I Corinthians 12
12 My friends, you asked me about spiritual gifts. 2 I want you to remember that before you became followers of the Lord, you were led in all the wrong ways by idols that cannot even talk. 3 Now I want you to know that if you are led by God’s Spirit, you will say that Jesus is Lord, and you will never curse Jesus.
Daniel 5
8 All of King Belshazzar’s highest officials came in, but not one of them could read the writing or tell what it meant, 9 and they were completely puzzled. Now the king was more afraid than ever before, and his face turned white as a ghost.
Richard: When you know God with certainty, there is no need to live in fear.
World Scripture and the Teachings of
Sun Myung Moon
Chapter 4
God’s Creation and Human Creativity
Nature as Teacher
Nature has much to teach us. From ants industriously storing food to birds sweetly calling for their mates, observing the ways of nature’s creatures provides lessons about the basic morality of life. cultivating the earth and caring for animals teaches about patience, sacrifice, and God’s dependable grace when the harvest yields its abundance. Father Moon teaches that through plants and animals God provided even the earliest humans with sufficient instruction to live a life of love and value.
But ask the beasts, and they will teach you;
the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
or the plants of the earth, and they will teach
you;
and the fish of the sea will declare to you.
Who among all these does not know
that the hand of the l ord has done this?
Job 12.7-9
After the sacred volumes of God and the
Scriptures, study, in the second place, that great
volume of the works and the creatures of God.
Francis Bacon 5
Have you considered the soil you till?
Do you yourselves sow it, or are We the
Sowers?
Did We will, We would make it broken orts,
and you will remain bitterly jesting—
“We are debt-loaded; nay, we have been
robbed.”
Have you considered the water you drink?
Did you send it down from the clouds, or did
We send it?
Did We will, We would make it bitter; so why
are you not thankful?
Have you considered the fire you kindle?
Did you make its timber to grow, or did We
make it?
We ourselves made it for a reminder,
and a boon to the desert-dwellers.
Qur’an 56.63-73
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat
falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone;
but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
John 12.24
Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord ;
his going forth is sure as the dawn;
he will come to us as the showers,
as the spring rains that water the earth.
Hosea 6.3