Pts to Ponder-week of August 23

Sunday- Ps. 84 did not ring a bell with me when i saw it on the calendar.  Few of us have such devotion for being in church. It allows the psalmist to move “from strength to strength.” the sanctuary has a sense of home to the writer. Where does your soul find rest?

Monday-Augustine (late 300s): "All agree that God is whatever they put above all other things, … one supreme thing, and one which is shared in common by all who enjoy it; if, that is to say, it is a thing, and not the cause of all things; if indeed it is a cause. It is not easy, after all, to find any name that will really fit such transcendent majesty. In fact it is better just to say that this… is the one God 'from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things' (Romans 11:36)" (De Doctrina Christiana 1.7.7, 1.5.5).

Tuesday-I think imperfection is the organizing principle of the entire human, historical, and spiritual enterprise. Imperfection, in the great spiritual traditions, is not just to be tolerated, excused, or even forgiven. It is the very framework inside of which God makes the God-self known and calls us into gracious union. It's what allows us--and sometimes forces us--to "fall into the arms of the living God" (Hebrews 10:31).Richard Rohr

Wednesday-"God loved us before he made us; and his love has never diminished and never shall."

—  Julian of Norwich

Thursday-“Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.” ~Albert Schweitzer

Friday-When despair for the world grows in me/and I wake in the night at the least sound.../I come into the peace of wild things/ who do not tax their lives with forethought/of grief. I come into the presence of still water./And I feel above me the day-blind stars/waiting with their light. For a time/I rest in the grace of the world, and am free./—“The Peace of Wild Things”Wendell Berry

Saturday-The face of a man walking his child in the park, of a woman picking peas in the garden, of sometimes even the unlikeliest person listening to a concert, say, or standing barefoot in the sand watching the waves roll in, or just having a beer at a Saturday baseball game in July. Every once and so often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it's almost beyond bearing. -Originally published in Whistling in the Dark