Bonnie Combe is a woman who lost her husband in a plane crash in Alaska. During her journey through grief, a friend asked her, "Did your husband enrich your life?" "Why, of course," she answered. The friend came back to her with something that changed her life, "Well then -- what are you going to do with those riches?" That statement became the ground of her recovery. [Told on ABC Nightline, 7/21/99 during a discussion of the John F. Kennedy Jr. plane crash]

Savings

Leo Tolstoy tells the story of a rich man who was never satisfied. Tolstoy tells wonderful stories. He told a story of a man who always wanted more and he heard of a wonderful chance to get more land. For 1,000 rubles he could have all that he could walk around in a day, but he had to make it back to the starting point by the end of the day or he would lose everything that he invested. He arose early and set out. He walked on and on thinking that he could get just a little more land if he kept going on, but he went so far that he realized that he must walk very fast if he was going to get back to the starting point and claim the land. As the sun went lower in the sky, he quickened his pace. He began to run. He came within sight of the starting place and so he exerted his last energies plunging over the finish line, falling to the ground, dead. His servant took a spade and dug a grave. He made is just long enough and just wide enough and buried him. Do you know the title of Leo Tolstoy's story? "How much land does a man need?" And he ends the story with this line: "six feet from his head to his heels was all that man needed"
a Lindy Black Sermon Nugget

Spirituality

Spirituality “must now touch every area of human experience, the public and the social, the painful, negative, even pathological byways of the mind, the moral and relational world.”
Rowan Williams

“Spiritualities that are disengaged from the world, rather than committed to it and to its transformation, fail to reflect the irrevocable commitment of God to the world in Jesus Christ.”

Love much, think deeply, speak gently, laugh often, work hard, give freely, pay promptly, pray earnestly and be kind.

The Empty Hands of Faith

"And so we put out empty hands and bread and wine are put into them which we eat and drink in communion with his body and blood, for we have no other offering with which to draw near to God but that one offering which is identical with Jesus Christ himself, through whom, with whom, and in whom we glorify the Father" (T.F. Torrance)
Thanks to Two Empty Hands for this quote.javascript:void(0)

Irish Fisherman's Prayer

"Dear Lord, be good to me
the sea is so wide
and my boat is so small."

Irish Fisherman's Prayer

Feeding the Church

As Christians we gather at the table and remember what Jesus did with bread on that hillside. The words used by Matthew here are familiar from the Last Supper account and from our own celebration of the Eucharist as well: the verbs--take, bless, break and give--are simple but powerful, and apply to our lives just as they apply to the bread we share with one another and with the world. In fact, this work of the church goes on in every age and every wilderness. Thomas Long writes: "the church is always in the desert, the place where it cannot rely upon its own resources, which are few. The church is hungry itself and is surrounded by a world of deep cravings...." 

from Kate Huey with reference to the Feeding of the 5000
Picture is by Eularia Clarke