Think back over your life during the ages of seven and eleven, and then share:
Where did you live during this time, and who were family for you?
How was your home heated?
Where did you look for personal warmth and affection?
When was the first time in your life that God became more than a word?
Nobody can prevent us from believing in God, hoping in Him, and loving Him. Faith, hope, and love make human being fully human.
That others are sinners cannot prevent us from becoming saints. Nobody really deprives us of anything.
The harm people do to me never comes from them, it comes from me. Harm is only self-inflicted.
If the wrongs people commit do penetrate our hearts, that is because they find room there. If suffering makes us bitter and ill humored, it is because our hearts are devoid of faith, hope, and love.
God is the eternal present.
Living in the present termites our hearts to expand.
It’s a mistake to add the burden of the past to the weight of the present, it’s still a worse mistake to burden the present with the future.
Jacques Phillippe
Interior Freedom
Prayer and spirituality feature participation, the complex participation of God and the human, his will and our wills. We do not abandon ourselves to the stream of grace and drown in the ocean of love, losing identity. We do not pull the strings that activate God’s operations in our lives, subjecting God to our assertive identity. We neither manipulate God (active voice) nor are manipulated by God (passive voice). We are involved in the action and participate in its results but do not control or define it (middle voice). Prayer takes place in the middle voice.
Eugene Peterson
The Contemplative Pastor
Fear knocked at the door.
Faith answered.
There was no one there.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Strength to Love