The last 8 days have been ones of trial and hardship and loss. However, despite that reality and some battles with fear, eventually this prayer to Jesus has burned brightly within me: “You have sweetened the suffering with your love and friendship. You have not withheld your frankincense from the myrrh; you have not left me with bitterness.”

How wonderful to know that in the hour of testing (where I have failed so many times in the last year), I passed with flying colors! That my faith is strengthened, that I have chosen to trust Him and proclaim His goodness before my brothers and sisters.

How glorious to sense His presence all around me! To sing of His sweetness and experience it, not just words. As we sang last night at the House of Prayer, “we will sing of Your beauty, we will sing of Your glory; we will sing of Your fragrance, we will sing of Your radiance.”
Beloved, He is good.

Harvest Time

Always, man dreams about the future:
what he will sow next
and where he will reap a harvest.
The planting itself is not enough;
he longs for the day of fruitfulness.

Like God, he sees that people grow too:
young boys to men,
young men to elders.
With patient shaping and instruction,
they, too, will bear much fruit.

But unlike God, he cannot see the invisible future:
he runs away from Suffering,
the most patient and fruitful of all his teachers.
He twists and turns to escape her voice
and rarely listens long enough to discover her wisdom.

My child, don't run.
After you have suffered a little while,
your Father will restore and strengthen you.
Let Suffering perform her full work,
for her harvests are always bountiful
in those who heed her words.

-klb 8/19/04, see 1 Peter 5:10

Last night my good friend Juli got married. It was beautiful and fun and all a wedding should be. There was no fear: Juli and Dave will be good partners.

Bart Campolo gave the homily and he said some thought-provoking, stretching important things to know. Part of life is change. When you marry your spouse, that will be the only day he/she is "that person". They will keep on changing the rest of their life, and so will you. Sometimes we complain "this isn't the person we married!" It's true. But instead of holding them to who they were, we need to expect them to change. We must instead learn to love the person they have become, and will become. Each time they change into a new person, we must discover it, and find a way to love them.

That is the marriage commitment: to love all of the people they will become!