If evangelicals were just a fraction as burdened to stop poverty, hunger, systemic racism, or bigotry as they are about policing LBGTQ folk’s bedrooms, bathrooms, and body parts, we’d have very little poverty or hunger or racism or bigotry–and Jesus’ prayer that the earth look more like heaven would be materializing in our midst and a tangible movement of God would be unmistakable. John Pavlovitz from If God is Love, Don’t be a Jerk
Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel and afterwards you receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And with you, I lack nothing on earth. My mind and body may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Psalm 73:23-26
Be kind to yourself, no expectations, no resistance, just keeping company with what is… This is what I remind myself… John Fridinger
Our life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment … Joy and sadness are born at the same time, both arising from such deep places in your heart that you can’t find words to capture your complex emotions. Henri J.M. Nouwen, Out of Solitude
Jesus said to his disciples, “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me” (John 16:16).
Life is “a little,” a short moment of waiting. But life is not empty waiting. It is to wait full of expectation. The knowledge that God will indeed fulfill the promise to renew everything, and will offer us a “new heaven and a new earth,” makes the waiting exciting. We can already see the beginning of the fulfillment. Nature speaks of it every spring; people [speak] of it whenever they smile; the sun, the moon, and the stars speak of it when [they] offer us light and beauty; and all of history speaks of it when amid all devastation and chaos, men and women arise who reveal the hope that lives within them. … What is my main task during my “little while”? I want to point to the signs of the Kingdom to come, to speak about the first rays of the day of God, to witness to many manifestations of the Holy Spirit among us. I do not want to complain about this passing world but to focus on the eternal that lights up in the midst of the temporal. I yearn to create space where it can be seen and celebrated. From Sabbatical Journey by Henri J.M. Nouwen
The bloodline of God is connected to everything . . . shells on the ocean shore, the mushrooms growing in the forest, the trees stretching to the clouds, the tiniest speck of snow in the winter, and our dust-to-dustness—we are all connected and tethered to this sacred gift of creation. —Kaitlin B. Curtice
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