Posts By This Author
Verse of the Day: 'everyone who searches finds'
Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
- Matthew 7:7-8
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Voice of the Day: Marva J. Dawn
Sabbath ceasing [means] to cease not only from work itself, but also from the need to accomplish and be productive, from the worry and tension that accompany our modern criterion of efficiency, from our efforts to be in control of our lives as if we were God, from our possessiveness and our enculturation, and finally, from the humdrum and meaninglessness that result when life is pursued without the Lord at the center of it all.
- Marva J. Dawn
Keeping the Sabbath Wholly [...]
Verse of the Day: Treasures on Earth
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
- Matthew 6:19-21
Voice of the Day: Spiritual Discipline
The question we need to ask with any spiritual discipline is, What does God want to accomplish through this practice? ... Perhaps we can see, then, that the discipline of fasting has to do with the critical dynamic of accepting those limits which are life-restoring. Our culture would seduce us into believing that we can have it all, do it all, and (even more preposterous!) that we deserve it all. Yet in refusing to accept limits on our consumption or activity, we perpetuate a death-dealing [...]
Verse of the Day: Peaceful Habitation
My people will abide in a peaceful habitation,
in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.
Isaiah 32:18
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Voice of the Day: Coming Together With Others
I come together with others not out of need, but out of the recognition that they belong to the same heart I belong to, and that they cannot fulfill the deepest yearning of my heart. Why? Because God has created in me a heart that can only be satisfied by the One who created it.
Henri Nouwen
Lecture at Scarritt-Bennett Center
Voice of the Day: Wendy M. Wright
We may not like the other but we are called to love. We may certainly not validate or condone his or her actions. But we are called into a radical sense of our interconnectedness as creatures and children of the same God. To perceive this deep level of interdependence, especially with those whose worlds are fashioned differently than our own or perhaps with those who would seek to harm or destroy our worlds, seems a nearly impossible task. Yet the Gospels prod us on.... At the furthest reaches [...]
Verse of the Day: 'Shall the potter be regarded as the clay?'
Ha! You who hide a plan too deep for the Lord,
whose deeds are in the dark,
and who say, "Who sees us? Who knows us?"
You turn things upside down!
Shall the potter be regarded as the clay?
Shall the thing made say of its maker,
"He did not make me";
or the thing formed say of the one who formed it,
"He has no understanding"?
- Isaiah 29:15-16
Voice of the Day: Henri Nouwen
It is hard for me to forgive someone who has really offended me, especially when it happens more than once. I begin to doubt the sincerity of the one who asks forgiveness for a second, third, or fourth time. But God does not keep count. God just waits for our return, without resentment or desire for revenge.
- Henri Nouwen
The Road to Daybreak
Verse of the Day: 'The earth dries up and withers'
The earth dries up and withers,
the world languishes and withers;
the heavens languish together with the earth.
The earth lies polluted
under its inhabitants;
for they have transgressed laws,
violated the statutes,
broken the everlasting covenant.
Therefore a curse devours the earth,
and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt;
- Isaiah 24:4-6
Verse of the Day: On Wisdom
And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow.
Ecclesiastes 1:17-18
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Voice of the Day: On Prayer
[Prayer] is an invitation to recognize holiness, and to utter simple words-"Holy, Holy, Holy"-in response.... It is ordinary experience live with gratitude and wonder.
Kathleen Morris
Amazing Grace
Voice of the Day: My Soul's House
My soul's house is cramped. Expand it, so that you may enter in. It is in ruins. Restore it. It must offend your eyes. I confess and know it, but who will cleanse it? To whom shall I cry but to you? Clear me from hidden faults, O Lord.
- St. Augustine
Hungering for God: Selected Writings of Augustine
Voice of the Day: The Vision of Jesus
The vision that Jesus gives us is this: That I am unconditionally loved, that I belong to God, and that I am a person who can really trust that. When I meet another person who also is rooted in the heart of God, then the spirit of God in me can recognize the spirit of God in the other person, and then wew can start building a new space, a new home, a house, a community. Whether we speak about friendship, community, family, marriage, in the spiritual world we are talking about spirit recognizing [...]
Verse of the Day: The Great Among You
Jesus called them to him and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."
- Matthew 20:25-28
Voice of the Day: The Seed of God
The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is; and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God seeds into God.
- Meister Eckhart
Verse of the Day: 'fools speak folly'
For fools speak folly,
and their minds plot iniquity:
to practice ungodliness,
to utter error concerning the Lord,
to leave the craving of the hungry unsatisfied,
and to deprive the thirsty of drink.
- Isaiah 32:6-6
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Voice of the Day: 'conversations with God'
We must continually work hard so that each of our actions is a way of carrying on little conversations with God, not in any carefully prepared way but as it comes from the purity and simplicity of the heart.
- Brother Lawrence
(c. 1605-1691)
The Practice of the Presence of God
Verse of the Day: 'Two are better than one'
Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up the other; but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm; but how can one keep warm alone? And though one might prevail against another, two will withstand one. A threefold cord is not quickly broken.
- Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
Verse of the Day: 'fools speak folly'
For fools speak folly,
and their minds plot iniquity:
to practice ungodliness,
to utter error concerning the Lord,
to leave the craving of the hungry unsatisfied,
and to deprive the thirsty of drink.
- Isaiah [...]