We Grope for the Wall

Isaiah 59

9 Therefore justice is far from us,
and righteousness does not overtake us;
we hope for light, and behold, darkness,
and for brightness, but we walk in gloom.
10 We grope for the wall like the blind;
we grope like those who have no eyes;
we stumble at noon as in the twilight,
among those in full vigor we are like dead men.
11 We all growl like bears;
we moan and moan like doves;
we hope for justice, but there is none;
for salvation, but it is far from us.
12 For our transgressions are multiplied before you,
and our sins testify against us;
for our transgressions are with us,
and we know our iniquities:
13 transgressing, and denying the Lord,
and turning back from following our God,
speaking oppression and revolt,
conceiving and uttering from the heart lying words.
14 Justice is turned back,
and righteousness stands far away;
for truth has stumbled in the public squares,
and uprightness cannot enter.
15 Truth is lacking,
and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.

Charles de Foucauld Quote Two

To serve others, I need gentleness, humility, abjection, and charity.  In every sick person I should see, not a human being, but Jesus, and so should show him respect, love, compassion, joy, and gratitude at being able to serve him, zeal and gentleness.  I should serve the sick as I do the poor, making myself do the lowliest services for them all, as Jesus washed the apostles’ feet.  I must tolerate the presence of evil people, as long as their wickedness is not corrupting others — as Jesus tolerated Judas.

Charles de Foucauld Quote

“Live as though you were going to have to die as a martyr today. The more we lack in this world, the more surely we discover the best thing the earth has to offer us: the cross. The more firmly we embrace the cross, the more closely we are bound to Jesus, our Beloved, who is made fast to it.”

Thought 3

“How to study the Bible is such a hard thing to explain. I feel like at times I am just staring at words on a page. But other times it’s like something opens up and I’m finally able to connect. I think a ton of it has to do with how I’m approaching the Scriptures. Am i putting myself above the scriptures? Or am I putting myself under them? Am I treating them like a recipe or like a river? Am using it to show God how He has screwed up this time? Or am I opening them to listen to God voice?”

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O GOD OF TRUTH, I thank thee for the holy Scriptures, their precepts, promises, directions, light.  In them may I learn more of Christ, be enabled to retain his truth and have grace to follow it.  Help me to lift up the gates of my soul that he may come in and show me himself when I search the Scriptures, for I have lines to fathom its depths, no wings to soar to its heights.  By his aid may I be enabled to explore all its truths, love them with all my heart, embrace them with all my power, engraft them into my life.  Bless to my soul all grains of truth garnered by thy Word; may they take deep root, be refreshed by heavenly dew, be ripened by heavenly rays, be harvested to my joy and thy praise.  Help me to gain profit by what I read, as trasure beyond all treasure, a fountain which can replenish my dry heart, its waters flowing through me as a perennial river on-dawn by thy Holy Spirit.  Enable me to distil from its pages faithful prayer that grasps the arm of thy omnipotence, achieves wonder, obtains blessings, and draws down streams of mercy.  From it show me how my words have often been unfaithful to thee, injurious to my fellow-men, empty of grace, fully of folly, dishonouring to my calling.  Then write thy own words upon my heart and inscribe them on my lips; So shall all glory be to thee in my reading of thy Word!

–A Prayer from “The Valley of Vision”

Thought 2

If it’s from fear, it’s not love. If it’s from fear, it’s not freedom.

Thought 1

The only way we will ever change the world is if the practice of Christianity is valued more than, or at least equal to the instruction.

Chesterton Quote

A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice.

He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.

GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Chapter VI. THE PARADOXES OF CHRISTIANITY