There are many paths into the Life of the Spirit: through Bible study and focus on God, through meditation or prayer, to name a few, but to me one of the most powerful is gratitude. Gratitude is an acknowledgement of all we’ve been given by God: LIFE ITSELF! which is an incredible gift, talents and […]
On Mondays I post my blog on my website, Facebook and our church ning site. Last week I began to post some brief thoughts for each weekday after Monday on Facebook at facebook.com/#!/pages/By-the-waters/146585815373488. On Friday I was essentially writing about bringing in the kingdom here on earth. The kingdom of heaven is very much on […]
We have closed out the year 2010, a year of uncertainty and a small economic recovery; we enter 2011 with many questions about how our lives will be in the unknown and untested year ahead. Since the economic crash of 2008, we’ve lived with more uncertainty than in the previous 50 years. So often during […]
Last week I wrote about God being the director and us, the actors on the stage of life. I was not talking about God the puppeteer and us the puppets. The relationship between us and God when we have surrendered our lives is like how the director and actors work together in a stage play: […]
I wish I had a concordance for my own writing. So many times I would like to be able to look up a word and see what I’ve written about it previously. I am making a small step towards that end by organizing and renaming the blog files by topic. By doing this I have […]
According to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary which has a branch in Charlotte, in 2008 there were 39,000 Christian denominations in the world with a new denomination forming every 12 hours. In 1800 there were 500 Christian denominations.[1] To me this is an astounding number. If someone had said that there were 500 today, I’d have been […]
Spirituality can be like going down a fairly straight ladder with your back to the rungs, or like facing the rungs and holding on as you descend. Spirituality, being led by the Spirit of God, and religion, a set of beliefs, rituals and a community drawn together by its commonality, form a continuum that depicts […]
Myths & fairy tales–these are not valued in our post-modern world; they are for children, we adults like the facts, real stories. We no longer believe in Cinderella, Snow White or any of the Greek or Roman myths. We are thinking people, rational, not guided by larger than life stories. We live in the real […]
I’ve been drinking in the ideas in Brother David Steindl-Rast’s book gratefulness, the heart of prayer, reading and then rereading parts of it. I don’t know when I have been so moved and influenced by a book. I feel like the soil in my mind is being plowed under in order to incorporate his ideas. […]
I am still thinking about repentance and religion, but this week I am seeing it from a different angle. To see God at work in this world, we have to look for higher consciousness and love at work, but to do that we have see the world in a totally new way. Instead of seeing […]