Sunday Morning Coffee - Thankful!

"Thankful"

Somedays we forget
To look around us
Somedays we can't see
The joy that surrounds us
So caught up inside ourselves
We take when we should give.

So for tonight we pray for
What we know can be.
And on this day we hope for
What we still can't see.
It's up to us to be the change
And even though we all can still do more
There's so much to be thankful for.

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Morning Coffee - Singing Praises!

"When they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushments...and they were smitten"

2 Chron. 20:22

Oh, that we could reason less about our troubles, and sing and praise more! There are thousands of things that we wear as shackles which we might use as instruments with music in them, if we only knew how.

Those men that ponder, and meditate, and weigh the affairs of life, and study the mysterious developments of God's providence, and wonder why they should be burdened and thwarted and hampered--how different and how much more joyful would be their lives, if, instead of forever indulging in self-revolving and inward thinking, they would take their experiences, day by day, and lift them up, and praise God for them.

We can sing our cares away easier than we can reason them away. Sing in the morning. The birds are the earliest to sing, and birds are more without care than anything else that I know of.

Sing at evening. Singing is the last thing that robins do. When they have done their daily work; when they have flown their last flight, and picked up their last morsel of food, then on a topmost twig, they sing one song of praise.

Oh, that we might sing morning and evening, and let song touch song all the way through.

–Selected

Streams in the Desert

Mrs. Chas. E. Cowman

I believe I'll hum a few praises while I enjoy a second cup!

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Little Drummer Boy

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Flashback! 1963

On this day in 1963, The Beatles released "She Loves You" in the U.S.   Some of us, those of us of a certain age, can probably remember where we were when we first heard this new culture changing song!


Enjoy!

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Liturgy and Prayer

Yours, Jack has been such a wonderful look into the life and faith of C.S. Lewis. I highly recommend this book! This morning I found this perspective of his interesting. He is comparing fixed forms of worship (liturgy and prayers) with extemporaneous worship. He writes in a letter dated April 1, 1952:

"The advantage of a fixed form of service is that we know what is coming. Extempore public prayer has this difficulty: we don’t know whether we can mentally join in it until we’ve heard it – it might be phoney or heretical. We are therefore called upon to carry on a critical and a devotional activity at the same moment: two things hardly compatible. In a fixed form we ought to have ‘gone through the motions’ before in our private prayers: the rigid form really sets our devotions free.

“I also find the more rigid it is, the easier it is to keep one’s thoughts from straying. Also it prevents any service getting too completely eaten up by whatever happens to be the preoccupation of the moment (a war, an election, or what not). The permanent shape of Christianity shows through. I don’t see how the extempore method can help becoming provincial and I think it has a great tendency to direct attention to the minister rather than to God.”

C.S. Lewis ~ Yours, Jack

I love the thought that “the rigid form really sets our devotions free”. That’s why liturgy is so moving. We know it well; we know what’s coming and we can enter it from the very first note or word. Even our simple table prayer – the one we’ve prayed for years and years – can be very devotional because it takes us immediately into a posture of thanksgiving.

For me this means no more struggling with impromptu public prayer. There are too many beautifully written prayers available; prayers that express exactly what I believe and that will allow me to worship unencumbered.

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He Speaks to Me Everywhere!

“I don’t doubt that the Holy Spirit guides your decisions from within when you make them with the intention of pleasing God. The error would be to think that He speaks only within, whereas, in reality, He speaks also through Scripture, the Church, Christian friends, books et cetera.” C.S. Lewis

This reminds me of the words from This Is My Father’s World.

This is my Father's world:
he shines in all that's fair;
in the rustling grass I hear him pass;
he speaks to me everywhere.

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It's a Beautiful Day!!

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Won't you be my neighbor!!

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