Category Archives: faith
Being willing to undertake the journey
I am reading a remarkable book by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant and Conversation, a Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible. This volume concerns the book of Genesis and contains many insights and reflections by this wonderful man, such as this one: Faith is the ability to live with delay without losing trust in the …
Why? Why? Why?
[I was out of town and then came down with a nasty head cold . . . thus, my absence this past week.] Today’s reading from Amy Carmichael’s Whispers of Power: Mt 11.6 And blessed is he, who shall not be offended in Me. All of us are sometimes troubled by questions. Why is the …
The storehouse of our mind
When you find yourself in the middle of a trial, is there a verse from Scripture that wells up from your heart to sustain you? I hope that is the case for you. Amy Carmichael writes about the importance of filling the “storehouse of our mind” with the riches of the Scriptures so that we …
“Strengthened by Faith”
It may happen that for a certain time a man is illumined and refreshed by God’s grace, and then this grace is withdrawn. This makes him inwardly confused and he starts to grumble; instead of seeking through steadfast prayer to recover his assurance of salvation, he loses patience and gives up. He is like a …
Advent journey
This morning I was meditating on Joseph and Mary’s Advent journey to Bethlehem. So often, I think, we would like our own Advents to be peaceful and calm and balk interiorly–if not exteriorly as well–at inconveniences and grouchy children (and husbands), at interruptions and long lines, etc. And then there are those even more serious …
Who would you rather listen to?
A few weeks ago I posted a selection from Christopher de Vinck’s The Power of the Powerless. Since then I’ve been dipping into other books of his, including Finding Heaven, Stories of Going Home. Here’s a selection from that book: A Prediction to Believe In We are inundated with predictions these days. Political commentators predict …
Having been shaken
Just a short nugget to ponder: Faith like Job’s cannot be shaken because it is the result of having been shaken. (Rabbi Abraham Heschel)
“You don’t see Him, but He is there.”
You know, most of the time–as I freely admit in the sidebar–I am writing these posts mainly for myself. This is a post I actually wrote quite awhile ago, but somehow never posted. Again, we hear from Amy Carmichael. This seems to be taken from a letter she wrote in response to someone else’s, someone …
God knows
Have you ever been called by God to do something, and then as you began to respond to that calling, thought: “What am I doing? I don’t have what’s needed. etc. “ I can do that a lot. This morning, as I was reading the biography of Hudson Taylor (see yesterday’s post), I was convicted …
“. . . for they shall see God”
It’s still the time, the season, of remembering Christ’s appearances to those He loved. Let us not move too quickly back into ordinary time. (Is there ever an “ordinary” time with Christ in our lives?) Luci Shaw captures this need to learn to recognized Him in this Sunday-poem. We, too, need to “get beyond the …
