Barnabas Powell's Blog, page 6
August 4, 2023
An Invitation to Cleanse the “Temple” of Your Heart
If you have a younger sibling then you’ve heard this before: “She did it! Why can’t I?” I know I’ve heard it in my house on numerous occasions, especially when the younger kiddo wonders out loud “What about me?” But sometimes (actually, many times) the younger child isn’t developmentally ready to take on the task that her bigger sister is doing. This happened recently as one daughter was walking to her bus…
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August 3, 2023
Are You Able To Drink This Cup?
When I think of the requests we make of God, I find my own requests break down into a few categories – Personal needs, Family concerns, Parish concerns, and Hopes and Fears. But one of the blessings of being Orthodox is that the wise prayers preserved in the Faith cause my prayers to ever expand to include the whole universe. The regular litanies of the Divine Liturgy and other services allow me…
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August 2, 2023
Truly Marvelous
It’s the second day of the Dormition Fast! The wisdom of the fasting disciplines of the Church is meant to reinforce the reality that unless the faith is holistically practiced, that is it affects every aspect of your person, the real danger of compartmentalization exists! One aspect of Orthodoxy that first caught my attention was this focus on Cosmic Truths AND the everyday practice of the Faith. What I discovered was the…
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August 1, 2023
It Is Not You Who Speaks
Welcome to August and the first day of the Dormition Fast. Let us not neglect the wisdom of the Faith as we prepare for this Great Feast! “I wish I had said this!” That’s what I said to myself after a particularly difficult conversation with a friend over a very sensitive subject. Have you ever had that happen to you? You think of the “perfect” thing to have said AFTER the conversation…
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July 31, 2023
Do You Desire to be Great? The Path is Humility!
The words of Jesus often strike us as paradoxical: To be free, you must be a slave, to live you have to die, to be great, you must be humble! Hundreds of books have been written trying to understand the paradox of Jesus and His influence on humanity. The fact is His life shouldn’t have mattered much at all when you think of the millions of lives lived by just religious philosophers…
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July 28, 2023
Conflict Reveals Important Truths
It seems we humans have an ingrained “love” of fighting, defending ourselves, and drama. We are really good at it. Just look at the conflicts that are raging today in our world. We seem to love to fight, and that, in itself, should be a sign of deep brokenness in us. Our impulse to fight, to demand our rights, to “get even” and “settle the score” all reveal a wound in humanity…
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July 27, 2023
Learn To Compete According to the Rules
I love a line from the Paraklesis to our parish saints, Sts. Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene: “We entreat you, O Martyr of Christ, who with Nicholas and Irene for His sake competed according to the rules: Save us from injuries by our unruly opponent, through your earnest prayers to our tender-loving Lord.” The good Monk Gerasimos Mikragiannanites wrote this Paraklesis to our patron saints and I love how he contrasts the saints,…
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July 26, 2023
The Path To Wise Living
It took me a long time to finally get my mind and heart around the profound difference between wisdom and legislation. For most of my life, I spent most of my time being a rule keeper. After all, I was the firstborn son. I was responsible to obey the rules. I was supposed to be the “good boy” that would grow up to be a “good leader” who taught everyone to obey…
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July 25, 2023
An Old Story Still True Today
“…of the holy and righteous ancestors of God Joachim and Anna…” At every liturgy, at the end of every prayer service, the priest remembers the grandparents of Jesus, the parents of the Theotokos! If something like this is repeated long enough, we humans start experiencing it as the familiar “noise” of prayer. The dangers of this “sound” becoming mere nostalgia increases and the greater danger of us “forgetting” WHY we pray this…
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July 24, 2023
Preaching the Paradox of Freedom
It’s just who I am. I remember my time at an Evangelical Protestant school for my undergraduate degree, and the 2 years of homiletical (how to give a sermon). It was a bit grueling and my professor was particularly tough on me. One day, I was walking with another seminarian and he overheard our conversation. He stopped me and said, “Brother Powell, you are a preaching machine!” I chose to take that…
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