Blog Archives

The Love of God

The Love of God is the only thing
of any importance at all.
The Love of God is so incredibly different
and beyond compare
that it boggles our ability to believe in it
enough to accept it.
No matter how much we have been loved
by family and friends,
no matter how famous and wildly adored
by the multitudes,
nothing has ever been more than
a barely glimpsed shadow
of the Love of God.
The Love of God is all that is necessary.
We need nothing more
than to know the unconditional love of God
with our whole mind,
to experience it with an open heart
until our spirit is so filled
with it, that we simply pass it on
by letting it overflow.
We begin to sense this Love of God
when we consider
the possibility that the creator of the universe
chose to walk in our skin,
to experience the frustrating and fearful limits
of being human,
being born under crushing political oppression,
a scorned minority,
bearing physical exhaustion and bodily pain,
the heartbreak
of being abandoned and even betrayed
by his only friends,
publicly ridiculed, tortured and killed,
even taking the
leap of faith into the darkness of death
to show us there is more,
because of His Love.
The love of God can free us to see ourselves
exactly as we are,
to accept our own need for forgiveness
without guilt, just true sorrow
that brings a joy that sets us free from fear
and gives us grace to change.
The Love of God begins to free us to forgive
both ourselves and others.
The Love of God heals us of the crippling wounds
that stunt our growth in love.
The Love of God takes our mustard seed of good
and nurtures it with grace.
The Love of God builds our faith and sets us free
to die and live again.
The Love of God is
personal, unconditional, and eternal.
All else fails.
There is nothing greater than
the Love of God expressed in Jesus,
the Love of God for you.

Not Forgiving, Creating God in Your Own Image, Awful Thoughts: Quotes from Anne Lamott

“Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.”

“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you hate.”

“I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud, because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish..”

“I do not understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”

“I think joy, sweetness, and affection are a spiritual path. We’re here to know, love, and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracles of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don’t have time to carry grudges; you don’t have time to cling to the need to be right.”

Quotes from my favorite author, Anne Lamott.  Accessible at Anne Lamott Quotes or her books:

§  Operating Instructions: A Journal Of My Son’s First Year. Pantheon Books. 1993

§  Bird by Bird : Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Pantheon Books. 1994. 

§  Traveling Mercies : Some Thoughts on Faith. Pantheon Books. 1999. 

§  Plan B : Further Thoughts on Faith. Riverhead Books

§  Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith. Riverhead Books

§  Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son’s First Son. Riverhead Books. 2012.

Suffering and Joy: Two Sides of the Same Coin

If we are open to the grace to embrace our suffering, it stretches our capacity for joy.  Suffering and Joy really are two sides of the same coin.

Whatever we experience contains the potential grace for our transformation.

The spiritual life is a process. We may be chosen, but we are not finished.

If it’s happening in this life, it’s temporary.

If we caused suffering, as soon as we are sorry, we have forgiveness, and grace and good can come from it.

When we suffer, we are not alone. Jesus has been there, suffered that, and now we are his tee shirt. Whatever is done to us is being done to Him.

Passion,death, resurrection should be one word. They are all part of one process. We experience many deaths and resurrections in our lives.

There is good somewhere in each experience, even if we cannot see it until we have eternity’s perspective.

There is no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.