A few lovely thoughts

“We find rest in those we love, and we provide a
resting place for those who love us.”
St. Bernard of Clairvaux

(Glendalough / Co. Wicklow / Julie Cook 2015)

“And I saw that truly nothing happens by accident or luck,
but everything by God’s wise providence …
for matters that have been in God’s foreseeing wisdom,
since before time began, befall us suddenly,
all unawares; and so in our blindness and ignorance we say
that this is accident or luck,
but to our Lord God it is not so.”
St. Julian of Norwich

Time is too slow for those who wait,
too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve,
too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.
Henry Van Dyke

Faith makes all things possible…
love makes all things easy.
Dwight L. Moody

“Love,” said Meister Eckhart, “is the will to, the intention.”
By that definition,
it is possible to obey the divine command to love our neighbor.
We may not in a thousand years be able to feel a surge of emotion
toward certain “neighbors,”
but we can go before God and solemnly will to love them,
and the love will come.
By prayer and an application of the inworking power of God,
we may set our faces to will the good of our neighbor and
not his evil all the days of our lives, and that is love.
The emotion may follow,
or there may be no appreciable change in our feelings toward him,
but the intention is what matters.
We will his peace and prosperity and put ourselves at his disposal
to help him in every way possible, even to the laying down of
our lives for his sake. Love, then,
is a principle of good will and is to a large extent under our control.
That it can be fanned into a blazing fire is not denied here.
Certainly God’s love for us has a mighty charge of feeling in it,
but beneath it all is a set principle that wills our peace.
Probably the love of God for mankind was never more beautifully
stated than by the angel at the birth of Christ:
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to man on
whom his favor rests.”
A. W. Tozer
Agape

one child is home and one child is now well

Children learn more from what you are, than what you teach.
W.E.B. Du Bois

(donning part of her brother’s soon to be halloween costume, the Mayor returns home)

(The sheriff intent on his duties)

I believe that if an angel were to wing his way from earth up to Heaven,
and were to say that there was one poor, ragged boy, without father or mother,
with no one to care for him and teach him the way of life;
and if God were to ask who among them were willing to come down to
this earth and live here for fifty years and lead that one to Jesus Christ,
every angel in Heaven would volunteer to go.
Even Gabriel, who stands in the presence of the Almighty,
would say, “Let me leave my high and lofty position,
and let me have the luxury of leading one soul to Jesus Christ.”
There is no greater honour than to be the instrument in God’s hands of
leading one person out of the kingdom of Satan into the glorious
light of Heaven.
Dwight L. Moody