love(4/8)
Memories of God's goodness give us a sense of being loved
We tend to spend a lot of energy focusing on resolving traumas in the hope that we will be free from the pain trauma brings. What we often miss or overlook is the power of building memories of God’s goodness that give us a sense of being loved. Noticing God’s goodness and appreciating His gifts can be viewed as depositing money in our “Immanuel” savings accounts, whereas focusing on painful evens in life can be like withdrawing money!…
Heaven is where you love everyone there
A monastery is cohesive; it is not a schismatic society that survives by expelling those who don’t fit into a mold. This difference might be summed up in two versions of heaven I once heard from a Benedictine nun: in one, heaven is full of people you love, and in the other, heaven is where you love everyone who is there.
The Risk of Birth
This is no time for a child to be born, With the earth betrayed by war & hate And a comet slashing the sky to warn That time runs out & the sun burns late. That was no time for a child to be born, In a land in the crushing grip of Rome; Honour & truth were trampled by scorn- Yet here did the Saviour make his home. When is the time for love to be born?…
Parent with a plan
Amie, my grandmother and I watched the story of Richard Williams a couple evenings ago and I haven’t been able to get my mind off of it. Richard pulled two approaches together I didn’t think could be merged. First, he had a thorough, specific and overarching plan for his daughter’s lives. Second, he sought to build into them the independence and skill to choose their own path. His 85-page plan for his daughters might have provoked resentment had he pressured his daughters to achieve without the family’s investment.…
What Christ Said
I said, "Let me walk in the fields." He said, "No; walk in the town." I said, "There are no flowers there." He said, "No flowers, but a crown." ---- I said, "But the skies are black, There is nothing but noise and din." And he wept as he sent me back; "There is more," he said, "there is sin." ---- I said, "But the air is thick, and fogs are veiling the sun.…
Birmingham epistle
Letter From Jail is a beautifully typeset rendition of Martin Luther King Jr’s epistle from Birmingham jail, with a crucial and timeless analysis of justice, oppression, love and race. It is also a stunning example of a modern day epistle in the same vein as Galatians.
The monastery is a school in which we learn from God how to be happy
The monastery is a school—a school in which we learn from God how to be happy. Our happiness consists in sharing the happiness of God, the perfection of His unlimited freedom, the perfection of His love. What has to be healed in us is our true nature, made in the likeness of God. What we have to learn is love. The healing and the learning are the same thing, for at the very core of our essence we are constituted in God’s likeness by our freedom, and the exercise of that freedom is nothing else but the exercise of disinterested love—the love of God for His own sake, because He is God.…
God makes the works of his wisdom more beautiful through contrast
if Adam had never fallen, the whole human race would have been a series of magnificently different and splendid images of God, each one of all the millions of men showing forth His glories and perfections in an astonishing new way, and each one shining with his own particular sanctity, a sanctity destined for him from all eternity as the most complete and unimaginable supernatural perfection of his human personality. If, since the fall, this plan will never be realized in millions of souls, and millions will frustrate that glorious destiny of theirs, and hide their personality in an eternal corruption of disfigurement, nevertheless, in re-forming His image in souls distorted and half destroyed by evil and disorder, God makes the works of His wisdom and love all the more strikingly beautiful by reason of the contrast with the surroundings in which He does not disdain to operate.…
The rebellion of the saints is the love of God
[The rebellion of the saints is] the rebellion of the lover of the living God, the rebellion of one whose desire of God was so intense and irresistible that it condemned, with all its might, all the hypocrisy and petty sensuality and skepticism and materialism which cold and trivial minds set up as unpassable barriers between God and the souls of men.
We have to be braver than we think we can be
We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are, to see through plastic sham to living, breathing reality, and to break down our defenses of self-protection in order to be free to receive and give love.
What I love about Jesus
There’s so much to love about Jesus. Here’s my endlessly growing list of loves, along with curiosities, questions, and otherwise. Loves He meets us anywhere, anytime because he’s in the past, present, and future. Actually there, not just by memory. See prayer transcends spacetime obedience is not jesus first priority Jesus has such an unexpected way of fulfilling the roles and gifts. See jesus fulfills the roles and gifts. Jesus' leadership upends the authority structures the world prefers.…
Love protects a business from employment violations
Love protects from a host of employment law violations. One of the fastest routes to a headache is to read the reams of employment laws. Discrimination based on gender? Check. Age? Check. Race, religion, disability? Triple-check. Even genetic information such as an employee’s mother’s heart condition could be grounds for a discrimination suit. Mazin, Rebecca, and Smith explain that “one of the most challenging tasks you will face in human resources management is complying with employment-related laws ({smith-hr}, pg.…