Happy Thanksgiving to you Carla & all my friends here at Adland !
Carla,
just received this in the mail, thought it a great Thanksgiving message to ponder upon, may it bless you all as it blessed me.
warm hugz
Pauline
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Cast Of Characters Book Free Book Excerpt
Written by maxlucado932rf
http://www.godtube.com/maxlucado
It was like discovering the prize in a box of Crackerjacks or spotting
a little pearl in a box of buttons or stumbling across a ten dollar
bill in a drawer full of envelopes.
It was small enough to overlook. Only two words. I know I'd read that
passage a hundred times. But I'd never seen it. Maybe I'd passed over
it in the excitement of the resurrection. Or, since Mark's account of
the resurrection is by far the briefest of the four, maybe I'd just not
paid too much attention. Or, maybe since it's in the last chapter of
the gospel, my weary eyes had always read too quickly to note this
little phrase.
But I won't miss it again. It's highlighted in yellow and
underlined in red. You might want to do the same. Look in Mark, chapter
16. Read the first five verses about the womens' surprise when they
find the stone moved to the side. Then feast on that beautiful phrase
spoken by the angel, "He is not here, He is risen," but don't pause for
too long. Go a bit further. Get your pencil ready and enjoy this jewel
in the seventh verse (here it comes). The verse reads like this: "But
go, tell His disciples and Peter that He is going before you to
Galilee."
Now tell me if that's not a hidden treasure.
If I might paraphrase the words, "Don't stay here, go tell the
disciples," a pause, then a smile, "and especially tell Peter, that He
is going before you to Galilee."
What a line. It's as if all of heaven had watched Peter fall - and
it's as if all of heaven wanted to help him back up again. "Be sure and
tell Peter that he's not left out. Tell him that one failure doesn't
make a flop."
Whew!
No wonder they call it the gospel of the second chance.
Not many second chances exist in the world today. Just ask the kid who
didn't make the little league team or the fellow who got the pink slip
or the mother of three who got dumped for the "pretty little thing."
Not many second chances. Nowadays it's more like , "It's now or
never." "Around here we don't tolerate incompetence." "Gotta get tough
to get along." "Not much room at the top." "Three strikes and you're
out." "It's a dog eat dog world!"
Jesus had a simple answer to our masochistic mania. "It's a dog eat dog
world?" He would say. "Then don't live with the dogs." That makes
sense, doesn't it? Why let a bunch of failures tell you how much of a
failure you are?
Sure you can have a second chance.
Just ask Peter. One minute he felt lower than a snake's belly and
the next minute he was the high hog at the trough. Even the angels
wanted this distraught netcaster to know that it wasn't over. The
message came loud and clear from the celestial Throne Room through the
divine courier. "Be sure and tell Peter that he gets to bat again."
Those who know these types of things say that the Gospel of Mark
is really the transcribed notes and dictated thoughts of Peter. It this
is true, then it was Peter himself who included these two words! And if
these really are his words, I can't help but imagine that the old
fisherman had to brush away a tear and swallow a lump when he got to
this point in the story.
It's not every day that you get a second chance. Peter must have known
that. The next time he saw Jesus, he got so excited that he barely got
his britches on before he jumped into the sea of Galilee. It was also
enough, so they say, to cause this backwoods Galilean to carry the
gospel of the second chance all the way to Rome where they killed him.
If you've ever wondered what would cause a man to be willing to be
crucified upside down, maybe you now know.
It's not every day that you find someone who will give you a
second chance - much less someone who will give you a second chance
every day.
But in Jesus Peter found both.
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