When the waves rise high above our ability to see your face… Still my soul, Lord Jesus, Calm the storm in me When the howling wind and the pouring rain drown out the sound of your voice… Still my sou...
No sorrowful tears, no beating of the breast For a safe repose has taken me. I dance Ring dances with the blessed saints In the beautiful fields of the righteous.
May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart. May God bless you...
1 Corinthians 3:15, Philippians 3:5-11, Matthew 19:16-30, John 12:20-26, Mark 8:27-38, Hebrews 11:1, Jeremiah 29:11
A ship went down in a storm, and only one man survived. He was fortunate enough to land on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific. With just a few items in his pocket, he was able to build a small...
Matthew 22:34-40, Mark 12:28-34, Luke 10:25-28, Leviticus 19:18, Deuteronomy 6:4-5
Almighty God, we bow before You, humbly able to admit how small, fragile, and dependent we are. Unfortunately, for many of us, it takes a disaster to convince us that we are not in control. Over the p...
…we talked in a kind of ocean depth of memories where magic fish swam past, as we evoked our parents and Joy’s sisters, all dead now but with us for an hour in that exquisite room where time past and ...
When John Stuart Mill—the influential philosopher and political economist—arrived at Thomas Carlyle's door that evening, his face drained of color, bearing the devastating news that the manuscript...
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
…I put down these memorandums of my affections In honor of tenderness, In honor of all of those who have been Conscripted into the brotherhood Of loss…
The best helps to growth in grace are the ill usage, the affronts, and the losses which befall us. We should receive them with all thankfulness, as preferable to all others, were it only on this accou...
And can it be that in a world so full and busy, the loss of one weak creature makes a void in any heart, so wide and deep that nothing but the width and depth of eternity can fill it up!
When you lead people through difficult change, you take them on an emotional roller coaster because you are asking them to relinquish something—a belief, a value, a behavior—that they hold dear. Peopl...
Lament is the practice of mourning what is wrong in the world and calling on God to repair it. We lament the sins for which we are responsible, the sins for which we are only indirectly responsible, a...
Some kind of loss is usually necessary to turn the mind toward faith. If you’re satisfied with want you’ve got, you’re hardly going to look for anything better.
Time, then, is told by love's losses, and by the coming of love, and by love continuing in gratitude for what is lost. It is folded and enfolded and unfolded forever and ever, the love by which th...
I think these difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way and that so many things that one goes around worrying about are of ...
All artists must learn the art of surviving loss: loss of hope, loss of face, loss of money, loss of self-belief… Artistic losses can be turned into artistic gains and strengths—but not in isola- tion...
The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss – an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wi...
The mind has a dumb sense of vast loss—that is all. It will take mind and memory months and possibly years to gather the details and thus learn and know the whole extent of the loss.
Gracious God, we are called to be a joyful people, giving thanks for You and Your good gifts. There are times, however, when sin and sorrow grow, pushing joy to the side. We lose sight of Your grace, ...
I know well there is no comfort for this pain of parting: the wound always remains, but one learns to bear the pain, and learns to thank God for what He gave, for the beautiful memories of the past, a...
As we feel the pain of our own losses, our grieving hearts open our inner eye to a world in which losses are suffered far beyond our own little world of family, friends, and colleagues. It is the worl...