Who is your true god?

Source: The Journeys Project

"Jesus looked at him and said, 'How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.'" - Luke 18:24-25 (NIV)

Today's verses do not imply any problems with wealth, nor does it reference the discussions about the rich people in the world as brought up by groups such as Occupy Wall Street. Rather, it is part of a passage from the Gospels (Luke 18:15:-30) in which Jesus first rebukes his disciples for rejecting children coming to him, then probes the heart of a rich ruler who questioned him.

In this passage, Jesus gets the ruler, his disciples and the reader to probe their own hearts on what is their god. Is it God himself, as revealed through Jesus Christ? Or is it something else, whether it is money, possessions, career, sex, or anything else?

Pastor Brooks Simpson of Grace Community Church in North Liberty, Iowa, discussed this recently.

Today's links

• Recently the Kony 2012 campaign spread around the virus, promoting the cause of fighting the recruitment of children as soldiers in Ugandan rebel Joseph Kony's army. The only problem, the information in the video that spread is horribly outdated. Among other actual facts, Kony has not been in Uganda for at least six years. 
• Members of Campus Crusade in Japan are giving survivors of last year's earthquake and tsunami manga or comics with a story of hope to help curb a high suicide rate in that country.
• Coptic Orthodox Pope and Patriarch Shenouda III, one of the world's most revered Christian leaders and an advocate for Christians in Muslim-dominated Egypt, has passed away at the age of 88.
• A riveting and sad story of a former slave in the African nation of Mauritania, where slavery continues despite its official abolishment in 1981.