This week has dabbled in the frenetic at my house. Uh. More than usual.
Rather than writing you a half-baked post, I’m pulling from the archives some chalkboard art of a printable prayer–an artistic version of this challenging Franciscan benediction:
For those who know me well…it’s a little eerie.
Since the beginning of the year here at Casa de la Breitenstein, I’ve been heading up my own ambitious, highly uncharacteristic Project Ducks in a Row.
Recently I went to a friend’s house on a dark day. (Even now, it is hard to type this. I might be crying a little.)
I’d been hanging out with her and her two-year-old son, Henry, every couple of weeks or so as they got their feet back under them after his chemo. Which happened after his brain tumor. Which happened after a life-threatening bacterial infection. Which happened after he was born prematurely. I’d arrived from Africa a little late to the scene, when they’d gotten the happy MRI’s with a healthy brain.
Until.
At some thoughts one stands perplexed, above all at the sight of human sin, and wonders whether to combat it by force or by humble love. Always decide “I will combat it by humble love.” If you resolve on that once and for all, you can conquer the whole world. Loving humiity is a terrible force; it is the strongest of all things, and there is nothing like it.
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
This week, I’m moving back from Africa to the U.S. Rather than writing you a half-baked post, I opted for chalkboard art–an artistic version of this challenging Franciscan benediction:
God, give us discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that instead we may live deep within our hearts.
Missed the first post? Grab it here.
Last Thursday was one of those days that encapsulated so much of what I love and what drives me bananas about living in Uganda. I veered through jaw-clenching traffic on the 45-minute drive home, assembling all the clutter of my day into the appropriate mental file folders. This is quite a task to begin with–considering both a) my mind and b) at least four sudden oncoming governmental convoys. (Let’s just say mental “papers” kept being upended from their file folders by real life.)
As I do every week, I’d taught Bible at the refugee center. Even after three years, it’s a bit of a rabbit hole for me. There are so many cross-cultural experiences to make sense of at once that I’m flying by the seat of my skirt.
“To be able to look backward and say, ‘This, this has been the finest year of my life’–that is glorious! But anticipation! To be able to look ahead and say, ‘The present year can and shall be better!’–that is more glorious! I have done nothing but open windows–God has done the rest. There has been a succession of marvelous experiences of the friendship of God. I resolved that I would succeed better this year with my experiment of filling every minute full of the thought of God than I succeeded last year. And I added another resolve–to be as wide open toward people and their need as I am toward God. Windows open outward as well as upward. Windows open especially downward where people need the most!
“…There is nothing that we can do excepting to throw ourselves open to God.”*
Today’s quotable is from Frank Laubach (1884-1970), missionary to the Philippines. Laubach is estimated to have been responsible for teaching half of the 90,000 people in his area to read and write, and to have reached out to the Mohammedan Moros, who regarded the Christian Filipinos as enemies. Laubach wrote in the new year of 1930,
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I wish that writing about my anxiety actually meant I didn’t wrestle with it anymore… I find the need to meditate on the words you, too seemed to resonate with in The Scribbled Heart: Fear-parenting vs. Faith-parenting.
So today’s quotable is from The Message–with a free chalkboard printable of these sweet words about worry: Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns…It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. (Philippians 4:6-7)
![Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language](https://www.janelbreitenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/love-languages-text-1.jpg "Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language")
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