Ambushed

The road I have traveled these last 38 years is pockmarked by disastrous victories & magnificent defeats, soul-diminishing successes & life-enhancing failures. Seasons of fidelity & betrayal, periods of consolation & desolation, zeal & apathy are not unknown to me.

There have been times...when the felt presence of God was more real to me than the chair I am sitting on; when the Word ricocheted like broken-backed lightening in every corner of my soul; when a storm of desire carried me to places I had never visited.

And there have been other times...when I identified with the words of Mae West: "I used to be Snow White - but I drifted!" When the Word was as stale as old ice cream & as bland as tame sausage; when the fire in my belly flickered & died;when I mistook dried-up enthusiasm for grey-haired wisdom; when I dismissed youthful idealism as mere naiveté; when I preferred cheap slivers of glass to the pearl of great price.

At times like these I have had to reclaim my core identity as Abba's Child & be ambushed all over again by Jesus of Nazareth.

Brennan Manning

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WOW!
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art & all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder & stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; their eyes are closed......

Albert Einstein