Author: Sr. Dorcee, beloved

I am the one whom Jesus loves.

All for the good

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Friday: from the archives

Sr. Dorcee, beloved's avatarWitnesses to Hope

Here’s a story I just read about one way God worked all things for the good:

In the devotional book Voices of the Faithful, a missionary couple in South America tells of a local pastor in Uberaba who bought a van to transport people to church.  To help make payments on the van, he removed the backseats and did delivery work through the week.  But the van needed four new tires, and the pastor had no way of paying for them.

One night the van was stolen from the church property.  Some of the church members tried to console their pastor by saying that perhaps it wasn’t God’s will for him to have the van.  But he knew he needed the vehicle for God’s work, so he trusted the Lord to work it all for the good.

A few days later, police officers from a nearby town called on…

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About all those shadows we live with

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I haven’t reposted from Ann Voskamp recently.  Probably because I figure that you all follow her.  But just in case, you don’t, here’s the latest:

I take the kid that fell off the rip stick and broke his foot back to the doctor.

He may or may not have laid an afternoon or two on the kitchen floor, wailing that I had ruined his life.

Because I had the audacity to not let him and his cast go drive a tractor or jump on the trampoline or swing down the zipline. Yeah, I’m sorta old fashioned and ridiculous like that.

The doctor says one more week of cast swinging. I think the kid may become a happy human pinwheel on crutches, flipping all the way out the doctor’s office.

I get pink eye.

And then youtube how to unclog a toilet so I don’t have to bother the Farmer who is putting in 24 hour days back to back in the field, because yeah, nobody wants to drag their dirt-crusted selves in after 48 hours on an open tractor only to meet a reeking toilet.

You can read the rest here.

A joy safe

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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?

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Steadfast taper

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A poem by Luci Shaw:

       Steadfast Taper
Job 28:3

His candle shines upon my head.
He trims the wick and guards the falme
and though darkness creeps in close
the steadfast taper shines the same.

The flower of flame sways in the air.
Wind fingers snatch and try to snuff
the stalk his careful hands protect.
The light shines through.  It is enough.

His candle shines on me in love,
(protective circle in the gloom)
and through the dreadful night I know
that he is with me in the room.

Throughout the weary waiting time
the liquid flame shines thin and pure.
When tiredness dims my faith, I look
and see his light, and I am sure.

        ~Luci Shaw (Moving into Light, p. 106)