Suffering, failure, loneliness, sorrow, discouragement,
and death will be part of your journey,
but the Kingdom of God will conquer all these horrors.
No evil can resist grace forever.
Brennan Mannin
(my favorite place on earth—the old Methodist Church in Cades Cove/
The Great Smokey Mts National Park / Julie Cook / 2021)
Have you ever felt that switch flip?
You know the one…
The switch which flips you from upside down to right side up?
As in all of a sudden, there is some sort of vast difference
between now and then.
Something new is now residing in your soul while the old has been
blessedly removed.
As an unseen presence now lifts you ever upward.
One day you’re one way…and then suddenly, the very next day,
you’re something else entirely.
You’re simply not the same person today as you were yesterday.
And thank God you’re not.
It is that odd juxtaposition of a before and an after sort of flip of the switch.
A profound difference begins to resonate within your inner core.
As in…there was first angst and emptiness…and then next there
grew a blessed peace and a sense of being sweetly content.
A huge difference happening all within a single 1 minute.
Marvelously, actually miraculously, you feel a peace that had been
nonexistent just one minute prior.
This new comforting sense of peace that, had been so elusive for such a long time–
longer than you could recall, now wraps you in a soothing embrace.
And so now you actually find yourself finally being able to exhale.
Being able to exhale the heaviness of forever,
while then breathing in a fresh new air of life.
The body goes weak.
The soul has been broken.
And now…we are the better for it…
as I think we call that loving Grace…
Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul,
the golden link which binds us to duty and truth,
the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life,
and is prophetic of eternal good.
Petrarch
God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed,
courage to change the things which should be changed and the wisdom
to distinguish the one from the other.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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