Author: Sr. Dorcee, beloved

I am the one whom Jesus loves.

Over the asses

Sr. Dorcee, beloved4 Comments

Continuing from yesterday:

1 Chron 27.30  And over the asses was Jehdeiah the Meronothite.

Jehdeiah’s name meant “Union of Jah”. [Note: “Jah” is shortened version of Yahweh.]  I once had a letter from a man who was trying to run a big political organization in India.  He said he had sympathy with Paul, who wrote in 1 Cor 15.32 that he had fought with wild beasts at Ephesus, but he was quite sure it was still harder to fight with asses.

I am glad that we do not have to fight with asses, but we certainly have to look after them sometimes.  I wonder if Jehdeiah found comfort in his name?  Work like his needs patience, firmness, kindness, and these good things are not naturally in us.  John 15.5, WITHOUT Me you can do nothing, is a word all who have to do with asses understand.  But WITH Me–that is the secret.  God in us can be patient and kind, even with poor asses.

God make all of us who have to do with asses His Jehdeiahs.

Over the camels

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

I just discovered a new collection of Amy Carmichael writings that I had not known about.  (I hope none of you are groaning. 😉  My disclaimer is that I write most of these posts for myself . . .  I always experience such wonder at what she discovers in Scripture and such hope from her words.  Here’s the first of a series of three.  This one makes me smile.

1 Chronicles 27.30 Over the camels was Obil the Ishmaelite

Have you to try to help people who are rather like camels?  You want them to go one way, and they go another.  You try persuasion and they turn sulky.  It is difficult to be patient with an animal that never looks pleased.  It is very difficult to be patient with human camels.

But God knows all about you and your difficulties, and your name is not forgotten to Him.  He htought the name of a camel driver who lived three thousand years ago worth writing in His Book.  The names of thousands of great kings are buried and forgotten, but the name of David’s camel driver is remembered to this day: Over the camels was Obil.

Obil means “driver” or “leader.”  I expect he sometimes found leading better than driving, and so sometimes shall we.  God give His Obils patience to deal with their camels.

🙂

“Still as poor”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved3 Comments

I always find this quote from St. Thérèse so encouraging:  “If I were to live to eighty, I would still be as poor as I am now.”  Encouraging because she is referring to her spiritual poverty and so we need not worry if we are feeling spiritually poor. . . and refocusing as well if I am experiencing a “striving” moment which is leading nowhere.  “Every day I begin again.”

The unoffended

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

I have been fascinated with the life of John the Baptist these past few years.  Today being the Feast of his death, I cannot but help think back to an insight I gained through reading Amy Carmichael that has never left me: the notion of living a life of taking no offense at the Lord and whatever He may be about in our lives, whether we understand what He is doing or not.  I’ll let Amy speak for herself:

I have been reading Luke 1.  “With God nothing shall be impossible” [Luke 1.37].   Then I read Acts 12.  James was killed in prison; Peter was set free.  God, with whom nothing is impossible, did not answer the prayers of those who loved James in the same way as He answered prayers of those who loved Peter.  He could have done so, but He did not.  “And blessed is he who takes no offense at Me” [Luke 7.43].  The words seem to me to be written across Acts 12.  John must have wondered why the angel was not sent to James, or at least have been tempted to wonder.  Again and again in Acts the Lord Jesus seems to say those words under His breath, as it were.  Let us turn all our puzzles, all our temptations to wonder why, into opportunities to receive the blessing of the unoffended.

And now all the grief of those days has been utterly forgotten by those who loved James; they have all been together with him in the Presence of the Lord for 1900 years, and the one thing that matters now is how they lived through those days when their faith was tried to the uttermost.

So it will be with any who are longing to see the answer to their prayers for those who are in affliction, or any other adversity.  In a few years–how few we do not know, but few at most–we shall all be together in joy.  So with us, too, all that matters is how we live through these days while we are trusted to trust.   (Thou Givest . . . They Gather, p. 76)

Sometimes we see this lived out so well among the very poor or the very sick–an abandonment, a complete surrender, a unsullied trust in God and His ways.  May we too be among those who live their lives as “unoffended.”

The Oriole

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A Sunday-poem from a blogger friend of mine:

The Oriole

I saw an Oriole come by.
Light, I thought, had learned to fly.
It seemed the sun had come to my garden
This morning, light winged, breast golden.
His song rang as bell rings clear
Whose charm pierces fleeing night, lingers
In heart’s ear but is too soon gone
While pale memory sips of sight and sound.

And I?  I must wait till sun’s return
Who, had I had my way, would have preferred
He stay and sing and shine like my own sun
In my own sky for me, for me alone;
His other works wait in other places
And he must shine on other faces.

The sun will peaceful on my garden shine
But bright light’s song has with his going flown
So I must rise and I must tell that I saw :
The brightness of day where was none before.
I saw an Oriole leap to the sky
And so I know that light can fly.

~Peadar Ban

Remembering all that God has done for us

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Pope Benedict XVI has been giving a series of talks on prayer recently in his Wednesday audiences.  I am including an excerpt below from August 17 in which he spoke about Mary as a model for us of a woman who truly pondered God in all things.  (If you are interested in hearing a talk that I gave recently on remembering God throughout the day, go to the Talks tab above.  Click on “Other Talks” and then on “A Thousand Times a Day.”)  Continue reading “Remembering all that God has done for us” →

“A tiny new Eden”

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“To a young child home stands for God.  In it he learns to see and touch the gifts of God.  If his mother is wise she will make his home beautiful.  She will copy the world’s creator and make a tiny new Eden.  She will bring in flowers and give the child animals and feed the birds.  The food on the table will be clean and simple and good.  It will not only taste nice, it will look nice.  From all this the child will learn naturally that God did not make the hideous travesty that we have made of created things.” (Caryll Houselander, The Mother of Christ)

Pressure

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Are you, by chance, experiencing pressure in your life?  The start of school or, even more serious, the lack of finances for school?  Or deadlines or a growing list of phone calls to return?  Or (fill in the blank)?  Let that pressure be something that forces you to God.  As J. Hudson Taylor so wonderfully put it:

“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.”

“It is ours to be gazed upon . . .”

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“This is a story told of a mother and her little daughter in Trinidad.  They are the poor of the earth, and the mother takes great care each evening to launder the one well-worn dress that her daughter wears to school day after day.  Each morning, as the little girl leaves the front door to set off for class, her mother asks her to stop and turn toward her for a moment.  ‘Just stand there.  I love to look at you.’

“Contemplation is a way of looking, a way of seeing.  The more I see, the more I love.  And the more I love, the more I see.  Seeing by loving; loving by seeing.  But the one caught up in contemplation knows that it is not only I who look and gaze and behold; it is the Other, whose name above all naming is Love, who gazes upon me.  A beloved child hears the word of a mother: ‘Just stand there.  I love to look at you.’  It is ours to be gazed upon . . . even while gazing.”  (Michael Downey, The Heart of Hope)