On the top of my pile
Author: Sr. Dorcee, beloved
I am the one whom Jesus loves.
As good as it gets
A blanket of hope
Therefore, do not lose heart
Tenderly
“Tenderly.
“‘I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her there’ (Hos 2.14 NLT). These are God’s words about His wayward people, spoken to the prophet Hosea, who had a wayward wife named Gomer. God’s plan required a desert–an arid, dusty, inhospitable climate. Today, our desert equivalent could be our corners of hiddenness. Our anonymous cubicles. Our support roles. Our 3:00 a.m. baby feedings. Our fifteenth sojourn in the doctor’s waiting room with an ill child, condition still undiagnosed. Our 136th day in the carpool line. Our crowded church sanctuaries. Our Friday nights alone. Our monotonous shifts in the grocery store that barely pay the bills.
“It is there, in whatever this desert is, that He promises to speak tenderly.”
(Sara Hagerty, Unseen, the Gift of Being Hidden in a World that Loves to be Noticed)
On the top of my pile
Small begets big.
Love this:
“We’ve fallen into the conventional thinking that a big mission demands big tactics, but we forget that in the economy of God’s kingdom, big does not beget big. It’s precisely the opposite. The overwhelming message of Jesus’ life and teaching is that small begets big. Consider, God’s plan to redeem creation (big) is achieved through his incarnation as an impoverished baby (small). Jesus feeds thousands on a hillside (big) with just a few fish and loaves (small). Christ seeks to make disciples of all nations (big) and he starts with a handful of fishermen (small). Even Goliath (big) is defeated by David with a few stones (small).
“This pattern is also repeated in Jesus’ parables about the nature of his kingdom. He said, ‘The kingdom of heaven is like grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown, it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.
“All of this confirms the counter-intuitive nature of God’s kingdom.” (Skye Jethani)
Lead, kindly light
A Sunday poem worth repeating.
Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home,–
Lead thou me on!
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene,–one step enough for me.
I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou
Shouldst lead me on:
I loved to choose and see my path, but now
Lead thou me on!
I loved the garish days, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.
So long thy power hath blessed me, sure it still
Will lead me on;
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone;
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.
John Henry Newman
Here is a lovely adaptation by Audrey Assad:
A restless heart
“Your heart, O God, is restless until we rest in you.” (Von Balthasar)
Beauty and hope
How Beauty instills the virtue of Hope
This is a guest post by Timothy Chapman. Timothy grew up in southern Illinois. He has degrees in English, history, and divinity and is currently a youth minister in St. Louis, MO. A version of this essay was first published at the website Here Is a Place.
My days, like many of yours, I bet, are usually spent in the busyness at hand, of to-do lists and iCal checks, of tickets to pay and shirts to drop off at the cleaners, of downloading apps to help with efficiency and drowning out spare silences by checking emails and playing three minutes and twenty-seven seconds of a podcast. Stoplights are often the biggest pause in the oppressive constancy of hours packed to the brim.
But I am a napper. I would take a 22 minute nap everyday if I could–and I…
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Witnesses to Hope 