Invaded

On the edge of war, one foot already in,

I no longer pray for peace:
I pray for miracles.

I pray that stone hearts will turn
to tenderheartedness,
and evil intentions will turn
to mercifulness, …

I pray that all the “God talk”
will take bones,
and stand up and shed
its cloak of faithlessness,
and walk again in its powerful truth….

I no longer pray for peace:
I pray for miracles. ~ Ann Weems

How far do your prayers go?

Fulfillment

“And blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord. And Mary said, My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…” Luke 1:45-46

How do you respond in soul and spirit?

It happened once

Remembering that it happened once,
We cannot turn away the thought,
As we go out, cold, to our barns
Toward the long night’s end, that we
Ourselves are living in the world
It happened in when it first happened… ~ Wendell Berry

Where do your thoughts turn?

At the edges

“At the edges of our borders you wait, and at the territorial lines you linger, because the place where we touch beyond our boundaries is where you take your delight.

And when we learn to read the landscape of our fears, and when we come to know the terrain of every sorrow, then will we turn our fences into bridges and our borders into paths of peace.“ ~ Jan Richardson, Night Visions

What edge of yours is God waiting at?

Advent Peace

It is the Glad Season.
Thunder ebbs to silence and lightning sleeps quietly in the corner.
Flood waters recede into memory.
Snow becomes a yielding cushion to aid us
As we make our way to higher ground. ~ Maya Angelou, Amazing peace

Ultimately

Ultimately we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world. ~ Etty Hillesum

How do you reflect peace?