Good morning... As an online community, we traveled different paths leading up to Christmas morn. Some signed up for the daily Advent devotional I wrote for our church, "With God Weather Life." Some chose not to subscribe to receive our morning messages. Along with these online posts, some enjoyed a hard copy of the material, a soft small [...]
Dear LORD... Hold us. Love us. Guide us. You who keeps no record of wrongs, Your voice is always gentle and always kind. We each have a tiny chapel in our hearts where we can meet intimately with You. Anytime. Anywhere. As we move into this season of great joy and expectation, we also may happen upon moments [...]
Good morning... Praying aloud in front of a crowd, Jesus said to our Father: "Now I'm returning to you. I'm saying these things in the world's hearing so my people can experience my joy completed in them" (John 17:13, MSG). It is an incredible thing to think the joy we experience in our everyday lives is actually the [...]
Good morning... In the quiet of right now, I envision my mind slowly lifting her inner sails, trying to catch the power of God's steadily stirring winds. I do not pray so I can change the brilliant mind of God. I pray so God transforms the changing mind in me. And do not be conformed to this world [...]
Good morning... On our behalf, Jesus continues praying to his Father. "I gave them your word. The godless world hated them because of it, because they didn’t join the world’s ways, just as I didn’t join the world’s ways. I’m not asking that you take them out of the world but that you guard them from the Evil One. They are no [...]
Good morning... Last Friday night, November 1st, I attended my friend's Day of the Dead party, a sacred evening when we celebrate loved ones who have gone on to heaven. The photo above is the altar I built to honor two young men, two of my 24-year-old son's close high school buddies, who have died suddenly in the [...]
Good morning... Often I allow some silence before I pray aloud with a group or when I am meeting with an individual, one-on-one or over the phone. Silence slows the pace; it opens breathing space and curtsies to the God of grace. As I offered closed-eyed silence before I said our prayer, a stream of words naturally bubbled [...]
Good morning... Morning by morning, I begin empty, open, thirsty. In each day's first hours, I silently pray, "LORD, please fill me up with Your endless love." I envision my mind, my heart, and my soul as three empty jugs. One vessel (my mind) collects timeless truths from the Creator, the Father, the Almighty, the Maker of all. [...]
Good morning... I pulled the bookmark from my signed copy of one of my favorite books, The Hidden Life Awakened, and I put the small slip of card stock beside the lamp on my bedside table. Centering myself on God's endless Source of life-giving energy, now I whisper aloud each night and each morning the prayer first formed in [...]
Good morning... After re-working yesterday's post, I touch on the Henri Nouwen online devotional, and God's Spirit flows me further down the exact same wavelength. It is as if Nouwen is continuing the final sentence of our morning message, a sentence which reads: "If we prayerfully listen well to the inklings of God’s Spirit stirring in our soul, [...]
