Pastor's Spiritual Journal
Virtue is not, for Wesley, the cultivation of a human potentiality intrinsic to human being. Virtue assumes that the intellect and will are ordered to something external to the human person. He states, “there is no virtue but where an intelligent being knows, loves, and chooses what is good.” The “good” which is to be known, loved, and chosen is the manifestation of God's own life in Jesus Christ. His work is the “restoration of man.” This is “real religion”'; which is to be known, loved, and chosen is the manifestation of God's own life in Jesus Christ.
-- D. STEPHEN LONG
We would that all should love and esteem us, and behave towards us according to justice, mercy, and truth. And we may reasonably desire that they should do us all the good they can do without injuring themselves; yea, that in outward things (according to the known rule) their superfluities should give way to our extremities. Now then, let us walk by the same rule; let us do unto all as we would they should do to us. Let us love and honour all. Let justice, mercy, and truth govern all our minds and actions. Let our superfluities give way to our neighbour's conveniences, to our neighbour's necessities; our necessities to his extremities.
-- JOHN WESLEY
It is not what we do, it is how much love we put in doing the doing.
-- MOTHER TERESA
Confirmation does not happen in isolation...It is part of a process that begins with baptism and is lived out in the nurture of the family and the congregation. Theologically, the congregation is the family. "It takes a village to raise a child"; it takes a whole church to raise a child in the faith. It is only as we are formed and transformed by God, through our participation in the life and ministry of the church, that we become Christians. Then, and only then, can we say, "I am a Christian."
John Wesley, like many of his predecessors in the Christian community, had a vision of Christian growth that he called "going on to perfection." His vision also included the unshakable certainty that growth in love was possible only in the Christian community. He needed---and he knew that the "people called Methodists" needed---the support of others as he struggled to live out his love of God in daily life. He also needed---and he knew that the "people called Methodists" needed---the accountability for one's Christian life that could only come from being part of a community.
-- Reflections from Claiming the Name by John Gooch
God's economy depends upon the retaught and relearned generosity of God, upon gifts that give in being given and create dignity in being received….How else will God redeem the world except through God's grace, God's love freely given for God's justice in the world. Both our revival and the survival of children depend on the actual historical practice of gifting….God invites us to a meal in which the earth and all its creatures are promised home and in which we have a realistic place [governed as it is by the cross] from which to be so bold as to speak of an economy of life against death.
-- M. Douglas Meeks
God needs us. God loves us unconditionally. We are the beloved daughters and sons of God. God weeps with us in our pain. God delights in our joy. God suffers with the oppressed and the abused. God celebrates when justice is restored, when the lost are found, when peace comes to a people. God calls us into a relationship of mutuality, where we are needed as well as loved. God calls us into relationship not only with God but also with our sisters and brothers and all of creation. And to be faithful people of God, we must intercede for others, not only in prayer but in action as well.
-- Jane E. Vennard
Earth Mother teach me of my kin, of Hawk, and Dove, and flower, of blinding sunlight, shady knoll, Desert wind and morning showers. Teach me every language of the creatures that sing to me, that I may count the cadence of infinite lessons in harmony. Teach me how to honor the sacred spaces of all, gently melding with the whole, answering the whippoorwill's call. Steamy tropics to glacial ice, to thundering ocean tides, in every grain of desert sands, your beauty forever abides. Oh, Mother of every kingdom, let me claim my family's love, from the whales of the deepest oceans, to the winged-ones high above. Expand my limited vision until I can truly know the missions of my relations and the blessings they bestow.
-- Jamie Sams
As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother, and God revealed that in everything, and especially in these sweet words where God says: I am he; that is to say: I am he, the power and goodness of fatherhood; I am he, the wisdom and the lovingness of motherhood; I am he, the light and the grace with which is all blessed love; I am he, the Trinity, I am he the unity... I understand three ways of contemplating motherhood in God. The first is the foundation of our nature's creation; the second is his taking of our nature, where the motherhood of grace begins; and the third is the motherhood at work.
-- From Julian of Norwich's Showings
I believe in children – little ones, big ones, chubby and thin ones. There is faith in their eyes, love in their touch, hope in their attitude. I thrill with them at life's joys, run with them through tall grasses, bow with them in worship, and hold them close in tragedy. I believe in children; the fragile dream of yesterday, life's radiant reality today, and the vibrant stuff of tomorrow. Yes, I believe in children, for wherever I go, to mountain village, industrial center, or open country, I find yesterday's children who were nurtured in the things of Christ at work in the building of the Kingdom of God.
--Author Unknown
We are now in the season called Eastertide. Perhaps it is a fitting time to consider that our resurrection faith has tidal qualities. It breaks upon us as waters upon the shore, molding and shaping. Sometimes it smoothes our rough and jagged edges and at other times it pulls at us to expose new sharpness. It uncovers what has previously been hidden. Faith brings surprises, laying them before us as though they were dropped by an outgoing tide. Its offerings connect us with people in far-off places; its gifts include living things such as hope and charity. Faith tells us of God's power and grace, both ever in motion as the seas, both ever present whether we are at high or low points in our lives. Faith constantly beckons. It seems to stretch toward us as the waters of a new-broken wave reach out to the walker on the shore. In gathering together during this season, we open ourselves to a God who changes us, surprises us, informs us, and draws us. May our worship be Eastertidal, our community filled with Spirit.
-- From Touch Holiness
May the God who shakes heaven and earth, whom death could not contain, who lives to disturb and heal us, bless you with the power to go forth this day and proclaim the Gospel. Amen.
-- Janet Morley
…there has never been anyone to this day who has really understood it. It was light coming out of darkness like the sun rising out of the sea. It was stillness and unspeakable relief following in the wake of storm. It was hope rising up out of shuddering despair. It was life springing like a lily, like a rose, out of death. I believe that to draw near to that life in whatever way we can, to reach out for and embrace and breathe deeply of that life as it draws near us, is to know at last the one thing of all things, that makes for peace truly and always. And I believe that if never quite to know, because such knowledge is too wonderful for us, but in our heart of hearts to have faith, to trust, to hope against hope that not even death can put an end to that life is the one thing that changes Palm Sunday from a Last Hurrah on the eve of unspeakable loss and sorrow to the first great Hosanna at the gates of dawn.
-- Frederick Buechner
As a teacher, Jesus was insistent; he intended that his disciples move from a superficial idea of God's messiah to a deep, daring trust that the Son of Man would overcome suffering, evil, and death by living through all of it. As long as the teaching journey to Caesarea Philippi had been, even longer would be the teaching journey to Jerusalem. The disciples learned God's abundant love as they traveled through the northern regions of Galilee; as they headed south, they learned a trust that bears all things...Heading south---the new teaching theme is a continuing exposition on true greatness that is demonstrated by an attitude of humility, by what a person values, and by the willingness to serve others. Jesus' lessons for the disciples overflowed with content, and most of the content is difficult.
-- from Kay Huggins' Called to Be God's People
Each time we dive, we stretch our bodies, suspended for the briefest of instances between dry land and water. When we pray, we float between who we are to the world and who we are to God. It may look, in both, like we're disappearing. And in a sense, we are. When I finish praying and emerge to the surface of morning and bed and desk and work, I know I've been somewhere else. I blink to hold onto the internal spaciousness, the glimpse of transcendence, the wonder of love.
-- from Lindsey Crittenden's The Water Will Hold You: A Daughter in Prayer
Let nothing upset you. Let nothing frighten you. Everything is changing. God alone is changeless. Patience attains the goal. Who has God lacks nothing; God alone fills all needs.
-- Saint Teresa of Avila
The shocking thing about the gospel is that Jesus actually expects us to take up the cross of nonviolent, suffering love and follow him. Jesus didn't attract fans; he called disciples. He didn't give us what we want; he revealed what we most deeply need. The New Testament expects every disciple of Jesus to actually become like Christ, not in the details of crucifixion, but in the mind-set that Jesus demonstrated in the way he went to the cross. The point of the story is not just to be impressed with Jesus' suffering but to share in his suffering for others; not just to know that he died for us but to discover what it will mean for us to die to the controlling power of our own self-interest and take up the interest of the world he came to save.
-- James Harnish, senior pastor of Hyde Park UMC in Tampa, Florida
God wants all of our heart, all of our mind, and all of our soul. It is this unconditional and unreserved love for God that leads to the care for our neighbor, not as an activity which distracts us from God or competes with our attention to God, but as an expression of our love for God who reveals himself to us as the God of all people. It is in God that we find our neighbors and discover our responsibility to them. We might even say that only in God does our neighbor become a neighbor rather than an infringement upon our autonomy, and that only in and through God does service become possible.
-- Henri Nouwen
Those who say that they believe in God and yet neither love nor fear Him, do not in fact believe in Him but in those who have taught them that God exists....Those who believe that they believe in God, but without any passion in their heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God-Idea, not in God Himself.
-- Miguel De Unamune
Unless you become like a child, Jesus said, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and maybe part of what that means is that in the long run what is good about religion is playing the way a child plays at being grown up until he finds that being grown up is just another way of playing and thereby starts to grow up himself. Maybe what is good about religion is playing that the Kingdom will come, until—in the joy of your playing, the hope and rhythm and comradeship and poignance and mystery of it—you start to see that the playing is itself the first-fruits of the Kingdom’s coming and of God’s presence within us and among us.
-- Frederick Buechner
Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger people. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God.
-- Phillips Brooks
John Keble’s “New Every Morning Is the Love”
If on our daily course our mind
Be set to hallow all we find,
New treasures still, of countless price,
God will provide for sacrifice.
Old friends, old scenes, will lovelier be,
As more of heaven in each we see;
Some softening gleam of love and prayer
Shall dawn on every cross and care.
The trivial round, the common task,
Will furnish all we ought to ask;
Room to deny ourselves, a road
To bring us daily nearer God.
Let your prayer be very simple. For the tax collector and the prodigal son just one word was enough to reconcile them to God.
-- John Climacus
Grandfather Great Spirit, all over the world the faces of living ones are alike. With tenderness they have come up out of the ground. Give us the strength to understand, and the eyes to see. Teach us to walk the soft earth as relatives to all that live. With Tenderness They Have Come Up
-- (Sioux, North America)
My favorite book of the Bible is Psalms. I turn there for strength when I am bothered. The words are so poetic and full of meaning for me. . . . I remember when I got married, I stopped reading the Bible. When my mother found out that I had stopped, she told me that one should not stop reading the Bible; there was always something new to learn by reading it. On that day, I started back reading the Bible and have not stopped since.
-- From Rosa Parks’ Quiet Strength
O My Father, my God, I am in your hand; and may I rejoice above all things in being so. Dowith me what seems good in your sight; only let me love you with all my mind, soul, and strength.
-- John Wesley
For all the possibilities ahead in this new year make us thankful, O Lord. Give us wisdom, courage, and discernment in the face of so much chaos, despair, and fear. Help us to see how, in our circumstances, we can contribute toward peace, faith, and love. And give us the will to translate our desires into actions.
-- Brother John Charles
God is a god of abundance, not a god of scarcity...God doesn’t give us just enough. God gives us more than enough: more bread and fish than we can eat, more love than we dared to ask for...When we live with this mind-set, we will see the miracle that what we give away multiplies: food, knowledge, love...everything. There will even be many leftovers.
--Henri Nowen
New Testament Greek speaks of believing "into" rather than believing "in." In English we can perhaps convey the distinction best by using either "in" or no preposition at all. Believing in God is an intellectual position. It need have no more effect on your life than believing in Freud's method of interpreting dreams or the theory that Sir Francis Bacon wrote Romeo and Juliet. Believing God is something else again. It is less a position than a journey, less a realization than a relationship. It doesn't leave you cold like believing the world is round. It stirs your blood like believing the world is a miracle. It affects who you are and what you do with your life like believing your house is on fire or somebody loves you. We believe in God when for one reason or another we choose to do so. We believe God when somehow we run into God in a way that by and large leaves us no choice to do otherwise.
-- Frederick Buechner
I believe God beckons each one of us to risk journeying to new places inside of ourselves, in our relationships to others, and also out in the larger world. Filled with unexpected turns, dead-end stops, hazardous obstacles in the road, beautiful scenery, and surprising encounters, each journey presents itself as a series of crossroads—intersections where God’s grace meets us in our human experience, opening our eyes to see the incarnations of God’s love already present and challenging us to become signs of God’s love to others. That is the deep meaning of the Incarnation expressed through the birth of the Christ: Love comes to dwell with us and among us and lives through us in our acts of justice, peace, and reconciliation toward one another.
-- Maggie Covenant McNaugh