Amy Welborn is a contributor - five devotions per issue - to the
Living Faith daily devotional quarterly.
For example, today' entry, March 18:
A couple of years ago, we visited the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta. There's a tour there, during which you can peer through windows and see lots and lots of paper money being collected and sorted. At the end, you take away a little plastic bag full of shredded bills, once "worth" something, now "worth" nothing.
MORE
January 31:
If you've ever had corrective lenses of any type, you know how it goes. You get the glasses, or perhaps an updated prescription, and the first time you look through them, you're amazed. You knew your eyesight was a little off, but what a surprise to find out how off it actually was.Quite often, my time on this earth is marked with the same certainty that everything is just fine, that I'm seeing life with absolute clarity, and I must be on the right path because, well, it's the path I'm on. No other reason, really.
January 22.
At the end of Mass, the celebrant felt moved to add a word of thanks. The choir, normally very good anyway, had risen to particularly stunning heights. So he thanked the musicians for their dedication. "And," he added cheerfully, "thanks to our baby choir too!"That morning, as usual, the baby and toddler voices had echoed through the cathedral as well. I don't think anyone minded, and if they did, the celebrant's words of gratitude undoubtedly gave them food for thought.
Also, last fall:
November 17, for example.
'Beauty in Simplicity'
St. Elizabeth of Hungary
But you, O LORD, are my shield;
my glory, you lift up my head!
- Psalm 3:4
We regularly attend Mass at a convent of a growing order of young sisters who provide retreats, catechesis for small parishes and warm hospitality to locals who attend Mass with them. The Masses in their small chapel are careful but not fussy, simple but not plain and beautiful in a way that it is not at all self-referential or showy.
The sisters chant in Latin and English, sing polyphony and traditional hymnody, and it's gorgeous. The other day, as the glowing harmonies faded into silence, I glanced around the small congregation--there were about ten of us besides the sisters--and thought, "What a shame there aren't more here to hear them sing. They must be disappointed." But then I glanced back at their content faces and realized that of course it didn't matter. They weren't singing for us. They were praising the Lord, and that was reason enough to pour out their gifts...for him.
Creator God, I praise you today through my thoughts, actions and choices.
Recently:
One of my sons asked, "Why don't they sell these in stores?" I pointed out that these were oddly shaped, they were too big, they were too small. They were imperfect and, in a way, "weak."
As a consequence of some ill-considered decisions by a nine-year-old, I recently spent five hours in a hospital's emergency room. More.
I have never climbed a real mountain and have no strong desire to. But I have ambled among hills, some of which might come close to being mountains and sometimes feel that way, depending on what kind of shape I'm in. More
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