Scarlet Robe Creations

"This is where I will build it," the tall, slender man said to the seller of the parcel. "Twenty five acres of God's beautiful creation.  It's breathtaking.  Don't you think?" "A chapel," the seller replied. "You said something about a chapel." "A barn, a stable, a place where Jesus will feel welcome." "Like a church?" "Not at all.  The building I will construct on this land will be nothing like a church.  It will not be labeled by denomination.  It will be labeled by faith.  That faith will be this, that you believe that he came as a child.  He fulfilled ancient scripture.  He walked among the people.  He taught them about His father.  He was nailed to a crude cross, because His father willed it.  He was laid in a tomb with a boulder rolled in front of the entrance, and He rose on the third day.  There will be no room for egos in this church.  No dark corners where piousness can thrive." "But don...

The shock hadn’t settled in yet.   A deep numbness took hold of every fiber in her body.   She walked aimlessly down the hospital’s corridor, not looking at any of those who passed by her, heading in the opposite direction.   The pale gray walls and the single gurney barely registered.   She turned a corner and stood frozen for a long moment as she stared down the lonely corridor. She was alone. The last few hours had been a blur.   Her mother was found, by a neighbor, unresponsive on the floor of her apartment.   The siren of the ambulance wailed all the way to the nearest hospital.   Doctors probed her mother’s unconscious body and seemed to speak in a foreign language. Aneurysm. Cerebral. Slowly, back against the wall, she slid to the linoleum floor, wrapped her arms around her legs and buried her face in the crevice between her knees.   Her mother was dying.   The God she’d given up on in college was allowing it to happen. ...

Inspired by Our Daily Bread Ministries 'Wounded in Worship' by Tim Gustafson Isn't this basically what He said? "It doesn't matter." He responds to the woman at the well, Who says, "You Jews say we should worship in Jerusalem. Yet my ancestors said we should worship on this mountain." Does it matter? Jesus opens that gate. His sheep follow And we praise Him wherever we stand. Pretty simple. Lord, remind me that You are not bound to a structure Or the rituals of Denomination. Lord, remind me that You love all, But not all will love You. Lord, remind me that Your Spirit envelops  Each mountain top  and every valley. copyright 2023 - Donald P James Jr https://www.amazon.com/stores/Donald-P.-James-Jr./author

Often, it seems, I meet individuals who are turning away from their faith because of a denominational law, shutting them away from God.  The teachers met on our journey often wish to preach their own ideals and not the one simple truth, that Jesus loves us as we are.  Never enclose our Lord into a tiny, defined box.  He is so much more than our limited imagination can grasp. No longer do we serve the old way of a written law, but in a new way of the spirit (Romans 7:6) Discouragement among believers when those seeking authority offer laws and not His words. Ideals bound together with human insight, worthy of a Pharisaical charge. Do we become white washed tombs, believing conspiracies contrived by those who need to control our journey with Jesus? He said "Come to me". Come as you are, not as they wish you to be. But come. Don't stand in the wake of your discouragement believing the ordained authority to be the clear voice of salvation...

Division among the chosen, multiple ideals trying to define the same cross. We kneel or stand in prayer seeking answers to justify our interpretations. Do we have a voice for tolerance or the word? Do we assign as sacred only those passages with which we agree? Are we not guilty of taken sides in our quest to package God with the label of our own brand? Denomination, a word which sometimes tastes foul, shepherds who have scattered the flock and shaped the cross with their own beliefs. copyright 2016 - Donald P James Jr https://www.amazon.com/stores/Donald-P.-James-Jr./author