Character and Conduct – 14 April – Temper
CONSIDER how much more often you suffer from your anger and grief, than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved.
CONSIDER how much more often you suffer from your anger and grief, than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved.
[Fortitude] may be exercised chiefly in doing very little things, whose whole value lies in this, that, if one did not hope in God, one would not do them:
John reminds us with his final few verses, in the culmination of his telling of the Good News, that the Gospel is not a case of ‘seeing is believing’ but, instead, in the words of our Beloved it is a case of ‘believing is not seeing’:
surrounded by the dead and in fear of being killed themselves that they heard the news of the hope that was born in a cave in Bethlehem and escaped from a tomb in Jerusalem.
To be able to provide a home for another is a precious gift, to know that our Beloved provides a home for us makes all our challenges, whether they involve squatting bishops or not, melt away.
This was not the only time since I have been in Holy Orders I have been threatened with a fire arm but it is the one when I prayed the deepest and hardest…
Often, when presented with the challenges brought to us by the anawim, the little poor ones, of God we hesitate to help. We can be tempted to question their motives in the middle of their distress. How many times have the words, ‘But do they really need it’ been spoken about those who queue for food and other help outside churches?
Fierce weather has a way of shaking the fidgets out of my system. Not just the cobwebs of life but the things that I’ve been clinging on to for no good reason other than they are mine and nobody else’s; and such things always weigh me down instead of setting me free.
Vengeance is the ultimate form of silliness. It accomplishes nothing because it cannot restore anything.
With our petty arguments over whether we were being ‘Bouncy or Coffy’ or even ‘Boffy’ how ever will those around us be able to see we are Christians by the way we love one another?