Livro: "The Cry of the Soul" (cap.2)

"The Cry of the Soul: How Our Emotions Reveal Our Deepest Questions About God"

Dan B. Allender & Tremper Longman III

<<< tradução automática para português >>>

Some excerpts from Cap.2:

'[...] No section of the Bible teaches us the language of the soul better than the Psalms, which reflect the movement of the human heart in rich, evocative, and startling language. In a voice that disrupts, invites, and reveals, the psalmist draws us to the voice of God.

The Psalms teach us how to praise and worship. But they also teach us how to wrestle with doubt until it gives way to the first rays of hope. The Psalms light our way on the path of change.

Writers and thinkers throughout the Christian tradition have recognized the soul-exposing function of this pivotal book of the Bible. John Calvin offered this brilliant insight:

"What various and resplendent riches are contained in this treasury, it were difficult to describe.… I have been wont to call this book, not inappropriately, an anatomy of all parts of the soul; for there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror." [reference: Institutes of the Christian Religion]'

'[...] A Voice that Disrupts Our Denial

The Psalms provoke us to move out of denial. Christians are particularly adept at numbing themselves against painful emotions. “After all”, we reason, “we should be joyful because we know that God is in control”. Negative emotions such as fear, anger, or depression are stigmatized as inappropriate because God is love and grants us peace.

But our spiritual songbook of Psalms does not contain 150 hymns of joy. As a matter of fact, a close look shows that the psalms of complaint and songs of accusation—the music of confusion, doubt, and heartache—significantly outnumber the hymns of joy. We may seek to flee from the feelings inside of us, but a look into the Psalms exposes them to our gaze. {John} Calvin described this exposure:

"[The psalmists] lay open their inmost thoughts and affections [emotions], call, or rather draw, each of us to the examination of himself in particular, in order that none of the many infirmities to which we are subject, and of the many vices with which we abound, may remain concealed." [reference: Psalms]

The psalmist’s ruthless honesty compels us to look beyond the surface of our tumult, deeper into our soul, where we expose our battle with God. As the psalmist cries “out of the depths” (Psalm 130:1), we find ourselves crying out to God along with him.

The Psalms disrupt our assumption that we can escape the “groaning” of this life. They call us back from our natural tendency to flee from pain and fight against any who provoke discomfort. They expose the essence of our emotional turmoil—the commitment to find life apart from trusting God.'

'[...] A Voice that Disrupts Our Depravity

Our culture presumes that emotions are amoral—neither right nor wrong. According to this perspective, it’s not what we feel that’s potentially sinful, but rather what we do with our feelings. The problem with this view is its assumption that some element of our personality escaped the consequences of the Fall.

It seems more accurate to say that our feelings are not any more or less sinful than our thoughts, desires, and behaviors. But God can use our emotions to disclose sin through revealing the depths of our battle with Him.

The Psalms expose the sinfulness of our anger, fear, jealousy, despair, contempt, and shame. Notice how envy exposed the psalmist’s inner disease (Psalm 73:1–3).

The psalmist’s jealousy reveals his sinful desire for the rewards of the wicked, but it does more—it exposes his sense of futility in remaining pure. Why be pure when God seems to give the blessings of life to the wicked and not to the righteous?

From our limited perspective, emotions seem to spring from horizontal cause-and-effect. Someone is unkind to me; I feel hurt or angry. Another person is kind; I feel happy. My colleague receives an award; I feel jealous. Feelings seem to follow the ups and downs of relating to others—they don‘t, at first glance, seem to have much to do with God.

A friend once told me (Dan): “I feel like I’m part of a cosmic, county fair bumper-car ride. I know I’m going to get hit; it’s only a matter of when and how hard”. I asked him if his sense of dread was related to God. “Not really”, he replied. “I just wonder when things are going to collapse, or when I’m going to get knocked down again”.

But all dread is related to the question, Is life predictable? All anger is related to the question, Is life just? Change the word “life” to “God”, and the questions become personal. Is God predictable? Is God just? The psalmist’s jealousy surfaced in the horizontal context of human circumstances, but it was rooted in his underlying question, Is God fair?

The Psalms help us understand that every emotion is a theological statement. All feelings reveal our attempt to maneuver into a position of regaining access to the pleasures and perfection of God. All dark emotions are rooted in our reactive response (flight) to being out of the Garden and our aggressive response (fight) to regain access to Eden.

Our natural response to pain is the attempt to get relief from our suffering—either by fighting in anger or fleeing in fear. When we’re angry, we naturally attack or threaten assault if the perceived unjust offense continues. When we’re afraid, flight seems like the most reasonable course in the world.

Notice what these people of God do when they feel the pain of hunger: “Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land; when they are famished, they will become enraged and, looking upward, will curse their king and their God” (Isaiah 8:21).

Unrighteous anger demands that others respond to our plight or pay the consequences. Ultimately, when we are empty and God does not respond as we wish, we feel justified to act on our own behalf. And we turn our rage against Him because He could alleviate our suffering.

The psalmist disrupts our denial that we are angry or afraid. He disrupts our pretense that our anger and fear are not directed against God. “The problem is not the situation that provoked your fear and anger”, he tells us. “The problem is that your heart is opposed to God”.

Yet even as he exposes the depths of our hearts, the psalmist does something quite odd—he invites us to question, doubt, and rage against God.'

'[...] We fear the same may be true with God. We shudder with dread that we will suffer terrible consequences for our inner rebellion. Precisely at this point, the Psalms surprise us. They not only help us articulate and understand what we feel, but they also dare us to struggle. Even more, they give us the words to vocalize our desperate struggles with the Lord.

The psalmists felt, and publicly expressed, the gamut of emotions—from hurt to fury, from desire for vengeance to contempt against God. How comforting to know that we are not alone when we ache with loneliness, burn with anger, and tremble with fear. Someone before us has faced these emotions and, in the midst of that conflict, learned to love God.'

'[...] A Voice that Invites Us to Hurt

The psalmist is not afraid to speak his heart to God. Unwilling to hide behind trite spiritual platitudes, he declares (Psalm 6:6–7).

In this declaration, the pain of life is not spiritualized away or tempered by trite steps to get a handle on personal agony—it is entered into and vocalized with passion. We are invited to enter the pain of our hurt without apology or compromise.'

'[...] A Voice that Invites Us to Rage

The psalmist brings his struggle to God and, at times, accuses Him of being faithless—even a lousy businessman. “You gave us up to be devoured like sheep and have scattered us among the nations”, he scolds God. “You sold your people for a pittance, gaining nothing from their sale” (Psalm 44:11–12). He wags his finger at God’s face, accusing Him not only of negligence, but idiocy.

Elsewhere the psalmist furiously mocks God for bringing pain into his life (Psalm 88:8–11).

Some believers cringe from this language of desperation and rage, even though they have the model of the psalmist. “The psalmist didn‘t have Christ, but we do—so we can’t be lonely, angry, or afraid!”

But this is presumption, not faith. The laments of the Psalms encourage us to risk the danger of speaking boldly and personally to the Lord of the universe.

Walter Brueggemann reminds us that “the laments are refusals to settle for the way things are. They are acts of relentless hope that believes no situation falls outside Yahweh’s capacity for transformation. No situation falls outside of Yahweh’s responsibility.” [reference: Old Testament Theology: Essays on Structure, Theme, and Text]

The Psalms do not offer an analytical treatment of emotions. They are not a how-to text from which we can extrapolate four easy steps to resolving difficult emotions. Such simplistic reductions of our inner world, and of life itself, strip the heart of calling out to God in the darkness of His mysterious involvement with us.

Instead, the Psalms invite us to question God. But they do this in the context of worship—they were the hymnal used in public worship. God invites us to bring before Him our rage, doubt, and terror—but He intends for us to do so as part of worship. This is the kind of emotional struggle we must engage in if we are to fathom the nature of God’s heart for us.'

'[...] The Need for a Revealing Voice

What can we expect from God? What is He really like? What will He do with us once our denial and sin is disrupted and our hurt and fury drawn forth?

It is in the dark struggles with God that we are surprised by His response to our anger and fear. What we receive from Him during our difficult battle is not what we expect. We assume He wants order, conformity—obedient children. Instead, we find that He wants our passionate involvement and utter awe in the mystery of His glorious character.'

'[...] A Voice that Reveals God’s Heart for Us

The Psalms disclose God’s fiery love for His people. He draws us to the extreme edge of life, where we cannot live by careful, well-planned control. This is where the desert begins. It is where darkness draws us to a realm of desperation and dependence. It is the place where trust can grow. God’s passion is to rig the world so that we are compelled to deal with whatever blocks us from being like His glorious Son.

The psalmist marvels that he can’t fake God out. Wherever he runs, God is already there:

You know when I sit and when I rise;

you perceive my thoughts from afar.…

Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?…

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

even there your hand will guide me,

your right hand will hold me fast.

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

and the light become night around me”,

even the darkness will not be dark to you;

the night will shine like the day,

for darkness is as light to you. 

(Psalm 139:2,7,9–12)

Wherever we flee, there God is—to express His love for us and reveal our unique role for His purpose. The Psalms reveal that God is slow to anger, rich in mercy, and long-suffering in grace. His purposes for us are good.

In the darkness our emotional wrestling with God, we grow in our understanding of Him. When He does not respond to us as we expect, we learn about His surprising character. We attack Him with anger, but we do not receive His judgment in return. We plead desperately for Him to save us from terror, but He does not necessarily rescue us with immediate resolution of our circumstances. However, what He does reveal is His heart for us.

Further, our darkest emotions reveal something—though in a skewed, bent, and tarnished way—about God’s emotional life. How can we begin to understand the nature of God’s anger unless we enter into our own? How are we to gain any picture of what it means for a holy, righteous God to be jealous for His people if we ignore our human envy and jealousy? In the most peculiar fashion, He chooses to reveal His perfect heart by analogy with human emotion that is stained by depravity. If we are to comprehend more richly the heart of God, it is imperative that we seek to understand our internal world.

The Psalms propel us into the deepest questions about ourselves, about others, and about God. As we let them expose the depths of our emotion, they will lead us to the God who reveals Himself in the midst of our struggle.'

Livro: "The Cry of the Soul" (cap.1)

"The Cry of the Soul: How Our Emotions Reveal Our Deepest Questions About God"

Dan B. Allender & Tremper Longman III

<<< tradução automática para português >>>

Some excerpts from Introduction & Cap.1:

'[...] It’s foolish to assume that we can directly alter our emotions simply by willing them to change. If you’re angry, it’s absurd for me to say to you, “Don’t be angry”, and then expect that you can simply switch to feeling kind or happy.

It is also a mistake simply to work at overcoming a troublesome emotion through behavioral techniques. This is not to say that it’s wrong to pray for release from rage or envy. It’s inadequate, however, to assume that we can change our emotions by applying a few methods to gain handles on our troublesome inner world.

Struggling with emotions is not a matter of solving problems with a little more information and practical knowhow. We are not machines that can be repaired through a series of steps—we are relational beings who are transformed by the mystery of relationship. We are radically disposed to idolatry, illusion-making, and attempts to secure our lives without bowing before God. Our core problem is not a lack of information—it is flight and rebellion.

Therefore, if we view difficult emotions as problems to be solved, we will end up looking for answers that will work rather than pursuing relationship with God, regardless of immediate outcome. A determination to resolve our emotional struggles inevitably subordinates God as a servant of our healing rather than a Person to be praised.

Rather than focusing on trying to change our emotions, we are wiser first to listen to them. They are a voice that can tell us how we are dealing with a fallen world, hurtful people, and a quizzical God who seldom seems to be or do what we expect of Him. Although emotions are generally aroused in a human context, they always reveal something about how we are dealing with God.

The revelation of reality—outside of us and within us—opens the door to wrestling with God. Encounter with God not only changes our emotions; more importantly, it has the potential to change our hearts.'

'[...] It’s important to realize that every emotion involves a complex interplay between body and heart. We do not merely experience anger in our minds—we feel it in our bodies. The same is true for fear, jealousy, despair, contempt, and shame. Therefore, it is dangerous to presume that all emotional struggles can be changed by a strictly “spiritual” encounter. For some, a deep spiritual encounter will include embracing biological weakness.

Certain emotions, especially anxiety and depression, involve physiological components that can often be treated with medication and other biological intervention. Ignoring the importance of the body involves a tragic misunderstanding about what it means to pursue God. It is a terrible wrong to place extra burdens on those who suffer profound emotional battles by suggesting that all they need to do is to work out their issues with God to make their struggles go away. It is equally wrong to suggest that it is unspiritual or a second-best compromise to seek physiological help. This issue is not a black-and-white, either-or option. The biological dimension of emotion is a complex factor, which we are not ignoring.'

'[...] Perhaps no section of Scripture more poignantly exposes the inner world of our heart and more vividly reveals the emotional life of God than the Psalms. The Psalms were composed in poetic form. Poetry reaches to the realm beyond the world of sight and sound to reveal what our senses long to see and hear. It is the language not so much of the sublime, but of the truly real—a reality that cannot be grasped through scientific or theoretical precision. Theological propositions are necessary for understanding truth, but truth is ultimately relational, and relationship is the domain of poetry. Poetry is God’s invitation to glimpse the unseen—His very character.'

'[...] The pains of life in a fallen world turn us into something not fully human. When we experience pain, our deepest passion is to escape the bludgeons of assault, betrayal, and loss. Most of us don‘t resort to the deadness that buffered my client’s pain. But in our desperation, each of us in our own way tries to dull the intensity of our groaning.

We might cling to emotional responses that enable us to cope with the harm that comes in small and large doses. For example, many men find it easier to feel anger than hurt. And many women find it safer to feel hurt or confusion rather than anger. So we buttress our sagging confidence and relieve our ambivalence by resorting to anger. We justify our flight through confusion and fear. We escape sadness by opting for shame; we bypass loss by giving into jealousy. In other words, we use one emotion to hide from other, more painful feelings.

Another way to dull the intensity of our inward groaning is by attempting to avoid our emotions. For many, strong feelings are an infrequent, foreign experience. Their inner life is characterized by an inner coolness, bordering on indifference. Unfortunately, this is often mistaken for trust. In many circles, passionate emotions are discouraged as unspiritual. You are considered godly if you can handle difficult trials with a detached and apparently unruffled confidence.

But this conclusion is wrong. There are times when lack of emotion is simply the byproduct of hardness and arrogance. The Scriptures reveal that this absence of feelings is often a refusal to face the sorrow of life and the hunger for heaven; it is not the mark of maturity, but rather the boast of evil (see Isaiah 47:8, Revelation 18:7).

Our refusal to embrace our emotions is often an attempt to escape the agony of childbirth and buttress the illusion of a safe world. It is an attempt to deal with a God who does not relieve our pain.

The presence of disruptive emotions that feel irrational or out of control is not necessarily a sign of disease, sin, or trauma. Instead, it may be the signal that the heart is struggling with God. Therefore, we must view the ups and downs of our emotional life not as a problem to be resolved, but as a cry to be heard.'

'[...] Listening to our Emotions

Emotions open the door to asking hard questions: Does life make sense? Is there any real purpose to my pain? Why must every relationship end? Is God good? If we are to understand ourselves honestly—and, more importantly, know God—we must listen to our emotions.

But the voices are legion that counsel, “Ignore what you feel. It will only get you into deeper trouble. Just get control, repent of negative feelings, believe by faith, choose the right course of action, and trust that emotions will follow like an obedient caboose”. Are those voices right? Is it a question of taming our emotional struggles and trying to do what’s right, day by day?

The Bible reveals that our inner world is complex. By God’s design we are complicated creatures. And further, we are deceitfully convoluted because of depravity. Through divine inspiration Jeremiah warns: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Clearly, handling our inner world is more complex than simply making a choice to manage our emotions.

The psalmist calls us to ponder our inner world, not neglect it: “Why, oh my soul, are you in despair?” he repeatedly asks. (See Psalm 42:11) Ignoring our emotions is turning our back on reality; listening to our emotions ushers us into reality. And reality is where we meet God.

If we want to know God, we must ponder and struggle with our feelings to gain an understanding of the passions that rule us. Nothing illuminates the ruling passions of our heart as dramatically or clearly as our emotions. And no book of Scripture illuminates our emotions as dramatically or clearly as the Psalms. In the next chapter, we will see how the Psalms provide a voice for us to bring the cry of our soul before God.'

'[...] Emotions Reveal How We’re Doing with God

What are we to listen for in our emotions? The answer is, in part: We are to listen for the direction of our heart. The question, What do I feel? is in fact another way of asking, Who am I? What direction am I moving in?

We most often think of emotions in horizontal terms—how we’re doing in relation to people in our lives. But in a deeper sense, emotions reveal what’s happening on a vertical level. They provide a window on the question, What am I doing with God?

The heart’s movement can be calibrated and assessed in light of many different criteria, but all evaluations eventually boil down to this: Am I moving toward God or away from Him? Am I turning toward God with awe and gratitude, or away from Him toward false gods of my own making?

Emotions are the language of the soul. They are the cry that gives the heart a voice. To understand our deepest passions and convictions, we must learn to listen to the cry of the soul.

However, we often turn a deaf ear—through emotional denial, distortion, or disengagement. We strain out anything disturbing in order to gain tenuous control of our inner world. We are frightened and ashamed of what leaks into our consciousness. In neglecting our intense emotions, we are false to ourselves and lose a wonderful opportunity to know God. We forget that change comes through brutal honesty and vulnerability before God. Only face to face with our deepest ruling passions is there hope of redeeming the fabric of our inner world.

Listening is the first step toward altering destructive emotions. Are you pursuing God?—your emotions will tell you. Are you pursuing false gods?—your emotional life will provide strong clues to the nature of your soul’s direction.

But how? Are we to presume that good feelings are the sign of faithful pursuit of God, and bad feelings the sign of idolatry? How easy if it were that simple. We can’t slap labels on our emotions as positive or negative, good or bad. Neither can we “fix” our emotional struggles as if they were so many broken toys.

We can, however, view our emotions from the perspective of whether they lead us to engagement with God or move us away from greater dependence on Him. We can listen to what they tell us about our struggles. Emotions are like messengers from the front lines of the battle zone. Our tendency is to kill the messenger. But if we listen carefully, we will learn how to fight the war successfully.

Listening to our emotions requires that we know how to speak the language of the heart. That is what we will be doing in the rest of this book: learning to speak the language of the heart by discovering how our emotions, particularly the difficult ones, reveal our deepest questions about God. And, ultimately, we will discover how these flawed emotions can give us unique and priceless glimpses of the character of God.

Emotion is a difficult topic. If you picked up this book because you wanted to discover how to find tranquility and ease amid the uncertainties of life, you will be disappointed. Peace that passes all understanding is possible, but more often than not it is an occasional refuge that comes only after wrestling with the inner realities of our struggles with life and with God.

Therefore, don’t assume that resolving your turbulent emotions is the key to meeting God. It is actually within the inner mayhem of life that a stage is built for the intrusive story of His light and hope. The absence of tumult, more than its presence, is an enemy of the soul. God meets you in your weakness, not in your strength. He comforts those who mourn, not those who live above desperation. He reveals Himself more often in darkness than in the happy moments of life.

This book outlines a journey that exposes the deepest questions of the heart. You won’t discover the kinds of answers that alleviate struggle. But you can encounter a person, God Himself, who exults in using darkness to reveal the brilliance of His infinite goodness. In hope that you will meet God, we ask you to choose to plunge into the emotions of anger, fear, jealousy, despair, contempt, and shame that yearn to be transformed.'

EB19: "O Noivo entronizado"

Mensagem:

"O Noivo entronizado" 
(Salmo 45)

(Texto em PDF)

PIBREP - 25/01/2026

*** OUTRO LINK PARA OUVIR O ÁUDIO ***

"Fogo amigo"

Em uma batalha, as balas que um soldado recebe, provenientes dos rifles de companheiros do mesmo exército, são chamadas de "fogo amigo". O salmista (Davi) conhecia bem esta amarga realidade, e externa sua perplexidade, diante da traição, no Salmo 55:

"Com efeito, não é inimigo que me afronta; se o fosse, eu o suportaria; nem é o que me odeia quem se exalta contra mim, pois dele eu me esconderia; mas és tu, homem meu igual, meu companheiro <***> e meu íntimo amigo. Juntos andávamos, juntos nos entretínhamos e íamos com a multidão à Casa de Deus. A morte os assalte, e vivos desçam à cova! Porque há maldade nas suas moradas e no seu íntimo. Eu, porém, invocarei a Deus, e o SENHOR me salvará." (vv. 12-16)

Contudo, na parte final deste salmo, Davi - homem segundo o coração de Deus (At 13:22) - nos ensina a confiarmos em Quem ele confia, apesar do "fogo amigo" que enfrentou:

"Confia os teus cuidados ao SENHOR, e ele te susterá; jamais permitirá que o justo seja abalado" (v. 22)

--------------------

<***> allûph, no original (hebraico), segundo os dicionários bíblicos (#Strong h0441) pode significar "companheiro", mas também pode significar "amigo (de um círculo íntimo)", "alguém familiar" ou "alguém gentil".

EB14: "Sua misericórdia dura para sempre"

Mensagem:

"Sua misericórdia dura para sempre" 
(Salmo 136)

(Texto em PDF)

PIBREP - 19/01/2025

*** OUTRO LINK PARA OUVIR O ÁUDIO ***

doAÇÃO & gratiDÃO

 [Gráfico de ocorrência do termo "thankfulness" (ou "gratidão") na Bíblia (inglês)]

“¹²Revesti-vos, pois, como eleitos de Deus, santos e amados, de ternos afetos de misericórdia, de bondade, de humildade, de mansidão, de longanimidade.¹³Suportai-vos uns aos outros, perdoai-vos mutuamente, caso alguém tenha motivo de queixa contra outrem. Assim como o Senhor vos perdoou, assim também perdoai vós;¹⁴acima de tudo isto, porém, esteja o amor, que é o vínculo da perfeição.¹⁵Seja a paz de Cristo o árbitro em vosso coração, à qual, também, fostes chamados em um só corpo; e sede agradecidos.¹⁶Habite, ricamente, em vós a palavra de Cristo; instruí-vos e aconselhai-vos mutuamente em toda a sabedoria, louvando a Deus, com salmos, e hinos, e cânticos espirituais, com gratidão, em vosso coração.¹⁷E tudo o que fizerdes, seja em palavra, seja em ação, fazei-o em nome do Senhor Jesus, dando por ele graças a Deus Pai.” (Cl 3:12-17)

É interessante notar que no substantivo gratiDÃO é possível reconhecer a palavra “DÃO”, nos fazendo lembrar que a gratidão é sempre uma decisão voluntária de doação daqueles que “DÃO” graças a Deus pela vida de alguém que geralmente manifestou amor através de um gesto prático, seja por meio da “AÇÃO” de doAÇÃO de bens materiais para atender necessidades reais e urgentes do “próximo”, ou seja por meio de palavras de graça e misericórdia dirigidas ao “próximo”, ou seja até mesmo por meio de um abraço prolongado e sincero no “próximo”.

“Qual é o principal de todos os mandamentos?²⁹Respondeu Jesus: O principal é: Ouve, ó Israel, o Senhor, nosso Deus, é o único Senhor! ³⁰Amarás, pois, o Senhor, teu Deus, de todo o teu coração, de toda a tua alma, de todo o teu entendimento e de toda a tua força. ³¹O segundo é: Amarás o teu próximo como a ti mesmo. Não há outro mandamento maior do que estes.” (Mc 12:28b-31)

Também é importante notar que no verbo agraDECER é quase possível notar a palavra “DESCER”, lembrando-nos de outro importante aspecto da gratidão, que está relacionado à humildade. Tanto para quem oferece, quanto para quem recebe, é preciso “descer” a escada da humildade, para “subir” a escada da gratidão!

“Em tudo, dai graças, porque esta é a vontade de Deus em Cristo Jesus para convosco.” (1Ts 5:18)

Como conclusão, no final deste ciclo de doAÇÃO & gratiDÃO, os [salmos] nos ensinam quem é finalmente enGRANDEcido:

“Grande é o SENHOR e mui digno de ser louvado, na cidade do nosso Deus.” [48:1]

 “O teu caminho, ó Deus, é de santidade. Que deus é tão grande como o nosso Deus?” [77:13]

“Pois tu és grande e operas maravilhas; só tu és Deus!” [86:10]

“Porque o SENHOR é o Deus supremo e o grande Rei acima de todos os deuses.” [95:3]

“Porque grande é o SENHOR e mui digno de ser louvado, temível mais que todos os deuses.” [96:4]

“... eu sei que o SENHOR é grande e que o nosso Deus está acima de todos os deuses.” [135:5]

“Grande é o SENHOR e mui digno de ser louvado; a sua grandeza é insondável.” [145:3]

“Grande é o Senhor nosso e mui poderoso; o seu entendimento não se pode medir.” [147:5]

Caro irmão ou irmã por quem Cristo morreu, qual será o seu “próximo” gesto de amor, em gratiDÃO a Deus, através de doAÇÃO ao “próximo”?

Glória somente a Deus por tudo!