Tag: despair

Up to its knees in the past

Post author By dw
Post date June 14, 2020
No Comments on Up to its knees in the past

Reflecting again on the nature of hope brings me back to a quote from Frederick Buechner I posted last year.

Click through to see where I think hope ends.

Then at last we see what hope is and where it comes from, hope as the driving power and outermost edge of faith. Hope stands up to its knees in the past and keeps its eyes on the future…shall is the verb of hope.
Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, “A Room Called Remember”
Up to its knees in the past – becoming flame

Grace and peace to you…

Tags a room called remember, choice, despair, Frederick Buechner, future, hope, past, Secrets in the Dark

Music Other Writings

Am I convinced?

Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness.

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sentences on Hope

From one kind of sublime to, well, a something different…

I just happened to hear Andy Grammer’s Wish You Pain this morning.

Thomas Merton and Andy Grammer in the same post???

Get over it 🙂

p.s. my better half took me to an Andy Grammer concert a couple of weeks back. I have to admit I’m a snob when it comes to musical style…and I found Andy’s positive message so spot on…well, who needs to be a snob anyway?

Grace and peace to you…

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Tags Andy Grammer, complacency, despair, finding God, forgiveness, mercy, No Man is an Island, sentences on hope, Thomas Merton, Wish You Pain

hope Other Writings Poetry

The God of those who can hope

Post author By dw
Post date September 22, 2019
No Comments on The God of those who can hope

Those who abandon everything in order to seek God know well that He is the God of the poor…the supreme expression of His justice is to forgive those whom no one else would ever have forgiven. That is why He is, above all, the God of those who can hope where there is no hope. The penitent thief who died with Christ was able to see God where the doctors of the law had just proved impossible Jesus’s claim to divinity.

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sentences on Hope

Perhaps,
in our darkest hour,
the difference between
hope and despair
is our willingness
to recognize
the God of love
hanging on the cross
beside ours.

Photo by Bobbie Wallace on Unsplash

Tags despair, forgiveness, hope, Jesus, justice, No Man is an Island, poor, Thomas Merton

Other Writings

More courage needed

To find “ourselves” then is to find not only our poor, limited, perplexed souls, but to find the power of God that raised Christ from the dead and “built us together in Him unto a habitation of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22).

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island