THE BLESSED HOLY SPIRIT

The Holy Spirit longs to reveal to you the deeper things of God. He longs to love through you. He longs to work through you. Through the blessed Holy Spirit you may have: strength for every duty, wisdom for every problem, comfort in every sorrow, joy in His overflowing service.

-- T.J. Bach

 
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ONE LIFE TOGETHER

Perhaps the greatest blessing in marriage is that it lasts so long. The years, like the varying interests of each year, combine to buttress and enrich each other. Out of many shared years, one life. In a series of temporary relationships, one misses the ripening, gathering, harvesting joys, the deep, hard-won truths of marriage.

-- Richard C. Cabot

 
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SHAKING EVERY BRANCH

For some years now I have read through the Bible twice every year. If you picture the Bible to be a mighty tree and every word a little branch, I have shaken every one of these branches because I wanted to know what it was and what it meant.

-- Martin Luther (1483-1546)


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BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD

Silence is as common as the air we breathe. It is a vast pool always available to us where we can refresh and renew ourselves, or simply stop in for a while. Silence is God's gift to our minds, a gift that modern life seems to have lost or crowded out. We need more silence in our lives, more stillness in our homes. We need, in our increasingly complex and frenetic world, to silence ourselves -- and to listen… The key ingredient is not so much the total absence of noise as receptivity and access to the "still small voice within".
The cultivated ability to hear that voice is the most enduring value of silence. In silence we can discover the divine within, which is universally accessible but speaks to each of us in a unique voice. If we can locate, at the very center of silence, our individual "still small voice," we will have found our greatest ally in life. Because if we listen to that voice with an open heart, it will guide us through the most challenging crossroads of our lives: in work, in love, in distinguishing right from wrong.

We need only trust the voice that speaks to us out of the silence.

-- Robert Lawrence Smith in A Quaker Book of Wisdom


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UNEXPECTEDLY AND IRRESISTIBLY APPEALING

The ministry of Jesus is grounded in personal practices. Jesus' life is marked by prayer, solitude, worship, reflection, the study of Scripture, conversation, community, serving, engagement with suffering, and generosity. These personal practices sustained a ministry that opened people to God's grace, transformed human hearts, and changed the circumstances of people in need. Jesus modeled going away to quiet places, spending time in the Temple, and listening for God. Jesus spoke to the woman at the well; the tax collector in the tree; the rich young ruler on the road; the paralyzed man beside the pool; to the lepers and the blind and the widowed and the wealthy; to Mary and Martha and Peter and John. He held a child in His arms, noticed the woman who touched His rob, healed a soldier's servant, ate with sinners, told stories to Pharisees, and blessed the thief beside Him on the cross. He intervened to challenge unjust systems that abused vulnerable people, overturning the money changers' tables and dispersing those ready to kill a woman accused of adultery. He connected people to God, opened their hearts and minds to God's kingdom, invited them to follow in His steps, and set them on the path toward God. Jesus knitted them into community, interlaced their lives with one another by the Holy Spirit, and wove them into the body of Christ, the church. By example and story, by lessons and parables, and by inviting them into ministry and sending them out in His name, He taught them to practice and live the ways of God. Jesus made maturing in faith and growth toward God unexpectedly and irresistibly appealing.

-- Robert Schnase in Five Practices of Fruitful Living

 
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