life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the category “time”
Why walking in faith is our calling
I believe God wants you to know…
…that everything is falling together perfectly, even
though it looks as if some things are falling apart.
Trust in the process you are now experiencing. Life
is on your side. It is showing that to you now, though
you may not be able to see it clearly at this time.
You have made your wishes and dreams known to
God. Now comes the time for faith. Faith that all
is right, right now. Tomorrow will reveal itself exactly
as it should.
– Neale Donald Walsh
http://www.nealedonaldwalsch.com/index.php?p=Home
The Power of Union
Entering into Partnership
In partnership and relationship we harness the power of union.
The purpose of partnership is to create something greater than we can create alone. Not because of any deficiency or incompleteness in us, but because each of us is unique, with our own talents and abilities, and in partnership we increase the efforts and talents available for creating something meaningful together. All 
partnerships, whether romantic, creative, or professionally-based, can be powerful relationships for personal growth. In partnership we harness the power of union.
It is important to choose our partnerships consciously. Sometimes forged quickly during times of need, we may find ourselves rushing into unions with perhaps not the clearest intentions. Partnerships created from those starting point might serve our immediate needs, but the repercussions of a union so quickly fostered without much thought can be difficult to recover from. Granted, there is something to learn from every relationship, but looking to another to fix or complete us can turn a partnership into a dependent bond. If we can stay clear about what we want and what we need in a partnership, while staying grounded and remembering that we are our own source of happiness and fulfillment, we can create partnerships that support and enhance the best of who we are.
Everyone in our lives is a mirror reflecting back the parts we love and dislike about ourselves. If we have the courage to recognize our reflections in each other, we can grow through our partnerships. A partnership that offers both acceptance of who we are and an opportunity for personal transformation can be fertile ground for growing a healthy, lasting union. When we find this kind of partnership, we are more likely to want to 
keep it, invest in it, and nurture it. Life is a collaborative effort. Much of what we do can be enhanced through partnership. Together we are stronger because our personal power is multiplied by two. Through partnership we experience the joys of working, living, and loving together.
www.dailyom.com
Illusion Newsletter found at
www.songsfromthevalley.com
I Surrender All
When we pray for God our shepherd to lead us, we usually have green pastures in mind. But when Peter and James healed a paralytic, preached to the crowd, and testified to the authorities who arrested them, they didn’t do this out of their own personal desire; they did it because God led them to. God didn’t exactly lead them beside still waters.
Our lives are richest in blessing, peace and vibrancy when we live not according to our own impulses, but in harmony with God’s grace. Whether it is toward peaceful rest or challenging action, God leads us from within, guiding, nudging, sometimes compelling us, and leads us from without, alluring, beckoning, pleading, needing us. We much prefer going our own way, of course―so we do what we can to ignore God’s shepherding. One way is to believe that God is on our side, so that we don’t feel the need to listen to God. We already know. Another way is to limit our faith to ideas, so that we can “believe” without actually acting. Another escape is to be busy, so that we believe we can’t afford to slow down as much as is needed to listen to God. Many believers are so sure and busy that if God really is a shepherd, they’re atheists.
You will not likely know God’s will for your life by pushing hard. You’re more likely to find out by listening for the voice of your shepherd and following. Whether you feel the need to stand up and act or lie down and rest, let God shepherd you. Let the Spirit within you and in others speak to you. Let God’s “rod and staff” gently lead you. Rather than deciding where you ought to be, discern where your shepherd is, and be there. Renounce all your ideas of where God ought to lead you. Let the shepherd decide. In stillness, listen. In openness, wait to hear. In humble trust, resolve to follow the shepherd before you know where he’s going.
Don’t resist when the shepherd leads you either to pastures greener than you think you deserve or valleys darker than you think you can handle. If you are with your shepherd, you are in the right place. You are in “the house of the Lord.” Listen, trust and follow. And don’t worry about saving the world. That’s God’s job. Neither shrink back in despair nor run ahead on your own; just stay with the shepherd. Just show up and take your place in the flock, where God needs you. Surely goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life.
_____________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Used with permission
Love Conquers All
Sonnet 116:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
by William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
Public domain
Get great poetry daily from The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/
Defining Love
Posted Friday, April 23, 2012 by Women of Faith
Love is difficult to define. It is one of those intangibles—something we cannot touch, taste, see, hear, or smell. Still, we do try. The dictionary defines love as an intense emotional attachment. For many of us, love is just that—a feeling we have—and feelings can be very hard to put into words. It doesn’t simplify matters to define love by saying that God is love, because we can’t really define Him either. But think about it for a minute. God says, “I am God. I am love. These are My people and I love them. How have I behaved towards those I love? See, this is what love expects, how love reacts, what love is willing to do. This is love.” It may not help us to slap a nice, tidy definition on love, but it does help us to understand what love is supposed to look like.
This week, stretch your mind and heart a bit as you try to comprehend the bigness of God’s love for you. Do you have a view of the ocean where you live? God’s love is much more vast and deep! Do you have mountains to admire? God’s love is higher than they are! Do you live in wide open places—”big sky country”? God’s love stretches beyond those horizons! Are you blessed with a view of the night sky, with all its stars? The love of God for you is higher even than these! Take comfort and confidence in the unchanging faithfulness of God’s love. Give thanks for the gentleness of God’s love. Pray that you will be able to receive God’s love, for that is just the thing your heart needs today.
Excerpted from Receiving God’s Love. Copyright 2005 Thomas Nelson, Inc. Published by Thomas Nelson.
http://www.womenoffaith.com/
We are the body – use all your gifts!!!
Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. – I Peter 4:10 NIV
life: acoustic & amplified 