Tuesday, March 19th: This morning I meditated on God’s eagerness to forgive me, revealed in these words: “As far as the East is from the West, so far does God remove my sin” (Psalms 103:12). In the midst of all my distractions, I was touched by God’s desire to forgive me again and again. If I return to God with …
Monday, March 18th: I really want to encourage you not to despair, not to lose faith, not to let go of God in your life, but stand in your suffering as a person who believes that she is deeply loved by God. When you look inside yourself, you might sometimes be overwhelmed by all the brokenness and confusion, but when …
Sunday March 17th: The Gospels are filled with examples of God’s presence in the word. Personally, I am always touched by the story of Jesus in the synagogue of Nazareth. There he read from Isaiah: The Spirit of the Lord is on me, for he has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to …
Friday, March 15th: Our lives are destined to become like the life of Jesus. The whole purpose of Jesus’ ministry is to bring us to the house of his Father. Not only did Jesus come to free us from the bonds of sin and death; he also came to lead us into the intimacy of his divine life. It is …
Thursday, March 14th: Every time you make free time for God, you clear up a bit of the descending path, and you see where you can plant your feet on the way to love. Nothing spectacular or sensational. It may be simply a matter of what you say, what you read, to whom you speak, where you go on a …
Tuesday, March 12th: Whereas patience is the mother of expectation, it is expectation itself that brings new joy to our lives. Jesus not only made us look at our pains, but also beyond them. “You are sad now, but I shall see you again and your hearts will be full of joy.” A man or woman without hope in the …
Monday, March 11th: The mother of expectation is patience. The French author Simone Weil writes in her notebooks: “Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.” Without patience our expectation degenerates into wishful thinking. Patience comes from the word patior, which means “to suffer.” The first thing that Jesus promises is suffering: “I tell you . . …
Saturday March 9th: Jesus said to his disciples, “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me” (John 16:16). Life is “a little while,” a short moment of waiting. But life is not empty waiting. It is to wait full of expectation. The knowledge that God will indeed fulfill …
Tuesday, March 5th: Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-dresser. Every branch in me that bears no fruit he cuts away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, to make it bear even more” (John 15:1–2). These words open a new perspective on suffering for me. Pruning helps trees to bear more …
Monday March 4th: God sent Jesus to make free persons of us. He has chosen compassion as the way to freedom. That is a great deal more radical than you might at first imagine. It means that God wanted to liberate us, not by removing suffering from us, but by sharing it with us. Jesus is God-who-suffers-with-us. Over time, the …