Category: Speaking to the Soul

“None of us is the Messiah, of course.  But we each are children of God, and, as such, we are more than we usually imagine ourselves to be.  We were conceived before the world began to be a unique part of God’s holy plan.  Do we know who we really are and what our mission is?”

“What Jesus intended to teach was what God had planned all along: that people get along together, work to help each other, take care of their neighbors, work to make the stranger feel welcome, feed the hungry, clothe those who are lacking, visit those who are in prison, and any one of many ministries that make the world better.”

“Hope is hard to come by these days. Never ending pandemic and mutations, inflation, escalating global tensions, crime and political divisions on the home front. A mental health practitioner told me that, regardless of her patients’ diagnoses, every single one is suffering anxiety and increased stress.”

“Faith is not a box on a checklist. The point of faith is not primarily knowledge or mastery. The point of faith is relationship—to be specific, to accept the unimaginable truth that God loves us fiercely, tenderly, protectively, intimately as our Creator.”

“As I gazed through the ice I wondered, how often do we become frozen and harden, causing our view of what lies ahead to become obscured?  My reflection was not abstract or rhetorical, but practical, as I could feel my own heart hardening.”

“When it came time for Isaac to get his shark kite soaring, he had a few more missteps along the way. There were nose dives and immediate flops back to the ground. This is what my heart feels, I think. With every news headline and report from doctors, my heart crashes. Yet, Isaac continued to smile and lift his kite to the wind.”

“My husband moves up beside me, from his assigned place at the back of our trekking line. He puts his gloved hand on my shoulder. We climb higher, together, and I can feel more of the heaviness subside and my stomach settling as we navigate the silhouettes of people, snow and rock.”

“So, thinking of today’s readings, I wonder at a young man and woman willing to uproot themselves, to take only what they could carry on their backs and to go somewhere totally foreign and new, just on the basis of warnings in a dream.  Sure, dreams probably had a lot more weight back then than they do now, but even so.  I’m sure it wasn’t the usual way to respond.”

“One thing about Jesus was that he didn’t make resolutions. He set himself to live a course of life and kept to it. He had a job to do, and he was determined to do it the way God wanted him to.”