shafts-of-glory-blog - Tumblr blog

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The day I turned thirty, I met some friends for drinks and celebratory cigars at a smoke shop acro...

Read this when you are quiet and longing.

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Perspective. #firstworldproblemsarenotproblems #L

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"Compassionate Lord, Thy mercies have brought me to the dawn of another day. Vain will be its gift unless I grow in grace, increase in knowledge, ripen for spiritual harvest. Let me this day know Thee as Thou art, love Thee supremely, serve Thee wholly, admire Thee fully. Through grace let my will respond to Thee, knowing that power to obey is not in me, but that Thy free love alone enables me to serve Thee. Here then is my empty heart, overflow it with Thy choicest gifts; here is my blind understanding, chase away its mists of ignorance..." - Valley of Vision (Puritan Prayers / Morning)

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QOTD

What's your favorite place/nook/hideaway/haven on the internet?

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What would make this life real:

Gorgeous photographs recording experiences?

A missive of rightly-chosen words?

Reunions?

There is a lot that I hunger for, yet I believe there's One who satisfies.

It's helpful to learn truths like that when we knock, the door is opened, but I want a heart of flesh that knows the truth through and through.

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Page after page of this has me loving everything about it. The WRITING. The PICTURES. The QUOTES. 

Surf through it. It's worth it. 

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"How come you've never shown your work to anyone?"

"I never feel like it's finished."

"Why?"

"Because I guess I'm a perfectionist."

"You know that's just another way of saying 'I'm a chicken.'"

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Food coloring.

There was an afternoon this past week where I was wishing I was more creative. I needed picture-ideas. I needed a scenario and I felt like I had exhausted all that the elements could give me. (I.E. please, spring. come soon.) I grabbed a bunch of snow, shoved it into a kitchen bowl, and poured different kinds of food coloring over it. Blue dots. Green ones. I then held up different sections of snow up to light to see what it would look like. 

Nothing special. 

Frustrated, I threw the contents of the bowl outside and the colored-snow hit some other snow. And shattered. And the colors flashed. And it was actually kind of cool. Sometimes creativity comes when you give up attempting to be creative. 

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discipline

"My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights." [Prov 3:11-12]

"Discipline" comes from the Latin disciplina, instruction, from discipulus, pupil. Why does it connote punishment and disapproval today?

I think that God wouldn't take the trouble to correct us if he didn't care about us so much. If not discipline, what is it that I want: his respect? to be left alone?

Do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof.

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A book review that reads more like an introduction to a fascinating human being. "Chronic introspection may be fatal for an activist, but it’s a necessary precondition for an essayist..."

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The Christian narrative tells us that we individually and we as a world turn our backs on what is true, essential, wholly to be desired. And it tells us that we can both know this about ourselves and forgive it in ourselves and one another, within the limits of our mortal capacities.

Marilynne Robinson, Reclaiming a Sense of the Sacred

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I must confess, I'm confused about who is my audience on this tumblr. I have very little to say to the world in general. -r

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Snow doesn't stay white. The truth is, it's mostly dirty. Mounds of snowbanks piled up around the Northeast this weekend are pillars of steel reminding me of fallen humanity. I snapped this picture because it reminds me of a promise. That while we, as fallen humans, are revolting, disgusting, and filled with sin, there is a Redeemer who will take all this dirt and make it whiter than the purest of earthly snowfalls. "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." [Psalm 51:7]

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Is expression learned or inherent?

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“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them." - Thomas Merton

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This week, I'm studying figure-ground relationships. I'm dedicating this one to the neighbor who's become my new friend.

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I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.

John Newton