Legalism and Witchcraft

If witchcraft is a process that says, "Do this and that and this, then you will get a prescribed outcome," can we say that legalism is witchcraft? Just thinking.

What I Am Reading

• Finished reading the Bible in May and began again in Genesis, Psalms, Matthew and Acts.
• Poking Holes in the Darkness by Jaki Parlier - She grew up in Newark, NJ and she & her husband who was from Tennessee moved to Papua New Guinea (from a skyline view of Manhattan to the jungle) to translate the Bible for the Managalasi language group.
• When I Don't Desire God: How to Fight For Joy by John Piper - I'm not too far into this book, but I find these ideas: We are commanded to joyfully desire God. We cannot produce this joy on our own. It is like gardening. We dig and weed and plant and water, but God grows the seed. Comforting. One thing I know how to do is keep putting one foot in front of the other.
• I am reading for 3 lesson preparations a week: Sunday School - the Harmony of the Gospels. We are just finishing the crucifixion. Then we go onto Proverbs which I am studying for now. Then there is my small group studying Colossians. And I am presenting a short teaching to our one youth each week. We finished the book of Esther, talked about the war between the flesh and the spirit and will attempt to answer the question, "Why d0es my haste and anger not work the righteousness of God?"

Unity

Thinking about unity--
Unity, like living organisms, doesn't grow without proper conditions. In general, I think any kind of unity has to rise out of a common hope. If in a group of people between 2 and ten zillion, everyone plants their hope in something diffeent, a tug of war results. Likewise, in the church, without the common hope of seeing Jesus and through that being transformed--and that hope being in the center--we will not find sustainable unity. So if we find disunity, we should consider the basis of our hopes.