Good morning... Just after sending you yesterday's photo of the frigid, frozen Norwegian landscape outside one subscriber's front door, I opened Henri Nouwen's morning message to be greeted by the luxurious photo above. What a gorgeous contrast. Land, white snow versus green grass. Sky, winter grey versus springtime blue. Feeling, chilly cold versus welcoming warmth. God's breathtaking beauty [...]
Good morning... A friend ended her email with a quote from Pascal: "In difficult times, always keep something beautiful in your heart." What "something beautiful" - a hope, a thought, a feeling, a memory - rests in the home of your heart right now? Sense it. Savor it. Slip it into your soul. As you focus fully on this "beautiful [...]
Good morning... I watch the news so I know how to best pray, day after day. I watch different television stations to consider various points of view. I lift in prayer those I see struggling and those I see serving, those I see hurting and those I see helping, those I see reporting and those I see recovering. [...]
Good morning... "On this morning, if I can leave anything with you, let me urge you to be sure that you have a strong boat of faith," said Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. on March 3rd, 1968 at Ebenezer Baptist Church here in Atlanta, Georgia. "The winds are going to blow. The storms of disappointment are coming. The [...]
Good morning... I ran across this quote jotted in the margin of my book. "If you argue with what "is" you lose. But only 100% of the time." It strikes me that at the heart of each fear, each worry, each anxiety we are arguing with the Almighty God who is in charge of what "is," "what has been," [...]
Good morning... We are invited into deeper trust. God feels every fear, God knows every need, and God offers permeating peace to calm our anxiety. In the privacy of our personal prayers, will we take time to let go and lay down our worries? Fear will not leave us alone, worries naturally well up in each human heart. [...]
Good morning... "We all have something important in common," she said softly, as we neared the end of our first fall gathering of our Sr. Moms Study. "We were all pregnant on September 11th, 2001." "Pregnant or caring for a newborn," I quietly added. Our youngest son was born on June 5th, 2001, so he was three months [...]
Good morning... "Sue, I just read both Monday and Tuesday's posts," she wrote yesterday. "Well as your 'crazy' moment was about turkey, my UGLY moment was about what our young adult kids chose to wear to church on Easter Sunday. I went off before we left the house and ended up being the naggy mom. So, instead of just [...]
Good morning... "I don't know if you get the messages from the chaplains at Lovett," she wrote yesterday, "but this week's aligns so beautifully with your waiting season." My husband is one of the chaplains at The Lovett School, and I have heard him talk about the devotional emails this talented team sends out each week, but I have [...]
Good morning... Yesterday morning our fascinating post about the murmuration of starlings was the most widely viewed post in a very long time. The videos, spectacular. Unifying synchronicity, mesmerizing. God's invisible power made visible, thought-provoking. Then last night I turned on the news to witness wild division, and I remembered the visual of different sections of the murmuration parting widely [...]
