Quotes

"I've found that when life's brush obscures my view with gloomy strokes that seem to mar the scene, God's hand appears and gives to sunless hue and dreary skies a more majestic sheen." Gustafson

10 March 2009

DAY 34

It's super late and unexpected but God opened the door for me to go meet with some counselors tonight, which means I didn't get my workout in. I'm so thankful I went and grateful for their time.

I'll share some of the things I read today and end with them.

Galatians 5:1
"The goal of any discipline is to result in greater freedom."

From Journey To Freedom Founder Scott Reall:
"We can’t claim ignorance any longer; we know what we’re doing. I know when I reach for addiction that it is going to break my heart--and yet I keep doing it. I believe that I don’t have the power to stop, and this is the power an addiction has over us. People ask me about my struggle with addiction, “Why do you do it?” And I say, “I don’t know why.” Paul says this is in the New Testament: “The thing I know to be wrong, I do.”



What is it to live with suffering?

Suffering is the necessary feeling of evil. If we don’t feel evil we stand antiseptically apart from it, numb. We can’t understand evil by thinking about it. The sin of much of our world is that we stand apart from pain; we buy our way out of the pain of being human.

Jesus did not numb himself or withhold from pain. Suffering is the necessary pain so that we know evil, so that we can name evil and confront it. Otherwise we somehow dance through this world and never really feel what is happening.

Brothers and sisters, the irony is not that God should feel so fiercely; it’s that his creatures feel so feebly. If there is nothing in your life to cry about, if there is nothing in your life to complain about, if there is nothing in your life to yell about, you must be out of touch. We must all feel and know the pain of humanity. The free space that God leads us into is to feel the full spectrum, from great exaltation and joy, to the pain of mourning and dying and suffering. It’s called the Paschal Mystery.

The totally free person is one who can feel all of it and not be afraid of any of it.

from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, p. 209, day 218

Ready for a new day...
(Source: Days of Renewal)

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