February 2012
5 posts
Mother Teresa's Nobel Prize Lecture. Amazing.
As we have gathered here together to thank God for the Nobel Peace Prize I think it will be beautiful that we pray the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi which always surprises me very much - we pray this prayer every day after Holy Communion, because it is very fitting for each one of us, and I always wonder that 4-500 years ago as St. Francis of Assisi composed this prayer that they had the same...
Thy Will be done
“The worst day of all was when it hit me that Jesus’ own most fervent prayer was refused: ‘Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.’ I must have read that verse or heard it a hundred times before without seeing or hearing. Maybe I didn’t want to see it. But then one day I saw it. It just knocked me in the head. This, I thought, is what is...
January 2012
19 posts
Bella
“ill faut soffrir pour être belle”
Beauty does not come without suffering. More on that later, but in order to get to the point, a little background story is necessary.
Next Wednesday, one of my fiancé and I’s good friends is traveling to SE Asia for six weeks with a couple of other gentleman to look sex slavery right in the face. When he first told us that he was going, I freaked out a little....
Godthings: “It is probably impossible to love any... →
godthings:
“It is probably impossible to love any human being simply ‘too much.’ We may love him too much in proportion to our love for God; but it is the smallness of our love for God, not the greatness of our love for the man, that constitutes the inordinacy. But even this must be refined upon. Otherwise…
Hitting me today.
“Awareness born of love is the only force that can bring healing and renewal. Out of our love for another person, we become more willing to let our old identities wither and fall away, and enter a dark night of the soul, so that we may stand naked once more in the presence of the great mystery that lies at the core of our being. This is how love ripens us -by warming us from within,...
“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be...”
– Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
crookedtooth:
I love because He loved me when I had nothing.
Beauty Creates Beauty →
One of Zach & I’s good friends is traveling to SE Asia to do some amazing work with trafficked victims and to document their stories. If you are interested in donating to their work or saying a prayer for them you can check them out here.
Your gifting & charisma will mean NOTHING if your character is faulty.
TRUTH.
in everything there is a season
“I believe that we ought so to love and trust God in our lives, and in all the good things that he sends us, that when the time comes (but not before!) we may go to him with love, trust, and joy. We ought to find and love God in what he actually gives us; if it pleases him to allow us to enjoy some overwhelming earthly happiness, we mustn’t try to be more pious than God himself and allow our...
“When I think of the incredible, incomprehensible sweep of creation above me, I have the strange reaction of feeling fully alive. Rather than feeling lost and unimportant and meaningless, set against galaxies which go beyond the reach of the furthest telescopes, I feel that my life has meaning. Perhaps I should feel insignificant, but instead I feel a soaring in my heart that the God who could...
“You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it.”
– Albert Einstein (via taylorcthomas)
You Never Marry the Right Person →
How our culture misunderstands compatibility.
Am I becoming more and more in love with God as a holy God, or with the conception of an amiable Being who says, “Oh well, sin doesn’t matter much”?
-Disciples Indeed, 389 L
Reflections: 2011
“For He wounds, but he binds up; he shatters, but his hands heal.”
I should have written this reflection piece a long time ago just as everyone else in the blogging world did, as they prepared for that midnight strike that changed another month and year in our calendars. 2011 was the best year of my life to date. Not to say that it wasn’t without its fair share of ups and downs, and it...
December 2011
20 posts
Godthings: TIMOTHY: Sometimes, we feel God’s hand... →
godthings:
TIMOTHY: Sometimes, we feel God’s hand on the back of our neck pushing us towards something. And sometimes, we feel totally abandoned. That’s normal. But just because you don’t feel something, doesn’t mean it’s not there. How many people here have gotten sunburned on a cloudy day? You didn’t think…
Wherever the providence of God may dump us down, in a slum, in a shop, in the desert, we have to labour along the line of His direction. Never allow this thought—“I am of no use where I am,” because you certainly can be of no use where you are not! Wherever He has engineered your circumstances, pray.
-So Send I You, 1325 L
The fiery furnaces are there by God’s direct permission. It is misleading to imagine that we are developed in spite of our circumstances; we are developed because of them. It is mastery in circumstances that is needed, not mastery over them.
The Love of God—The Message of Invincible Consolation, 674 R
“No doubt by praying we learn to pray, and the more we pray the oftener we can pray, and the better we can pray. He who prays by fits and starts is never likely to attain to that effectual, fervent prayer which availeth much. Prayer is good, the habit of prayer is better, but the spirit of prayer is the best of all. It is in the spirit of prayer that we pray without ceasing, and this can never be...
“A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt (via rsf)
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See...”
– Psalms 139:23-24 (via taylorcthomas)
Chuck Klosterman re: Tim Tebow →
Absolutely, entirely, and completely agree with the below. This article is pretty awesome.
brookebutler:
Whether people rant about loving him or hating him, they are just extending the media circus that they, in fact, turn around and complain about.
For the most part, I’ve been part of the why-does-it-really-matter camp, but Klosterman’s take is the only thing I’ve read that makes a little...
South by Sea: Jenn Brown meets Meatheads →
This link is to a close friend’s personal blog. I may or may not have chuckled my entire way through this post, so I figured it would be a nice Friday treat for those of you who read my blog. Click through the title for the entire post. Happy Friday! :)
southbysea:
Have you ever wandered where these type of people work out?
Before this past week I had no clue, and most certainly...
WatchSport can make a difference.
“I’m learning that love is not an emotion. God is love, but God is not an...”
– Madeline Engle
godthings:
“Of course God does not consider you hopeless. If He did He would not be moving you to seek Him (and He obviously is). What is going on in you at present is simply the beginning of the treatment. Continue seeking Him with seriousness. Unless He wanted you, you would not be wanting Him.”
— C. S. Lewis, letter to Mrs Sonia Graham, June 13, 1951, Letters of C. S. Lewis (edited by W. H....
December 2 from Oswald
Not that I have already attained, or am already perfect … —Philippians 3:12
It is a trap to presume that God wants to make us perfect specimens of what He can do— God’s purpose is to make us one with Himself. The emphasis of holiness movements tends to be that God is producing specimens of holiness to put in His museum. If you accept this concept of personal holiness, your life’s...
November 2011
8 posts
“Do you know that nothing that you do in this life will ever matter, unless it is...”
– Francis Chan
“Hope stands up to its knees in the past and keeps its eye on the future. There...”
– Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons