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Looking ahead to the coming year, the plan is to stay the course:
- Continuing with "A Daily Spiritual Seed"
- Offering occasional webinars and book study series
- Maintaining and adding resources to shalomplace.com
- Responding to inquiries on the discussion board
- Recording podcasts
There's no shortage of ministry options!
If you have a suggestion, please pass it along.
Hopefully, a Covid-19 vaccine will help to restore some sense of normalcy so the retreat center in Great Bend can open next spring sometime. Our Internet ministry will continue, however, as it has for the past 23 years, thanks in no small part to your support. Please remember us in your prayers.
Gratefully, Phil
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All donations are eligible for tax-deduction.
A special gratitude gift will be sent to all donors.
Check payments:
- Heartland Center for Spirituality
Internet Ministry
3600 Broadway
Great Bend, KS 67530
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So we find that love is many things, though we know its's not a thing in the sense that it cannot be bought or sold or weighed or measured. Love can only be given, expressed freely. It can't be captured or held, for it's neither there to tie nor to hold. It's in everyone and everything in varying degrees and awaits actualization. It's not apart from the self. Love and the self are one. . . Love lives the
moment; it's neither lost in yesterday nor does it crave for tomorrow. Love is Now!
- Leo Buscaglia [20th C.], Love -
("Love is Now." Stop many times today to be present to Love . . . starting "Now.")
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RV 10:8-11; PS 119:14, 24, 72, 103, 111, 131
LK 19:45-48
Jesus entered the temple area and proceeded to drive out
those who were selling things, saying to them,
“It is written,
My house shall be a house of prayer,
but you have made it a den of thieves.”
And every day he was teaching in the temple area.
The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people, meanwhile,
were seeking to put him to death,
but they could find no way to accomplish their purpose
because all the people were hanging on his words.
USCCB lectionary
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Reflection on the Scripture
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“In my mouth it tasted as sweet as honey, but when I swallowed it my stomach turned sour.” —Revelation 10:10
Imagine hearing a voice from heaven. Then you meet an angel, a gigantic angel who stands “on the sea and on the land” (Rv 10:8). This angel commands you to eat a little book (Rv 10:9). Books are not your favorite food, but try saying “no” to an angel. Surprisingly, the book tastes sweet, although later it tastes sour in your stomach and gives you indigestion (Rv 10:10).
Eating the little scroll is accepting God’s call to prophesy. This ministry of prophecy works out well initially, but later becomes a bitter experience of rejection, suffering, persecution, and martyrdom.
Many of God’s callings are also sweet-sour. For instance, how sweet was your honeymoon and those first months or even years of marriage! Yet now you may be rejected by your spouse or struggling to keep your marriage vows. How sweet it was when you first gave your life to Jesus and joined the Church! But now you, like Jesus, may feel sick to your stomach (see Rv 3:16) when you think of loving the Church and laying down your
life for her (see Eph 5:25).
When sweet turns to sour, we feel like turning our commitment to unfaithfulness. However, by God’s grace, we can be sweet to Jesus, even if life has turned sour.
Prayer: Father, I offer You the sacrifice of faithfulness. May this be sweet to You.
Promise: “The entire populace was listening to Him and hanging on His words.” —Lk 19:48
Presentation Ministries
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Abandonment to Divine Providence
- by Jean-Pierre de Caussade
BOOK II,
CHAPTER IV. CONCERNING THE ASSISTANCE RENDERED BY THE FATHERLY PROVIDENCE OF GOD TO THOSE SOULS WHO HAVE ABANDONED THEMSELVES TO HIM
SECTION II. Diversity of Grace
The afflictions which the soul is made to endure are but loving artifices of God which will, one day, give it great joy.
At this awakening those who, like Jeremias and David, have been inconsolable in their grief, will see that in their desolation they have been a subject of joy to the angels, and of glory to God. The bride sleeps through the bustle of industries, and of human actions, and in spite of the sneers of sceptics. In her sleep she will sigh and tremble; in her dreams she will pursue and seek her Spouse, who disguises Himself
to deceive her.
Let her dream; her fears are only born of the night, and of sleep. When the Spouse has exercised her beloved soul, and shown forth in it what can only be expressed by Him, He will develop the result of these dreams and will awaken it at the right time.
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Paperback, Hardback, Kindle
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