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Meditation 1 – God loves generous hearts
The Catholic Church has a pamphlet that I find tremendously comforting. It’s titled “A Meditation Before the Blessed Sacrament.” Consisting of 14 meditations, it encourages our prayers and meditations. (Your local church likely has copies available). I’m going to reflect on one meditation from this pamphlet each day for the next couple of weeks. As…
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Miracle of answered prayer
My daughter caught one of these darn bugs that are going around this winter. We get particularly concerned about her because these bugs can often trigger her asthma. So, when she called to tell me she was at Urgent Care one Sunday night, I was immediately lifting her up in prayer, asking that God strengthen…
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The miracle of feeling awestruck by God’s beauty
Being awestruck by God’s creation involves at least two miracles. The first miracle is the beauty and magnificence of God’s creation. Spiritbath, in this post “…hello dear universe,” shared the beautiful Vimeo video from Christian Mulhauser, in which he uses time lapse photography to capture the Milky Way and other scenes from the Island of…
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Seven steps to a deeper faith
I prepared a little mission statement and annual plan for this blog for 2014. It goes like this: Mission: In 2014 I want to achieve a deeper understanding of God’s purpose for my life. Objective: To achieve this I will document here life’s little miracles as they happen to and around me. Kind of formal,…
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Christmas Letters to my Lord-Part IV
Keeping You uppermost in my thoughts and reflections during this Christmas season, trying to experience Your presence in all the unfamiliar people and situations was both fruitful and exhausting. Yet as we slow our pace, take time to reflect on Christmas and all of 2013 in preparation for the new year, I realize You were…
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Christmas Letters to my Lord-Part III
From family harmony to community connectedness. You have shown Yourself to me in amazing ways this Christmas. How can my meager ‘thank you’ be sufficient? How do I love You more and better? How can my faith possibly be enough? Pope Benedict XVI wrote these reassuring words in Jesus of Nazarath, From the baptism in…
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Christmas Letters to my Lord-Part II
Where were You, Father, in this annual Christmas celebration? I ask this knowing You haven’t gone anywhere, but knowing also that keeping pace with all my various deadlines (how apropos is this word in this context?) made feeling Your presence a challenge. Amongst all the merriment and the bounty of this season, where were You,…
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Christmas Letters to My Lord – Part I
In this particularly disoriented, discombobulated fourth quarter of 2013, when members of my little family underwent various surgeries and water damage from an upstairs neighbor required we decamp our home for 10 weeks awaiting its repair and restoration, life has been lived in unfamiliar and changing circumstances. Unusual numbers of unfamiliar people and obligations and…
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Things
I want to reflect today about the whole issue of ‘things.’ I get the importance of being detached from material possessions. I finally off-loaded years of accumulated stuff…things I was storing for the kids, things left by parents and grand parents, childhood toys and memorabilia, closets full of things long forgotten that I’d bought in…
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Discerning Advent
Originally posted on God In All Things: [audio http://traffic.libsyn.com/godinallthings/Advent_2_Annunciation.mp3%5D “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” (Luke 1:28) We know God desires to shine a light into our world and into our hearts. There’s hope, somewhere. Through the darkness a light begins to shine. Thomas Merton describes this glimmer of hope: My Lord God,…