love

the goodness of God

August 4, 2006

I’ve been worshipping and praying for a while this morning, delighting in the goodness and loving-kindness of God. If you’ve been checking the blog this week, you’ll see I haven’t posted since I went to the hotel last Thursday (a week ago!). Each day I planned to write; each day something happened and I ended up not writing. As I sat down this morning at the keyboard, I thought, “what did I choose to do each morning instead of writing?” Nothing of great importance, as far as I can tell.

I was feeling rather condemned–aside from any tacit commitment I have to my readers to post regularly, I have a commitment to myself and to God to write…

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If we don’t win today, we’ll win tomorrow

June 29, 2006

My favorite part of Cooke’s The Secret of a Powerful Inner Life comes early on, as he discusses life in the Spirit and Paul’s declaration that there is no condemnation for those in Christ. Most Christians know this, but my own experience and observation suggest that many Christians don’t really believe it; they have head knowledge–a fact and a memorized verse–but they don’t have the reality of it–belief–in their hearts. Cooke personalizes this vital truth, making it clear and believable:

God does not beat us up over missing it one day. In fact, His love bubbles over for us: “I know the struggle you’re having, but it’s a good fight. I promise, it’s a good fight you can win. Just stop condemning yourself for it. If we don’t win today, we’ll win tomorrow. Every day is a new day, by My mercy.”

The next morning we wake up, and God says, “Okay, it’s a new day. I’ve gotten rid of yesterday; let’s not carry anything forward into today. Let’s have a fresh crack at it, together. I refuse to allow you to beat yourself up over what happened yesterday.”

Meditate on this for a while: can you hear your God and Father saying this to you?

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when I think of God…

June 19, 2006

Poetry is challenging for the majority of my students, both because of unfamiliarity and because of poor teaching in the past. Most of my students have apprehensions and misconceptions about poetry, and so I will often introduce it by writing on the board “When I think of poetry…” and asking them to complete the statement by writing for a few minutes. When students read their responses, I hear things like “it’s hard to understand” and “it doesn’t make sense.” There is the student who loves poetry and has been looking forward to discussing it all semester, but there’s generally only one in a class of thirty-five.

I suspect that if I ask my students to complete the statement “When I think of God…” I would get pretty similar responses. Ditto, my neighbors and coworkers and even fellow Christians. There are a lot of apprehensions and misconceptions about God…

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“A Sky Full of Children”

March 27, 2006

For my birthday, I bought Madeleine L’Engle’s Bright Evening Star, a series of essays on the “Mystery of the Incarnation.” The first of these is “A Sky Full of Children”; the title refers to the stars, each one created and named by God. L’Engle offers some things to think about:…

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powerless without love

March 8, 2006

This from an article titled “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” by Creflo Dollar: Have you ever met a Believer who knew how to pray down a mountain, but was mean as a rattlesnake? there are a lot of Christians like that. They know the seven principles to this, and the four steps to […]

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“freedom is for love”

March 3, 2006

from Lent and Easter Wisdom:

The greatest light comes from the commandment to love God and neighbor. In this commandment, human freedom finds its most complete realization. Freedom is for love: its realization through love can reach heroic proportions.–Pope John Paul II

In thinking about yesterday's post, I see that part of Jesus’ agenda was love. To write that seems incredibly foolish in a sense…

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prepared for relationship

February 27, 2006

I read the second piece in Ratzinger’s God Is Near Us; this one is called “God’s Yes and His Love.” I’ve not had time to process a coherent, complete response to it, so in the meantime, I’m simply going to present some passages that stood out to me:

On Jesus washing the disciples’ feet (John 13):

In this scene, the evangelist sums up, as it were, the whole of Jesus’ message, his life, and his Passion…

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