You... were created to be loved. So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around...

Living unloved is like clipping a bird's wing and removing its ability to fly...

A bird is not defined by being grounded but by his ability to fly.

Remember this, humans are defined not by their limitations, but by the intentions I have for them; not by what they seem to be, but by everything it means to be created in my image.

Love is NOT the limitation; love is the flying.

I AM love.

— William P. Young (The Shack)

Life is not a spectator sport; win, lose or draw, the game is in progress whether we want it to be or not. So go ahead, argue with the refs, change the rules, cheat a little, take a break and tend to your wounds. But play hard, play fast, play loose and free; play as if there's no tomorrow... It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game, right?

-Meredith from Grey's Anatomy Season 1

exerpt from "Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road" by Donald Miller

And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?

It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain.

define GRACE

A man in my Bible study last night asked for the definition of grace.
The priest's answer was good, of course, but this speaks to me more...

Grace is what God gives us when we don't deserve and Mercy is when God doesn't give us what we do deserve

Irish Blessings and Sayings for St. Patrick's Day

There are two types of people in the world, those who are Irish and those who wish they were.

May your blessings outnumber
The shamrocks that grow,
And may trouble avoid you
Wherever you go.

 May the best day of your past
Be the worst day of your future.





 

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Every day gives you an opportunity to improve.
With every run, you can try to be better.
Not just a better runner, but a better person.

John "The Penguin" Bingham, The Courage to Start

retweet from TWLOHA

"If one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again."

– Flavia Weedn

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
It may be incomplete,
but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.We may never see the end results, but that is the difference
between the master builder and the worker.We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.We are prophets of a future not our own.This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
 We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation
in realizing that. This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.

Amen.

"I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.

Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them.

And the point is to live everything.

Live the questions now.

Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."
— Rainer Maria Rilke