paravanes:meditations

  (c) Deborah Evans Do you honor your spirit, your will, your imagination, your mind, your dreams? Honor the body in which all of these reside. The Bible doesn't teach of a resurrection experience that involves humans becoming angels  or disembodied spirits flying through the air. Certain artists have crafted these images, but you can't find this concept in the Bible. Genesis teaches us God literally breathed the "breath of life" into the human body. Genesis also teaches us God shaped the human body intentionally.  Read Genesis 2:4-7. Regarding the resurrection, Paul the apostle writes this in the New Testament: "So it will be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown (buried) is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." (Read 1 Corinthians 15:42-44). Here, Paul describes the truth that many of u...

(c) Deborah Evans When Jesus says you cannot follow him unless you "deny yourself" (Matthew 16:24+25), he doesn't mean for you to neglect your well-being, your fitness and health, or your mind. What he does mean is you must give up the life this broken world wants to give you: the life you have when someone is more important than Jesus, the life you have when there's no time for the Bible and fellowship with other believers, the life you have when you're too busy to pray. Denying yourself means ripping the unholy (habits, people, priorities) from your life and keeping the unholy out of your life. Self care isn't sinful. Your body and mind are designed by God and are gifts from God. Designed to glorify God and to house other gifts of God, your body and mind require self care in order for you to carry out God's will for you in this life. Rest, good food, exercise, positive social connections, and life long learning are all forms of self care that...

A number of the blogs and feeds I follow have carried intense ( and intensely emotional ) discussions in the last month or two about obesity and black women. A series of recent articles, including one in the New York Times  , have questioned why so many black women are obese, perhaps even morbidly obese. Objections to the tones of  these articles have arisen around the apparent lack of solutions, empathy, or concern for the health of the women whose "issues" are being dissected and discussed. I don't know if more black women are obese, compared to other women. If that is true, then what does it mean, and is there a spiritual component? I have been a variety of sizes as an adult, and those changes have often reflected what was happening in my life at the time. I have jokingly said it took ten years to lose the "baby fat", but it is all gone now. What happened, and why? As an American woman of African descent, here is my take on this subject. I am no...