A Guide and Goad
Other people’s words guided me this week — and goaded me to keep looking for my own. Maybe what I read will refresh you, as March departs like a soggy lion.
Well-trained Christians make it a habit each night to look over the past day and see where they have failed our Lord, or as the sweet old expression has it, “we examine the appearance of our soul in the mirror of our sins.”
I wonder if some of our most grievous offenses are not overt sins, but just plain, unvarnished, base ingratitudes.
Lots of us wouldn’t know a blessing when we see one. We are awfully slow in recognizing the hand of God. This is especially true when the answer to our prayers is “Wait.”
As I look back on a life of both evil report and good report, I can begin to see that all the numberings of circumstances, the brutal frustrations, the sad and irreparable losses were measures under God for my good. They were shaping and molding, chipping of the unnecessary, and futile, smoothing down rough places and making the crooked straight.
I have learned to thank God for every one of them.
Had not the Potter’s thumb pressed heavily on me at times, had not the answers been “No” and “Wait,” I would not dream of writing of these matters.
Let my mouth be filled with Thy Praise, that I may sing of They Glory and honor all the day long. —Psalm 71:8 (A Book of Days for Christians, Richardson Wright, page79-80)
Illustrative Jewelry and Wise Words
No Words? READ other people’s words
When I still need other people’s words, when the season of hard-to-find words lasts longer than I would wish, reading is a gift that keeps on giving. And the sight to read, a ginormous gift.
Should I pretend I’m In it or paint it . . . can’t decide. Garden of Bright Images
Reading enhances your filter, giving you knowledge and insight that will reverberate in your mind in ways you can’t perceive, offering a measure of wisdom and breadth you wouldn’t otherwise have. (Why Read When I Forget Eveything, Trevin Wax)
Since words won’t come, I’ll welcome yellow flowers. Works in progress.
These words say how I feel:
Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 133.)
So sorry we could not see you this last weekend
In a world, shadowed by cruelty, violence and lost, is there a good reason for the planting of flowers? Oh, yes! For these bursts of color and beautiful blooms are bright Dabbs of grace, witnesses to a promise reminders of a spreading beauty, more eternal, and therefore, stronger, than any evil, then any grief, then any injustice or violence. taken from every moment holy volume one.
Amen . . . am listening to Mere Christianity and painting my daffodils . .. and just grieving. for all who have lost a child, (near Baltimore so many families are mourning) and for those dears souls whose children easily could pick up weapons of mass destruction. Day before yesterday — Jeremiah 8 was my tutor . ..