{"id":156,"date":"2015-04-16T08:20:18","date_gmt":"2015-04-16T06:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/?p=156"},"modified":"2015-04-16T08:20:18","modified_gmt":"2015-04-16T06:20:18","slug":"2nd-week-of-easter-thursday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/2015\/04\/16\/2nd-week-of-easter-thursday\/","title":{"rendered":"2nd Week of Easter, Thursday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Readings:\u00a0Acts 5:27\u201333;\u00a0Psalm 34:2, 9, 17\u201320;\u00a0John 3:31\u201336.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Our Lord in today&#8217;s Gospel continues to teach Nicodemus that if you don&#8217;t trust a\u00a0witness, you won&#8217;t trust his testimony either. In contrasting Heaven and earth Jesus encourages us to trust his testimony for another reason: if a high point is often the best vantage point, what higher or greater vantage point is there than Heaven?<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes we think of Heaven as something distant and disconnected from earth, but Our Heavenly Father is always watching over every detail of our life, and does so as a loving father, not as\u00a0an all-controlling Big Brother. He has the big picture always in mind and can help us make the best decisions regarding ourselves and regarding others. And when sometimes life doesn&#8217;t seem to make sense, if we are trying to do what is pleasing to him we know that in the long run everything will work out.<\/p>\n<p>If God sees things from the best vantage point, and has a loving concern for us, his testimony is worthy of our belief, and he is worthy of our trust. Let&#8217;s open our hearts to him today and ask him to help us see the big picture from his perspective, and to gain a deeper knowledge of how we can be a part of it, not just for his best interests, but for ours as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Readings:\u00a0Acts 5:27\u201333;\u00a0Psalm 34:2, 9, 17\u201320;\u00a0John 3:31\u201336. Our Lord in today&#8217;s Gospel continues to teach Nicodemus that if you don&#8217;t trust a\u00a0witness, you won&#8217;t trust his testimony either. In contrasting Heaven and earth Jesus encourages us to trust his testimony for another reason: if a high point is often the best vantage point, what higher or &#8230; <a title=\"2nd Week of Easter, Thursday\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/2015\/04\/16\/2nd-week-of-easter-thursday\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about 2nd Week of Easter, Thursday\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[5,29,10],"class_list":["post-156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-easter","tag-second-week","tag-thursday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p65qtw-2w","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions\/158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}