Sunday Sunshine: Angels Among Us

There are angels among us everywhere. They don’t all have wings and halos or play harps or wear white robes. Angels come in the form of those who don’t make a lot of fanfare but whose actions demonstrate love. Angels can be found in our everyday encounters:

The person who sits with an elderly woman, holding her hand in times of fear

The person who patiently sits with a young child, encouraging him to read aloud when reading comes difficult

The person who delivers a hot meal to a homebound neighbor

The person who extends a hand in welcome to a stranger

The person who knits a prayer shawl for a hospital patient

Be one of those angels among us. Be an angel in someone’s life.

Be kind, be loving, be inclusive, be generous, be patient.

Today, this week: Watch for the angels around you. Take their cue and be one, too.

Sunday Sunshine: Love Works

In a world that often seems to be filled with fear, worry, division and differences, love is the answer. Love works. Love is the greatest gift that we can give each other.

Love builds bridges, offers compassion, displays kindness, shows patience, is gracious, is generous, values others. When unsure just what to do or say, come from a place of love.

Today, this week: Spread love. Love works.

Fresh Thoughts for Your Monday: Spread Love

In a world that often seems to be filled with fear, worry, division and differences, love is the answer. Love works. 

Love is the greatest gift that we can give each other. 

Love builds bridges, offers compassion, displays kindness, shows patience, is gracious, is generous, values others. 

When unsure just what to do or say, come from a place of love.

Today, this week: Spread love.

Fresh Thoughts for Your Monday: Embrace and Spread the Light

We all have times in our lives that feel like dark nights, shadows, even storms. Life doesn’t let us get by without experiencing such difficulties or challenges.

Once we accept that there will be storms in life--some severe, we can develop the tools to move through those difficult times with grace. We can learn effective ways to use our storms as opportunities for growth. 

Even in the depth of our shadows and storms, we can find light. That light comes when we become more patient, empathetic, and kind to others and to ourselves.

Today, this week: Look to the light, embrace it and spread it to others.

Fresh Thoughts for Your Monday: See the Unique Beauty

The experiences of our lives have a tendency to set the lens through which we see others and view future experiences.

What if we shed those preset lenses for just today and chose to see everything and everyone from a new perspective?

Today, try this experiment: See the unique beauty in everyone you meet and everything you encounter. Come from a place of openness. Come from a place of kindness. Come from a place of patience. Come from a place of compassion. Come from a place of respect.

At the end of the day, consider what you learned from your experiment. Then, give it a try again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.

In God's Time

I really need more patience and I need it right now.  Whoops -- I guess that's not exercising patience very well.  It seems that everywhere I read lately, there are reminders to exercise patience, the latest of which was featured in our church bulletin:  "Everything happens in God's time, not ours."  As a child, I was always living in a state of self-imposed urgency.  Everything was important and it was important right now.  As I've gotten older, age and a few bumps in life's road have given me a tad more wisdom and even patience.  But, this year, I am working to heed the words of our church bulletin even more. I'm striving to remember always that I may have wishes, desires and plans, but there are times when I need to let go, be patient and allow plans to unfold, perhaps in much more desirable ways than I could have imagined for myself.  Whenever I feel impatient these days, I recall those three powerful words:  "In God's Time."

Waiting Room

I tend to be an impatient sort who focuses on waiting for something to happen, rather than living for right now.  I should imagine that most of us fall prey to the same thing.  But, a recent tweet from someone yanked my thoughts into another perspective.  Quoting Eckhardt Tolle from Practicing The Power of Now, the tweet stated, "Give up waiting as a state of mind. When you catch yourself slipping into waiting...snap out of it. Come into the present moment. Just be and enjoy being."  I had been waiting for something recently and dedicating a lot of my thoughts to it.  Reading that tweet from the wise Eckhardt Tolle was such a gift.  It reminded me that the present moment is what I have and that if I gave up my waiting (and ruminating), I could spend that precious time just being and enjoying it.  So ever since that tweet, whenever my mind turns into a waiting room, I simply -- intentionally, though not always so easily -- close the door to it and turn my thoughts to the present.