Category: Speaking to the Soul

Don’t we all know the weight of helplessness
when hoping in God is all there is?

In this moment, invite God to hold all you carry, and trust that you are not alone. 

“I’m reading Howard Thurman this week, that blazingly brilliant preacher and purported to be guide to MLK, jr. (Supposedly Dr. King carried, “Jesus and the Disinherited” written by Dr. Howard in 1949) In it he talks about the religion of Jesus, a phrase I have come to love.”

“And then I came to understand that I could always touch his clothes, for what he wears is love.  Caring for the people of the world that he cares for, I would be touching the hem of his robe all the time.  As loathsome as I imagined myself to be, I was still more than all right, and I was meant for love.”

“Where do you experience the gift of tears in your life? Do you share tears with loved ones at family events?  Do disasters causing significant loss of life affect you? Do beautiful things make tears well up in your eyes?  What about when you think about your sins or guilt? Does the thought of the sacrifice of Jesus for those sins and guilt bring you closer to tears? “

“(Author’s Note:  Officially, the feast day of James Weldon Johnson is still a bit in limbo, since General Convention has not yet approved the calendar of feast days in A Great Cloud of Witnesses.  That said, Johnson’s life is such an amazing display of God’s gifts and talents shining through one person, he deserves “off-label” mention, in my opinion.–M. Evans.)”

“Yet our paths to God are not required to be straight. It is often the most indirect, wandering stop-and start journeys that end up being the truest, because they don’t fool us into thinking that the life of abundance can actually be acquired. The broken road is often the road that leads us to God, because it strips away all our defenses and resistance to God.”

“The attention we give to space and place is important, and how will our children ever learn about these things if we, ourselves, aren’t actually offering attention? I don’t know anyone who would text or check an SF Giants’ score during a service, or who would check to see who called that very last time the phone vibrated, but I hear that it happens.”

“I’m impatient, yes, but it’s also hard at the onset to believe that the small seeds sowed in the ground will take root. What with all the chances for water to wash them away, birds to eat them, or the seeds being planted too deep or not deep enough. Some years, also, have more critters that sneak in the night and enjoy their own feast. “