Category: Speaking to the Soul

This woman is an outsider on three important levels. First, she is a woman, approaching a strange man whom she does not know. Second, she is a Gentile, of Phoenician and Syrian heritage. Third, the inhabitants of the region of Tyre were typically prosperous, as it was a busy trading hub with a highly lucrative economy as compared to the poorer agricultural area from which Jesus came around Galilee, and so its inhabitants were often looked upon with resentment by their neighbors.

My soul needs to bask in canopies of green; My soul needs to hear the running water wash clean. My soul needs a reminder of

I hear the lapping of waves against the rocks and the stillness invites me closer with her words: All will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well. 

“You love me into opening my eyes, opening my overwhelmed heart.  You urge me into prayer.  You push me into the tearing compassion that is its own anchor in a charred and broken world.  You dare me to give — just one more time — and then another — never more than what I have — but sometimes all I have.”

“This better reflects the teaching Matthew gives us just a few verses later.  Here we’re told, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or sick or in prison – or without oil – and took care of you?’  And Jesus answers, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these – or a foolish bridesmaid – you did it to me.'” 

“The story of Thomas Gallaudet and Henry Winter Syle stands as a living testimonial of how a single relationship, like a pebble tossed into a lake–creates ripples that spread further outward.”

“We have been given a similar opportunity to demonstrate that lovingkindness and sense of appreciation of the value of our neighbors’ lives. We have the opportunity to live by grace—in humble acknowledgement of the grace we ourselves have received, honestly acknowledging the profligate love that is at the root of such radical acceptance and forbearance.”

“Think about it. Some ancestor somewhere and sometime must have appreciated a single note or sound emitted from rough wood or metal and passed that appreciation and invention to another person, and to another generation, until at last an actual instrument took shape and form and capacity for scales.”

“The Lord walks with us:
in our streets, along country roads, 
in our classrooms, down hallways,
on playgrounds, and on the fields.”