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Pulp: By the grace of God, I’m slowly building a life that glorifies Him and supports my loved ones. If one day He chooses to take it all away from me, then I still have Him. But so far, so good.

Pulp: Mother Teresa, a cherished saint, confided in her spiritual director that "...I am told God lives in me — and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul."

The pain you feel is the pain that the greatest people who ever lived, felt. Remember that. Let it light a fire in your soul.

STONEY_:

Pulp: We are all haunted by death. No matter what you accomplish in your life, how much you achieve, what you manage to produce, we all know that it's going to be swallowed up in our own death. And that's led some philosophers and others to say, 'what's the point? Life is just absurd, isn't it? Death has the final say.'

"...I will open your graves and have you rise from them." That's the God of Israel speaking to us, the God of the Bible, the true God, who does not think that death has the final say. He announces his purpose clearly: to open our graves and have us rise from them. He is the God of the living, not the God of the dead. He wants to breathe *life* into us, to revive our dry bones. Christ didn't just turn bad people into good people, he turned dead people into living people. He restored life in the departed. And he is the only man to have come back to life on his own.

No matter how final we think death is, God is more powerful.

Pulp: Four years ago, you met your maker. Since you lived a life of service, love, and gratitude, the trumpets sounded for you on your way to heaven. And when death eventually comes knocking on my door, mark my words I will crawl over broken glass to see you again. دوستت دارم

Pulp: I met a bishop some years ago who told me a story that imprinted itself on my memory. He once had the opportunity to participate in a tour of a Hindu temple led by a devout Hindu woman. As they approached the central and holiest place of the temple, the woman pointed to a small structure topped by a dome and explained that a granite statue of the deity Ganesh was housed there. Recognizing a parallel to the Catholic tabernacle, the bishop asked what the structure was called. To his surprise, she said, "the sanctum sanctorum" (holy of holies).

Latin in a Hindu temple? It turns out that Hindus employed terminology familiar to Catholics. To his further surprise, he learned that once the statue has been specially blessed by a Hindu priest, they believe that it is worthy of worship, not mere veneration, because "Ganesh," she said, "is truly present." He then shared that Catholics have a similar belief. "Really?" she asked. "Is that what your statues are for?" "No," he replied. "Those are just reminders of Jesus or of the saints. They are not objects of worship. Our object of worship isn't made of wood or stone." "What is it made out of?" she wanted to know. "Food, actually." "Food?" "Yes, food. Bread and wine, to be specific."

The bishop could tell that, compared to the strong and lasting quality of granite, this Hindu woman didn't initially think that something perishable, like food, was very fitting for the divine presence. But then the possibility of an unimagined intimacy with the deity dawned on her. "What do you DO with the food once it has become God?" she pressed the bishop. "Actually, we eat it." "You EAT it?" she gasped incredulously. "Yes, we do," he affirmed. She then said with no small amount of wonder and amazement, "well, that would make YOU the sanctum sanctorum."

Pulp: Whether you're a in a ditch somewhere, in the throes of addiction, isolating from everyone, self-harming, jaded/cynical/exploiting people, your maker loves you just the same. Filthy we are, but the blood of the lamb of God has made us whiter than snow, brighter than the sun. And every time you diminish your own light, He weeps and waits patiently for you to throw your arms up and say, "I'm done trying to do all of this by myself, lord. I'm done. Help me."

Pulp: I'm never mad at you, I'm disappointed.

Sunny B Blessed: Wireclub Help Suggestion

When in a chat room, and you want to “invite people,” the list that pops up is totally outdated, full of people you haven’t been friends with for years and even people you have blocked. So it’s really not useful at all when you want to invite all your current friends to chat.

I would like to request that Wireclub would fix this problem and reset the “invite people” list to only current friends, so that we could use this feature when wanting to invite our friends to chat with us.

Pulp: I have an ego bigger than the sun: I get it, I'm not everyone's cup a tea. That's fine. But do me one favour and come up with a better story than "Pulp uses his position to hit on women" or a similar illustration of me as some pervert. It's bizarre and sophomoric and, most importantly, too easy. Elevate your lies a little, use your imagination. C'mon, people!

Pulp: 2000 years ago, our creator came down to earth and we killed him. For this reason, Christ on the cross is, partly, a symbol of our own hatred, cruelty, violence, and stupidity mirrored back to us.

But that's not the heart of the story.

The heart of the story is that our creator stands shoulder to shoulder with us. Our lord was willing to experience the fullest depths of human suffering and God forsakenness to show us that no matter how far away we run away from him, his arms are open. The further we run away from the father, the closer we run into the arms of the son. And that's the heart of the new testament: that there is no sin so terrible that we finally escape God's mercy. When the Roman soldiers put a thorned crown on our lord's head, mocking him, he could have at any point sent a legion of his angels to make them vanish. Instead, he wore the burden of that absurd mockery, patiently. Bruised, beaten, whipped, bleeding.

Moral to the story? Take up your cross. Develop a relationship with your creator. Gift him a fraction of the love that he displays for us. That's the definition of religion: a habit of virtue that inclines the will to do unto God what he's due.

Happy Easter. (: