Month: April 2017
It’s All a Blur #2
I’m having fun experimenting with motion and blur.
Reel Faith
Many things you fear come to pass, but
most don’t; and
since you never know which will or won’t, it makes more sense to fear none. But
my Pollyanna is more my Puddleglum, and
my optimism quotient is tempered by what is truly possible on this broken planet; so
how does a glass half empty gal have faith without feeling like it is more about wishful thinking and cooked up certainty?
How to live in the real world with real faith when real is often reeling with the now and the what could be? Yet will I praise Him.
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“Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” ~Matthew 6:34
Feast Day!
I buy ladybugs on Amazon 🙂 and they have a feast off the aphids on my roses. Ladybug, ladybug, don’t fly away home. Stay!
My Book of Uncommon Prayers: Easter Prayer
Is it just another day, another ritual performed,
a chance to wear new clothes and serve festive meals,
a celebration to mark our days and orient ourselves in a new year?
Is it just another obligation,
a compartment to fit in all the praiseworthy things
we ought to feel,
hope to feel,
about One so distant, so long ascended?
Has the burning in our hearts been quenched by familiar practices
and institutions?
Has the finger-in-the-side-faith lost its exclamations,
replaced by programs, distractions, and holy soundtracks?
Has our communion in the garden become commonplace
rather than ablaze with revelation and intimacy?
Oh, God of the resurrection,
God of the unruly and easily sidetracked,
burn within my heart this day.
Renew this shabby faith, these tattered shreds of almost belief,
with an obsession,
a knowing,
a persistence,
and an urgency to love You,
to love the faltering, the lost.
To be the Kingdom person you suffered to make me
is my Easter prayer.
He is risen . . .
. . . He is risen indeed!
Asking you, asking me . . .
Does your faith-life even require Jesus?
Got the maxims memorized.
Got the rules down.
Is religion more your bulwark than relationship—
behavior and image more important than face-falling service,
open-hearted devotion to His worthiness?
Has purpose surpassed person?
Maybe it’s time to re-evaluate this substance-hoped-for idea.
Are we a scattered and lost flock, devoted to a text but without a message?
I think I would rather falter on a rough road than walk resolutely down a worn and wrong path,
stuck in a form of obedience . . . but without a desperate, clinging trust.
My will is contrary to my dedication;
my rituals supplant my connection, offering a form without reality.
Am I so right-on religious that as a Christian I can do this thing without Jesus?
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Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. ~Psalm 51:10
I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.
~Romans 7:19
Apronhead 