Self-awareness and healthy self-love go hand in hand. When we love what God has given us and share it with others naturally and without expectations for gratitude we are truly people who have spiritual self-confidence and compassion; and isn't that a great way to live?
- Robert J. Wicks
(Resolve to live this way today.)
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1 Cor 15:1-8; Psalm 19:2-3, 4-5
Jn 14:6-14
Jesus said to Thomas, “I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
If you know me, then you will also know my Father.
From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
Philip said to him,
“Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.”
Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time
and you still do not know me, Philip?
Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.
How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?
The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own.
The Father who dwells in me is doing his works.
Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me,
or else, believe because of the works themselves.
Amen, amen, I say to you,
whoever believes in me will do the works that I do,
and will do greater ones than these,
because I am going to the Father.
And whatever you ask in my name, I will do,
so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”
Reflection on the Scriptures
Philip said to him, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” What a gift Philip gives to us in the here and now. As he continues to question, despite Jesus’ response to Thomas (I am the Way the True and the Light), I have an opportunity to connect my faith to that of the apostles, the witnesses of the ministry, death, and resurrection of Christ. Sometimes, I hear a rebuke for
lack of faith in reading these words. This time, I hear a prompting of the Holy Spirit, nudging both Thomas and Philip to question. The questions open the door for me to become more aware of two things.
First, I can trust Jesus with all of my questions. If I have doubts or do not understand, he will not reject me but patiently respond with a fuller explanation. He will not demand that I believe; instead, he will reassure me of his presence and remind me that he longs for my companionship.
Secondly, he knew some 2000 years following his earthly ministry, the world’s darkness would weigh heavily on his followers. Today I notice the war in Ukraine, human trafficking, and the lack of respect for all persons’ equal dignity, all leading me to ask Master, where are you, and where is the Father?
The answers to my questions and doubts do not come as a bolt of lightning knocking me off my chair. Reading about the doubles of the witnesses, Thomas, Philip, and others, give me the courage to ask my questions. My question, Where are you, is answered when I take the time to notice the work of everyone committed to building God’s
Kingdom.
- by Gladyce Janky
The Existence of God
by Francois Fenelon
SECTION XIII. Of Water
Let us now behold what we call water. It is a liquid, clear, and transparent body. On the one hand it flows, slips, and runs away; and on the other it assumes all the forms of the bodies that surround it, having properly none of its own. If water were more rarefied, or thinner, it would be a kind of air; and so the whole surface of the
earth would be dry and sterile. There would be none but volatiles; no living creature could swim; no fish could live; nor would there be any traffic by navigation. What industrious and sagacious hand has found means to thicken the water, by subtilising the air, and so well to distinguish those two sorts of fluid bodies? If water were somewhat more rarefied, it could no longer sustain those prodigious floating buildings, called ships. Bodies that have the least ponderosity
would presently sink under water. Who is it that took care to frame so just a configuration of parts, and so exact a degree of motion, as to make water so fluid, so penetrating, so slippery, so incapable of any consistency: and yet so strong to bear, and so impetuous to carry off and waft away, the most unwieldy bodies? It is docile; man leads it about as a rider does a well-managed horse. He distributes it as he pleases; he raises it to the top of steep mountains, and makes
use of its weight to let it fall, in order to rise again, as high as it was at first. But man who leads waters with such absolute command is in his turn led by them. Water is one of the greatest moving powers that man can employ to supply his defects in the most necessary arts, either through the smallness or weakness of his body. But the waters which, notwithstanding their fluidity, are such ponderous bodies, do nevertheless rise above our heads, and remain a long while
hanging there. Do you see those clouds that fly, as it were, on the wings of the winds? If they should fall, on a sudden, in watery pillars, rapid like a torrent, they would drown and destroy everything where they should happen to fall, and the other grounds would remain dry. What hand keeps them in those pendulous reservatories, and permits them to fall only by drops as if they distilled through a gardener's watering-pot? Whence comes it that in some hot countries, where
scarce any rain ever falls, the nightly dews are so plentiful that they supply the want of rain; and that in other countries, such as the banks of the Nile and Ganges, the regular inundation of rivers, at certain seasons of the year, never fails to make up what the inhabitants are deficient in for the watering of the ground? Can one imagine measures better concerted to render all countries fertile and fruitful?
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