growth on Perseverance

Eternal and Glorious God, Your grace calls us toward growth and service in You. Yet today we acknowledge the many times we have forgotten Your mercy and rejected Your love. Forgive us when we sin agai...

Resilience is the virtue that enables people to move through hardship and become better. No one escapes pain, fear, and suffering. Yet from pain can come wisdom, from fear can come courage, from suffe...

In the desert outside of Tucson, scientists dreamed up an experiment to re-create the conditions of earth for space, when and if the earth could not be made great again. The biosphere was a little wor...

Consider the banyan tree, a remarkable species found in India and other subtropical regions. As it grows, its sprawling branches become increasingly heavy. But instead of breaking under their own weig...

Holy One, grant me Patience in the waiting Raise in me   Steadfastness Resilience Persevering Make me a child of hope and becoming New life takes time to root and grow and bear fruit It takes trus...

Be patient with everyone, but above all with yourself. I mean, do not be disturbed because of your imperfections, and always rise up bravely from a fall. I’m glad that you make daily a new beginning; ...

Experienced mountaineers have a quiet, regular, short step—on the level it looks petty; but then this step they keep up, on and on as they ascend, whilst the inexperienced townsman hurries along, and ...

A Story from the Philokalia A story is told in  The Philokalia  about a young monk who went to an older monk to confess a struggle. The older monk was appalled, telling the young monk that his strugg...

Faith does not grow in spite of suffering, but through suffering, when hope learns to contradict reality.

G. K. Chesterton said, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” Chesterton wasn’t encouraging mediocrity; he was alerting his audience to an important truth: if you wait to do something until you ...

Adversity is not simply a tool. It is God's most effective tool for the advancement of our spiritual lives. The circumstances and events that we see as setbacks are oftentimes the very things that...

If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.

In an essay on friendship, the renowned poet Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “My entire success, such as it is, is composed of particular failures.” There’s a deep truth in that line—one many of us need to...

What Are We Waiting For? Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers sang, “Every day you get one more yard, you take it on faith, you take it to the heart, the waiting is the hardest part.” Waiting in love, in...

Once when my daughter was six and my son was two, my mother-in-law noticed my daughter holding a favorite toy just out of my son’s standing reach, and she gently scolded her for teasing him that way. ...

In the Parable of the Lost Coin, the woman who discovers that she has lost one of her ten silver coins doesn’t just hope that the coin will be found. She diligently works at finding it. She lights a l...

Brother Lawrence, a 16th-century Carmelite monk, spent his days scrubbing pots and mending shoes. Largely uneducated, he filled his free time writing letters and notes that, after his death, friends g...

Grace is not only needed for the occasion of conversion, the moment we suddenly (or slowly) come to our senses and realize that we are spiritually bankrupt, having nothing to bring to God and everythi...

The truth is, that more spiritual progress is made through failure and tears than success and laughter.

The battle is won in the secret places of the will before God, never first in the external world… Nothing has power over the [person] who has fought out the battle before God and won there.

Qui cessat esse melior cessat esse bonus (He who ceases to be better ceases to be good)

If the amount of energy lost in trying to grow were spent in fulfilling rather the conditions of growth, we should have many more cubits to show for our stature.

The following illustration, taken from Ronald Rolheiser book, The Holy Longing, can be applied to the idea of bad habits, that they often have a way of returning, no matter how hard we try to kill t...

For over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living. . . . Strained by the very mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we are further strained by an inward uneasin...

The mind is seldom quickened to very vigorous operations but by pain, or the dread of pain. We do not disturb ourselves with the detection of fallacies which do us no harm.

Grateful people learn to celebrate even amid life’s hard and harrowing memories because they know that pruning is no mere punishment, but preparation."

The animal behavior scientist Temple Grandin, who achieved significant success while struggling with autism, has this to say on the subject of progress: People are always looking for the single ma...

Too often we fail to appreciate that (the) apprehension of God is not only the test of our worship, but also the test of our spiritual growth. A Christian's real development in spiritual life will...

We're not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.

Gracious God, when I think of how you created all things in a step-by-step manner, I am reminded of my own impatience. There are so many times, Lord, when I want you to move at my pace, not yours. I c...