april 2013....
annual tulip festival - La Conner, WA
"Easter people, raise your voices, sounds of heaven in earth should ring. Alleluia! Alleluia! Easter people, let us sing."
For the life that You have given
For the love of Christ made known
With these fruits of time and labor
With these gifts that are your own
Here we offer, Lord, our praises--
heart, and mind and strength we bring.
Give us grace to love and serve you-
living what we pray and sing...
Boston marathon reflections: http://celebrate-2day.blogspot.com/2013/04/fwd-reflections-from-2013-boston.html
In this event in Boston where we witnessed such generosity of spirit followed by such tragedy and loss, I continue to pray:
"Bring Your best to our worst. Bring Your peace to our pain. God of love, heal Your people…"
I've learned that counting gifts, seeing God's goodness, doesn't necessarily make the sadness go away. We live in a world that is broken by sin. There are things that can and should break our hearts and make us sad. It's called lament and, throughout the pages of scripture, there seems to be an awful lot of it.When I count the gifts, when I see glimpses of God's goodness amidst the sadness, I'm no longer frightened by it or worry I'll be consumed by it. I can stare directly into the sadness and yet worship. I've learned:Lament is a kind of worship that says, "This is wrong, but I know You are good." -Nancy Franson
"Even when it hurts. Even when our heart aches. We summon the strength that maybe we didn't even know we had, and we carry on. We finish the race." - President Barack Obama
joie de vi·vre (zhwä d vvr)
n.
Hearty enjoyment of life; an exultation of spirit
[French : joie, joy + de, of + vivre, to live, living.]
In each darkness, cloud and fire
In the quiet, as words retire
in our lost and best desires
God is there
Not for what we are or do
No for what we've journeyed through
But for all you call us to,
God be there...
(a powerful passage to share below from Tony Campolo's book Carpe Diem)
"How long have you lived?"
I posed the question to the students on the first day of a special seminar course on existentialism.
No one answered. It may have been that my manner was intimidating. But then again, maybe it was because the question had a certain ambiguity to it.
So I picked out one of the students on the front row of the lecture hall and, riveting my attention on him, I asked the question again, this time with an intensely personal emphasis.
"How long have you lived?" I asked.
My inquiry must have seemed like an attack on him. I could see that he was taken aback. The question seemed to pull him out of a time of private reverie. Instinctively he answered, "Twenty-four years!"
"No! No!" I responded. "I didn't ask you how long you have existed as a breathing, functioning member of the human race. I wanted you to tell me how long you have been really alive."
from an email my friend received after our Boston experience:
"Every day, as we are granted to live and go on, we collect a little bundle that makes us grow and be just a bit of a different person from yesterday. You, on the Boston Marathon collected a very large bundle. Please do not let that weigh you down, but inspire you to move forward and give every day your all."
It is time to go and be His witnesses.
And as we go we pray that the Lord would bless us and keep us,
the Lord make his face to shine upon us and be gracious unto us.
May God give us grace never to sell ourselves short,
grace to risk something big for something good,
grace to realize that the world is much too small for anything but love,
and much too dangerous for anything but truth.
And now may God take our minds and think through them,
and may God take our lips and speak through them,
and may God take our hearts and set them on fire.
In the name of Jesus Christ who goes with us always. Amen.
-benediction at St. John's Lutheran
Annual Teacher Brunch honoring our fabulous teachers
"Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come."
…a glimpse of how Taylor made his bed the other morning…
May we hold on to the kingdom perspective even as life gets back to "normal".
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