mile stones

Today marks the 300th post on this blog. It hardly seems that that amount of time have come and gone between the first post and this post.

I guess every one celebrates miles stones, so why not 300. I suppose post 301 will be just as telling as this post today. If there is a 301, it means I have been given the opportunity to live and pray and love and tell. It will be a token of God's mercy. Yet, I suppose a token of God's mercy will be whether 301 comes along or not. It is his mercy that keeps us going, in him we move and breathe and have our being and he holds all things in himself.

There have been two prayers in the office that have stayed with me this week. The first is the prayer from Wed. evening prayer and the other is the prayer from this morning.

Wednesday Evening prayer:
Lord, watch over us by day and by night.
In the midst of life's countless changes strengthen us with your never-changing love.

Saturday Morning prayer:
Lord, free us from the dark night of death.
Let the light of resurrection dawn within our hearts to bring us to the radiance of eternal life.

It is the never-changing love that dawns within our hearts, scattering the darkness of our worries and concerns, and fills us with radiance that empowers us to action and brings us to the radiance that awaits. God's never-changing love introduces into our life and world stability. In the midst of the scourge of violence that is happening around the world, it is this stable force of never-changing love that will bring about a dawn of peace whose radiance finds it source in the face of Jesus.

May we continually seek His face. He descended into the misery of the human condition. His face is a "bleeding Head, so wounded;" precisely in this way it manifests the mystery of God's never-changing love whose power transforms violence into hope, thus a dawn of ressurection is always on the horizon. In peering in His face we are awaken to courage to carry on in the struggle of turning wounds into glory.

Psalm 34 "look toward him and be radiant...the Lord turns his eyes to the just and his ears to their appeal."