Waiting for Grace

Grace: the free and unmerited favor of God, manifested in and the bestowal of blessings. a divinely given talent or blessing… It’s a night of waiting f0r grace, a time for waiting for grace! It is a night of God with us, of love without end, of the Messiah. No matter how tenuous our lives may feel to us, no matter how questionable the fairness of the world appears. It’s a night of waiting f0r grace, a time for waiting for grace! It is a night of God with us, of love without end, of the Messiah. No matter how tenuous our lives may feel to us, no matter how questionable the fairness of the world appears. Love surrounds us, supports us, makes meaningful the world!

Maturity

Maturity is learning how to start when you feel like procrastinating and learning how to listen when you feel like talking. ~ James Clear

What does it mean to be a grown-up? I like this definition. I’m ending a day after doing little constructive, have my list in my head, determined to accomplish more tomorrow. Down days are okay, but letting all be such makes for low self-esteem. So tomorrow I’ll be effective, and listen to good advice even if it’s the niggling reminders in my head.

A Shortcut to Realizing Inner Peace

The solution is learning to be alert to those things that are important so we can let the rest slip by. Being selective about what we allow to capture our attention is the most obvious way to stay on the path to realizing inner peace. ~ Casey, Karen. Each Day a Renewed Beginning (p. 222). Mango Media. Kindle Edition.

What IS important? Obviously the answer can change in an instant! Family, friends, quality of life stay high on the list! Wanting to be self-reliant can take a back door. If interrupting someone to ask for a favor could prevent doing it yourself and causing them chaos, interruption is better... May you find your peace today!

Time for Everything

There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven — A time to give birth and a time to die; A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal; A time to tear down and a time to build up. A time to weep and a time to laugh; A time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones; A time to embrace and a time to shun embracing. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-5, NASB) Turn around and turn again. There was a time before the Byrds. Turn the page, turn again. There were the words before the Byrds. Centuries before. Millennia before. There was the truth of the words before. We see our lives through a microscope. God’s huge view telescopes the microscopic picture — the whole mural as well as our square inch. He knows times we need to hate, to uproot, to throw away. He loves us through those and the times to love, to keep, to dance, and to have peace. God, thank you for all the times of our lives. May we remember dancing while we mourn. May we have peace in times of war.

Same Measure

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you….” ~ Matthew 7:1-2 NIV There is a difference between judgment and observation without condemnation. ~ Lawton, Sabrina Universal. Each Day a Gift: A Gratitude Devotional for Women: 90 Devotions to Make a Habit of Praise and Thanks (p. 54). Althea Press. Kindle Edition.

Loving everyone you meet, all the people you know, is an idea, an ideal to be achieved. When we follow the two rules. They’re the two top commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. Surely when we can manage love for everybody, we see things differently. We can notice differences but by choosing they become mere observations devoid of the judgment we’ve often made, naturally substituting noticing distinctions for the classification of deficits we once practiced. Let us move through today without any condemnation… only love!

Loving Raisin Cakes

The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.” ~ Hosea 3:1 (NIV)

Do you love sacred raisin cakes? I don't think I've tried them but would, probably! Asked about favorite Christmas memories yesterday I told of Grandmom's saying her prune cake icing ran out the door, of which I once wrote, "Grandmom's backyard was supposedly paved with this icing that had run out the door, but I never managed to find any edible samples. Sigh." A dietitian asked today about food preferences and I didn't ask for raisins or cakes. God still loves me whether I eat raisin cakes or prune cakes, whether I make good choices or poor in my contact with God!

Amazing Grace

The glory of God isn’t naturally the core motivator of what we do and say. So if you are willing to say, “God, show me my heart,” and willing to speak these words, “Please forgive me,” you know that you have been showered with amazing grace—grace that has already changed your heart and grace that promises more change to come. ~ Tripp, Paul David. New Morning Mercies (p. 701). Crossway. Kindle Edition. The glory of God isn’t naturally the core motivator of what we do and say. Why? If I’m willing to ask God to show me my heart. Part of me wants to balk since I ought to know the contents of my heart. but can I describe my heart? Well, no! The Psalmist had it right. Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.* And with even more to come!

A G.I.'S Gift

Olive drab is basic pain, endless hikes in drizzling rain. Blue is Christmas TDY, raucous joy so I won’t cry. Red courage stains on desert sands, youth drained out in cruel lands, white-knuckled fear, all fossilize this PFC with gaping eyes. That’s the gift I give to you, olive drab, red, white, and blue.

God Will Give You What You Want

 ²⁹ “And don’t be concerned about what to eat and what to drink. Don’t worry about such things. ³⁰ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers all over the world, but your Father already knows your needs.³¹ Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and he will give you everything you need. ~ Luke 12:28-31 (NLT)

Overeaters Anonymous has similarities
with these words of Jesus.
Others may see the purpose precisely
as being concerned about what to consume.
We are not a diet club...calories and points
have no role. We would agree these things
"dominate the thoughts of unbelievers"
but we have decided to turn such concerns
over to God, however we understand God,
and to trust God to take care of our disease
of compulsive eating, the needs for nourishment
as well as for abstinence from harmful eating.
And we trust God to give us everything we need,
to allow our reliance on God to lead us,
to love us and to teach us how to love ourselves.

image Copyright : Diana Johanna Velasquez

A Commandment to Love

  5 And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. 6 And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love. ~2 John 5-6 (NIV )

While we, with scholars,
could argue about the author
and the addressee of 2 John,
we’re probably in agreement
as to the message…
that we are to love each other.
And that to love each other
means we walk obeying God’s commands
and that walking in His command
means walking in love.

Image copyright sunnyko

 

Amazing Grace

 The glory of God isn’t naturally the core motivator of what we do and say. So if you are willing to say, “God, show me my heart,” and willing to speak these words, “Please forgive me,” you know that you have been showered with amazing grace—grace that has already changed your heart and grace that promises more change to come. ~ Tripp, Paul David. New Morning Mercies (p. 701). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

The glory of God isn’t naturally
the core motivator
of what we do and say.
Why? If I’m willing to ask God
to show me my heart.
Part of me wants to balk
since I ought to know
the contents of my heart.
but can I describe my heart?
Well, no! The Psalmist had it right.
Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.*
 And with even more to come!

 

 

*Psalm 139:23-24 NIV

Heartlight.org

God Is Love

 

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. ~ 1 John 4:16b (NIV)

God is Love. Love is God.
How do we go about living in God?
We live in Love. We love the world
and the Maker of the world.
How do we love the world?
We love the people of the world.
We love the Maker of the world.
We love Love.
God is love.
Whoever lives in love
lives in God,
and God in them.

From website of Wellspring Church

I Am Nothing

 Now if, as we seek the real truth about justification, we find we are as much sinners as the Gentiles, does that mean that Christ makes us sinners? Of course not! But if I attempt to build again the whole structure of justification by the Law then I do, in earnest, make myself a sinner. ~ Galatians 2:17-18 (Phillips)

---

---

It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. ~ (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 85)

---

---

Out of alignment
I reclaim my course,
tried, proven untrue,
but so logical, so cogent, so clear.

And so wrong.
Of myself I am nothing.
I become something only when
abandoning myself
I yield to God, to a higher will
a greater good
to the real truth.
The gifts received, recovery gained,
persist conditionally
dependent on my choice
of acceptance or rejection
each this day.

I give up, God.
I still can’t run my life.
It’s in your hands.

KerPLOOP

 onder the word “percolate.”

Is your first thought the sound
as the percolator is plugged in
(or placed on a burner)
and coffee brews to the tune?
Or do you envision a liquid
finding its way molecule by droplet,
purified or enriched in the process?
It can mean ooze or seep, dribble
or disseminate. But all meanings
represent action, usually slow,
gradual, pervasive.

Have you watched Recovery percolate?
It can surge up, joyfully becoming new,
full of flavor, soothing. Sometimes
we go through the Steps time after time,|
and realize something happened in the process,
that we’ve absorbed the essence of the Steps
and have become something new,
carrying with us the bounty of the Steps.
Sometimes it spreads so slowly, so quietly,
we find person after person change,
renewed, recovered, remade as the essence,
the flavor, the meaning transforms us.

Image Copyright: lim_atos

The Holy and Me

 

It is indeed from the experience of beauty and happiness, from the occasional harmony between our nature and our environment that we draw our conception of the divine life. ~ George Santayana

Raised in church,

steeped in religion,

theologian,

biblical scholar,

many came like me,

joined hordes of others —

all the rest in the Rooms —

paths to recovery and understanding.

Knowledge doesn’t count,

membership doesn’t matter,

holy is not holy enough

to really grasp the vastness,

the intimacy of Power

ruling the universe

but completely involved

in me, in my life,

in my choices.

In recovery.

Image Copyright : Wang Shuang

Addicted to Misery

 If a person is addicted to … misery, or other people, we let go of his or her addiction; we take our hands off it. ~ Beattie, Melody. The Language of Letting Go: Hazelden Meditation Series (p. 353). Hazelden Publishing. Kindle Edition.

The ellipsis replaces expected words
of addiction: of “alcohol, other drugs.”
Of course we of Overeaters Anonymous
would add food, compulsive eating,
binge eating, etc. But who ever considered
addiction to misery? Or to other people?
But we recognize truth when we see it!
And we understand that Anne Frank
would say, “I don’t think of all the misery
but of the beauty that still remains.”
We don’t need to be addicted to misery
or to the people who welcome it!

from quotlr

The Action Part of Faith

 Letting go is the action part of faith. It is a behavior that gives God and the Universe permission to send us what we’re meant to have. ~ Beattie, Melody. The Language of Letting Go: Hazelden Meditation Series (pp. 351-352). Hazelden Publishing. Kindle Edition.

We recognize the childishness
inherent in the declaration,
“I can do it all by myself!!”
But the latest conversation I’ve had
was declaring I didn’t want to do a task,
and to the suggestion I not go do it,
I declared I couldn’t stand to start tomorrow
with it not done. Are the two equally childish?
Do I believe “Letting go is the action part of faith?”
I don’t expect God and the Universe
to clean the messy kitchen, but they could change
the way I looked at it, felt about it,
the energy I had!
I don’t expect to be sent an orderly kitchen,
but I need not seek to make others feel guilty
for not equally sharing the tasks.
God, is what I need a servant’s heart?
I expect it’s what I need,
and it’s growing as I sit here
doing the next right thing
with willingness to be willing.

from QuoteGram.com

Responsible?

 It was the Law itself that killed me and freed me from its power, so that I could live for God.

I have been nailed to the cross with Christ. (Galatians 2:19, CEV)

---

---

Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us! God makes that possible. (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 62)

---

---

Whatever
I’ve tried all these years
over and over again
didn’t work.
Why should I trust it to work now?
Do I relish guilt,
savor shame,
revel in remorse?
Emphatically not!
Why, then, should I persist,
why try harder when I know
I could not before have done more
than I did, at least briefly…
I’m incompetent, powerless,
unable to manage my life,
my responsibilities.
It’s time to toss my pride in the rag pile
and allow the results
even if I can’t claim
responsibility.God, thank you!
I don’t have to be
responsible.

 

 

A Matter of Vanity

 As a result, other Jewish Christians followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.  ~ Galatians 2:13 (NLT)

---

---

I fancied myself a leader, for had not the men of my battery given me a special token of appreciation? My talent for leadership, I imagined, would place me at the head of vast enterprises which I would manage with the utmost assurance. (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 1)

---

---

Managing with the utmost assurance —

yep, rings true, I’ve been there.

Peter, simple fisherman transformed

to key carrier, not just for a meeting

but to the kingdom all in a few short years.

How fearful he must have been,

how often.

Do I need a report from his POV?

No. No need to take his inventory,

just mine.

When I find myself a leader

by vote of peers or default,

my responsibility lies not

in keeping waters calm

but in being qualified to lead,

allowing that to come from

a Power far greater than I,

and seeking daily the Power’s directive

and
the will and courage
to lead there.

God, I offer myself.
While I’d prefer anonymity,
I’m willing to yield
to your plan.

Measuring Up?

You must not envy the worthiness of the person next to you, as if he or she is more accepted by God because he or she is more spiritually mature than you.  ~ Tripp, Paul David. New Morning Mercies (p. 639). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

I am good enough!
I have a purpose and am
trying to understand what it is.
I am good enough and
have something no one else has to offer. 
I am good enough because people love me.
I am worth more than the way I've been treated.
I'm good enough to learned to move on.
I'm good enough to know you're good enough, too!

Image copyright pixelsaway

 

Rules, Rules, More Rules

 Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law.

But Scripture has locked up everything under the control of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe. ~ Galatians 3: 1-22 (NIV)

I was at one time assistant manager of a corporation department employing sixty-six hundred men. One day my secretary came in saying that Mr. B—insisted on speaking with me. I told her to say that I was not interested. I had warned him several times that he had but one more chance. Not long afterward he had called me from Hartford on two successive days, so drunk he could hardly speak. I told him he was through—finally and forever. ~ A.A. World Services Inc. Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition . A.A. World Services, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

There must be rules
whether they be called laws
or company policies,
social mores,
or merely common sense.
Surely by the time we become adults
we know the rules…
but why then do we break them
so often?
And when we do,
we lose a job
or destroy our families
or sometimes
do what we know is stupid,
trying time-after-time
when we’ve promised
our boss, our parents,
our spouse, ourselves
to do what the entire world
knows is detrimental to us…
even fatal if we don’t
slam on the breaks!

 

God, that which
I so badly want to do,
I do not!
I’ve tried and tried!
I give up.
Tell me what to do,
give me the ability to do it,
and I will!