We are Perplexed, but Not in Despair - 2 Cor 4:8

3 But if our gospel be hid , it is hid to them that are lost : 4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. 5 For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. 6 For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness , hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. 8 We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed ; we are perplexed , but not in despair ; 9 Persecuted , but not forsaken ; cast down , but not destroyed ; 10 Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. 11 For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. 12 So then death worketh in us, but life in you. 13 We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written , I believed , and therefore have I spoken ; we also believe , and therefore speak ;

Outward Focused Life

Quoting a passage of the Bible in Galations translated by the Message:
19-21It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.
This isn't the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God's kingdom.
22-23But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

Cremation from Aish.com

Israel's first crematorium opens for business. What would Moses say?


A crematorium recently opened for business in Israel, for the use of citizens who want their remains reduced to ashes.
A decade ago, just over 20% of Americans who died were cremated. In 2005, the rate had risen to 32%. The Cremation Association of North America confidently forecasts that by 2025 more than half of Americans will choose to have their remains burned rather than interred. While no one knows what percentage of American cremation-choosers are Jewish, there is little doubt that, at least among Jews with limited or no Jewish education, or who became estranged from Jewish observance, cremation has become acceptable, if not a vogue. And now, the Jewish State has it own facility for burning human bodies.
Yet the fact that the establishment is the first of its kind in Israel does bespeak an essential Jewish attitude toward the services it provides.
Some Jews recoil from the idea of cremation because the Third Reich incinerated so many of its Jewish victims.
Others, and many non-Jews, disdain the burning of human remains because of infamous cases where crematory owners, after accepting families' payments, presented them with urns of animal ashes, turning a further profit from the sale of the bodies entrusted them to brokers who then conducted brisk businesses of their own selling body parts.
The Jewish Source
Judaism's inherent abhorrence for cremation, however, predates and supersedes both Nazi evils and ghoulish crimes. The roots of the Torah's insistence on burial of human remains lie elsewhere.
Not only our souls but our physical selves, too, possess inherent holiness.
Judaism's opposition to cremation is sourced, at least in part, in a fundamental Jewish belief: that there will come a time when the dead will live again. Although the idea of the resurrection of the righteous may be surprising to some, it is one of Judaism's most important teachings. And even though it is not explicitly expressed in the Written Torah, it is prominent in the Torah's other half, the Oral Tradition. The Mishnah, the Oral Tradition's central text, confers such weightiness to the conviction that it places deniers of the eventual resurrection of the dead first among those who "forfeit their share in the world to come" (Sanhedrin 11:1). As the Talmud comments thereon: "He denied the resurrection of the dead, so will he be denied a portion in the resurrection of the dead."
That our bodies are invested with such importance should not be startling. Not only our souls but our physical selves, too, possess inherent holiness. Our bodies, after all, are the indispensable means of performing God's will. It is through employing them to do good deeds and denying their gravitations to transgression that we achieve our purposes in this world.
And so, Jewish tradition teaches, even though we are to consign our bodies to the earth after death, there is a small "bone" (Hebrew: "etzem") that is not destroyed when a body decays and from which the entire person, if he or she so merits, will be rejuvenated at some point in the future.
Spiritual DNA
The idea that a person might be recreated from something tiny -- something, even, that can survive for millennia -- should not shock anyone remotely familiar with contemporary science. Each of our cells contains a large and complex molecule, DNA, that is essentially a blueprint of our bodies; theoretically, one of those molecules from even our long-buried remains could be coaxed to reproduce each of our physical selves. (Intriguingly, the Hebrew word etzem can mean not only "bone" but also "essence" and "self.")
Burning, in Judaism, is a declaration of utter abandon and nullification. Jews burn leaven and bread before Passover, when the Torah insists no vestige of such material may be in their possession. The proper means of disposing of an idol is to pulverize or burn it.
Needless to say, God is capable of bringing even ashes to life again. But actually choosing to have one's body incinerated is an act that, so intended or not, expresses denial of the fact that the body is still valuable, that it retains worth, indeed potential life.
The new Israeli crematorium's owner, in fact, describes himself as an atheist, as do most if not all of his customers. One, a teacher in Jerusalem, gave eloquent expression to her reasons for choosing cremation, telling The Jerusalem Post: "I was not sanctified in my lifetime, so my grave won't be sanctified either. I believe that there is nothing after death."
That is the philosophy underlying the choice of cremation.
It is the antithesis of the belief-system called Judaism.
Published: Sunday, February 04, 2007

Here's a poem quoted on my cousin's blog, Food and Gladness, at www.foodandgladness.blogspot.com. Check out her blog for references to spiritual aspects of diet and health.

Suggestions for Fasting and Feasting:

Fast from discontent; feast on thankfulness.

Fast from worry; feast on trust.

Fast from anger; feast on patience.

Fast from self-concern; feast on compassion for others.

Fast fromunrelenting pressures; feast on unceasing prayers .

Fast from bitterness; feast on forgiveness.

Fast from discouragement, feast on hope.

Fast from media hype, feast on the honesty of the Bible.

Fast from idle gossip; feast on purposeful silence.

Fast from problems that overwhelm; feast on prayer that undergirds.

--Anonymous