Lord, you have searched me thoroughly. You know me....

This can be a scary thought. We want to be known, and seen, and loved, and respected. Not searched.

Later in the Psalm we learn how wonderful and loving is the one who knit us in our mother's womb. His "searching" eyes are there to see our slightest need for him. How wonderful he is in his care for us in all things....

This is a quiet meditation to bring to our inner space a sense of safety and trust.

Music by Petrushkasound from Pixabay

Jesus, looking at him, loved him (Mk). Of course these are the words in the Gospel that describe how Jesus received the rich young man. This quiet and reflective reading will lead you to touch gently both your vulnerability and the way the Lord loves you unconditionally, incredibility, and forever.

O God, you are my God...

For you I long...

For you my soul thirsts...

This psalm I prayed at my mother's side shortly before she passed into eternity. It is a psalm for any of us who are walking through a wilderness, where all is stripped away and we may feel lost and wondering and wandering... 

Where God finds us.... Faithful. Love. 

Take a breath. Rest. And join me in quiet prayer.

I hope you keep in touch. Visit http://www.touchingthesunrise.com

Music by Petrushkasound from Pixabay

What is important here is that we approach our thought world with compassion, curiosity, and creativity, a bit of humor, and a lot of prayer. It is like a cluster of screaming children clustered around our heart where God is dwelling. Think about a playground with kids out of control. It’s hard to get to the center, to the ground, to the inner room where God is dwelling when we are deflected by so many interests, fears, desires, and demands.

In this meditation we experience the rest of our inner world that only Jesus and his compassion can bring us.

What keeps you up at night? What is in your heart that you wish you could share with someone who cares? In this Holy Thursday meditation, Jesus gathers you tightly into his embrace as he looks in to your eyes and says: "When will you give all this to me?"

A conversation between Sr Emily Beata Marsh and Sr Kathryn James exploring the questions we ask in times that are uncertain, when we face struggles and challenges in our life, and when we wonder why those we love suffer.

Welcome to the last in the series: Being the Child God Made You where we're exploring how to be the child that Jesus asks us to be. Today we'll be talking about God made us to be satisfied only in God.

Excerpts:

God has made us for himself. He is providing for us, nourishing us, protecting us, warming us, delighting us... As long as we keep our hearts open, begging for him and his life, we will receive all he is giving us.

What gets in the way of this inbuilt hunger for God? For each of us there would be a different list. One of the habits in the following list might be on yours: hours of scrolling through social media feeds, trying to do what only God can do, trying to change people around you instead of changing yourself, numbing habits, grasping for empty fillers like higher salaries, success, possessions, status... When we are satisfied with what can never satisfy us....

One thing we can do to increase our hunger for God is to avoid these ultimately unsatisfactory fillers and meditate instead on these famous words of St. Augustine who said: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

To connect to more resources for spiritual formation: www.touchingthesunrise.com

Welcome to the sixth in the series: Being the Child God Made You where we're exploring how to be the child that Jesus asks us to be. Today we'll be talking about how to accept our own neediness and also how to receive God's love, especially when we find it difficult.

Excerpts:

Recently on retreat I found myself asking Jesus: “Will you leave me, drop me, because I am not interesting enough?” Isn’t that the fear we all have. That somehow God won’t be so captivated with love for us that he’ll decide we are not worth being with for the long haul?

These were Jesus’ words I felt that he said in my heart:

“It is I who have planted my tent on your land, It is I who have desired to possess your soul... It is I who have chosen you. My choice is irrevocable. I choose to love your story—all of it. It is not a journey from bad to good. It is a life from seed to blossom. You have survived the blights and bugs, the storms, the bending and breaking, MY mending and molding. And now in MY garden, you are blossoming. It is ALL good.”

To connect to more resources for spiritual formation: www.touchingthesunrise.com

Welcome to the fifth in the series: Being the Child God Made You where we're exploring how to be the child that Jesus asks us to be. Today we'll be talking about Mary who teaches us how to receive the Spirit.

Excerpts:

Finally, the apostles had gathered around the Mother of Jesus after he had ascended into heaven, waiting with her for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Mary knew well the presence, almost the “feel”—spiritually speaking—of being inhabited, of being a Temple, of the Spirit of Jesus. She had profound spiritual sensitivity and was no stranger to the movement of the Spirit, through whom the Son of God took flesh within her. At the Annunciation she became the Mother of Jesus, the Mother of the Son of God, and at that moment, in some mysterious way, the Mother of us, all of us who are the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ. In the Cenacle, as the Spirit is poured out on all Jesus’ disciples praying there, Mary is manifested as a type of the Church who, as Mother herself, will give birth to children of God at the baptismal fonts of every country and every time through the grace poured out by the Spirit. This grace is a gift given on the initiative of God, purifying and elevating our nature without suppressing or changing it in its very being....

Mary, Mother of the Church, teach me how to be a mother to people who have fallen away from the Church. Inspire me how to enter into the troubled moments of others’ lives with a quiet invitation to accompany me to the Eucharist or adoration, there to meet your Son. Encourage me to say a gentle word of faith at a time when their heart is ready to receive it. Mary, Mother of the Church, pray for us....

To connect to more resources for spiritual formation: www.touchingthesunrise.com

Welcome to the fourth in the series: Being the Child God Made You where we're exploring how to be the child that Jesus asks us to be. Today we'll be talking about how we belong to the King of Kings and the Lord of the Universe. We truly are royalty!

Excerpts:

So amazing! Yet this reality, this truth that is hinted at on every page of God’s word, is so hard to remember about ourselves and about others. Jesus, the Son of God, loves us. Jesus chooses us. We belong to the King of Kings and the Lord of the Universe. In Isaiah there is more than a hint:

“You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,

...You shall be called My Delight Is in Her” (Isaiah 62:3, 4)....

Baptism is what makes us royalty. I follow the royal family in Great Britain. There people are born into royalty. We, instead, through Baptism, having no claim on being a part of the Royal Family of God, have been made a “partaker of the divine nature,” member of Jesus Christ and a temple of the Holy Spirit....

To connect to more resources for spiritual formation: www.touchingthesunrise.com