PeaceMakers

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God”

well i read these words and i thought to share it with u,many of u may have seen it b4 but i liked it ,hope it works

in the begining i’d love to thanks Rami for this wonderful idea.i still don’t have a pc at my home but i will do my best to share you some of what i am thinking.

Being alone is really something not easy at all.i love being alone and not talking too much but sometimes i feel that there is a bomb inside me and i wanna talk to anyone but God and myself.i think i need to talk to God in the human figure.i will tell you a lovely thing,i remember Miena when he said onetime that when you are alone you are able to see the signs of God more clearly,that is completely right and i live to add something else.WHEN YOU ARE ALONE GOD IS PLAYING WITH YOU THE HIDE AND SEEK GAME.that is right.you feel sometimes that god is not beside you and you began to cry we tel3an elyoum elle enta geet feeh lewa7dak but in uncertain time you find him is saying ANA AHOH and so on.what is making me able to resist and face anything in this life that i am totally convenced that God won’t quit and say ana mosh la3eb khalas.
i wish that you understood my idea clearly
i have alot of ideas but i prefer to tell you about them in every email.
take care of yourselves my friend
RoRooooooooooooooooooooo

I’m going to complete the rest of the points I wanted to mention about the Praying issue. But just before I go on, where are the rest of you guys, why aren’t you commenting, where are you Fadi, you didn’t show up for 2 days, and you used to write to daily before that.
Any way let’s get back to the topic.
Brain whashing, a word that Miena mentioned 2 days, is it related to praying?
Till you what yes it is related, and it should be related. Let’s define first what is brain washing, it is the process of removing certain concepts from someone and yielding new ones. And this kind of change should occur during praying, especially meditation (elhazez). Our old concepts which is based on greedy, lusts, arrogance, hatred…should die and new concepts of love, giving, humpleness…should be born and this change occurs only in praying. So that the new concepts are not just known by us mentally but also based in our hearts moving every action we do.
It seems that I made the whole issue look suspicious, so would you please make it more clear?
I’ll try making it clearer in this paragraph. First when does brain washing occurs, it occurs when I put myself under the clout of certain text or someone. This why we have to do all our prayers based on biblical text, because it the only text which should have clout upon us. I express this situation, that we place ourselves under something and we allow it to reshape us. This why some of the fathers insist on basing meditations on biblical scripts and not even scripts written by saints. This why we should be above all the kind of text and teaching given to us except for the bible. I even consider the same concept with spiritual guiding, we should examine and discern everything before we put ourselves under it. I will go further here and add that we should examine and discern the ideas and thoughts we acquire during praying. Because ideas and thoughts are sometimes illusive. This is why we always here this expression discerning whenever we talk with someone with good spiritual experience.
I’ll try to write something soon about some kinds of brain washing we may suffer from in our lives, because I’ve a lot to say about it.
I just want to add something at the end, inspite of this complications, and sophisticated post I’d written, god is much more simple than this. He is not just simple he never leaves us.

Time: 3.46 am
Place: Sleeping room
Condition: I’ve been trying to sleep for nearly 3 hours now, but I can’t get into it, I just keep on thinking and thinking about the praying issue.
I’ll try here to state down some kind of comprehensive view on the issue of praying and some the controversial questions related to it. Of course all what I’m going to write here expresses my own point of view and nothing.
I’m going to post my thoughts in the form of questions and answers.
Let’s start from the early beginning.
What is praying?
Praying is a conversation we have with god.
But what is the essence of this conversation?
It is this conversation that ascends from materialistic self-seeking conversation, to spiritual self-seeking conversation ending up with this gratis prayer in which we seek nothing but being with him, praising him… Of course this categorization doesn’t cover all the essences that the conversation with god can be based on. In addition these three categories mentioned formerly are not like steps being taken. It is more like a particularity that dominates on most of our prayers, but that doesn’t mean that even during being in a certain essence we don’t live any of the other 2 essences. We live all the three mutually, but with more dominance of one of them. Note: there are much higher levels of praying like ecstasy (aldahesh), the vision of god, and theiahenosis (unity with god).
And how should the prayers be practiced?
There are wide variety of options we are offered to practice praying in our personal life. We have the Agepea prayers, we have the personal prayer and that may be classified to both meditation (hazez) and contemplation (ta2mol), and we also have the spiritual chanting that is mostly practiced in the Anglican and Protestant churches.
So which is the superlative practice?
Herein I’ll try to analyze all these 3 categories out of my own very limited experience. The Agepea prayer is based on David’s psalms so it is very expressive words to talk to god with, it also arranged to cover main periods of the day (even if it is mostly practiced twice a day) and this makes not faulty in expressing our real commitment in offering daily time to good, it is not faulty on the intellectual level as it will be seen with contemplation, it covers a wide variety of levels of praying from thanking, asking forgiveness, praising… But I see it is some times turns out to be series of repeated words without getting personally and totally involved in it, and thus lived in a superficial way.
So what about the personal prayer, it is based on biblical text and thus it helps to dominate the word of god over us, it also helps us to understand ourselves in more deep way, and it is very effective when we want revise some period in out life and how we lived it. But it very faulty on the intellectual level as it may satisfy our intellectual desires without penetrating the word god tour hearts, in addition it may lead to some kind of heresy if we kept on living it on intellectual level.
And for the spiritual chanting it helps us being in state of readiness to accept god’s demands and obey his commandments. But it may be very faulty on the psychological level, because living in some kind of extra ordinary feelings stimulated by chanting may mislead us and put us in a kind of illusion that we have reached certain levels of high spirituality.
So what can we conclude from your thoughts ya 3am Tony?
I’ll tell you. What really matters in the prayer is the person who is praying and what is he trying to live and is he trying to be honest with himself in his spiritual practice or just fooling himself. God said “My son give me your heart and your eyes should be on my roads.” That is what god really wants from us our hearts. And this is what we should be giving him in our prayers. Because whatever the way we practice our prayers without heart it is nothing and without the daily effort in each prayer to deny ourselves and thoughts in front of god’s sound, then we are just fooling ourselves. By the way the previous point the advantages and disadvantages are not something wrong with the prayer itself, it is the wrong the person who prays and how honestly does he live it. Personally and again I say it is something personal for me, I feel I need all the previously mentioned practice of prayer in diverse levels, in addition to a lot of others like praying with the community of believers, the prayer of poor….
To Be Continued because, it is 5.18 now and I start falling asleep…

The answer is surprisingly yes!! Here is the statement:
” God is limited by His infinite attributes”
Let me give you an example! If I say that God can’t lie, it is a limitation. But does it degrade from Him, absolutely not. God can’t lie beacause His infinite attributes do not agree with this.
Let me take another biblical example: if you read the Gospel according to St. Mark chaper 6 from 1 to 6:
(Quoted in English then Arabic)

” 1And he went out from thence, and came into his own country; and his disciples follow him. 2And when the sabbath day was come, he began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, saying, From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands? 3Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him. 4But Jesus, said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. 5And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. 6And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching. ”

1 وَغَادَرَ يَسُوعُ ذلِكَ الْمَكَانَ وَعَادَ إِلَى بَلْدَتِهِ، وَتَلاَمِيذُهُ يَتْبَعُونَهُ.
2 وَلَمَّا حَلَّ السَّبْتُ، أَخَذَ يُعَلِّمُ فِي الْمَجْمَعِ، فَدُهِشَ كَثِيرُونَ حِينَ سَمِعُوهُ، وَقَالُوا: «مِنْ أَيْنَ لَهُ هَذَا؟ وَمَا هَذِهِ الْحِكْمَةُ الْمَوْهُوبَةُ لَهُ، وَهَذِهِ الْمُعْجِزَاتُ الْجَارِيَةُ عَلَى يَدَيْهِ؟
3 أَلَيْسَ هَذَا هُوَ النَّجَّارَ ابْنَ مَرْيَمَ، وَأَخَا يَعْقُوبَ وَيُوسِي وَيَهُوذَا وَسِمْعَانَ؟ أَوَلَيْسَتْ أَخَوَاتُهُ عِنْدَنَا هُنَا؟» هكَذَا كَانُوا يَشُكُّونَ فِيهِ.
4 وَلكِنَّ يَسُوعَ قَالَ لَهُمْ: «لاَ يَكُونُ النَّبِيُّ بِلاَ كَرَامَةٍ إِلاَّ فِي بَلْدَتِهِ، وَبَيْنَ أَقْرِبَائِهِ، وَفِي بَيْتِهِ!»
5 وَلَمْ يَقْدِرْ أَنْ يَعْمَلَ هُنَاكَ أَيَّةَ مُعْجِزَةٍ، غَيْرَ أَنَّهُ لَمَسَ بِيَدَيْهِ عَدَداً قَلِيلاً مِنَ الْمَرْضَى فَشَفَاهُمْ.
6 وَتَعَجَّبَ مِنْ عَدَمِ إِيمَانِهِمْ. ثُمَّ أَخَذَ يَطُوفُ بِالْقُرَى الْمُجَاوِرَةِ وَهُوَ يُعَلِّمُ. >

I want you to focus on verses 5 and 6. Verse 5 said that He couldn’t do mighty works, it didn’t say He did not or He did not want to. It said literaly He couldn’t. How could not Jesus do a mircale??? Isn’t He God? Definitly He is. Then what is wrong?? The answer is, nothing is wrong. Verse 6 explains every thing right away: Jesus could not do a miracle because of their unbelieve… He is the one who set the rule… He can’t break it, not out of weakness, but, out of prefection… It is his infinite justice that limited Him…
God can’t do evil things not out of weakness but out of perfect righteousness.

I wanted to complete Tony’s idea about how we are limiting God by rules.. We will really limit God if you employ our own logic to make Him perfect.. BUT God revealed Himself to us in His Son. He showed us Himself in the bible. He told us about Himself… These things that He told us about are absolute facts.. They are not going to confine Him.. What will really confine HIM is our rejection to His clear statements that He repeated more than once…I d like to give another example here:
When He talked about Himself as the only way of salvation…. When He talked several times about the necessity of faith for our salvation….
But our self-righteousness does n’t accept it, our logic will start assuming postulates about different cases that doesn’t look fair if it were judged through Jesus words. Then what will do? We will act as Gods by twisting His words to others words that satisfy our sense of fairness.

Well,this is my first contribution here,in fact i am really happy that we got on line with our thoughts and experiences again although i prefer doing it face to face cuz faces carry feelings and transmit them more clearly,i sure mean honest faces,anyaway,as that’s our only way now to comunicate so i guess we have to work hard on keeping it and even searching for more ideas so that we can make it alive,more interesting don’t know how but i will try to think of something brilliant,u all may think too.
I readalmost all wha’t on site and i may have comments that’s working inside me but let it go out in time,i just want to say a first big hello to all people here: Fadi,Rasha,Emad,Sherif,Nadine,Lorine,Tony and of course 3amena el big boss Rami and for those who didn’t arrive yet hurry up we r waiting for u all .
i want to share something with u all ,it is a song lyrics ,maybe some of u already know it,it seems kind of sad words but it has very deep,honest,touchy meanings,waiting for ur comments guys ok?
Here it is:
“Goodbye My Lover”

Did I disappoint you or let you down?
Should I be feeling guilty or let the judges frown?
‘Cause I saw the end before we’d begun,
Yes I saw you were blinded and I knew I had won.
So I took what’s mine by eternal right.
Took your soul out into the night.
It may be over but it won’t stop there,
I am here for you if you’d only care.
You touched my heart you touched my soul.
You changed my life and all my goals.
And love is blind and that I knew when,
My heart was blinded by you.
I’ve kissed your lips and held your head.
Shared your dreams and shared your bed.
I know you well, I know your smell.
I’ve been addicted to you.

Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.

I am a dreamer but when I wake,
You can’t break my spirit - it’s my dreams you take.
And as you move on, remember me,
Remember us and all we used to be
I’ve seen you cry, I’ve seen you smile.
I’ve watched you sleeping for a while.
I’d be the father of your child.
I’d spend a lifetime with you.
I know your fears and you know mine.
We’ve had our doubts but now we’re fine,
And I love you, I swear that’s true.
I cannot live without you.

Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.

And I still hold your hand in mine.
In mine when I’m asleep.
And I will bare my soul in time,
When I’m kneeling at your feet.
Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.
I’m so hollow, baby, I’m so hollow.
I’m so, I’m so, I’m so hollow.

Dear Friends,
First I want to share you something I experience everyday with this blog thing. I nearly check the site 100 times a day for finding some kind of more comments or posts. When it is at night I just have this struggle, “I want to sleep.” VS “I want to write something on the blog.” and it usually ends up me not sleeping and writing something here, specially comments.
Now I’ll tell you about something I’m planning to write here. For me the unity of the church means a lot, means some kind of a dream, I’m not having the same background and the same point of view I used to have about the unity of church when we started such an activity. But I’ve this dream; having this dream doesn’t mean that I’m much better than others who don’t care about it, or any kind of a thing that makes ahead of them. I’ve this dream because I believe it is God’s will to be one. One more thing I want to add here, I’ve no kind of an imagination on how this dream can be on the earth of reality. I just dream that it will be done in the way God’s will is fulfilled.
You know what the word unity doesn’t mean any more for me just the unity between churches, it means the unity we should work on creating in our communities, starting from our families… But this doesn’t deminish any of my strong desire for the unity of church.
Before I start a series of posts I’m planing to write here. I just want to say some points on which I would like to build this whole thing.
“I’m sorry if one day I couldn’t understand the fears, the feelings of the churchs enough.”
“I’m sorry if one I was a kind of humilating by my words any of the churchs or the leaders of the churchs.”
“I love all the churchs and I believe that God is trying to tell something to every one of them.”
“I believe that every church have a lot of richness.”
“I believe that unity will not be a work of humans, it will be God’s work.”
“I believe that unity will change the face of earth.”
What I’m going to post is a series of post under the title “Why do we conflict?” this title is not just directed about the churchs, but it is rather more about our personal lives. Let’s pray for god’s will in fulfilling the unity of the church and let us work to unify the world around us.
Love
Antonius Armanious

dear friends,

i’m happy to talk about dreams, and freedom. i have an idea. we can pray together everyday in subject “the dreams” with texts from bible + helpful points. i already have this programm in my notebook.
it can be like this.. send you everyday one text or two..max. with some helpful points.. and you take half an hour daily to pray with this text, and share our feelings in comments. in the first time i can send you the method to pray that most of you know it already…etc.
if you like it. please send me comments that you want me to do it. if i find 3 or more comments i’ll begin it.
jesus with you

hi all,
i have something i want to share you, i have a text form the bible i want to share it with you,
mark 9-14:27 , my favorite part is ,
23( ” if you can?” said jesus . “everything is possible for him who believes.” 24immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “i do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” )
and it slame me in the face, i believe in jesus and i do believe that everything he gave me is for myown good, but sometimes we face a very tuff times and we can’t see god’s wisdom … and i begun to say why, i was good , i was happy ( but sometimes i wasn’t ) , and in this time the little tiny unbelief ( although i won’t call it unbelief i will call it weakness ) come out … that why i like this part and this prayer soooo mush and i will always say it , every single time i feel of weakness ” help me overcome my unbelief “.
i’m happy to share this with you, may anyone find it useful…
love & peace, rasha

Heeeeeeeey all my friends, great to see u here……Great job u did here Ramy, thank you.
For the first while when i read what u all wrote, i felt like we had our group back again,…felt like i’m talking with Rasha,Miena,& Fadi from abroad, & talking with my old friends who is still here in Egypt, i felt i got my friends back, the feeling i miss long time ago.
I got that song today from a friend, & I’m sure u will like it.

That’s What Friends Are For

And I never thought I’d feel this way
And as far as I’m concerned
I’m glad I got the chance to say
That I do believe I love you

And if I should ever go away
Well then close your eyes and try
To feel the way we do today
And then if you can remember

Keep smiling, keep shining
Knowing you can always count on me, for sure
That’s what friends are for
For good times and bad times
I’ll be on your side forever more
That’s what friends are for

Well you came in loving me
And now there’s so much more I see
And so by the way I thank you

Oh and then for the times when we’re apart
Well then close your eyes and know
The words are coming from my heart
And then if you can remember

This is new song in the charts now
it’s name is UGLY by “sugababes”.
i heared it when i was thinking about people and how they act and it really inspired me.

When I was 7
They said I was strange
I noticed that my eyes and hair weren’t the same
I asked my parents if I was OK
They said you’re more beautiful
And that’s the way they show that they wish
They had your smile
So my confidence was up for a while
I got real comfortable with my own style
I knew that they were only jealous cos

People are all the same
And we only get judged by what we do
Personality reflects name
And if I’m ugly then
So are you
So are you

There was a time when I felt like I cared
That I was shorter than everyone there
People made me feel like life was unfair
And I did things that made me ashamed
Cos I didn’t know my body would change
I grew taller than them in more ways
But there will always be the one who will say
Something bad to make them feel great

People are all the same
And we only get judged by what we do
Personality reflects name
And if I’m ugly then
So are you
So are you

People are all the same
And we only get judged by what we do
Personality reflects name
And if I’m ugly then
So are you
So are you

Everybody talks bad about somebody
And never realises how it affects somebody
And you bet it won’t be forgotten
Envy is the only thing it could be

you can download from the folowing site, it is #7
www.mp3-start.nl/login/slam40.php

I originally posted this one on my personal blog (http://song-riddle.blogspot.com/) and I like to share it with u all, so here it is …

In this new year’s eve we went to the children’s hospital just as we used to do every new year’s eve for a few years, It was nothing special for me .. And I wouldn’t be missed at all if I didn’t go, in fact all I did is standing there, quite useless. Just as I expected .. however I insisted on going, this is one thing that I refuse to let go to boredom and indifference. As I said I felt nothing special. Only maybe a more than usual feeling of sickness .. this perhaps due to my knowledge that one of my colleagues’ little girl is in one hospital somewhere to reasons dealing with Asthma. I felt so connected .. but also so detached in a contradicting and strange way. I feel indeed connected to this people more, I feel more like one of them and not just a visitor like I used to be before, but also detached .. detached because this new connectedness was no big deal to me, having felt this way a few years ago, I would probably reacted far more deeply than this. I also got irritated from this smell of medicine (the smell of doctors and hospitals) of course I was never a fan of it, but for the first time I can’t wait to get rid of it, to wash my hand over and over just to get it away, sickness is no problem for me, always have been and still, but somehow I handle it differently this time. Also many of the little inhabitants of the hospital are babies. I feel strangely connected to babies ever since my sister got a baby girl, a niece that I still yet to see.

“I am glad that you have shot this footage and that the world will see it, It is the only way we have a chance that people might intervene.” Paul Rusesabagina.

“Yeah, and if no one intervenes, is it still a good thing to show?” British Reporter.

“How can they not intervene when they witness such atrocities?” Paul Rusesabagina

“I think if people see this footage….they’ll say, “Oh, my God, that’s horrible.” and then go on eating their dinners” British Reporter.

 Watch this movie, but hope you don’t end up eating your dinner as I did.