Category: Speaking to the Soul

“Try as I might to treat my fishing as prayer, to maintain centered focus, I think it was not I but God who was praying. True, enough – there has not been a day in my life spent outdoors that did not feel like a day spent in prayer. To paraphrase the apostle, I find it impossible to peek into the heavens without experiencing the Divine. God was with me, I’m sure of it, but not so much in the bobber of my concentration as above me. In the eagle. In the hawk and osprey. Along the shore, in the deer. Watching me curiously.”

“Help me, Lord, to be open to your beauty, 
and to trust that there’s always more to come.”

“He was a faithful Jew, as was Jesus. He knew the Law and the Prophets. He used that knowledge to argue for the truth of Jesus as Messiah. He lifted up Jewish social ethics, long embodied in the Law and extolled by the Prophets. Feeding and clothing the poor, widows, orphans wasn’t new but commanded, at least for the people of God. But his greater goal was to overarch the social doctrine in favor of the higher one, the one pointing to the Holy One of Israel.”

“Even if I physically back away from those who want to show their love for me as I did for Classy when I was trying to get him to let me pet him, it’s hard to back away from God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit sometimes, especially as they have ways of being persistent and loving during the process. Like a cat, I may go and try to hide under the bed or in the closet or even outside somewhere, but they always find me and lure me out and one step closer.  Slowly the trust is rebuilt, and all is well.”

“The kingdom of heaven is not the marketplace. God does not assign value to the unit of labor or the output or the work product. God values the worker.”

“Woven within these confessional phrases are also converse actions we can take in dedicating ourselves anew to walking in the Way of Jesus. In other words, the prayer of confession also implies a prayer of dedication and discipleship. What we confess leads us to know what we can do in service to Christ. Because sin is a sundering of relationship, the path to atonement calls us to try to repair and restore our relationship with God and each other.”

“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.”

“We pick up our cross each time, and become the sons and daughters of our Abba, and one with Christ Jesus. The Holy Cross is within us. And so we venerate the Cross, as each act of adoration and service in Jesus’ name is our unification with Jesus’ death. And his Resurrection. And ours.”

“I have learned that my most authentic self will never be beyond God’s protective reach.  But, then, I have a different understanding of other people than I did when I was four.  I have learned that nobody is on the wrong side; God cherishes all and longs for each.”