Joy Comes in the Morning

Iced coffee.

Clean house.

Grocery shopping sans crowds.

"Singers and Standards" on pandora. 

Peaceful feelings of trust and hope in His future for me.

Blissful Friday.  

"Where hope would otherwise become hopelessness, it becomes faith."  ~Robert Brault

Waiting for the Splendor...

“The basic premise of biblical trust is the conviction that God wants us to grow, to unfold, and to experience fullness of life. However, this kind of trust is acquired only gradually and most often through a series of crises and trials.

Through the indescribable anguish on Mount Moriah with his son Isaac, Abraham learned that the God who had called him to hope against hope was eminently reliable and that the only thing expected of him was unconditional trust. The great old man models the essence of trust in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures: to be convinced of the reliability of God.

The story of salvation-history indicates that without exception trust must be purified in the crucible of trial. David, the most beloved figure of Jewish history, was no stranger to terror, loneliness, failure, and even sinister plots to destroy him; yet he ravished the heart of God with his unwavering trust.

Behold the splendor of the human heart that trusts that it is loved.”

~ Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust

The Friend Who Can...

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. 

 ~Henri Nouwen