Sunday Ps. 4-I was looking for some help with this psalm and Playstation 4 kept coming up on the internet. Well, Ps. 4 deserves a close look. I would encourage you to read the psalm, and then to rewrite it with your words and current experience and make it as personal as possible.
Monday-Americans want freedom from oppression--but what is it freedom for? Frederick Buechner's words: "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meets." Like Alice in Wonderland, if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there! It's beyond work or job. What do you get up each day for?I am here on this earth to...." Pause.... Let your mission statement reflect a two-fold focus: What puts a sparkle in your eyes (deep gladness)? What pulls at your heartstrings? (some deep hunger of the world)? After silence, begin to write your free-flow response.... After about a page, stop; read what you've written... Then highlight luminous phrases that leap out at you. Condense the highlights to one vital sentence. (Keep others as objectives.) Ira kent Groff
tuesday-Have you ever felt God calling or leading you to something that you weren't sure how you were going to do? It can be terrifying when God calls us to come and follow. That's what God did to Ezekiel. "Stand up on your feet. I am sending you." But here's the interesting part. Ezekiel didn't stand on his feet by his own volition. The Spirit entered him and set him on his feet. I find courage and strength in knowing that even as God calls me, I do not go alone. God will always send the Spirit to lead me. Jennifer Beil
Wednesday-We find ourselves/when we lose ourselves./The wilderness and the wild./The Christ who gathers./The Christ who descends./The giving up of control./The smallness of humility./The largeness of the mystery./The immensity of seeking the sacred in everything./Never running from life/but plunging ourselves more wholly into her.We dance and we feel our lumbered bodies begin to move./We dance and we feel the heavy begin to take flight./We dance to find liberation.-Joel McKerrow
Thursday-“I wish you happiness now and whatever will bring happiness to you in the future.” If we said it to the sky, we would have to stop polluting, if we said it to the ponds and lakes and streams, we would have to stop using them as garbage dumps and sewers; if we said it to small children we would have to stop abusing them, even in the name of training; if we said it to people, we would have to stop stoking the fires of enmity around us. Beauty and human warmth would take root in us like a clear, hot June day. We would change.—from A Monastery Almanac by Joan Chittister (Benetvision)
Friday-“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.” ― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
July 4-“Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author” Thomas Jefferson
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