Godly Insights for the 21st Century Life

      Recently, I've noticed a disturbing trend within the church: the refusal to use pronouns when referring to God and Jesus. I had noticed the deacon at my church doing it, and while it annoyed me, I thought that it was just one of her quirks. Then, I noticed the same thing happening in the Lenten devotion I am doing. Now, they are still using You and Your during their prayers, but they are not using He, Him, or Himself. What they seem to be forgetting is that the entire reason why proper pronouns exist as a part of speech is to use them to refer to God and Christ.     Imagine, if you will, that St. Paul also had this aversion to pronouns. In that case, Philippians 2:6-9 would read like this:      "Christ was like God in every way, but Christ did not think that Christ's being equal to God was something to use for Christ's own benefit. Instead, Christ gave up everything, even Christ's place with God. Christ accepted the role of a servant, appearing in human form.

      I had planned to write about something different in this post. I almost always have a few different ideas for posts that I draw from each month unless there's something more pressing to discuss. Well, this month, there was something more pressing.     On the morning of February 19, I called my care receiver for our biweekly check-in. She didn't answer, so I left her a message on her voice mail and sent her a text. I was a bit worried, especially since I hadn't been able to talk to her on the 5th either, but I knew that sometimes she had issues with her phone, so I thought that maybe that was happening again. Unfortunately, that wasn't the problem this time. About an hour later, I got a text from her number saying it was her sister and asking me how I knew her. Before I could respond, the sister called to inform me that she had died a week earlier.       I am thankful that though she is gone now, I was able to give her a sense of peace through our relationship. In