Where Our Love Must Start October 26, 2011

“It is easy to love the people far away.

It is not always easy to love those close to us.

It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home.

Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start.“

Mother Teresa

As i was thinking about what i wanted to share with you this week, this saying from Mother Teresa struck me!

Isn’t this saying so true!

In my own experience, sometimes it is far easier to have compassion, concern, and acceptance

for the random stranger or acquaintance,

than it is to have those same concerns for those i live with day in and day out.

Why is that?

Why is it that we close our hearts to those we are closest too and open them wide for the stranger?

Could it possibly be that we fail to see God in those close to us?

We are only able to see their failings and weaknesses.

Have you stopped to acknowledge the beauty in your roommate, family, friend, etc.?

Can you see God in that person who is driving you nuts right now?

That is where true love for another begins.

Attend to your heart! October 19, 2011

“Listen and attend with the ear of your heart.”

– St. Benedict of Nursia

Our hearts are so important to our relationship with God.

Now, i don’t mean our physical heart, i mean our spiritual heart.

Have you attended to your heart lately?

Have you listened to what it wants to say lately?

We use our heads a lot.

We study.

We read.

We form opinions.

We reason things through.

But, we have to also listen to our hearts.

What am i feeling?

what do i long for?

What is my passion?

When our heart and head come together,

we rest in God’s will!

Listen with the ear of your heart today.

You may just hear God speaking to you!

Failure or Success? October 4, 2011

 

My dad sent me this recently and i thought i would share it with all of you.

“To succeed you must be willing to fail.  There is no cookie-cutter solutions in life.

There’s no silver bullet, no magic button you can press that would fix every problem.

The reality is there is no way you can be certain that you will get everything right.

The only way you can succeed is by making the effort with the knowledge that failure is possible.

Each failure is just me getting closer to success.

Thomas Edison needed 1,000 attempts to create a light bulb.

We learn more from our failures than our success.”

Sometimes in the discernment process we are looking for the solution to our question.

We want to get it right the first time.  We are afraid of making the wrong decision.

The reality is if we are trying to find and follow God’s will, even if take a few detours to our final destination,

we will have only grown closer to God and come to a better understanding of ourselves.

Don’t let your fear prevent you from making a decision for God.