Shout With Joy

God, Guidance, Joy 0

“Clap your hands, all you peoples; shout to God with loud songs of joy. For the Lord, the Most High, is awesome,” declares Psalm 47:1-2. Instead of hearing it as exaggerated, we need to take this advice to heart. We do need to be able to rejoice with God. We do need to be able to shout with joy. Many of us are far too emotionally guarded to actually be able to do so. We carry ourselves as though braced for the worst. We are ready to be good sports about God’s will for us, but we are not ready to really revel in the joy of what God is unfolding for us. We are prepared to accept the negative but not the positive. The positive sends us reeling. We feel out of our depth, but are we?

Perhaps, with a little help from God, we can become accustomed to God’s generosity. Perhaps we can become accustomed to God’s will and our will coinciding. It’s worth trying. We need to remain calm and centered as great good comes to us. We need to respond to life with a spirit of exuberance. We need to anticipate and accept the new opportunities that await us. We need to stay as close to God in times of joy as we do in times of sorrow. We need to pray with the words of Psalm 3:3, “You, O Lord, are a shield around me.”

Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 154-155

Forgiveness is Not Excusing.

Forgiveness, Healing 0

The people who have hurt you have possibly done something that is very wrong, and wrong is wrong — that’s all there is to it. When you forgive someone, you don’t excuse the person’s wrong actions; you merely detach yourself from your involvement in that person’s actions and drop your burden of pain about the situation.

— Mary Hayes Grieco, Unconditional Forgiveness, p. 22

Me, Too

Acceptance, Growth, Humor, Life, Trials 0

The last few years have afforded me much experience in Coping with the Crappy Parts of Life referenced in the title of this book. However, it must be said that the Crap, plentiful as it has admittedly been, is overshadowed still by the Amazing, the Humbling, the Gratifying, and the Nifty. My prayer for us all is that we’re always able to pay more attention to those things in our lives and laugh our way around the Crap.

— Jill Conner Browne, Fat Is the New 30: The Sweet Potato Queens’ Guide to Coping with (the crappy parts of) Life, p. vii

More Than Some Antics

Humor 0

Inevitably, some people will never like punning because it fogs up the lens of clarity through which they view the world and impose order, or at least the illusion of order. But if puns seem, at times, to confuse, they actually enlighten us through both laughter and insight. They keep us from taking ourselves too seriously, and sharpen our capacity for creative thinking. Ultimately, puns keep our minds alert, engaged and nimble in this quickening world, revealing new connections and fresh interpretations. And that’s why, even as we hurtle into a future of uncertain opportunities, puns will always be more than some antics.

— John Pollack, The Pun Also Rises, p. 152

Not a Traffic Cop

Acceptance, God, Joy, Letting Go, Relationships 0

Walking beside others is what we are here to do. That’s why others have gathered. But walking side by side is far different than pushing our specific direction on someone else. If our motive is to express joy about another’s journey, allowing her or him to have what fits for them, we are fulfilling God’s will for us. If, instead, we are directing traffic, we have usurped God’s role in their lives, and it’s time to back off.

— Karen Casey, Let Go Now, p. 77

A Kindred Soul

Books 0

Over the years I have collected so many books that, in aggregate, they can fairly be called a library. I don’t know what percentage of them I have read. Increasingly I wonder how many of them I ever will read. This has done nothing to dampen my pleasure in acquiring more books. But it has caused me to ponder the meaning they have for me, and the fact that to me they epitomize one great aspect of the goodness of life.

— Marianne Robinson, When I Was a Child, I Read Books, p. 19

A Moment of Incarnation

God, Prayer 0

Prayer is a moment of incarnation — God with us. God involved in the details of my life. Another author of an otherwise excellent book on prayer said that prayer was mainly about us being with God and not about God answering our prayers. As an example he mentioned that “mothers in the days of high infant mortality used to pray desperately that their children would not die in infancy. Modern medical techniques have put an end to those prayers in the West.” Maybe. Or maybe modern medical techniques were developed in the West because young mothers in the West were praying for the lives of their children.

— Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p. 125

Interpreting Jesus

Faith, God, Growth, Healing 0

Listen to how someone prays — it will reveal what they really think about Jesus. Does he sound near, or does the prayer make him seem far away, up above the sky somewhere? Does it sound as though Jesus might be someone we are bothering with our requests, someone with far more important things to do? Does he have a sense of humor, or is he always serious? Is it formal, and religious, or “Good morning, Papa”? Do they even sound like they know him? Really, listen to their prayers. Listen to your own.

We interpret Jesus through our brokenness. A painful truth, but also a hopeful truth. Maybe we can open up the doors and windows we didn’t know we closed….

This is actually good news, friends — a fair share of your difficulty with Jesus is simply your own brokenness getting in the way. It’s good news because it enables us to realize that our perceptions may be wrong, that this isn’t what Jesus is like — this is our brokenness talking. And second, healing our brokenness is exactly what Jesus came to do. How did he handle every broken person that ever came to him?

— John Eldredge, Beautiful Outlaw, p. 159-160