Ponder this:
“Hope does not come from what I do, but from the awareness that there is Someone who loves me with this everlasting love, who calls me into being every instant, having pity on my nothingness.” (Fr. Julian Carron)
A Hymn
Timely . . .
O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.
From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation
Of honour and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord.
Tie in a living tether
The prince and priest and thrall,
Bind all our lives together,
Smite us and save us all;
In ire and exultation
Aflame with faith, and free,
Lift up a living nation,
A single sword to thee.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Mary words
“My children, she is the ladder of sinners, she is my chief confidence, she is the whole ground of my hope.”
~St. Bernard of Clairvaux
Friday: from the archives
In October I did a series of posts on “little words” in Scripture that are really “big” words. I wanted to share another with you today.
Psalm 73.26: But God
These words have been like strong hands lifting up, bearing up, countless thousands of souls. “My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.” Many who will read this note are well and strong and joyful in their work, thank God for that. Sooner or later, however, to most who follow the Crucified, there comes a time when flesh and heart fail, and if it were not for that “But God”, we should go under. . . . (Amy Carmichael, Edges of His Ways, p. 12)
It’s evident to me what it means to have your flesh fail, but I have been pondering what it may mean to have your heart…
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Nothing less
“Nothing less than God can satisfy us.” (Julian of Norwich)
I have learned
The light shines
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1.5)
Shared but entire
For the “Little People”
A beautiful Sunday-poem from Paul Thigpen:
For the “Little People,” Before the Blessed Sacrament
Tiny round God,
weak and small, You could fit in my hand, yet
all the span of the universe cannot contain You
all the powers of the cosmos cannot resist You.
You have made Yourself like those
who are close to Your Heart.
I carry them here with me today
the “little people”
invisible to the mighty but not to the Almighty.
The world reckons them a zero:
without wealth, without power,
without name, without face,
without arms, without voice.
But You too, Lord, are a Zero,
a white, wheaten Cipher,
a Figure on whom
they have failed to reckon.
When You foes seek to multiply
You will invade their equation
and bring them to naught:
You will nullify their pride,
annihilate their power,
annul their schemes
of domination.
But those of lowly degree
You will stand beside
to magnify.
Tiny round God,
blessed are You
who gather the poor
into the ring of Your riches,
the empty
into the cup of Your fullness,
the weak
into the crown of Your might,
the sorrowing
into the circle of Your dance.
Blessed are You,
encompassing Your people
without beginning, without end,
in Your love.
Far, far better things ahead
Witnesses to Hope 