Smile

Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.
~Mother Teresa


And what a relief to see your friendly smile. It is like seeing the face of God! ~ Genesis 33:10

Love Perserveres

“People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people may accuse you of selfish motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you may win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People who really want help may attack you if you help them. Help them anyway. Give the world the best you have and you may get hurt. Give the world your best anyway.”
“We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”
“We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.”
~ Mother Teresa

Your Instrument, Lord

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled, as to console;
Not so much to be understood as to understand;
Not so much to be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying that we awaken to eternal life.
~ St. Francis of Assisi

Love’s Responsibility

'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.' *
Christian love is the “possible impossibility” to see Christ in another person, whoever he or she is, and whom God, in His eternal and mysterious plan, has decided to introduce into my life, be it only for a few moments, not as an occasion for a “good deed” or an exercise in philanthropy, but as the beginning of an eternal companionship in God Himself.
. . . each [Christian] has received the gift and the grace of Christ’s love. We know that all persons ultimately need this personal love—the recognition in them of their unique soul in which the beauty of the whole creation is reflected in a unique way.
. . . however narrow and limited the framework of our personal existence, each one of us has been made responsible for a tiny part of the Kingdom of God, made responsible by that very gift of Christ’s love.

Sunday Of The Last Judgement lesson
*Matthew 25:40

Love is Patient

Have patience with all things, But, first of all with yourself.
~Saint Francis de Sales

Habit

I’ve been thinking about habit. If, as they say, it takes 21 days to form a habit this would be a very good one to cultivate: 21 days of seeking change through seeking Him.

Remembering

Gratitude is the memory of the heart.
~Jean Baptiste Massieu
Ideas to help:
Begin a gratitude journal
1000 gifts list

Turning, Looking, Seeing

“I am God, the one and only. I don’t just talk to myself or mumble under my breath. I never told Jacob, ‘Seek me in emptiness, in dark nothingness.’ I am God. I work out in the open, saying what’s right, setting things right. So gather around, come on in, all you refugees and castoffs. . . . Turn to me [look to me] and be helped — saved! — everyone, whoever and wherever you are.

Whenever they turn to face God as Moses did, God removes the veil and there they are—face-to-face! They suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiseled stone. And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We’re free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.
~Isaiah 45: 18-22 ~2 Corinthians 3:18

A Reminder

“The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. He will remind you of all the things I have told you.

I’m leaving you well and whole. That’s my gift to you. Peace. I don’t leave you the way you’re used to being left—feeling abandoned, bereft. So don’t be upset. Don’t be distraught.” ~John 14:26-27 (MSG)

Thank You, Lord.

I Am Not a Template

I thought that it would be so easy. That was the advertising, Sign up, pick a template, start blogging. No problem, right? Wrong. I quickly discovered that none of the templates fit me. Some were closer than others, but none just right.

Meanwhile, while I was learning html code so that I could modify a template and make it into something I thought I could work with, my “closer than a sister in every way” friend signed up, picked a template, and started blogging.

I thought about the many “lessons” in this.

Lesson number one: We are not templates.
We are each uniquely created for a unique purpose. We have unique gifts. The Lord may give us the gift of a friend who is so like us it is uncanny, but we need to always remember, we are unique.

So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ's body, let's just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren't. ~Romans 12:4-6

Behold, Children are a Gift of the LORD

He’s eleven today. Eleven years. It seems like it was just yesterday that I held him in the crook of my arm, breathing in that sweet baby fragrance, losing myself in those beautiful eyes, and returning that infectious smile with laughter. As he’s opening and thanking us for his gifts, I sit and watch my “little guy.” Putting together his new remote controlled sailboat, checking the line on the new rod and reel. The time has flown, going way too fast. He catches me watching him and comes over to me, to be cradled in the crook of my arm, and as I breath in his fragrance and lose myself in those beautiful eyes, with tear-filled ones of my own, I return his infectious smile with a prayer of thanks to God for this beautiful and most precious gift.

And a Little Child Will Lead Them

We’ve been letting a young Galilean boy, “Joel,” lead us along the Galilean shores, into the Judean countryside, and through the streets of Jerusalem at the time of Christ, in the book Joel: A Boy of Galilee.

The Time

“I will appoint a time,” says God.

You know the time has come; the moment is here for you to stop sleeping and wake up, because by now our salvation is nearer than when we first began to believe. The night is nearly over, daylight is on the way; so let us throw off everything that belongs to the darkness and equip ourselves for the light. Let us live decently, as in the light of day . . . fix your attention on God.

Jesus said, “No procrastination. No backward looks. You can’t put God’s kingdom off till tomorrow. Seize the day.”

Psalm 75:2a ~Romans 13:11-13 ~Romans 12:1 ~Luke 9:62