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Just checking in on a Monday <3

Just a quick hello as Russ and I have taken a few days away to have a small vacation to end the year.

Like you, we were stunned by the news of another mass shooting yesterday – this time in a small church in a small town in Texas.

The newscasters on national stations were struggling to find words to wrap around a gunman wiping out half of a congregation on a Sunday morning and leaving the other half physically and emotionally and forever wounded and scarred.

Grown men who have careers in the legal system were choking back tears on camera.

All were stunned and many were saying things just to fill the airwaves and some of it was awkward and really not even accurate in assessing our human condition of brokenness even before a violent act like this makes its ugly face known in our small towns.

And so today, we in this nation recover from yet another deranged act that authorities are trying to sort through and piece together while all around this globe, families and children and citizens are hourly living with nightmares that have real faces and real guns and real plans of destruction.

So we turn to our God – the Father of all compassion…all comfort…all justice. And we lift up hands asking for Him to come and to help and to deliver.

We wonder what we can do to make any difference in the midst of so much need.

I am almost finished reading The Mercy Prayer by Robert Gelinas and in the closing pages he talks about how we want to do great things for God, but we need to start with small things around us each and ever day.

“In this world, we hear about pain and suffering everywhere. We want to do great things but don’t know how to do them. But if we become students of mercy, we become like Jesus, seeing opportunities for mercy and responding to that one person with compassion and grace….In the midst of walking with a great God and dreaming of great things God can do through us, mercy says, ‘But what are you going to do today in the name of Christ? How are you going to love today?'”     Robert Gelinas, The Mercy Prayer; Thomas Nelson 2013 page 138

I received a comment this week from a sweet friend who visits this site most days. While I did publish it on the post, I wanted to take time today to make sure you all see her invitation to show that mercy the world so desperately needs.

Here is her comment:

And speaking of being about that which matters; how would you like to be a part of God’s Shelter of Love’s new emergency shelter overnight team? Maybe one of your readers would be interested. I’m truly wanting to make a difference in the lives of people with no home here in our city. Let me know if you’d be willing to help once a month or once every other month. I’m going to a meeting on Nov. 16 at the Avon theater from 7-9. I do want to be about spending time on things that matter, and people who need basic shelter is a very important matter. Blessings friend!

Thank you for the ways you show love and mercy to those around you.

You are the hands and feet of Christ when you do these things in His Name <3

 

 

 

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