I have a secret that I need to tell: I love watching sheep. They are very funny animals. The way they run around in their pen always brings a smile to my face.
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According to an ancient legend, a king who had no son to succeed him posted a notice inviting young men to come and apply for adoption into his family. The two qualifications were love of God and love of neighbor.
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For the past several weeks, I have been under an overwhelming amount of stress. Most of this was work-related: working long hours with short deadlines. Throw in several church-related activities and tasks on top of that, and I was running on non-stop overdrive.
In the midst of all of this, we had a family emergency at the hospital. Upon driving to the hospital one day, I noticed that I was having difficulty breathing and felt some odd pains in my chest that I had never felt before. I thought that I was having a heart attack. I immediately broke into prayer asking God to help calm me down. At that very moment, a song came on the radio – and I heard these lyrics:
Every anxious thought that steals my breath,
It’s a heavy weight upon my chest.
As I lie awake and wonder what the future will hold,
Help me to remember that You’re in control.
You’re my courage when I worry in the dead of night.
You’re my strength ’cause I’m not strong enough to win this fight.
You are greater than the battle raging in my mind;
I will trust You, Lord, I will fear no more.
As soon as these words touched my ears, I felt the power of God within me and I began to realize that I could not handle all of this weight on my own. I suddenly felt a calmness come over me and began to breathe normal again.
In our first reading, Queen Esther, filled with anguish, breaks into prayer and realizes that there is no one else who can provide her with the help she needs other than her Lord and Savior.
Every now and then, you and I need a little reminder that we need to turn to God for help. We cannot handle our stress alone but need to rely on the one who can help us carry our load.
During this Lenten season, let us get into the habit of turning to our Father in prayer. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Lord, turn our mourning into gladness and our sorrows into wholeness. Praise be to God, now and forever. Amen.
A sloth is a strange looking animal, isn’t it? Whenever I look at a sloth, I say to myself, “I am sure glad that I am not a sloth!”
Who am I to say that a sloth isn’t thinking the same thing about me? A sloth might be glad that it’s not a human being. I guess what you think of others depends on who or what you are. But since I am a human and not a sloth, I think sloths are kind of weird looking.
A sloth has almost no tail and no ears, a short snout, and only has two or three toes, depending on the species. And sloths are slow moving animals that live in trees. But by far the strangest thing about the sloth is that it is an upside-down animal. If you want to look at a sloth straight in the eye, you have to turn your head upside down. Sloths live upside down. They eat upside down, and they spend their whole lives living upside down in trees.
I don’t know about you, but I would certainly not want to live that way. I would never want to walk upside down, eat upside down or even sleep upside down. It just sounds uncomfortable.
Yet, strangely enough, this is what many people do. They live upside down. Not really, of course. They don’t walk on their hands or eat hanging upside down from the kitchen ceiling. But they live upside down in another way. They don’t live the way that Jesus wants them to live.
Jesus says that we must seek God first. He says that we must make God number one in our life and ourselves number two. He says that when we do that, we’re living right side up. But many of us do the opposite. We make ourselves number one and God number two. That’s turning Jesus’ words on their head. That’s living like a sloth.
How can we make sure that we are living right side up? The best way is to live every day, with Christ’s help, in the way he has shown us: by loving our neighbor, helping one another, and spreading the Gospel by the way we live our lives. If we can do that on a day to day basis, the future will take care of itself and there will be no need to worry.
Ah, summertime. A time of rest, relaxation, and recreation; a time of sunshine, warm breezes, high humidity and mosquito’s. Summer is a great time to remove oneself from the ordinary routines of life and rediscover that one actually has a life. As students in school, we called this summer vacation. As adults, we call this a much-needed break from reality. Read More
I don’t know how it is where you call home, but here in the greater Chicagoland area, it is COLD!!! Seriously, it is extremely cold with wind chills dancing below zero. And on top of that, it is snowing. Yes, it’s wintertime here in Illinois. But let me make something perfectly clear: I am not complaining. Compared to what is happening on the East Coast, we here in the Midwest have nothing to complain about. But there’s simply no denying the fact: it’s cold outside!
But what about the temperature on the inside? Are we cold-as-ice or feverishly-warm? Read More
Does anyone have a need in their life? I think most of us have several important needs. I would even say that most people have one or more major needs in their lives and some may not see how their need can be met. Some people are looking at devastating family problems. Some are experiencing financial difficulty. Some are looking at a problem with a child. Some look at their lives and realize that they are lost. Some are facing a disease and wondering what lies ahead. Some are looking at their parents and realizing they won’t be here forever. I could stand here all day and not exhaust the list of problems that many of us are facing today. Read More
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