"I get enough."

How 3 words can stop what's stealing your joy: Instead of staying stuck in comparing and competing
Ann Voskamp

"I get enough."

I get enough… because I get enough Jesus – and Jesus for me is enough.
I get enough… because I get enough God – and God in me is enough.
I get enough… because I get enough grace – and His grace to me is enough.
I get enough… because I get enough Love – and His Love all around me, for me, in me, is enough.
I get enough.
When I can’t remember that I get enough – I just have to remember to give thanks.

Eucharisteo always precedes the miracle:
Give thanks – and you get the miracle of knowing that you do get enough. You get enough God.

The disease of not-enough… is cured when you give thanks for more than enough grace.
. . .
“He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all – how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?
If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing Himself to the worst by sending His own Son  –  is there anything else He wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us?” (Romans 8:32, NIV, MSG)
If God already gave us the extraordinary extravagance of Jesus – He will give the ordinary enough of right now.

The column was originally published on Ann Voskamp’s blog, annvoskamp.com.
www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/07/29/how-3-words-can-stop-whats-stealing-your-joy-instead-staying-stuck-in-comparing-and-competing.html

She is a friend of my mind.

"She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind."
~ Toni Morrison, Beloved

Fear Not

Fear Not
Our fear is a hump we have to get over, and we have to get over it before we can go very far with Jesus. To help an alcoholic or a drug addict, we must first get him or her off the stuff. That is the first step, the first lesson (if you will): to stop drinking or using. Only then does it make sense to talk about other things.
Jesus knew that people, from the day they are born, are slaves to fear, just as much slaves as a drunkard is to his bottle or an addict to his needle. And, until we can stop being afraid, and trust God, nothing else works. We are simply too consumed by fear and worry and anxiety to think about anything else.
For that reason Jesus spent a great deal of time telling us not to be afraid -- telling us directly, and acting out God's grace by feeding people who were hungry and rescuing those in trouble on the sea. God will be there when we need him. Fear not. It the first lesson in the Christian primer, the one on which all the others build.
~ William R. Boyer, Four Miles Out

truth-telling, confronting injustice, and pursuing peace

William Sloane Coffin, Jr., who died at the age of 81, was a scholar, civil rights leader, antiwar activist, and a prophet. He summed up his faith by saying, "I believe Christianity is a worldview that undergirds all progressive thought and action."
He also said, "The Christian church is called to respond to Biblical mandates like truth-telling, confronting injustice, and pursuing peace."

Hope

"Hope is not a matter of waiting for things outside us to get better. It is about getting better inside about what is going on inside. It is about becoming open to the God of newness."

- Joan D. Chittister, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, Grand Rapids, MI, 2003, 110.

Turn your face to the sun

"Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall always behind you."

- native New Zealand proverb

Give Light

"Give light and the darkness will disappear of itself. "

- Erasmus

Failure and Success

"Failure changes us for the better, success for the worse."

- Seneca, Roman philosopher 

Live in the Present

"When we yield to discouragement it is usually because we give too much thought to the past and to the future. " -St. Therese of Lisieux, Peacemaking, 1989 ed.

Glued to Our Faults

Glued to Our Faults
James S. Hewett once gave an apt example of people not getting the respect they deserve. Especially young people.
He tells about his son, who was using one of those super-adhesive glues on a model airplane he was building. "In less than three minutes," says James Hewett, "his right index finger was bonded to a shiny blue wing of his DC-10. He tried to free it. He tugged it, pulled it, waved it frantically, but he couldn't budge his finger free."
Soon, they located a solvent that did the job and ended their moment of crisis.
Then James Hewitt writes this: "Last night I remembered that scene when I visited a new family in our neighborhood. The father of the family introduced his children: 'This is Pete. He's the clumsy one of the lot.' 'That's Kathy coming in with mud on her shoes. She's the sloppy one.' 'As always, Mike is last. He'll be late for his own funeral, I promise you.'"
James Hewett goes on to say, "The dad did a thorough job of gluing his children to their faults and mistakes. People do it to us all the time. They remind us of our failures, our errors, our sins, and they won't let us live them down.
Like my son trying frantically to free his finger from the plane, there are people who try, sometimes desperately, to free themselves from their past. They would love a chance to begin again. When we don't let people forget their past, when we don't forgive, we glue them to their mistakes and refuse to see them as more than something they have done.
However, when we forgive, we gently pry the doer of the hurtful deed from the deed itself, and we say that the past is just that--the past--over and done with . . ."
King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com