V-A-L-E-N-T-I-N-E

(V) – For God so loVed the world
(A) – That He GAve
(L) – His on Ly
(E) – BegottEn
(N) – soN
(T) - That whosoever
(I) – Believeth In Him
(N) - Should Not  perish,
(E) – But have Everlasting life.

 

John 3:16

 

Inside the Newspaper

On 31st December 06 as I opened The Sunday Times a book fell out and when I looked closer I noticed that it was copy of the English Translation of the Dhammapada. I thought that someone from the shop had left it and it must have got in accidently and I kept it aside to return it when I go to the shop sometime later.

As I was reading the newspaper it was clearly mentioned that a copy of the Dhammapada has been included free with The Sunday Times. Now I wonder what would have been the reaction if a Sinhala translation of “The Bible” had been in the newspaper. Some of our robed friends would have shouted that it was forced conversion or that religion is being propogated in an unethical manner and would have urged the authorities to take action against the newspaper.

It would have been made a big issue and protests may have even been carried out in front of The Sunday Times Office. Now I wonder how many Christians protested citing this as an excuse. In fact no one protested!

I am not finding fault with the newspaper for including this material but the so called champions of Buddhism (who do nothing but damage the name of Buddhism) should stop accusing the Christians of converting in an unethical manner, since if they view that as unethical then isn’t what was in the newspaper also unethical.

 

True Meaning of Christmas

It will be Christmas very soon in fact in about 5 days and we are all busy with cleaning up and buying gifts for our friends and families. In all this rush to celebrate this holiday we tend to forget the true meaning of why we celebrate Christmas.

It is not about the gifts that we buy for the others or the times of merry making but it is about the Birth of our Saviour Jesus Christ who eventually died on the cross of Calvary for the sins of mankind. Even though December 25th is not the date that Jesus was born and the actual date is arguable, it is used to symbolically represent the date on which we can celebrate this great day.

Christmas is very highly comercialized these days and we also see that people are trying to remove the Christ out of Christmas by wording it as Xmas. This year lets explore our hearts and see whether it is ‘Xmas’ or ‘Christmas’ for us and if it is Xmas lets remove the ‘X’ and put ‘Christ’ back into our Christmas.

Lets remember the ones in need, the people displaced by the Tsunami and the senseless War and the hundreds of people who have lost someone and do something for them from this Christmas onwards so that they can move their lives forward.

I hope that this year we will celebrate it truely as the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.