Celtic Odyssey

Galatians 5.1, 13-25 (NLT; adapted): So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law. For you’ve been called to live in freedom, my sisters and brothers. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you’re always biting and devouring one another, watch out! Beware of destroying one another. So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you’re not free to carry out your good intentions. But when you’re directed by the Spirit, you’re not under obligation to the la...

Galatians 3.23-29 (amended): Before faith came, we were guarded under the Law, locked up until faith that was coming would be revealed, so that the Law became our custodian until Christ so that we might be made righteous by faith. But now that faith has come, we’re no longer under a custodian. You’re all God’s children through faith in Christ Jesus. All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There’s neither Jew nor Greek; there’s neither slave nor free; nor is there male and female, for you’re all one in Christ Jesus. Now if you belong to Christ, then indeed you’re Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to the promise. There are two things I want to touch upon here: the Law and Christ. The Law From time to time, I hear people state that followers of Jesus should be following the Jewish (or Mosaic) Law. It seems to me that St. Paul refuted that in the passage above. He stated that “the Law” (i.e., the Mosaic Law), was only a temporary thin...

About a year ago, I wrote a post about switching to a Chromebook , so I thought I’d give an update to my decision. I still love it! There’s only one set back to it— booklets . When I do a retreat or lead a service, I generally use my own liturgical booklets. Each booklet’s geared specifically to the situation. And in each case, I need an office suite that has some sort of drawing application—one that will allow me to use text fields and add images. If you’ve never created a booklet (or pamphlet) it can be a trying task if you don’t have the right application. Most people think that you can just use a word processor (Microsoft Word, Google Docs, etc.), but for the life of me, I can’t get them to do what I need them to do. For example, when using Google Docs, I just create a document. The whole page is like a giant text box. I start typing and the text appears on the page from left-to-right and fills up the space between the margins. Sure, I can add an image to this document...