An Everyday Wonder!

Recently we were driving Highway 21, the road that skirts the eastern shoreline of Lake Huron. As we drove along, we passed dozens and dozens of wind turbines.

The questions of whether these things produce energy efficiently or  destroy the beauty of the countryside, as many contend, didn’t occupy my mental landscape. I’ll leave such considerations to the experts and to those who must live with them. No, it was not the controversy they’ve created, but their wonder that caught my imagination–the mystery that when you simply rotate copper coils in a magnetic field, out comes electricity–magic extraordinaire!

Everyday is filled with magic and to encounter it would be to live in wonder and be primed for worship!

Leadership

Average people have a way of accomplishing extraordinary things for teachers and leaders who are patient enough to wait until ability becomes apparent.  . . The best motivators are always on the lookout for hidden capacities.

From “Bringing Out the Best in People” by Alan Loy McGinnis

Seeing Love First

It’s not so much that we have to love people as that we need to observe how Jesus loves them. I know we’re supposed to love, but what happens when you don’t? Is there a love switch I can just throw? Of course I must make a choice to love and that’s important, but it still takes more. It takes grace and I become “graced” through interaction with Jesus in prayer.
One of the most important things we can see in prayer is how God loves others especially the people we have a hard time with. In our mind’s eye we can see Jesus looking with love on the person. As we allow ourselves to feel his love for them, and ask him to help us to love them too, the mystery can happen. Our hearts can be warmed and changed.

A Surprising Thought about Fruitfulness

“It is very interesting: fruits are always the result of vulnerability.” A child is conceived when two people are vulnerable with each other in their intimacy. Or the experience of peace and reconciliation can come when people are very honest and compassionate with one another, when they are vulnerable and open about their own needs and weaknessess . . .” Henri Nouwen

Seeds of Eternity

Our short lives on earth are sowing times. If there were no resurrection of the dead, everything we live on earth would come to nothing. How can we believe in a God who loves us unconditionally if all the joys and pains of our lives are in vain? . . . This wonderful knowledge that nothing we live in our bodies is lived in vain holds a call for us to live every  moment as a seed of eternity.

“Our Greatest Gift” – Henri Nouwen

The First Reason to Pray

We must pray not first of all because it feels good or helps, but because God loves us and wants our attention.

‘The Road to Daybreak’ – Henri Nouwen

The Seducing Voices Versus the Voice of Love

The endless seducing voices of our society “keep pulling us away from that soft gentle voice that speaks in the center of our being: ‘You are my beloved, on you my favor rests.’

Prayer is the discipline of listening to that voice of love. Jesus spent many nights in prayer listening to the voice that had spoken to him at the Jordan River. We too must pray. Without prayer we become deaf to the voice of love and become confused by the many competing voices asking for our attention.”

‘Here and Now’ – Henri Nouwen

Our True Work

“I deeply know that I have a home in Jesus, just as Jesus has a home in God. I know, too, that when I abide in Jesus I abide with him in God . . . My true spiritual work is to let myself be loved, fully and completely, and to trust that in love I will come to the fulfillment of my vocation. I keep trying to bring my wandering, restless, anxious self home, so that I can rest there in the embrace of love.”

‘Sabbatical Journey’ Henri Nouwen

Our Response to Being Loved

“The unfathomable mystery of God is that God is a lover who wants to be loved. The one who created us is waiting for our response to the love that gave us our being. God not only says, ‘You are my Beloved.’ God also asks: ‘Do you love me?’ and offers us countless chances to say ‘Yes.’ . . . The change of which I speak is the change from living a life as a painful test to prove that you deserve to be loved, to living it as an unceasing ‘Yes’ to the truth of that Belovedness.” Henri Nouwen

Ten Steps for Boosting Your Creativity

Ten Steps for Boosting Your Creativity.