…‘I am so angry with your inability to understand that what you are doing angers me and steps on everything I cherish that I won’t even tell you what it is I am upset about so that you can’t begin to fix what is wrong!’ Not quite what is meant by Christian charity…
Following our own path is difficult enough without offering advice (criticism?) of how others answer the call of God.
I remain ashamed of the many times I chose not to do what was ‘right’ because I wanted to do what was ‘popular’…
…the problem is that the Gospel is indeed a ‘mere’ message – a simple word. God loves us, what are we to do about it?
We can add nothing to this love, for that would simply diminish its perfection.
Pride in the fact that God has been gracious to us is nonsensical, arrogant, futile, and destructive of the Good News.
Yes, religious people must allow their faith to add salt to public life… but public politics is not the ground whereon a personal faith can be prosecuted. When that happens we all too often end up, to Screwtape’s glee and delight, using our faith as a convenience for our own personal preference instead of building the Realm of God.
Silence, lived and felt well, is not emptiness; it is the musical accompaniment to the whispers of God’s love.
…. I have learnt that when I give myself over to being ‘His’ I finally discover what it is to be ‘me’.
The lesson I need to learn, and perhaps a few other readers who like me allow themselves to be hag-ridden by their vocations, is the one about to whom my time and days really belongs…
Little by little, act of kindness by act of kindness, teardrop by teardrop, we, often seen as the powerless, have the possibility and the power to transform rejection, prejudice and judgment into ‘Something Beautiful for God’
Suffolk Vicar 