Inspiration

My Cross Dear Jesus,  In this season, as in many before, I have felt so distant from You. My cross can feel overbearing. While I should be grateful for my family, I am most commonly the opposite. I feel starved for attention and respite. Bitter at the need to be constantly humble. I react with anger and impatience rather than with the submission of you ask me to be.  Stabbing, searing, loneliness and despair. Giant, twisted trees of wood rising into the sky.  The piercing heaviness of the cross. You received Agony for my sins. Took on my suffering and understood it. JP II said You have made room in Your suffering for me to participate, to know your love.  Paul says to rejoice in it.  Help me to offer my pain to You, to empty myself so you can fill me.  Not my will, but your will be done.  Jesus, may I trust in You.

  What is justice? So often I feel entitled, that I am owed something. For so many of us, pride accompanies our drive for "success". What is perceived as a good career, or ideal family structure, or living environment, surrounds me in my daily interactions and ways of life.  In actuality though, who am I, in the grand scheme of things? Almost nothing. A speck of dust, and all the more reminded of this during the season I write this in (Lent).  It is Jesus who I must strive to emulate- He is my Rabbi, yet I so struggle with incorporating his ways, his meekness, and loving others without desiring power, glory, or something else in return. As declared in the book of Isaiah, He does not cry out when He is wronged. He does not fight to correct others, but is gentle and perfect in grace. The "bruised reed" (Isaiah 42:3, quoted in Matthew 12:20) is a metaphor for He who is weak, downtrodden, or spiritually broken.   It is frequently paired with "a dimly burning/smolde...