Pater Noster

http://m.youtube.com/watch?sns=fb&v=1hWE52zsOaA&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D1hWE52zsOaA%26sns%3Dfb

Into Christmas, He comes

The LORD has come! He has come into the celebration of His birth; has come into the frantic, the frenzied, the joys, the pains, the relationships that have need of reconciliation. He has come into the hearts of those that are mourning; those who have suffered loss, the death or absence of a loved one. He has come to fill the gaps in our less than perfect relationships; into our misunderstandings..., our grieves and our sorrows. He has come into the poignant moments of children's joy and the knowledge of how rich these moments are. He has come to fill in all the deficits of our inability to get it all right. He comes as the mortar that upholds all things by the words of His power. He comes to refresh us and strengthen us and renew us. He comes to fulfill us and cleanse us from the stain of our fallen humanity; he forgives us all.
And in Him we are empowered to forgive all. This is the essence of Christmas. This is why He comes! What a marvelous mystery.

It's the truth, anyhow

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December 8

Calling a defect a defect

“When we see how our defects exist in our lives and accept them, we can let go of them and get on with our new life.” Basic Text, p. 35 ––––=–––– Sometimes our readiness to have our character defects removed depends on what we call them.  If misnaming our defects makes them seem less “defective,” we may be unable to see the damage they cause.  And if they seem to be causing no harm, why would we ever ask our Higher Power to remove them from our lives? Take “people pleasing,” for example.  Doesn’t really sound all that bad, does it?  It just means we’re nice to people, right?  Not quite.  To put it bluntly, it means we’re dishonest and manipulative.  We lie about our feelings, our beliefs, and our needs, trying to soothe others into compliance with our wishes. Or perhaps we think we’re “easygoing.”  But does “easygoing” mean we ignore our housework, avoid confrontations, and stay put in a comfortable rut?  Then a better name for it would be “laziness,” or “procrastination,” or “fear.” Many of us have trouble identifying our character defects.  If this is the case for us, we can talk with our sponsor or our NA friends.  We clearly and honestly describe our behavior to them and ask for their help in identifying our defects.  As time passes, we’ll become progressively better able to identify our own character defects, calling them by their true names. ––––=–––– Just for today:  I will call my defects by their true names.  If I have trouble doing this, I will ask my sponsor for help.

 

Copyright © 1991-2013 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved

New Memories

Daily Meditation for Wednesday 04th of December 2013 

The Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me. "
1 Corinthians 11:24

People in the recovery process are people with painful memories. We remember our losses. We remember our sins. We remember the sins which have been committed against us. It is part of the hard work of recovery to face these memories, to grieve them and to come to terms with them. But sometimes the painful memories become so powerful that it seems like nothing will be able to compete with them for our attention. The memory of pain consumes us. In times like this we need a powerful new memory that can challenge the dominance of our painful memories.

Jesus invites us to receive a new and startling memory. "Remember me," Jesus says, "Eat the bread and drink the wine and remember that I gave my life for you. I gave my life because I love you. Take this new memory. Allow it to shape the way you think about yourself and about life and about me. Allow yourself to remember me."

It is not that the memory of Jesus' sacrificial love erases all of our painful memories. Painful memories still have to be faced and grieved if healing is to come. But God offers us in Jesus a memory powerful enough to compete with the most powerful of painful memories. The death-grip which painful memories have on our attention can be broken by the powerful memory of God's love.

Help me to remember you, Lord.
Help me to find a place
in my mind and heart
for the memory of your love for me.
I want the memory of your love, Lord,
to be the most powerful of my memories.
I want it to be 
The Memory
that shapes me.
Help me to remember you.
Amen.

Copyright Dale and Juanita Ryan

Thanksgiving Blessings from Dayspring

Thanksgiving Blessings

Praying you are...

Blessed in a way that brings God's presence closer than you have ever known it...

Blessed in a way that assures you of the plans He has for your life...

Blessed in a way that fills your heart with a thousand"thank-yous" for all that His hand will bring your way.

May the Lord continually BLESS YOU with Heaven's blessings as well as with human joys. Psalm 128:5 TLB

The Giving Life

Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.” (Luke 6:38 NKJV) November 4

Exchanging love

“...we give love because it was given so freely to us.  New frontiers are open to us as we learn how to love.  Love can be the flow of life energy from one person to another.” Basic Text, p. 105 ––––=–––– Love given, and love received, is the essence of life itself.  It is the universal common denominator, connecting us to those around us.  Addiction deprived us of that connection, locking us within ourselves. The love we find in the NA program reopens the world to us.  It unlocks the cage of addiction which once imprisoned us.  By receiving love from other NA members, we find out—perhaps for the first time—what love is and what it can do.  We hear fellow members talk about the sharing of love, and we sense the substance it lends to their lives. We begin to suspect that, if giving and receiving love means so much to others, maybe it can give meaning to our lives, too.  We sense that we are on the verge of a great discovery, yet we also sense that we won’t fully understand the meaning of love unless we give ours away.  We try it, and discover the missing connection between ourselves and the world. Today, we realize that what they said was true:  “We keep what we have only by giving it away.” ––––=–––– Just for today:  Life is a new frontier for me, and the vehicle I will use to explore it is love.  I will give freely the love I have received.

An Honest look at Religious Addiction

Daily Meditation for Saturday 02nd of November 2013 

If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
I Corinthians 13:3

We need to experience loving relationships in order to heal and grow. In loving relationships we experience the safety that allows us to face the truth. In loving relationships we experience the support we need to begin to change. And in loving relationships we learn that we are lovable and valuable.

Because we have been wounded in relationships, our instinct is often to run from relationships. We don't want to be hurt again. This leaves an enormous void in our souls. And it is this void which we desperately try to fill with addictions and compulsions of various kinds. This text focuses on two manifestations of religious addiction (compulsive altruism and religiously motivated self-abuse) and sums up the result: I gain nothing. The same could be said of all of our addictions. "I deliver my body to be burned" and "I gain nothing" are an accurate description not only of a particular kind of religious addiction but also of chemial addiction, work addiction, sexual addiction and relationship addiction, as well as many self-abusive compulsions.

We gain nothing for all the time and effort we spend on trying to numb the pain. It does not achieve the desired result. The void remains.

Although loving fellowship may be frightening for us, it is the path to recovery. The vulnerabilities of intimacy may remind us of earlier times of terror in life, but there is no way to recover in isolation. The net result of compulsions and addictions is "I gain nothing." But the net result of recovery is very different. There is something to be gained by all the hard work that recovery requires. Recovery builds in us a capacity to receive love and a capacity to give love to others. And that is a real gain.

May God grant you the courage you need today to pursue loving fellowship.

Lord, you see my guarded heart. 
You see the fears that make me run from love.
What I fear is what I want most.
I want to love and to be loved.
Give me courage to open my heart to love today.
Amen.<

Copyright Dale and Juanita Ryan