Thursday, 18 October, 2018

God’s Unrelenting Love

Posted on Friday, 22 March, 2013Sunday, 20 August, 2017 by Zheluo Cai

We are a week away from Good Friday. My thoughts in the past days have been focused on God’s unrelenting love, which precipitated His incarnation, and inevitably led to His sacrifice.

Reflection: John 15:9-11; 1 John 3:1-2; 1 John 4:19; and Romans 8:38-39.

“I have become absolutely convinced that neither death nor life, neither messenger of Heaven nor monarch of earth, neither a power from on high nor a power from below, nor anything else in God’s whole world has any power to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!” (Romans 8:31-39 – J.B.Phillips’ Translation).

Dare we experience what God has proffered, bearing in mind the quality of our earthly relationships? It is certainly not the fact of being loved unconditionally that is life changing. It is the vulnerable and risky experience of allowing myself to be loved unconditionally by Him that is life transforming! God has reached out to us, dare we take hold of His hands daily and not let them go? I am challenged.

The Guna, known as Kuna prior to an orthographic reform in 2010, and historically as Cuna, are an indigenous people of Panama and Colombia. In the Kuna language, they call themselves Dule or Tule, meaning "people," and the name of the language in Kuna is Dulegaya, literally "people-mouth." Most Gunas live on small islands off the coast of the comarca of Kuna Yala known as the San Blas Islands. Each community has its own political organization, led by a saila, who is traditionally both the political and religious leader of the community; he memorizes songs which relate the sacred history of the people and transmits them to the people. Traditionally, Guna families are matrilinear, with the groom moving to become part of the bride's family and taking the last name of the bride as well.

M15: Dense Globular Star Cluster.
Image Credit & Copyright: Bernhard Hubl (CEDIC). Messier 15 is an immense swarm of over 100,000 stars. A 13 billion-year-old relic of the early formative years of our galaxy, it is one of about 170 globular star clusters that still roam the halo of the Milky Way. Centred in this sharp view, M15 lies about 35,000 light years away toward the constellation Pegasus, well beyond the spiky foreground stars. Its diameter is about 200 light-years. But more than half its stars are packed into the central 10 light-years or so, one of the densest concentrations of stars known. Hubble-based measurements of the increasing velocities of M15's central stars are evidence that a massive black hole resides at the centre of dense globular cluster M15.

The current flag of Myanmar was adopted on 21 October 2010. The new flag was introduced along with implementing changes to the country's name, which were laid out in the 2008 Constitution. The design of the flag has three horizontal stripes of yellow, green and red with a five-pointed white star in the middle. The three colours of the stripes are meant to symbolise solidarity, peace and tranquility, and courage and decisiveness. The white star that symbolised the Union of Burma.

The Elgin Marbles are a collection of Classical Greek marble sculptures made under the supervision of Phidias and his assistants in c. 447 to 438 BC; originally part of the temple of the Parthenon. From 1801 to 1812, agents of Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin removed about half of the surviving sculptures and transported them to Britain. The half not removed is now displayed in the Acropolis Museum. In Britain, the acquisition of the collection was not supported by some, and the Earl's actions was likened to vandalism. Following a public debate in Parliament and its subsequent exoneration of Elgin, he sold the Marbles to the British government in 1816. They were then passed to the British Museum, where they are now on display in the purpose-built Duveen Gallery.

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