“The Little Way finds joy in the present moment, in being pleased to be the person you are, whoever you are. It is a school of self-acceptance, which goes beyond accepting who you are to wanting to be who you are. It is a way of coming to terms with life not as it might be but as it is.” (Bishop Patrick Ahern)
Month: May 2019
There’s light even in the darkest places.
My creaturehood
For the days and times when we so experience our woundedness and faults and wonder how God can still love us:
God likes me covered with my creaturehood
and with my limits spread across His face.
He likes to see me lifting to His eyes
even the wretchedness that dropped His grace.
~Jessica Powers (from “Creature of God”)
Go ahead and cry
“People have said, ‘Don’t cry’ to other people for years and years, and all it has ever meant is, ‘I’m too uncomfortable when you show your feelings. Don’t cry.’ I’d rather have them say, ‘Go ahead and cry. I’m here to be with you.'” (Mister Rogers)
The right purpose for pressure
“It doesn’t matter really how great the pressure is; it only matters where the pressure lies. See that it never comes between you and the Lord–then, the greater the pressure, the more it presses you to His breast.” (Hudson Taylor)
A joy safe
I keep a number of encouraging and important personal papers in the zipper pouch of my bible cover. They are easily accessible for me to pull out and look at whenever I wish. But here’s a great idea, too.
“I find that joy can be overwhelmed. Just as a migraine can ruin a picnic, painful happenings can eclipse joy. In a hard time recently, I remembered a friend’s grandmother showing me her ‘joy safe,’ a wooden box in which she kept things that connected her with joy and reminded her of God’s presence. I started my own box last week with two things: a button from the uniform my father wore when he came safely home from war and a note from a grandchild who had been kept back in third grade: ‘Grandma! I got all A’s. I’m gonna make it.'” (Patricia Livingston)
What would you put in your joy safe to help you remember God’s presence in your life?
Witnesses to Hope 