Month: October 2012

Categories
Faith Life

Sabbath Quiet: A Morning Blessing

St. Francis walked the world like the Pardon of God. I mean that his appearance marked the moment when men could be reconciled not only to God but to nature and, most difficult of all, to themselves.~ G.K. Chesterton

The blessing of flowers

A Franciscan Morning Blessing

Jesus, I offer you this new day because I believe in you, love you, hope all things in you and thank you for your blessings.

I am sorry for having offended you and forgive everyone who has offended me.

Lord, look on me and leave in me peace and courage and your humble wisdom that I may serve others with joy, and be pleasing to you all day.

Amen

Wisdom of St. Francis

Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance.

Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation.

Where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice.

Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt.

St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226)

A Grammar of Gratitude

St. Francis was above all things a great giver; and he cared chiefly for the best kind of giving which is called thanksgiving.

If another great man wrote a grammar of assent, he may well be said to have written a grammar of acceptance; a grammar of gratitude.

He understood down to its very depths the theory of thanks; and its depths are a bottomless abyss…the great and good debt that cannot be paid.

G.K. Chesterton, from St. Francis of Assisi

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Categories
Culture Faith Life

Goodness Happens

I believed that here in Le Chambon goodness had happened, and I had come to this village on a high plateau in southern France in order to understand that goodness face-to-face. ~Philip Hallie

goodness happens when we answer the knock

How does goodness happen?

The villagers of Le Chambon, whom I introduced in my last post, didn’t set out to save 3,500 Jews from certain death.

They just answered a knock at the door.

And in the split second of decision, when certainty and safety were too slippery to grasp, something deeper than common sense made up their minds. Something that made it easy to open the door wider, to offer a weary refugee a warm, homely welcome.

Le Chambon kindness was shaped by experiences not easily forgotten. Centuries of persecution still haunted their collective memory, ancestors who faced torture and death because of  their Protestant faith. The villagers knew with biblical certainty, that to live with and love the enemy one must not copy the enemy’s ways.

Well acquainted as Pastor Trocmé and his church were with the cold winds of cruelty, compassion for those shivering before them was easily found.

The pattern is repeated in each human heart–we have a choice. The way of the enemy, or the strange way of Jesus. Yielded to him, we will notice the upside-down law: Not from outward success–any position of strength, but from our brokenness, goodness is born.

Goodness Happens. You’ve seen it:

  • Comforting words from the one well-versed in grief.
  • A wide-armed embrace from the one often left out.
  • An understanding nod from the one who’s ignored.
  • A generous gift from the one who has little.
  • A hospitable welcome from the newly displaced.
  • Deep wisdom flows from the one who’s been silenced.

Goodness happens where we’ve lamented our sin, where we’ve travelled the margins, or been pushed off the grid.

Goodness happens where, flawed and deficient, we have turned to a God of unlimited grace. In the place of our weakness, God’s strength gains a footing–when we’ve run out of ourselves, what’s left is all him.

And you?

Someone is knocking at a door only you can open, because you are the one who has stood where they are.

(Deuteronomy 10:19,  2 Corinthians 1:3,  2 Corinthians 12:10)

How is God using your past failures and sorrow to open a door for others?

 

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail
Categories
Culture Faith Life

The Power of Small: Le Chambon-Sur-Lignon

From the point of view of the history of nations, something very small had happened here. ~Philip Hallie

small french village

In a world where success is measured in numbers, where GO BIG, OR GO HOME! is the cheer, the truth may escape us:

Christ is found in the small choices and seldom-noticed courage of  those who believe he meant what he said.

Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, one of the 15  books that found me, is Philip Hallie’s gripping story of Le Chambon, a small village in the south of France, and “how goodness happened there.”

Few history books record the tale. During the German Occupation more than 3,500 French Jews, many of them children, were rescued by those living in this isolated village. For years, a little train delivered a stream of refugees right under the noses of the Nazis.

Hidden away in farmhouses, some were escorted over dangerous mountains into Switzerland. The high-plateau town, despite openly flouting Vichy orders, emerged from the war unscathed. A miracle.

But, just as compelling as what happened there, is why it did.

The Power of Small

Over the door of the Protestant church in Le Chambon are the words of Jesus, Love One Another. Pastor André Trocmé, later named the “soul” of Le Chambon, had the audacity to believe that Jesus really meant it when he taught us,

  • human life is precious–we must not harm,
  • love transcends categories–people are people,
  • we must not become the very thing we oppose.

In the late 1930’s, as the shadow of evil grew over Europe, Pastor Trocmé preached from the gospels of Jesus. He urged his community to search out little ways, small acts of goodness to undermine the forces of destruction now unleashed in their own country– but without doing evil themselves.

When the first frightened, half-frozen Jews knocked on their doors, his parishioners were ready.

Many years later, when interviewers asked Why? of the villagers, the inevitable response was a shrug. “Things had to be done, that’s all, and we happened to be there to do them. You must understand that it was the most natural thing in the world to help these people.”

Does “goodness happen” here?

Jesus claimed that mountains are shifted by mustard-seed-sized faith. I wonder if mountains seldom move around me because I don’t really believe he meant what he said.

What about you? How ready are you for the ones Christ will send your way?


 

 

 

 

 

 

Image Credit
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail