Snippets... to Re-arm You in Your Love of God...So You May "Pass it On" to Others...

Osiris and Dionysus Before Jesus??

The stories told about Osiris-Dionysus will no doubt sound familiar. He is the Son of God who is born to a virgin on the 25th of December before three shepherds. He is a prophet who offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites of baptism. He is a wonderworker who raises the dead and miraculously turns water into wine at a marriage ceremony. He is God incarnate who dies at Easter, sometimes through crucifixion, but who resurrects on the third day. He is a savior who offers his followers redemption through partaking in a meal of bread and wine, symbolic of his body and blood. This was a LONG time before Jesus...how could this be?

And from another Godquest reader:

The seer Rudolf Steiner (he wasn't a Christian but became one after he became convinced of the unique importance of Christ through his clairvoyant investigations) wrote that Christ was known in several ancient cultures under different names. In several ancient cultures the priests knew that the spiritual being Christ would one day come to earth as Jesus Christ. Osiris was the name the Egyptians were giving to Christ. Christ was known as 'Ahura Mazdao' in Persia (Zoroaster/Zarathustra), as Manitou among the American Indians, as Vishnu among the Hinduists, etc. God is greater than the names we little humans give him. (I'm not implying that all religions are the same - that would be a superficial mistake - but they aren't entirely separated either - there are often overlaps and there are often reasons why one specific religion is initiated into human culture at a specific time. There is guidance in this). Google 'Rudolf Steiner' if you are interested in a renewal of religion and spirituality....

It's humanly natural to want to defend our personal spiritual tradition. But we can also be respectful of the traditions of others. The death/resurrection motif is very strong within Christianity, yet it may also be found within other traditions as well. God is simple too big, too wonderful, too inclusive, to let any one group have a corner on the "God" market.

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A Hole In the Road

Theres a hole in the road, I didnt know it was there. I fall in. Its confusing, and I am disoriented. I wander around, and after awhile, I climb out.

Theres a hole in the road, I know its there. I go over to it and peer in out of curiosity. I fall in. I wander around and explore. I get lost, and after a considerable amount of time and effort, I find a way out.

Theres a hole in the road. I know its there, I have been there before. I want to go see it but I am afraid I may fall in. I carefully approach the hold from a different angle. I peer in, and by accident I fall in. I dont like being in this hole, its dark, and takes too much of my time. I realize this is not a good place to be. I look immediately for a way to get out, and get out as fast as I can.

Theres a hole in the road. I know its there. I look over to it out of curiosity, but I am wary. I am afraid to fall in, so I cross the road and keep as far away from it as possible. I continue on my way.

I take a different road altogether.

(Sent to me by Alf)

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Untiring Love

(This is a true story that happened in Japan)

In order to renovate the house, someone in Japan tore open the wall. Japanese houses normally have a hollow space between the wooden walls. When tearing down the walls, he found that there was a lizard stuck there because a nail from outside was hammered into one of its feet. He saw this, felt pity, and at the same time he was curious. When he checked the nail, turns out, it was nailed 10 years ago when the house was first built. What happened? The lizard had survived in such a position for 10 years! In a dark wall partition for 10 years without moving, it is impossible and mind boggling. Then he wondered how this lizard survived for 10 years without moving a single step--since its foot was nailed!

So he stopped his work and observed the lizard, what it had been doing, and what and how it has been eating. Later, not knowing from where it came, appeared another lizard, with food in its mouth. Ahh! He was stunned and at the same time, touched deeply. Another lizard had been feeding the stuck one for the past 10 years... Such love, such a beautiful love! Such love happened with this tiny creature... What can love do? It can do wonders! Love can do miracles! Just think about it; one lizard had been feeding the other one untiringly for 10 long years, without giving up hope on its partner. If a small creature like a lizard can love like this... just imagine how we can love if we try!

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Perhaps some of George MacDonald's most direct and powerful words on anguish and faith.

From Weighed and Wanting

This Sunday Hester, in her dejection and sadness...and there came upon her a hopelessness that was heavy, sinking into the very roots of her life, and making existence itself appear a dull and undesirable thing. Hitherto life had seemed a good thing, worth holding up as a heave-offering to him who made it; now she had to learn to take life itself from the hand of God as his will, in faith that he would prove it a good gift. She had to learn that in all drearinesses, of the flesh or spirit, even in those that seem to come of having nothing to do, or from being unable to do what we think we have to do, the refuge is the same--he who is the root and crown of life. Who would receive comfort from anything but love? Who would build on anything but the eternal? Who would lean on that which has in itself no persistence? Even the closest human loves have their only endurance, only hope of perfection, in the eternal perfect love of which they are the rainbow-refractions. I cannot love son or daughter as I would, save loving them as the children of the eternal God, in whom his spirit dwells and works, making them altogether lovely, and me more and more love-capable. That they are mine is not enough ground for enough love--will not serve as operative reason to the height of the love my own soul demands from itself for them. But they are mine because they are his, and he is the demander and enabler of love.

The day was a close, foggy, cold, dreary day. The service at church had not seemed interesting. She laid the blame on herself, and neither on prayers nor lessons nor psalms nor preacher, though in truth some of these might have been better; the heart seemed to have gone out of the world--as if not Baal but God had gone to sleep, and his children had waked before him and found the dismal gray of the world's morning full of discomfortable ghosts. She tried her New Testament; but Jesus too seemed far away--nothing left but the story about him--as if he had forgotten his promise, and was no longer in the world. She tried some of her favourite poems: each and all were infected with the same disease--with common-place nothingness. They seemed all made up--words! words! words! Nothing was left her in the valley but the shadow, and the last weapon, All-prayer. She fell upon her knees and cried to God for life. "My heart is dead within me," she said, and poured out her lack into the hearing of him from whom she had come that she might have himself, and so be. She did not dwell upon her sorrows; even they had sunk and all but vanished in the gray mass of lost interest. What noble nature would be content to be cured of sadness by a dose of medicine?

There is in the heart a conviction that the soul ought to be supreme over the body and its laws; that there must be a faith which conquers the body with all its tyrants; and that no soul is right until it has that faith--until it is in closest, most immediate understanding with its own unchangeable root, God himself. Such faith may not at once remove the physical cause, if such there be, but it will be more potent still; in the presence of both the cause and the effect, its very atmosphere will be a peace tremulous with unborn gladness. This gained, the medicine, the regimen, or the change of air may be resorted to without sense of degradation, with cheerful hope and some indifference. Such is perhaps the final victory of faith. Faith, in such circumstances, must be of the purest, and may be of the strongest. In few other circumstances can it have such an opportunity--can it rise to equal height. It may be its final lesson, and deepest. God is in it just in his seeming to be not in it--that we may choose him in the darkness of the feeling, stretch out the hand to him when we cannot see him, verify him in the vagueness of the dream, call to him in the absence of impulse, obey him in the weakness of the will.

A Lesson From Wolves
Jenny Valent

"Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; and only he who sees takes off his shoes."

I love this quote! Paul declares to us that His attributes and nature can be seen through what has been made, and I learned a lesson from the wolves this weekend... My husband loves wolves, and we watched a show about them on Animal Planet this weekend - I think it was called "Wolves Among Us"...anyhow, the documentary was about a pack of wolves and the husband and wife who raised, released, and lived among them for a few years. Here's the lesson I learned - in every wolf pack, there is an Alpha - he is the pack leader - the first to eat, directing where the pack goes, overseeing the other members and putting them in their places. Usually there is an Alpha male and Alpha female; they mate for life and are the only two who mate and produce offspring in the pack. The rest are helpers in raising the offspring, and are usually themselves either siblings or children of the Alphas. I knew all this previously, but this is what I didn't know... In every wolf pack, there is also the Omega - the lowest member of the pack. It's an awful job, but someone has to do it...he is the last to eat, and is constantly picked on by all the other pack members. They say that, although it is the toughest position in the pack, an Omega will rarely leave, for it is nevertheless preferable to being alone. In fact, the role of Omega is actually vital to preserving the peace of the pack, since he is the scapegoat of tensions and disagreements among the others.

Kind of gives new meaning to the declaration of God: "I am the Alpha AND the Omega"

When "Strength" Becomes a Virtue

God desires not that He may say to them, "Look how mighty I am, and go down upon your knees and worship", for power alone was never yet worthy of prayer; but that He may say thus: "Look, my children, you will never be strong but with my strength. I have no other to give you. And that you can get only by trusting in me. I can not give it you any other way. There is no other way." ... George MacDonald (1824-1905), Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood [1866]

The "Faith-Based" model of Sanctification vs. the "Choice-Based Model"

Yet more and more of me thou dost demand;
My faith and hope in God alone shall stand,
The life of law -- not trust the rain and sun
To draw the golden harvest o'er the land.
George MacDonald, Diary of an Old Soul

"Hell" As Redemption--Not as an End in Itself
George MacDonald

The outer darkness is but the most dreadful form of the consuming fire--the fire without light, the darkness visible, the black flame. God has withdrawn himself, but not lost his hold. His face is turned away, but his hand is laid upon the man still. His heart has ceased to beat into the man's heart, but he keeps him alive by his fire. And that fire will go searching and burning on in him, as in the highest saint who is not yet pure as he is pure.

A chimney above a huge house indicates the greatness of the building below, as the volcanoes of the world tell us how much fire is necessary to keep the old earth warm. For it is not the sun itself that warms the planet. The earth is like the human heart. The great glowing fire below us is God in the heart of the earth, and the great sun is God in the sky, keeping it warm on the other side. Our gladness and pleasure, our trouble when we do wrong, our love for all about us, that is God inside us. All the beautiful things and loveable people, all the lessons we get from life, and whatever comes to us, is God on the outside.

Every life is between two great fires of the love of God, that is, so long as we do not give ourselves up right heartily to him we fear the fire will burn us. And so it does when we go against its flames and not with them, refusing to burn with the same glorious fire with which God is always burning. When we try to put it out, or get away from it, then indeed it burns.

But at length, O God, will you not cast Death and Hell into the lake of fire--even into your own consuming self? Death shall then die everlastingly.

Then indeed will you be all in all. For then our poor brothers and sisters, every one--O God, we trust in you, the Consuming Fire--shall have been burnt clean and brought home. For shall a man be more merciful than God? Shall, of all his glories, his mercy alone not be infinite? Shall a brother love a brother more than a Father loves a son--more than the Brother Christ loves his brother? Would he not die yet again to save one brother more?

As for us, now we will come to thee, our Consuming Fire. And thou wilt not burn us more than we can bear. But thou wilt burn us. And although thou seem to slay us, yet we trust in thee.

Picturing God Through the Mists of a Low Theology
From the Novel, Robert Falconer, by George MacDonald

For now arose within him, not without ultimate good, the evil phantasms of a theology which would explain all God's doings by low conceptions. In such a system, hell is invariably the deepest truth, and the love of God is not so deep as hell. Hence, as foundations must be laid in the deepest, the system is founded in hell, and the first article in the creed that Robert Falconer learned was, "I believe in hell." Practically, I mean, it was so; else how should it be that as often as a thought of relgious duty arose in his mind, it appeared in the form of escaping hell, of fleeing from the wrath to come? For his very nature was hell, being not born in sin and brought forth in iniquity, but born sin and brought forth iniquity. And yet God made him. He must believe that. And he must believe, too, that God was just, awfully just, punishing with fearful pains those who did not go through a certain process of mind which it was utterly impossible they should go through without a help which he would give to some, and withhold from others, the reason of the difference not being such, to say the least of it, as to come within the reach of the persons concerned. And this God they said was love.

A Vision of God's Character

"God is so beautiful, and so patient, and so loving, and so generous that he is the heart and soul and rock of every love and every kindness and every gladness in the world. All the beauty in the world and in the hearts of men, all the painting all the poetry all the music, all the architecture comes out of his heart first. He is so loveable that no heart can know how loveable he is - can know only in part. When the best loves God best, he does not love him nearly as he deserves, or as he will love him in time." --George MacDonald: From a letter to his daughter Mary when she was sixteen.

"Oh, only for so short a while you have loaned us to each other. Because we take form in your act of drawing us, And we take life in your painting us, And we breathe in your singing us. But only for so short a while have you loaned us to each other." ~ Aztec Prayer ~

Prayers for More God Vision

"O most merciful Redeemer, Friend and Brother. May we know thee more clearly, love thee more dearly and follow thee more nearly, day by day"-- Richard deWych (1197-1253)

"Cure me, please, that I may heal others, Lord
(A one-eyed queen amidst my knights forlorn)
Some post-traumatic tides I cannot ford,
Unless your cross (rod/staff) will fuse reborn
(From anguished madness into love supreme)
Thy love-starved soldiers into husbandry,
And primrose gardeners in the tempest's lee."

George MacDonald, Diary of an Old Soul

The Heart-cry of Every Soul for God...

O Living Flame of love...
How gently and how lovingly
Thou wakest in my bosom,
Where alone thou secretly dwellest;
And in Thy sweet breathing
Full of grace and glory,
How tenderly Thou fillest me with Thy love.

St. John of the Cross,
Living Flames of Love

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"Low-sunk life imagines itself weary of life, but it is death, not life, it is weary of. Let us in all the troubles of life remember - -that our one lack is life - - that what we need is more life - - more of the life-making presence in us making us more, and more largely, alive. When most oppressed, when most weary of life, as our unbelief would phrase it, let us bethink ourselves that it is in truth the inroad and presence of death we are weary of. When most inclined to sleep, let us rouse ourselves to live. Of all things let us avoid the false refuge of a weary collapse, a hopeless yielding to things as they are. It is the life in us that is discontented; we need more of what is discontented, not more of the cause of its discontent. Discontent, I repeat, is the life in us that has not enough of itself, is not enough to itself, so calls for more. He has the victory who, in the midst of pain and weakness, cries out, not for death, not for the repose of forgetfulness, but for strength to fight; for more power, more consciousness of being, more God in him..." George MacDonald (excerpt from: ''Life'' as found in: Unspoken Sermons, Second Series

The Irrevocable Call of God

"God lies in wait for us with nothing so much as love, and love is like a fisherman's hook; without it he could never catch a fish, but once the hook is taken the fisherman is sure of the fish. Even though the fish twists hither an yon, still the fisherman is sure of him. So, too, I speak of love; he who is caught by it is held by the strongest of bonds, and yet the stress is pleasant; he who takes this sweet burden upon himself gets further, and comes nearer to what he aims at, than he could by means of any harsh ordinance ever devised by man. Moreover, he can sweetly bear all that happens to him; all that God inflicts he can take cheerfully. Nothing makes you God's own, or God yours, as much as this sweet bond. When one has found this way, he looks for no other. To hang on this hook is to be so completely captured that feet and hands, and mouth and eyes, the heart, and all a man is and has become God's own…Whatever he does, who is caught by this hook, love does it, and love alone…" Meister Eckhart

"So long as we imagine that it is we who have to look for God, we must often lose heart. But it is the other way about; He is looking for us. And so we can afford to recognize that very often we are not looking for God; far from it, we are in full flight from him, in high rebellion against him. And He knows that and has taken it into accouunt. He has followed us into our own darkness; there where we thought finally to escape him, we run straight into his arms. So we do not have to erect a false piety for ourselves, to give us the hope of salvation. Our hope is in his determination to save us, and he will not give in." Simon Tugwell, Prayer

A Noble Daily Goal

"I will center my thoughts on a Higher Power. I will surrender all to this power within me. I will become a soldier for this power, feeling the might of the spiritual army as it exists in my life today. I will allow a wave of spiritual union to connect me through my gratitude, obedience and discipline to this Higher Power. Let me allow this power to lead me through the orders of the day. May the steps I take today strengthen my words and deeds, may I know the message I carry is mine to share, given freely by this power greater than myself." --Anonymous recovering alcoholic

Invocation of the Great Spirit

"Most powerful Holy Spirit, Come down Upon us And subdue us. From heaven, Where the ordinary Is made glorious, And glory seems But ordinary, Bathe us With the brilliance Of your light Like dew."-- Celtic Prayer

Take Joy in Your Weakness

"The true man trusts in a strength which is not his, and which he does not feel, does not even always desire ; believes in a power that seems far from him, which is yet at the root of his fatigue itself and his need of rest --- rest as far from death as is labour. To trust in the strength of God in our weakness; to say, 'I am weak: so let me be : God is strong;' to seek from him who is our life, as the natural, simple cure of all that is amiss with us, power to do, and be, and live, even when we are weary, - - this is the victory that overcometh the world. To believe in God our strength in the face of all seeming denial, to believe in him out of the heart of weakness and unbelief, in spite of numbness and weariness and lethargy; to believe in the wide-awake real, through all the stupefying, enervating, distorting dream; to will to wake, when the very being seems athirst for a godless repose; - - these are the broken steps up to the high fields where repose is but a form of strength, strength but a form of joy, joy but a form of love. 'I am weak,' says the true soul, 'but not so weak that I would not be strong; not so sleepy that I would not see the sun rise; not so lame but that I would walk ! Thanks be to him who perfects strength in weakness, and gives to his beloved while they sleep!'" George MacDonald

Universal Song

"There are songs that can only be learned in the valley. No art can teach them; no rules of voice can make them perfectly sung. Their music is in the heart. They are songs of memory, of personal experience. They bring our their burden from the shadow of the past; they mount on the wings of yesterday. Saint John says that even in heaven there will be a song that can only be fully sung by the sons of earth-the strain of redemption. Doubtless it is a song of triumph, a hymn of victory to the God who made us free. But the sense of triumph must come from the memory of the chain. No angel, no archangel can sing it so sweetly as I can. To sing it as I sing it, they must pass through my exile, and this they cannot do. None can learn it but the children of the cross. And so, my soul, thou art receiving a music lesson from thy Father. Thou art being educated for the choir invisible. There are parts of the symphony that none can take but thee. There are chords too minor for the angels. There may be heights in the symphony that are beyond the scale-heights which angels alone can reach; but there are depths which belong to thee, and can only be touched by thee. Thy Father is training thee for the part the angels cannot sing; and the school is sorrow. I have heard many say that He sends sorrow to prove thee; nay, He sends sorrow to educate thee, to train thee for the choir invisible. In the night He is preparing thy song. In the valley He is tuning thy voice. In the cloud he is deepening thy chords. In the rain He is sweetening thy melody. In the cold He is molding thy expression. In the transition from hope to fear He is perfecting thy lights. Despise not thy school of sorrow, O my soul; it will give thee a unique part in the universal song".--. George Matheson

A Praise to the God of All People:

"Even though the day be laden and my task dreary and my strength small, a song keeps singing in my heart. For I know that I am thine, I am part of thee. Thou art kin to me, and all my times are in Thy hand."--Alistair Maclean

A Human Heart-Cry: "Seven times a day, as I work upon this hungry farm, I say to Thee, 'Lord why am I here? What is there here to stir my gifts to growth? What great thing can I do for others- I who am captive to this dreary toil?'"

A Reply From the God of All People: "And seven times a day Thou answerest, 'I cannot do without thee. Once did My Son live thy life, and by His faithfulness did show My mind, My kindness, and My truth to men. But now He is come to My side, and thou must take His place.'"--From Hebridean Alters

"People Are Good At Heart", by Anne Frank.

"It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again. In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out."--Anne Frank. The Diary of a Young Girl. Trans. B.M. Mooyaart-Doubleday. New York: Pocket Books, 1952, p. 233.

A True Civil War Love Letter

July 14, 1861 Camp Clark, Washington

My very dear Sarah:

"The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days-perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more . . . I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans on the triumph of the Government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution. And I am willing-perfectly willing-to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt . . . Sarah my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me unresistibly on with all these chains to the battle field. The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them for so long. And hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our sons grown up to honorable manhood, around us. I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me-perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar, that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battle field, it will whisper your name. Forgive my many faults and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have often times been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness . . . But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the gladdest days and in the darkest nights . . . always, always, and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath, as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by. Sarah do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again . . ".

Sullivan Ballou was killed a week later at the first Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861.

Is there no balm in Gilead?

"What do we do in the face of darkness and despair? Cry out, rage, beat the breast, slam doors, let the anger be heard and the pain sing songs of lament. Moan. Grieve. Do not let the justified wrath and incomprehensible fury overcome you. Weep and cry. Curse and sob. Live the anger rather than deny or diminish or renounce it. Let it live. Anger is the last hiding place of our fears. And when anger is denied, it returns to haunt and harass us as terrors that, in the end, destroy us. The fears that erupt out of unlived anger are what foster retaliation and revenge. Surely justice and the punishment of those who have broken our bodies and hearts will happen. But more bloodshed and warfare will not bring back one of those thousands of people who did nothing more than go to work or step into an airplane that fateful day. The prophet asks the question: Is there a balm in Gilead? Like us, he asks not where but if wounds can heal and the breakage be repaired. Even in scripture, there is no definitive, satisfying answer. But it was the writer of the great spiritual who turned such a question into a resounding YES. Out of the darkest chapters of our nation's annals of slavery, the victims refused to let their anger consume them in fear but rather, out of that experience, forged a path toward healing. There is a balm in Gilead."-- Based on Jeremiah 8:22, from Meditations For A Time of Crisis, Forward Movement Publications

A Universal Meaning of the Cross of Christ

Paul saw deeply into the meaning of the cross. It represented to him the greatest revelation yet of the heart of God. Paul did not consider Christ a martyr, as if Jesus were saying, "See? Look what you made me do because of your sin," hence, launching a global guilt trip for all time. Nor did Paul view the cross as the lightening rod of God's wrath, as if it were a means of "calming God down." Paul saw this in a much deeper way. Among other things, the cross helps us to see our "dependent" condition. Healthy dependence exists within healthy community. Also, it shows God's heart toward us and his harmless character. God "owns" his own truth; that is, he does not merely intellectualize about the great human need for redemption. He can fully empathize with us because God has "been here" among us. He was willing to learn through experience that he could better serve us with "first hand" and not "second hand" religion. The Cross of Christ is a blessing for all. It is efficacious for all, regardless of one's belief in it, or acceptance of, it. It requires nothing, not even "belief" for it to be a blessing. It is the means by which the Great Spirit has chosen to restore all the living to their place in the family of God. All are finally blessed and benefited apart from their knowledge or acceptance of it. The final, universal understanding of this divine action will eventually elicit love from all in the human family, but only in "due time" (1 Tim. 2:6), or as the writer of Ecclesiastes put it: God "has made everything beautiful in its time" (Eccl. 3:11).

The Only Way to Moral Purity

"That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new… Take me to You, imprison me, for Except you enthrall me, never shall I be free, Nor ever chaste, except You ravish me. --Batter My Heart, John Donne

How God Sees Me

"God doesn't see me the way I do…I look all the time into a distorted mirror that exaggerates some features and makes others disappear. God sees a true picture of me with all my faults and limitations, but more than this He sees a picture of all the possibilities and potential I hold…Sometimes God gives us glimpses of that picture to encourage us and spur us on. For me it is a long process, but in the end it is all about becoming God's picture of me."--Amy Carmichael

This is My Song
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.

Oh God of all the nations:

This is my home, the country where my heart is; here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine; but other hearts in other lands are beating with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine. My country's skies are bluer than the ocean, and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine; but other lands have sunlight too, and clover, and skies are everywhere as blue as mine. O hear my song, thou God of all the nations, a song of peace for their land and for mine. © From the hymn "This is My Song" by Lloyd Stone; Music "Finlandia" by Jean Sibelius.

Have You Touched The Face of God?
Chloe Z. Fox

Have you touched the face of God today,
Have you closed your eyes and searched?
Have you whispered to the unseen ears,
To the One who loved you first?
Have you felt the rain fall on your cheeks,
Has the wind blown through your hair?
Have you felt your heart still beating,
When the world just doesn't care?
Have you watched a baby laugh and smile, at what you cannot see?
Have you listened to the tiny voice, that whispers, "Come to me."
Have you watched the moon rise o'er the hills,
Have you heard the night owl cry?
Have you watched the sun sink slowly down,
'til it sleeps beyond the sky?
Have you watched the dawn break o'er the crest, of the never ending sea?
Have you reached your hand, to touch the clouds, have you listened to the trees? Have you taken time, to stop and see, when all around you dims?
Have you looked beyond the flesh and blood, have you grasped the inner Him? Have you taken time, to listen close, when all around you sings?
Have you looked for He who made you, have you gazed upon your King?
Have you touched the face of God today, have you searched your heart to see?
If the face of God is what they'll find, when they look at you and me?