Deep Peace

Thoughtful Love

Mahatma Gandhi stepped aboard a train one day - but as he did so one of his shoes slipped off and landed on the track. He was unable to retrieve it as the train slowly moved ahead.

Then, to the astonishment of those who were with him, Gandhi calmly removed his other shoe and threw it back along the track to land as closely as possible to the other.

He smiled at a fellow passenger who was nonplussed as to why he had done that. Said Gandhi: Now the poor man who finds the shoe lying on the track will have a pair he can use.

Encouragement

Keep away from folk who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too can become great.

- Mark Twain

Love Cures

Dr. Karl Menninger said once that love cures people - both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.

More

Wanting to know God more, to go deeper, to experience all that He has for us - surely that is our desire, at least some of the time.

One night a group of nomads were surrounded by a great Light. They felt they were in the Presence of a celestial being, and their anticipation and wonder was great as they awaited an important heavenly message.

Finally a Voice spoke. "Gather as many pebbles as you can; put them in your saddlebags; travel a day's journey, and tomorrow night will find you glad - and it will find you sad."

The Visitor departed. The nomads shared their disappointment for they had expected the revelation of a great universal truth - something to enable them to create wealth, health and purpose for the world. Instead, they had been given a task that made no sense to them at all.

Nevertheless, the memory of the brilliance of their visitor caused each of them to pick up least a few pebbles to deposit in their saddlebags.

They travelled a day's journey and made camp at night. But when each reached into his saddle bag, he discovered that every pebble gathered had become a diamond!

They were glad they had diamonds. They were sad they had not gathered more pebbles.

Ministry

 As with most great books and authors, one can re-read them with new insight and increased profit time and again. Henri Nouwen is one who's writings continue to inspire and to touch my life deeply. He wrote, in Lifesigns: Intimacy, Fecundity and Ecstasy in Christian Perspecive - All Ministry is a caring attentiveness to vulnerable lives, and a grateful receiving of the variety of fruits by which they manifest their beauty.

The Blue Boat

Tobermory, Isle of Mull, Scotland

Evermore

Stained glass image of Christ, St. Mungo's Cathedral, Glasgow, Scotland

Prudentius Clemens Aurelius lived between 348 and 410 AD. A lawyer by training he was for many years employed in the civil service of Spain. He quit that aspect of his life, determined in a new way to commit himself to becoming a devoted servant of Christ. Writing in Latin, he published many of his hymns and poetry. To us now, he seems obscure and unknown but some of his hymns are still sung. They speak of the eternal and of the Eternal One, who is for believers in Him, daily, the same unchanging Friend.

Of the Father's love begotten,
Ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega
He the Source, the Ending He,
Of the things that are,
That have been,
And the future years shall see,
Evermore and evermore!