a fortress!

this weekend was pretty eventful overall :) starfield concert mostly but got to also do a women's Bible study with the church i am going to and hung out a lot with brothers and sisters on Sunday. anyway i guess what i wanted to blog about is the Bible study..

we were looking at the passage of Luke 15 - the parable of the prodigal son. I guess often i focus on the son that spends his fortune, repents, comes back, and is welcomed home by the father (paralleled by our own rebellion to God and coming back to him in repentance, seeking forgiveness.. i think this is the more...obvious? message of this parable. But at this Bible study, we actually spent a lot of time talking about the older son - particularly to the idea of "unfair"ness.. might not be a word ahah anyways the older son is meant to portray the Pharisees (soon after they grumbled against Jesus because he was eating with sinners) who had obeyed the father all along but did not truly love him because he was obeying for the sake of reward. Anyway the reason we talked more about the older son because we felt that was truly where the deeper problem lay... the idea of finding that we deserve something because of what we have done or overall how to deal with something that seems unfair. I think most of us said that it must have been difficult for the Pharisees, who thought they were doing the "right" thing but Jesus comes and tells them something totally different. but anyway i guess in more present-day terms, if we are humble and remember that we have all we need already (Jesus!), which is what the father in the parable tells the son, it may be much easier to approach the situation. maybe we are so accustomed to that thinking of "i did something well so i deserve to be rewarded". i am not sure if we came to a final conclusion of that discussion but it was definitely a very interesting talk about this parable i have never had before! and it rly reminded me be more humble since a lot of the times i expect people to be nice to me because i try to be nice but when it doens't happen back i get frustrated ... soo may God grant me the humility, patience and LOVE to be more unconditional in my love

ALSO. re:previous post. at starfield concert, they showed this video of an African woman who had to take care of many of her grandchildren and she said that she put her faith in God to provide for them. When asked what she wanted to share with everyone who could hear her story, she said: "ask God for strength, for when you do, He will give you a fortress" (paraphrased). that really struck me... just visualizing what that is like... is profound haha so i shall ask God for strength to face these trials!