October 9th

God's Mercy - (Not so) Wordless Wednesday

Mercy is God's supply system for every need everywhere. Mercy is that kindness, compassion and tenderness which is a passion to suffer with, or participate in, another's ills or evils in order to relieve, heal and restore. ...It is to take another into one's heart just as he is and cherish and nourish him there. Mercy takes another's sins and evils and faults as its own, and frees the other by bearing them to God. Rex Andrews

^15-18 “Can a mother forget the infant at her breast,
    walk away from the baby she bore?
But even if mothers forget,
    I’d never forget you—never.
Look, I’ve written your names on the backs of my hands.
    The walls you’re rebuilding are never out of my sight.
Your builders are faster than your wreckers.
    The demolition crews are gone for good.
Look up, look around, look well!
    See them all gathering, coming to you?
As sure as I am the living God”—God’s Decree—
    “you’re going to put them on like so much jewelry,
    you’re going to use them to dress up like a bride.

Isaiah 49:16

The Message (MSG)

You were deliberately planned - (Not so) Wordless Wednesday

You aren't an accident.  You weren't mass-produced.  You aren't an assembly-line product.  You were deliberately planned, specifically gifted, and lovingly positioned on this earth by the Master Craftsman.

  Max Lucado

"You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason with your neighbor, lest you bear sin because of him.  You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself:  I am the LORD."

 Leviticus 19:17-18
The Revised Standard Version

¹² We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

1 Corinthians 13:12

The Message (MSG)

Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul. And the other things on the face of the earth are created for man and that they may help him in prosecuting the end for which he is created. From this it follows that man is to use them as much as they help him on to his end, and ought to rid himself of them so far as they hinder him as to it. For this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things in all that is allowed to the choice of our free will and is not prohibited to it; so that, on our part, we want not health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, long rather than short life, and so in all the rest; desiring and choosing only what is most conducive for us to the end for which we are created.
Ignatius of Loyola