Ranking Work and Pleasing God

There is no work better than to please God; to pour water, to wash dishes, to be a cobbler, or an apostle, all is one, to wash dishes and to preach is all one, as touching the deed, to please God.

-- William Tyndale

2010 Senior Scholarship Night!

24 - Season Finale!

Understanding

Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.

-- St. Augustine

Desire for transcendence

Despite what people think, the discussion about speed is never really about the current state of technology. It goes much deeper than that, it goes back to the human desire for transcendence.

-- Mark Kingwell

I've not thought of speed in this way, but I can see the connection to technology (especially in our age), which does seem to often be used, in whatever age, for something like transcendence.

Mercy

Lord, have mercy.

Have mercy on my darkness,
my weakness,
my confusion.
Have mercy on my infidelity,
my cowardice,
my turning about in circles,
my wandering,
my evasions.

I do not ask for anything but such mercy, always, in everything,
mercy.

My life here – a little solidity and very much ashes.
Almost everything is ashes. What I have prized most is ashes.
What I have attended to least is, perhaps…
a little solid.

Lord, have mercy.
Guide me,
make me want again to be holy,
to be a man of God, even though in desperateness and confusion.

I do not necessarily ask for clarity, a plain way, but only to go according to your love,
to follow your mercy, to trust your mercy.

I want to seek nothing at all, if this is possible.
But only to be led without looking and without seeking.

For thus to seek is to find.

-- Thomas Merton, Journals, August 2, 1960, IV.28

Makenzie & Friends - 8th Grade Dance

Even Mystery

Even mystery has a stone on which to kneel.

Seeing

I thank God today for the ability to see. 

I was out running this morning through the woods, down a path that meandered a course along a local stream.  The landscape was whipped from yesterday’s endless winds, but the morning was winning back its beauty as everything relaxed back into its slow, more regular reach for the skies.  The stream was full and coursing along in the places it falls, in others just pacing as the terrain allowed.  Suddenly a huge span of wings filled the waters’ surface as a giant heron slowed ascended just above the trickling below to escape any possible danger from me.  It flew slowly and silently, hovering over the middle of the stream, as if anticipating to someday hang in perfect balance in the capture of some professional photographers' gallery.  As it flew out of sight, I murmured ‘Thank You’ to God for the ability to see such a thing.

I came around another bend in the trail and the picture before simply repeated itself again down yet another stretch of the winding watery path.  I thought knowing such a thing happens whether I am the one to see it or not deepens a sense of something within me.  My seeing also led to my knowing something, something bigger than my routine sense of things, something I had not quite yet known before.  I felt like a student in one of God’s many schools, this time the session being held in the natural classroom that He made.

A third time I came upon the great bird, now just standing still in the middle of the creek.  He watching me this time, poised but perhaps more tolerant of my presence because I had presented him no danger up until now.  I ran by with not one movement on his part, except for the slow darting of his eye to retain his sense of knowing something.  What a dance this had become between me and the natural world.

What a gift my eye-sight was to a deeper knowledge, that I fit in a much larger order of the things of God. 

I thanked God again for allowing me to 'see'.

Tomorrow and Today

I am struck again today at 2 seemingly opposite things:

- That I regularly live trying to anticipate the future
- That the future is completely unknown

I cannot know what lies ahead – good or ill.  Yet I try to anticipate everything I can about the possibilities of both.  But the effort is largely ill-founded and largely a waste of energy.

I noticed this again today while running; realizing that I can only thank God for the beauty of the day outside and for the ability he has given me to simply notice it, to enjoy it … to see it, smell it, feel it, taste it, hear it, sense it.  I then thought about my yesterdays, in light of my experience today and realized that God is both taking care of me now (today) and that He has done so in all my yesterdays (the past).  Why then would I worry about the future?  Is the future any more in my hands than today is, than yesterday was?  What makes me think I can manage the future, especially when I realize I haven’t controlled much of anything up to this point?  In fact, the worry about getting through tomorrow seems to do little more than detract from my ‘today’, and my awareness that He is taking care of me in ways well beyond what I can imagine.

The only thing I need to do is the only thing I can do – trust Him…today.

A life un-preoccupied with the future is a life that is finally free.

Earnie Harwell - Farewell

I don't profess to be a 'huge' baseball fan, but I do remember many many nights going to sleep to Earnie's voice.  His passing brought back many childhood memories that only his voice captured.

There was something magical about life (radio) before 'everything was televised'.

Tigers legend instilled love of baseball

Not What We Expect

I was thinking today that when we have the courage to pray for God's expansion in our lives, we don't have in mind that His answer often is to provide humility...so that His kind of expansion can occur.  Even less do we expect the contexts where humility is often provided...in the destruction of parts of ourselves that we are working hard to expand.

The Christian must be consumed by the conviction of the infinite beauty of holiness and the infinite damnability of sin.

-- Thomas Carlyle

Opposites

The opposite of joy is not sorrow. It is unbelief.

-- Leslie Weatherhead

Less

The more I feel responsible for, the less free I seem to be.