became aware of her own sins and desired to repent.  The elder offered to take her to a place where she could repent of her sins and so obtain forgiveness of God.  She then took all that she had gained from her sinful life, had it piled outside in the street and there set fire to it so that all her sinful possessions were destroyed.  She then went with the elder to a convent where he placed her in a cell and nailed the door shut leaving only a small opening by which she could receive bread and water.  She asked the elder how she should pray and he told her to say only “O Thou Who hast created me, have mercy on me.”  Having established Thais in her place of repentance, the elder returned to his own cell in the desert.  After three years, he approached St Anthony asking if God had indeed forgiven Thais.  St Anthony received a revelation from God that indeed she had been forgiven and that a place of rest had been prepared for her in heaven. The elder returned to the convent where he opened the cell that Thais might enter the life of the convent.  Thais, however, only wished to remain and pray for forgiveness, for her sins were now continually before her eyes and the condemnation that they brought about.  Within a fortnight of opening the cell, Thais fell ill and after three days peacefully reposed entering into the reward prepared for her in the Kingdom of God.

Today in the Gospel we heard the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee.  The publican, seeing his sinfulness, fell down before God, not even raising his eyes and cried out only “have mercy on me”.  The Pharisee, however, stood in the front of the temple and raising his hands, looked up towards heaven and loudly proclaimed his righteousness to God.  Our Lord, however, pointed out that the publican went away justified, while the Pharisee received nothing from God.  The lesson, of course, is the importance of humility and repentance before God. 

Another thing that we are shown in the parable is that the Pharisee, although an expert in the law, did not see his own sins – he saw only his own supposed righteousness.  But that appearance of righteousness was not from God but only the creation of his own mind tainted by pride and served only to hide the sinfulness of his heart.  The pharisee lived in a state of self-delusion, imagining himself to be righteous when in fact he was consumed by sin.  The publican, on the other hand, saw only his own sinfulness.  He knew that there was nothing righteous in himself and therefore his only hope was to humble himself and cry out for mercy.

The sinner Thais, while she knew about God and the joys of heaven and torments of hell, likewise did not see her own sin.  She did not realize that her actions were condemning her to eternal suffering and not only herself, but those who she enticed to sin with her. Like the Pharisee, she lived in a cocoon of self-delusion.  But as soon as St Paphnutius opened her eyes, and she saw the awful depths of her sin, she was moved immediately to repentance and turned away from her former life of sin and devoted herself entirely to repentance and weeping for her sins.  These two examples now are a call to all of us to put aside our self-delusions of righteousness and to see our own sins.  Great Lent will provide us with the atmosphere which is favorable for us to look at ourselves and begin to recognize our sins.  Everyday in our standard evening prayer rule, we say the Prayers of St John Chrysostom for the hours of the day; one of those prayers is this: “Grant me the thought of confessing my sins”.  Now is the time to take this little prayer more seriously and to contemplate what those sins are so that we might confess them.  During the fast, we routinely add the prayer of St Ephraim the Syrian to our prayers and we say also, “Grant me to see my own sins and not condemn my brother.”  Here too we ask our Lord for help in this vital task – to see our own sins.  And our Lord who freely gives to us every good thing for which we ask will indeed begin to show us our sins, to prompt us toward confession and repentance in accordance with our prayers.

There is another help that we have in recognizing our own sins and that is the sense of shame that we feel when we bring them to mind.  This sense of shame is the voice of our conscience by which we convict ourselves of our own sins.  When we feel this emotion of shame, we should not shrink away from it or avoid it but we should pay attention to it for in this way we begin to see our own sins.

The other thing that we see in the life of the nun Thais and in the example of the publican is the power of heartfelt repentance.  Although she had spent her entire life in sin with no regard for her own salvation, Thais undertook to repent wholeheartedly and without rest seeking the mercy of God. For three years she remained isolated in her cell doing nothing but praying for forgiveness.  She turned her back completely on her former life – destroying and abandoning every worldly and sinful possession.  She cried out day and night, “O Thou Who hast created me, have mercy on me” not even saying the name of God due to her own awareness of her unworthiness to even approach Him. When St Paphnutius sought to discover if God had accepted the repentance of Thais and forgiven her, he discovered that not only was she forgiven, but that a place of rest and reward had been prepared for her in heaven. This profound repentance we see also in the publican who did not even raise his eyes to heaven but cried out only  “God be merciful to me a sinner.”  Because of his humility and repentance he “went to his house justified.”  Here are two examples of the power of repentance – two sinners who could see only their own sins and who repented wholeheartedly were by the mercy of God granted forgiveness. 

Therefore, we also should have hope.  When we see our own sins, the temptation is to fall into despair.  Do not forget however that if we confess our sins, God is faithful to forgive us our sins … and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.  This is our hope, this is the promise of God.  Do not stop halfway and simply remember your sins, but having confessed your sins also repent with confidence that our Lord who desires not the death of sinner but that he should return and live will also freely forgive you your sins and will quickly and thoroughly cleanse you of all unrighteousness, so that you might appear before him spotless and radiant with His grace.

2/11 - Great Faith


Matt. 15:21-28 & 2Cor. 6:16-7:1

This account in the Gospel is significant in that it is one of only two times when Jesus interacted directly with people who were fully gentile, fully pagan, but who reached out to Him in faith.  Both times, our Lord comments on the greatness of their faith, pointing out that these foreigners, these gentiles had a faith greater than even the Jews who had been given to know the One True God through the Law and the prophets.  This is important for us in that it points out that our Lord came not only for the salvation of the Jews, but rather for the salvation of all mankind.  When the Jews rejected their Messiah, God turned away from them and proclaimed salvation to the world.

Let us, therefore, look at this Syrophoenician (today we would use the term “Lebanese”) woman to see how it was that our Lord bestowed His salvation upon her.  First, we note that she was not entitled to salvation by her heritage.  As we said, she was not a Jew by any stretch of the imagination.  She could not lay claim to the promises that God gave to the Hebrew people – the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  She was utterly a gentile – cast out and foreign to the chosen people.  There was no salvation for her here.  Neither did she have the Law as her salvation.  She was ignorant of the Law of God and had no idea what the commandments given by God were.  The Samaritan people, while still considered outcasts by the Jews were at least partially of Jewish heritage (their ancestors had intermarried with the Jews at the time of the exile to Babylon), and they followed the Law given by God to Moses. But this woman did not even have that – she had only her conscience which spoke to her of the image of God in which we were created and the witness of God’s greatness in creation.  But to follow the Law was not even something that she could approach, for the Law was not given to her; there was no salvation for her there.

What then did she have, where was her salvation?  She had the same salvation that was given to Abraham for it was Abraham’s faith that was counted to him as righteousness.  This woman held the same faith – faith that there was a God who created all things, faith that God would somehow hear her plea and answer her cries for His help.  Although she did not have the Law of Moses, she did follow the law written in her heart simply because she was formed in the image of God.  We all have this law written in our hearts, we all know right and wrong, we all have a sense of what is good and what is evil.  This intrinsic law that is common to us all from our creation draws us believe in God and to search for a way to Him.  This was the faith of the woman, the faith that opened for her the doors of salvation and by which God bestowed His grace upon her.

If we all have this faith (and if the Jews had an extra measure of faith, having been given the Law by Moses) then what is it that made her faith “great”?  In the Gospel we see how Jesus tested her faith – not to see if she had enough faith since He knows the hearts of men and could see the greatness of her faith. Jesus tested her faith in order to bring out its greatness, to reveal how rich it was.  This test was not an exam she had to pass, rather it was a trial to prove the purity and potency of her faith.  In the same way that gold is tried in the fire to separate it from impurities and to bring out its luster and beauty, so also God tests our faith by various trials and difficulties to purify it.  In the same way that steel is tempered by sudden heating and cooling in order that it might become strong and resilient, so God tests our faith by the varieties of the circumstances of our life that it might be tempered and that we might thereby become strong and resilient in our faith.  So our Lord tested the faith of this woman.

First He tested her by ignoring her.  Although she pled with Him, He did not even seem to see her.  The apostles finally tired of her constant pleas and asked Jesus to send her away.  This first test was the test of persistence.  Remember the parable of the persistent widow and the judge who “feared neither God nor man”.  Even though the judge had no sympathy for the woman in the parable, still he was moved to grant her petitions just to get her to leave him alone.  Our Lord tests the persistence of our faith in order to develop its endurance.  Our faith needs to remain strong until the very end of our lives, and so God permits us to experience periods of seeming dryness and abandonment so that we learn that He will not leave us, and so that we can tolerate the warfare of demons which seek to separate us from God.  And so this woman’s faith was first tested in the furnace of seeming abandonment.  Still she persisted and this led to the next test of her faith – that of suffering and difficulty.  Jesus finally speaks to the woman saying to her, “Why do you cry after me, I was not sent to you, but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  He reminded her that she had no standing, no rights, no claim on Him.  He called her an outcast, a gentile, a foreigner and even a dog.  Now with this string of insults, most of us would respond in kind, returning insult for insult, becoming angry and indignant. But the woman did not do this, but she remained calm and did not abandon her plea – still she remained persistent, enduring all the insults that were heaped upon her.  Such was her faith that it passed this test of suffering as well.  Finally, Jesus, brings her to the final test – He caps off the insults given to the woman saying, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.”  And here we see the true quality of this woman’s faith for it was adorned with the quality of humility.  Not only did she endure the insult of being called a dog, but she embraced that insult – admitting that she was nothing more than a dog and yet, even “the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.”  Here is the true gold; the shining core of her faith finally made visible; the crown of glory that made her faith “great” – that faith was imbued with humility and for this reason our Lord referred to it as “great” and granted to her the gifts of grace that she so desired.

Here it is for us – if we would have great faith, then we must also have great humility.  When we come to our Lord, reaching out to Him, seeking after Him with the arms of our faith, then He will test that faith.  He will test our persistence to bring out its longevity and endurance.  He will test us with various forms of suffering and difficulty to prove the strength of our faith. And finally He will seek to humble us that our faith might have the crown of humility.  We are called to follow Him in faith, with persistence, strength and humility and so follow Him as He delivers us from our enslavement to sin, death and the devil and bring us into His Kingdom.

Having now been freed from that enslavement to sin, let us hear the words of the apostle and leave behind those things which once held us captive, “what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; … Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,”  Here the apostle points out to us that like the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman, we have been freed from the torment and enslavement of the demons and have become the temple of the living God.  The Holy Spirit dwells within us and unites us to Himself.  Therefore, having left behind the life of sin, let us “be separate”, let us no longer “touch the unclean thing”. That is, having left all those things behind, let us not return to them as a dog returns its vomit or a sow to the mud.  When we are faced with temptation, let us remember that we were there once, and that we have escaped and that there is nothing there that can hold us.  Any attraction is the phantom of deceit, the ghost of a lie.  We are no longer the children of sin, but now are children of the Light and God Himself has received us.  He has extended to us the same promise that He gave to Abraham and his descendants, the same promise that He gave to the Israelites as they fled Egypt.  This is the promise of God to us, “I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. … and (I) will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.”

We, who were once not a nation, not a tribe, gentiles, outcasts, separated from the promises of God have been redeemed by Him. By faith, we reach out to Him and He receives us.  He has come and dwelt within us, making us His temple. We are now the people of God, the children of the promise and the very Body of Christ.  We have become His children and He has become our Father and God.

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