Witnesses to Hope

What is a more powerful expression of the power of the Holy Spirit than His work in our personal lives, especially in our areas of weakness?  This Sunday’s poem is by Mother Mary Francis about that very thing.

A Scriptural Commentary

“For power is made perfect in infirmity” (2 Corinthians 12.9)

Predictable Your power, God,
Who shake the heavens into thunderous roar
And split the skies with lightning at Your glance.

You gaze at oceans and they leap
To speak response in crash of waves
And then subside in wonder at Your feet.

Only to think on seed need You
To see a thousand forests rise to praise You,
Hear treble of small blossoms find their voice.

Wave of Your raised almighty hand’s
Enough to call the sun to rise or set,
To light the sky-dome with ten million stars.

Never will skies impediment Your power
Nor oceans strain Your…

Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?
~J.R.R. Tolkien from The Return of the King

The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places. But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater.
~J.R.R Tolkien from The Fellowship of the Ring

Yet again unspeakable terror strikes down ordinary people living their lives–once again our soil is soaked with the blood of our sons and daughters, our sisters and brothers.

In our minds, we want to rewind and replay the events of a tragedy in a way that would prevent it from happening in the first place.   We want to bring the dead and injured back to health again.  The major devastating earthquake becomes a mere tremor, the flooding tsunami is only one foot…

Yesterday, I had one of those days that did not go according to “my” plans.  It did make for a good story later, but at the moment I found myself quite frustrated and irritated that I had to drop everything for someone else and that I didn’t get to eat lunch until mid-afternoon.  I had to do something on the computer that I really didn’t know how to do.  I had someone on the phone walking me through it, but the phone cord was too short to reach to the computer so I had to keep dropping the receiver, go work on the computer, and then back to pick up the phone. (I hope you’re laughing at this point–but let me assure you, I wasn’t.) I did have the brilliant idea at one point to switch a cord and handset from another phone–but when I went to hang it up…