Showing Process

Showing Process

She was young...

She was young…

Joan of Arc “experienced her first vision around 1424 at the age of 12, in her ‘father’s garden.’ (She) saw visions of figures she identified as Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret, who told her to drive out the English and bring the Dauphin (the rightful king) to Reims for his coronation. She cried when they left, as they were so beautiful.”[i]

brother-lawrence1

He was old…

Brother Lawrence, a Carmelite monk in the 1600s, enjoyed the presence of God while doing ordinary tasks in the monastery kitchen. He said, “I have abandoned all particular forms of devotion, all prayer techniques. My only prayer practice is attention. I carry on a habitual, secret, silent conversation with God that fills me with joy overwhelming.”[ii]

Christian author John Piper tells about a certain morning—March 19, 2007—in a remote area of Northern Minnesota, when God spoke to him in phrases that entered his mind one at a time. He noted: “There is no doubt that it was God. I heard the words in my head just as clearly as when a memory of a conversation passes across your consciousness. The words wereContinue reading

The Healed Soul

The Healed Soul

“The soul is healed by being with children.”

–Fyodor Dostoevsky

Happiness came at last for Dostoevsky in his mid-forties. Anna Snitkina and Fyodor Dostoevsky married and enjoyed sixteen wondrous years.

Anna’s writings gave us an intimate glimpse of Dostoevsky as an adoring husband. Once, he waited three hours for her on a street corner when her return was delayed. He also took great joy in giving her beautiful gifts—even when money seemed scarce.

8b0c79d0b2He had a tireless love of children and soothed the housekeeper’s children when he heard coughing or crying in the night. As a devoted father, he helped with bathing and feeding their children, unlike men of his day. Anna described him…

“Fyodor was uncommonly tender with his daughter, fussed over her, carried her about in his arms, sang her to sleep and felt so happy that he wrote (a friend), ‘Oh, why aren’t you married and why don’t you have a child? I swear to you that ¾ of life’s happiness lie in that, and ¼ at most in the rest.’”[i] Anna added, “Neither before nor since have I seen a man with such a capacity to enter the world of children.”[ii]

Dostoevsky also proved to be deeply passionate about God. He knew the depths of spiritual battles and once wrote:

“Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.”[iii]

Another time he wrote, “God sends me sometimes instants when I am completely calm; at those instants I love and feel loved by others, and it is at those instances that I have shaped for myself a Credo where everything is clear and sacred for me. This Credo is very simple; here it is:Continue reading

Such A Time As This

Such A Time As This

777_banner_800x240.jpg__800x240_q85_crop_upscaleAnne Graham Lotz recently issued a call to prayer on the Internet. She said,

“I am blowing the trumpet. . . sounding the alarm. . . issuing a national prayer initiative, entitled 777: An Urgent Call to Prayer. The call is for God’s people to pray for each of the first seven days in the seventh month—July 1-7. Then on the 7th day, we are to pray and fast for 7 hours.”

MH17-crash-jpgTen days later, a Boeing 777 commercial airplane—flight number 17—crashed on July 17th, when a surface-to-air missile struck it at 33,000 feet.

 

The crash left no survivors…nearly 300 souls violently ripped from their earthly lives.

You’ve heard the news. I felt utterly heartsick. I’ve been praying for the remaining families every day since.

What is God saying in times like this?Continue reading