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"Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul." *-- Psalm 143:8 (ESV)*
"Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. Jesus himself entered into this furnace. There he was tempted with the three compulsions of the world: to be relevant ('turn stones into loaves'), to be spectacular ('throw yourself down'), and to be powerful ('I will give you all these kingdoms'). There he affirmed God as the only source of his identity."
*-- Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart*
"The general human problem in relation to what God is doing is that we have something we are going to do, and we want God to help us do it. But that is not the way things work in the Kingdom. The way things work in the Kingdom is that we find out what God is doing, and we get in on it. We find out where God is at work, and we join him."
*-- Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy*
"When the Spirit comes, he sheds abroad the grace of adoption; the darkness is dispelled, and the grayness of sin is cleared away. He brings the light of knowledge. As when the sun appears, the darkness cannot remain, so the coming of the Spirit drives out everything that is dark. The soul that receives the Spirit is enlightened. Where the Spirit is, there is the light of understanding. The soul that before was heavy and dull is made bright and clear, and the mind that was wrapped in fog is made to shine with the rays of truth. The Spirit is called light because he makes men radiant, who before were dark, by giving them understanding."
*-- Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit*
"The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther's, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time -- death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call."
*-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship*
What would change about this day if your first conscious act were to lift up your soul -- not your plans, not your worries, but your very self -- before anything else has its say?
"You are right to expect that a philosopher should offer consolation for your troubles. What else would he be good for? Just as a doctor is useless if he cannot cure the sick, so a philosopher is useless if he cannot console the afflicted. But do not suppose that the wise man is without grief. It is one thing to be overcome by grief, and another to be moved by it. The wise man will feel the stings of pain, the burning of fever, the lash of all misfortunes -- but he will not yield to them. He will bear them in such a way that he remains master of himself, and even in suffering finds the occasion for virtue."
*-- Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 78*
St Clair, MI -- Partly cloudy 67°F, Humidity 88%, Wind →13mph