Sometimes you aren’t listening to your body because you’re listening to everybody else’s expectations.
Love isn’t about how much money someone’s willing to lay down for you, but about how much life they’re willing to lay down for you.
The art of giving is believing there is enough love in you, that you are loved enough by Him, to be made enough love to give. For.
You are the most loved not when you’re pretending to have it all together; you are actually the most loved when you feel broken and falling apart.
He who carved the edges of the cosmos curved Himself into a fetal ball in the dark, tethered Himself to the uterine wall of a virgin, and lets His cells divide, light splitting all white. He gave up the heavens that were not even large enough to contain Him and lets Himself be held in a hand. The mystery so large becomes the Baby so small, and infinite God becomes infant.
The answer to anxiety is always to exalt Christ.
Joy is a function of gratitude, and gratitude is a function of perspective. You only begin to change your life when you begin to change the way you see.
The hands of every clock never stop signing this: the best use of your hands is always love. The best way to say you love is always time. The best time to love is always now.
How can it be? When we’re naked and ashamed and alone in our brokenness, Christ envelops us with His intimate grace. When we’re rejected and abandoned and feel beyond wanting, Jesus cups our face: “Come close, my Beloved.” When we’re dirty and tear-stained and despairing, Jesus Christ is attracted to us and proposes undying love: “All that you’re carrying I take... and all that I am is yours.” How do you ever get over that?
I am more sinful and flawed than I ever dared believe, more loved and welcomed than I ever dared hope. ELYSE M. FITZPATRICK.
Love is not blind; love is the holy vision.
I’ll take it. I’ll take his words like a daring covenant, not knowing yet what’s to come: there is no growth without change, no change without surrender, no surrender without wound – no abundance without breaking. Wounds are what break open the soul to plant the seeds of a deeper growth.
When the church isn’t for the suffering and broken, then the church isn’t for Christ.
So now we pause. Still. Ponder. Hush. Wait. Each day of Advent, He gives you the gift of time, so you have time to be still and wait. Wait for the coming of the God in the manger who makes Himself bread for us near starved. For the Savior in swaddlings who makes Himself the robe of righteousness for us worn out. For Jesus, who makes precisely what none of us can but all of us want: Christmas.
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.
Suffering is not a problem that needs a solution as much as it’s an experience that needs compassion. Because.
God is always good and I am always loved. Everything is eucharisteo. Because eucharisteo is how Jesus, at the Last Supper, showed us to transfigure all things – take the pain that is given, give thanks for it, and transform it into a joy that fulfills all emptiness. I have glimpsed it: This, the hard eucharisteo. The hard discipline to lean into the ugly and whisper thanks to transfigure it into beauty. The hard discipline to give thanks for all things at all times because He is all good.
Activity for God – is not the same as intimacy with God or identity in God. And it is your intimacy with Christ that gives you your identity. You can’t experience the power of Christ, the mission of Christ, being made new in Christ, until you know who you are in Christ.
While I may not always feel joy, God asks me to give thanks in all things because He knows that the feeling of joy begins in the action of thanksgiving.
Don’t belittle everyday pots and pans – they are the means to carry theology into the everyday of our lives.