“God never violates his Word. But he doesn’t mind violating my interpretation of it.”
Bill Johnson
“there are more things in heaven and earth
than are dreamt of in your philosophy”
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Category: Epiphanies
We are moving. So this for some crazy reason is my second blog of the day. (?!) Upon sorting through my junk, I found some great Bono quotes I wanted to keep. So in order to throw away the paper they’re scribbled on, here they are:
“Religion often gets in the way of God.”
“Religion is what you get when the Spirit leaves the building.”
“This is what happens when God is on the move: crazy, crazy stuff happens.”
“God is with the vulnerable and the poor, God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house, God is in the silence of the mother who has infected her child with a virus that will kill them both, God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war, God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.”
“Stop asking God to bless what you’re doing and get involved in what God is doing- it’s already blessed.”
If in the last few years you haven’t discarded a major opionion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead.
Gelett Burgess
So it’s time to update. Look what I learned to do today:
this is my favorite scene
from The Passion
because this
…was me.
Our old friend Jack nailed it again for us:
“…the real problem of the christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes at the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day (not to mention stresses) rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.”
C.S. Lewis, from Devotional Classics, by Richard Foster
My life is full of “duhs” lately. I know the word dates me, yeah, well so do my grey hairs.
I was listening to Sy Rogers today while sewing curtains for our room. Just an aside, as the curtains were finished and I was exclaiming to myself how beautiful they were, I realized I could be exclaiming with my daughter Grace. So I ran downstairs and shouted, “Come quickly! There is such a sight to be seen! Make haste!” When she got to my room she said, “Oh, is that all? I thought at least the pigs had gotten into the garden.”
I love my daughter.
Anyway, I’m listening to Sy Rogers and he said something that made something make sense to me that has baffled me forever. You know one of those things you do that you don’t know why you do it, but you always do? Ok, you know how when you’re having a really bad day, whether you’re just feeling sorry for yourself or everything has just gone stinking wrong or you got the mean reds, whatever. And someone is nice to you? Nice, like they genuinely ask how you are and you know they really want to know, or they just show concern for your bad day? Empathetic? And you cry?
You just do, the whole world does, it’s ok. (Kind of like grown men wearing stretchy pants in their rooms by themselves just because. It’s ok)
SO, do you know why we cry? My original post left it hanging there, but I’m editing because I thought that was a bit too cheeky of me. We cry because someone is concerned for our feelings, our welfare, because someone is saying “your pain matters to me.” It’s validating. It’s telling me that it’s ok for me to be feeling the way I am, no matter how trivial it may be. Someone understands and empathizes. I matter. You matter. I don’t judge you for feeling the way you do, I believe you. That’s why we cry.
It’s just pure relief.
