Take Root Devotions

July 29

 

Pray without ceasing.

1 Thessalonians 5: 17

 

Prayer means, above all, to be accepting of God who is always new, always different.  For God is a deeply moved God, whose heart is greater than our own.

 

Henry Nouwen

I Never Saw a Moor

 

I never saw a moor,

I never saw the sea;

Yet know I how the heather looks,

And what a wave must be.

 

I never spoke with God,

Nor visited in heaven;

Yet certain am I of the spot

As if a chart were given.

 

Emily Dickinson    (1830 - 1886)

 

July 27

 

Give ear, O heavens, while I speak;  let the earth hearken to the words of my mouth!

Deuteronomy 32: 1

 

In time of affliction we turn to God, feel God's grace and grow from those experiences.  We come to a place where we say, "God, I need your help."  We move from knowing about God to knowing God. From head to heart.  The unknown becomes clear in time as we continue to trust God.

Kathleen Norris

 

July 25

 

No one can serve two masters.  He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and mammon*.

Matthew 6: 24

 *Mammon: an Armaic word meaning wealth or property.

 

The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvelous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven.  Ah!  How cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition.

 

Herman Melville

Living The Great Commandment

 

Note:  below is a one thousand year old meditation.  Ours is an ancient faith.  Occasionally we should be willing to invest a little extra concentration in order to glean wisdom from those on whose shoulders we stand.  The editor.

But now, dearly-beloved . . .  I speak to every one of you; I entreat you by the name of Christ, in which every knee shall bow.  Remain steadfast in brotherly love; unite together in (love) . . . against the wiles of our ancient enemy. . . . The voice of God commanded that the ark which was to hold eight souls during the deluge should be smeared with pitch within and without, so that she should be outwardly soothed by brotherly sweetness and inwardly united in the truth of mutual love.  Whoever loves inwardly, but is outwardly (at odds with others) . . . has the inner lining of pitch but not the outer.  He on the other hand who to all outward appearances shows himself kindly . . . but does not possess the reality of friendship in his inmost heart is damnably full of holes inside . . . .  Neither of them shall be saved from shipwreck in the deluge, since neither is protected by a double lining of pitch as the Lord commanded.  But he who is outwardly kindly and also keeps his inward love . . . sends down deep roots within, since he loves from the bottom of his heart, such a man is smeared with pitch both within and without, because he is joined to his neighbors by a double bond of charity.

St. Peter Damian was a Benedictine abbot.

 

 

 

July 22

The LORD took note of Sarah as he had said he would; he did for her as he had promised.

Genesis 21: 1

 

 

If my bark sink

'Tis to another sea.

Mortality's ground floor

Is immortality.

 

Emily Dickinson  (1830 - 1886)

 

For you, O God, have proved us

 

For you, O God, have proved us; 
you have tried us just as silver is tried.
You brought us into the snare; 
you laid heavy burdens upon our backs.
You let enemies ride over our heads;
we went through fire and water; 
but you brought us out into a place of refreshment.   

I will enter your house with burnt-offerings
and will pay you my vows, 
which I promised with my lips
and spoke with my mouth when I was in trouble.

Come and listen, all you who fear God, 
and I will tell you what he has done for me.
I called out to him with my mouth, 
and his praise was on my tongue.
If I had found evil in my heart, 
the Lord would not have heard me
But in truth God has heard me; 
he has attended to the voice of my prayer.
Blessed be God, who has not rejected my prayer, 
nor withheld his love from me.      

          

David,  Psalm 66

July 20

 

John 21:12   And Jesus said unto them, "Come, have breakfast."

 

Risen Savior, stay with me.

Lord Jesus, by your resurrection you have reconciled all people to God.

Lord Jesus, when you rose from the dead you blessed us with the Easter gift of peace.

Lord Jesus, by your rising you restored us to friendship with the Father.

Lord Jesus, on the seashore you cooked breakfast for your disciples.

Lord Jesus, you invite us to touch your wounds and to throw off all doubt.

Lord Jesus, you returned us to God's favor and intimacy when we were rebellious and estranged.

Lord Jesus, by your death and resurrection you have forgiven our sins.

Lord Jesus, your resurrection has liberated us from all fatalism, negativity, and dread.

Lord Jesus, your resurrection endows us with the confidence and certainty of the apostles.

Lord Jesus, by your resurrection you have formed your people into the communion of the Church.

Lord Jesus, your resurrection assures us that your mercy is offered to us at every moment as a new beginning.

Lord Jesus, in your resurrection is the hope of our own resurrection.

Risen Savior, stay with me.

 

 

July 18

 

 

May God strengthen you inwardly through the working of His Spirit.  May Christ dwell in your hearts through faith, and may charity be the root and foundation of your life.  

Ephesians 3; 16-17

 

If we have no peace it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

Mother Teresa

The Fixer Upper

 

The Fixer Upper

 

   That is what I like to call my life. Because it was truly broken, run down, worn out and just plain ugly to look at.  I guess I should start somewhere near the beginning so you can see where I am coming from. 
   I was born into a Christian home, my father was a Baptist Preacher, my mom played the piano in church,. And when I was older my dad taught Sunday School and was a deacon. I was given every opportunity, and there was no reason, other than my own stupidity, for my life to have gone so wrong. Like many teenage girls growing up in church, I was fairly sheltered from many of the harsh realities of this world, but there was something about those bad boys that I just could not leave alone.  I found myself at a bowling alley once a week when I was 15 because my dad played on the church bowling team.  I have often thought about one particular night being the turning point for my entire life. On this night I was sitting down, eating some nachos or something and notice that I am being watched  and talked about by a small group of , well, let's just say, non church-y looking guys.  So, as any self respecting 15 year old with a younger sister does, I paid my little sister a nickle to ask for the phone number of  one of them in particular...you guessed it, the baddest looking one.  A few minutes later my father, who by the way was a superior judge of character, looked at me, looked towards the group of boys and said "NO SPEAKY" Which I knew meant that those boys in particular were completely and totally off limits.  As you can imagine I ignored my dad's instruction and called the young man the very next day. Oh, I wish I could tell you that I saw him for what he was and decided he was not worth my time. The truth is that 3 short years later I boarded a greyhound bus in South Carolina and headed to the West Coast to marry him, leaving nothing behind but a note to my family. So we were married, and apart from the normal spats of newlyweds, the first year was fairly uneventful. When I found out that I was expecting our second child things started changing, I had discovered that his mother had a drug dependency, and my young husband was on probation for some alcohol and drug issues that had happened before I arrived, yes, looking back this should have been a red flag. 

So I find out that I am pregnant about the time he starts acting strangely, he won't go to work, He won't stay at home, and his alcohol use increases, not that I could judge because I had my share of it as well. Our arguments were coming closer together and they were escalating in intensity, until one day he hauled off and hit me, I am not talking about a slap, or a shove,  I saw stars, I do not remember falling down, but I opened my eyes and saw nothing but carpet.  Of course he said he was sorry, swore he would never drink again, blamed the booze first, me second, and every other circumstance imaginable, except himself.  I found myself in what felt like an alternate reality. If you are asking yourself if he straightened up his act, sorry to say the answer is no. Shortly after that I found a syringe floating in the toilet, he claimed that the previous owner must have been diabetic, then they started popping up all over the house. I noticed that he was wearing a lot of long sleeved shirts, in mid August, and started to question him. This just made him angry, which caused more arguments, which gave me a lot of bruises. The law intervened on several occasions, one such instance when I fought back, I got to experience a ride downtown in the squad car. His drug use increased, he preferred Meth but would honestly use anything he could get his hands on. I came home from one of my 3 jobs one night to find that every stitch of furniture we had was gone from the house, he had sold it to get high.  Things went on like this for over a year, he got high, I got hit, I will spare you all of the details. I tried leaving a few times, but he always found me. When I found
out I was expecting baby number 3, I knew that I could not live the way I was. I called my parents who had been trying to get me to leave for years, and told them that I was ready to come home.  Long story short, I had some issues with trust, I blamed God for my situation, I blamed my, now ex-husband.  I was broken, bruised, devastated, and I was convinced that no one would ever love me. It has been more than 10 years since then, and I can honestly say that God has healed those scars, He loves me, He cherishes me, and He feels exactly the same way for you. If He can take my wreck of a life, my broken heart, and give me new hope, and a life worth living, He can and will do the same for you, won't you let Him?

 

Angie Smith  

http://whereheleads.weebly.com/

 angie.smith@pbworks.com