rocking my world

Just listen.

becoming empty

God cannot fill what is full. He can fill only emptiness -- deep poverty -- and your "Yes" is the beginning of being or becoming empty. It is not how much we really "have" to give -- but how empty we are -- so that we can receive fully in our life and let Him live His life in us.

Mother Teresa
qtd. from a letter in Come Be My Light

quietness & rest

There are other souls who labour and weary themselves to a piteous extent, and yet go backward, seeking profit in that which is not profitable, but is rather a hindrance; and there are still others who, by remaining at rest and in quietness, continue to make great progress.

St John of the Cross ~ The Ascent of Mount Carmel

blossoms photo by kirsten.michelle

point vierge: being before doing

From this weekend's sermon:
The biblical call of what we do is always superseded by the challenge of who we are.

Other notes:
Be like Jesus.

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. [Psalm 103:8]

Unless the Lord builds the house,
its builders labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the watchmen stand guard in vain.
In vain you rise early and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat--
for he grants sleep to those he loves.
[Psalm 127:1-2]

Maybe that's why I feel as though not much is going on. There's not a whole lot of doing as I find myself in the midst of my own point vierge, waiting in a place that is the cusp between sleeping and waking, between darkness and light. It is a threshold, a doorway between who I was and who God has designed me to be.

Doing is not the point. Perhaps right now, obedience means sitting still. Waiting.

And so I will sit and wait, hands open: surrendering the old, ready to receive the new.

darkness & dawn photo by kirsten.michelle