Category: Christian Spirituality
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thoughts on the ascended Christ
God ascends to shouts of joy, alleluia, alleluia. The Lord to the blast of trumpets, alleluia, alleluia. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, God ascends to shouts of joy, alleluia, alleluia. A while back I bought a prayer book which, among other things, notes the days of the…
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questions and constancies
No one who lives stands still. One begins to ask questions as soon as one can speak. Indeed, my first utterance, if I am to believe Mother, was not a single word but a coherent question: “Where’s Daddy?” I must have wanted to know. The young, at least, always want answers . . . The…
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Abide in My Love
This morning I read John 15:9-12 As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept the Father’s commandments, and abide in his love . . . This is my commandment, That ye…
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Painful Perfection
I’ve been reading the Epistle to the Hebrews for the last few days, and yesterday was struck by the way God chose to perfect Jesus. If the Bible didn’t say that Jesus had to be made perfect, I wouldn’t believe it; I would believe that He was already totally perfect when He got here. But…
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Sick in the New Year
I planned to spend the new year in a sort of glowing rhapsody, resting, enjoying family over the holidays, eating Christmas cookies and reading novels. I planned to be refreshed, excited about the wonderful things to come. I planned to file the last of 2009’s receipts, lay out my goals and plans for the new…
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Christmas Children
Luke 1 is one of my favourite scriptures. Far less famous than Luke 2 (“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus” — you know the one), the entire chapter is potent with the intervention of God. Praise, prophecy, and the workings of the impossible —…
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rowing out to the darkness
It could be that God has not absconded but spread, as our vision and understanding of the universe have spread, to a fabric of spirit and sense so grand and subtle, so powerful in a new way, that we can only feel blindly of its hem. In making the thick darkness a swaddling band for…
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small ones
Four years ago, on a beautiful night in late June, my sister Tabithah was born. (I assume it was a beautiful night. Chances are it was humid and very warm, but I know it was green, and it wasn’t raining. In any case, the event made it beautiful.) I was twenty years old. Taba and…
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saintly service
Then came he to Derbe and Lystra: and, behold, a certain disciple was there, named Timotheus, the son of a certain woman, which was a Jewess, and believed; but his father was a Greek: Which was well reported of by the brethren that were at Lystra and Iconium. Him would Paul have to go forth…
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Comforting Miracles
And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep: and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead. And Paul went down, and fell on him, and embracing him said, Trouble not…