Category: Words of Wisdom

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Words of Wisdom

God Loves You

“Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed. Each of us is loved. Each of us is necessary.” – Pope Benedict XVI

Today may just be the day you must realize how much God really loves you. He loves you simply for who you really are. For the person He has created you to be.

Imagine a babe upon your arms. Imagine your very own child. You loved him before he was even born. Before he could even utter a word. You love him just because he is yours.

Try to live this day with the thought that God loves you. He willed you to be and He desires for you to live forever, to always exist. Never to be blotted out from His memory.

God loves you. At your weakest and at your worst. At the height of your greatest fears and at the depths of your heaviest sorrows.

God loves you. Despite all your helplessness. Despite all your doubts. Despite all your many falls.

God loves you. May this very thought draw you to love as you have never loved before.

“Keep me as the apple of your eye. Hide me under the shadow of your wings…” – Psalm 17:8, WEBBE

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Words of Wisdom

True Humility Is Being True

To be humble is not to degrade ourselves, but to be true. It is to know both our weakness and our strength, our imperfections and our God-given beauty.

“Humility is the mother of all virtues; purity, charity and obedience. It is in being humble that our love becomes real, devoted and ardent. If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. If you are blamed you will not be discouraged. If they call you a saint you will not put yourself on a pedestal.” – Mother Teresa

How many times have we been discouraged by the criticisms of other people? How many times have we allowed ourselves to be hurt so much because we have allowed the opinion of others to affect our own self-esteem?

To be humble is not to think low of ourselves. Rather, it is to think true. It is to have a strong image of who we really are such that our love for ourselves no longer depend on what others think about us.

When pride comes, then comes shame, but with humility comes wisdom. – Proverbs 11, WEBBE

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Spirituality Words of Wisdom

To Forgive and To Forget

They say that forgiveness is not the same as forgetfulness. But in my own experience, I’ve learned that sometimes, forgiveness involves some sort of forgetfulness. Why? Because as long as you bring to mind the injury that happened, your hurt is renewed over and over again and you do not have peace. You have peace only when you are able to move on, when that painful memory is healed by love.

“I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake;
and I will not remember your sins.” – Isaiah 43, WEBBE

Thinking about sin, whether our own or another’s, creates a spiritual fog that robs from us the sight of God’s beauty. Instead, we should seek God’s healing and strength on behalf of us all, and when we look at another who has fallen into sin, we should focus only on compassion and our own brokenness, longing for God’s healing for us both. Without this attitude, our own souls will trip and stumble into sin. Compassion is our protection.– All Shall Be Well

If I see people do anything which clearly seems to be sin, I cannot make up my mind that they have offended God; and if I dwell upon this at all,–which happens rarely or never,–I never can make up my mind, though I see it plainly enough . It seems to me that everybody is as anxious to serve God as I am. And herein God has been very gracious unto me, for I never dwell on an evil deed, to remember it afterwards and if I do remember it, I see some virtue or other in that person. – Life of St. TERESA of Avila

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Words of Wisdom

Love Is More Than a Feeling

Someday we shall see, the only answer is love and there is no greater love than that shown by Jesus Christ.

Set me as a seal on your heart,
as a seal on your arm;
for love is strong as death…
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a very flame of the LORD.
Many waters can’t quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
-Song of Solomon 8, WEBBE

The mystery of love is that though it makes you feel good, and though it gives you the greatest feeling in the world, it helps you accept the bad times also, times when instead of feeling good, you feel just quite the opposite. Love can still exist in the deepest sorrow, and in truth, love would gladly prefer such sorrow rather than choose not having loved at all.

But why? What is there in love that makes people endure the most terrible anguish and grief? If love no longer makes you feel good, why hold on to it?

Can it be because love is more than a feeling? And if love is more, what is it really?

What is love?

It is love that gives meaning to our lives, to who we are. We know deep within us that love is the most beautiful thing we can ever know or have. To love is to live. To refuse to love is to die to our very being. In truth, love gives meaning even to death, and with love, even death is conquered and gives way to life.

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Poems Spirituality Words of Wisdom

Why Can’t God Answer Me?

It is through the most difficult trials that God often brings the sweetest discoveries of Himself.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning?
My God, I cry in the daytime, but you don’t answer;
in the night season, and am not silent.
-Psalm 22:1-2, WEB

To be forsaken even by God. To be unable to understand why such an evil has to happen, has to be allowed to happen by the One Good God who can do all things. Why hasn’t He stopped this from happening? Why has He allowed me to be hurt like this? And where is He now when I need Him most of all?

But there is no answer. There is no sermon. There is no comfort. All that follows is silence.

What must a soul do? In all its pain, a soul cries out even louder. It hurls all its frustrations towards heaven. It narrates a long list of all the good deeds it has done, of all the noble acts that have been unrewarded. In frustration, the soul asks why such a punishment is given in return? The soul asks for justice and for mercy, but there is none. All that follows is silence.

Hanging upon the cross, Jesus uttered the same words, and asked the same question: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

I Can’t Tell You Why

I can’t tell you why
Things must happen the way they did,
Why this terrible pain
Must now break your heart.
I can’t tell you why
God is now silent as we speak,
Why He allowed such things
To happen to His child.

But I can tell you
How He loves you so,
And how He never changed
Through all these years.
I can tell you that
Though He seems so far
In truth He is with you
And never more so near.

So hold on through the shadows
And take heart through the night
Someone watches over you
And cares for you tonight
I can’t tell you why
He chose to be unseen
Or why He waits for tears to fall
But it can never be
because He doesn’t care
For we know His love
Is the greatest of them all!

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. – John 15, WEBBE