Unearned Luck

  Praise the L ORD ! Praise, O servants of the L ORD , praise the name of the L ORD ! Blessed be the name of the L ORD from this time forth and for evermore! From the rising of the sun to its setting the name of the L ORD is to be praised! Praise the L ORD !    -Psalm 113:1-3, 9b Many have no regard and less respect for Contemporary Christian Music (CCM), because, they claim, it is vapid, heretical, profane, unoriginal, and inappropriate. There is much within the genre that deserves such criticism, but there is much within CCM that offers Christians the opportunity to praise God with intelligent, thoughtful lyrics that do not offend orthodoxy. Much of this intelligent CCM may not be appropriate for the Holy Mass, but it is better than much of what is being played every week around the country. Due to the brevity of a blog post, we'll cover a few examples with the encouragement to explore CCM yourself. Third Day Prior to being given Third Day's 1999 r...

I've wasted so much of my life running away from God. It's not that I don't love Him.  I do so, so much. But see, when I was very young, we'd go to church and on those Sundays when we would get there before Mass had started, we would kneel down to pray and prepare ourselves for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, this most beautiful re-presentation of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross from which flows all of God's grace and mercy.  I never knew what to say, so I would pray, "Dear God, let me serve  you."  I prayed that for the longest time before each Mass I ever attended. I wasn't really aware of what I was asking until He started taking me up on my petition.  In so many ways and at so many different times, God has asked me to do something for Him and I'm pretty sure that I've declined every offer. Except it wasn't an offer.  God wasn't asking me to do something like wash the car or take out the trash.  Those kinds of things I d...