Tag Archives: peace

“All Praise Be Given” Reading

praisegod

Below is a reading our church will be reading this Sunday at church.  Feel free to use it for your church or for you own personal praise of our God. If you’d like to give me credit, that is great, but you do not have to.

You can download the document for free here at my online storage site, or copy and paste it from below.

All Praise Be Given

All praise be given to the Lord, the one who made the ultimate sacrifice for our sin.

All praise be to the Light of the world, the one who shines light into the darkness.

All praise be given to the Forgiver, the one who took our sins upon his shoulders.

All praise be to the God of the universe, the one who holds the sun and moon in his hands.

All praise be given to the Care-giver, the one who loves each one of his creatures individually.

All praise be given to the Savior of the entire world, the one who came for every lost person and loves each the same.

All praise be to the merciful judge, the one whose perfect justice will bring restoration to this broken world.

All praise be to the eternal King, the one who was, is, and is to come.

All praise be to the God who will never abandon us, the one who shelters and protects our souls.

All praise be to the God of peace, to the one who will end the suffering of this world.

All praise be to God who is not just our Lord, but the one who is also our friend: Jesus the Christ.

Amen.

Campolo/Claiborne Talk Religious Peace

campolo

Peace. Everybody wants it, but there are many different routes to getting there.  So much of war is caused by religious differences.  It’s sad, but it is true.  Conservatives are criticized because they want to stop violence with violence.  Liberals are criticized because “all they want to do is talk”.  Maybe you “don’t care about politics”, but I find that most people that say this still definitely care about things like peace and justice.  This disconnect is frustrating for me to watch.  Is our government going to solve the huge problems of this world?  Of course not, but the government can serve as one source of helping (or what seems to more frequently happen, end up hurting the situation).  So maybe you don’t care about politics and that is ok.  But what do we tell our government to do when there is a genocide in Darfur (2,000 – 5,000+ dead since 2003)?  What do we say when our government bombs innocent people because we are looking for a small terrorist group in a huge land?  What do you think about abortion or gay rights?

Anyways, here is an old but interesting interview between Tony Campolo (president of Eastern University) and Shane Claiborne (a crazy, but interesting, hippie for Jesus).  I learned a lot and more importantly, it confirmed a lot of of my beliefs of how to come to peace between our religious differences (muslim, christian, atheist, etc.).  Maybe there won’t ever be peace between us, but that does not give us the excuse to stop trying.