If you want to tell me how sincere your faith is...

If you want to tell me how sincere your faith is.....How devout your faith is....How deeply you believe...

Then tell me how you love.

How you reach out.

How people feel welcomed and safe with you.

How compassionate you are.

How you champion the rights of the vulnerable.

How you make time for the lonely.

How madly in love you are with the God who is madly in love with you.

Then I shall listen. And we shall talk, and share, and rejoice.

God bless you.

Flimsy or firm ground?

If your positions on issues, faith, whatever, are so fragile that you must prop them up by attacking others, or by taking from them what you demand for yourself, then you stand on flimsy ground indeed.

Being confident in yourself, of your reasoned stances on issues, faith (or non-faith as might be for others), allows you to give other people the dignity and respect you want for yourself. It lets you not feel threatened by what is different; that confidence allows you to maintain your own space in the world without diminishing the value of other people.

You then can communicate with those of different view points, learn from them, share with them, enrich them and be enriched by them. What is there to be so afraid of? Why react in fear and loathing when you can instead reach out, sure of yourself, in friendship and kindness to others?

--Beth Haynes Butler

Suffering

Personal reflections on the nature of suffering that occurred to me in the quiet of prayer today:

Suffering strips away the varnish, the polish, of who you want to appear to be. Both to others, and yourself.

Suffering forces you to shape your character, for good or ill, as well as to reveal the form of your nature which you have been crafting with each decision your entire life.

Suffering shows what your foundational bedrock is; how strong or weak the beliefs you have clung to really are to you. It makes you sort your priorities and relationships-- suffering means your soul has to face itself, what it values and believes. Suffering asks if you can look into the mirror of yourself, and will you be hearkened or sorrowed by what you find?

True suffering will not leave you unchanged; the crux becomes how you will use that suffering. Will you let God use it to refine and purify aspects of your character? Will you use the lessons that suffering has taught you, to reach out in compassion to others? Will you use that suffering to strengthen your foundation, or in bitterness use it to chip away all that you stand upon?

One must decide, sometimes by sheer force of will, to use one's suffering as a tool. A tool to improve one's dependence upon God. A tool to make one's relationships more meaningful. A tool with which to minister to others. A tool that will help one improve their foundation and character.

Otherwise, suffering will lead to bitterness. And that does neither the suffering person nor anyone else any benefit.

--Beth Haynes Butler 

Compassion

A truth and way of looking at situations and people that was given to me in prayer last night:

Compassion is taking someone else's burden into your heart.

--Beth Haynes Butler 

"Bless Thou, O God, the dwelling,

"Bless Thou, O God, the dwelling,
And each who rests herein this night;
Bless Thou, O God, my dear ones
In every place wherein they sleep;
In the night that is to-night,
And every single night ;
In the day that is to-day,
And every single day."

(traditional Hebridean prayer from the Carmina Gadelica)

Faith in God with purity of heart; simplicity of life with religion; generosity with love.

Faith in God with purity of heart; simplicity of life with religion; generosity with love.

--Ita, who died in about 570, was abbess of a women’s community in Killeedy, County Limerick in Ireland.

I'm not going to be that Pharisee.

Now, you can personally and religiously believe what you like, but you don't have the right to kill, harm and deprive someone of freedom for living a life different than yours, as long as they are not out hurting someone else. No one is telling you what to believe or not to believe (although I don't think you understand the Gospel in the way I understand the Gospel at all), but to kill someone because they live a different lifestyle than you? Imprison them? Deny them basic, human rights that everyone should be entitled to?

Are you so insecure in yourself and your beliefs? Do you hate so much? Are you so afraid? Are you so small souled and hard of heart?

My faith in God does not make me fear, hate or discriminate against people who believe differently than I do, who have a different sexual orientation, different political views, or world views. My faith in God is strong enough, secure enough and large enough that I can do what Jesus told me to do: seek out the lonely, hurting, broken, outcast and vulnerable (no matter what caste, fringe group, minority, gender, etc they belong to) and love them. I don't agree with every aspect of any one friend; because we're all different and hold different views on a vast amount of things.

But being different than they doesn't mean I have to fear, hate or discriminate against them. I'm not going to be that Pharisee.

Beth