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On Kindness

Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness. For about a hundred years we have so concentrated on one of the virtues—“kindness” or mercy—that most of us do not feel anything except kindness to be really good or anything but cruelty to be really bad. Such lopsided ethical developments are not uncommon, and other ages too have had their pet virtues and curious insensibilities. And if one virtue must be cultivated at the expense of all the rest, none has a higher claim than mercy. . . The real trouble is that “kindness” is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds. Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. Thus a man easily comes to console himself for all his other vices by a conviction that “his heart’s in the right place” and “he wouldn’t hurt a fly,” though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature. We think we are kind when we are only happy: it is not so easy, on the same grounds, to imagine oneself temperate, chaste, or humble. You cannot be kind unless you have all the other virtues. If, being cowardly, conceited and slothful, you have never yet done a fellow creature great mischief, that is only because your neighbour’s welfare has not yet happened to conflict with your safety, self-approval, or ease. Every vice leads to cruelty.

• From The Problem of Pain
• Compiled in Words to Live By

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There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn: We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

• From The Weight of Glory
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

From @FWMission ... Friday Story: “A More Hopeful Future”

Founded in 2001, Free Wheelchair Mission is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to providing wheelchairs for the impoverished disabled in developing nations. Headquartered in Irvine, California, FWM works around the world in partnership with a vast network of humanitarian, faith-based and government organizations, sending wheelchairs to hundreds of thousands of disabled people, providing not only the gift of mobility, but of dignity, independence, and hope.

---

FWM Photos

Friday Story: “A More Hopeful Future

Elsie is a nine-year-old girl who lives in Ghana, a country on the west coast of Africa. She and her family live in the capital city, Accra, where she is a third grader at Praise Sanctuary Academy.

Elsie was born with a disability and cannot stand or walk. Because of this, her mother would carry her wherever she needed to go, including to school. This wasn’t always easy to do in their bustling urban neighborhood ...

• Read the rest of this story ...

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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On Hell

There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture and, specially, of Our Lord’s own words; it has always been held by Christendom; and it has the support of reason. If a game is played, it must be possible to lose it. If the happiness of a creature lies in self-surrender, no one can make that surrender but himself (though many can help him to make it) and he may refuse. I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully “All will be saved.” But my reason retorts, “Without their will, or with it?” If I say “Without their will” I at once perceive a contra- diction; how can the supreme voluntary act of self-surrender be involuntary? If I say “With their will,” my reason replies “How if they will not give in?”. . .

The doors of Hell are locked on the inside. I do not mean that the ghosts may not wish to come out of Hell, in the vague fashion wherein an envious man “wishes” to be happy: but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good. They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved: just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free.

• From The Problem of Pain
• Compiled in Words to Live By

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SATAN SPEAKS

I am Nature, the Mighty Mother,

I am the law; ye have none other.

I am the flower and the dewdrop fresh,

I am the lust in your itching flesh.

I am the battle’s filth and strain,

I am the widow’s empty pain.

I am the sea to smother your breath,

I am the bomb, the falling death.

I am the fact and the crushing reason

To thwart your fantasy’s new-born treason.

I am the spider making her net,

I am the beast with jaws blood-wet.

I am a wolf that follows the sun

And I will catch him ere day be done.

• From Spirits in Bondage

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Aslan stood in the center of a crowd of creatures who had grouped themselves round him in the shape of a half-moon. There were Tree-Women there and Well-Women (Dryads and Naiads as they used to be called in our world) who had stringed instruments; it was they who had made the music. There were four great centaurs. The horse part of them was like huge English farm horses, and the man part was like stern but beautiful giants. There was also a unicorn, and a bull with the head of a man, and a pelican, and an eagle, and a great Dog. And next to Aslan stood two leopards of whom one carried his crown and the other his standard.

But as for Aslan himself, the Beavers and the children didn’t know what to do or say when they saw him. People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time. If the children had ever thought so, they were cured of it now. For when they tried to look at Aslan’s face they just caught a glimpse of the golden mane and the great, royal, solemn, overwhelming eyes; and then they found they couldn’t look at him and went all trembly.

“Go on,” whispered Mr. Beaver.

“No,” whispered Peter, “you first.”

“No, Sons of Adam before animals,” whispered Mr. Beaver back again.

“Susan,” whispered Peter, “what about you? Ladies first.”

“No, you’re the eldest,” whispered Susan.

And of course the longer they went on doing this the more awkward they felt. Then at last Peter realized that it was up to him. He drew his sword and raised it to the salute and hastily saying to the others “Come on. Pull yourselves together,” he advanced to the Lion and said:

“We have come—Aslan.”

• From The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• Compiled in A Year with Aslan

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The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.

We can only do it for moments at first. But from those moments the new sort of life will be spreading through our system: because now we are letting Him work at the right part of us. It is the difference between paint, which is merely laid on the surface, and a dye or stain which soaks right through. He never talked vague, idealistic gas. When He said, ‘Be perfect,’ He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder—in fact, it is impossible. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

• From Mere Chistianity
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

From @chinaaid : "Xi’an Church Of Abundance Ministers Placed In Residential Surveillance"

The ChinaAid Association is a non-profit Christian organization - based in Midland, Texas - with a mission to uncover and reveal the truth about religious persecution in China, focusing especially on the unofficial church. They do this, they explain in their website, by exposing the abuses, encouraging the abused and equipping the saints to advance the kingdom of God throughout China.

Chinese police torture elderly Christian for 24 hours

Distributed by ChinaAid, March 2023 ...

XI'AN, SHANXI PROVINCE, CHINA – Local police summoned an elderly Christian to fabricate charges against arrested pastors of Xi’an Church of Abundance. Authorities tortured the believer during a 24-hour detention, but he never betrayed the church’s pastorse...

• More on this story from ChinaAid ...

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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On Heaven

Tirian had thought—or he would have thought if he had time to think at all—that they were inside a little thatched stable, about twelve feet long and six feet wide. In reality they stood on grass, the deep blue sky was overhead, and the air which blew gently on their faces was that of a day in early summer. Not far away from them rose a grove of trees, thickly leaved, but under every leaf there peeped out the gold or faint yellow or purple or glowing red of fruits such as no one has seen in our world. The fruit made Tirian feel that it must be autumn but there was something in the feel of the air that told him it could not be later than June. They all moved towards the trees.

Everyone raised his hand to pick the fruit he best liked the look of, and then everyone paused for a second. This fruit was so beautiful that each felt “It can’t be meant for me . . . surely we’re not allowed to pluck it.”

“It’s all right,” said Peter. “I know what we’re all thinking. But I’m sure, quite sure, we needn’t. I’ve a feeling we’ve got to the country where everything is allowed.”

“Here goes, then!” said Eustace. And they all began to eat.

What was the fruit like? Unfortunately no one can describe a taste. All I can say is that, compared with those fruits, the freshest grapefruit you’ve ever eaten was dull, and the juiciest orange was dry, and the most melting pear was hard and woody, and the sweetest wild strawberry was sour. And there were no seeds or stones, and no wasps. If you had once eaten that fruit, all the nicest things in this world would taste like medicines after it. But I can’t describe it. You can’t find out what it is like unless you can get to that country and taste it for yourself.

• From The Last Battle
• Compiled in Words to Live By

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TO MRS. JOHNSON: On the good the dead do by dying well and by comforting us (in the Holy Spirit) afterward; and on how heaven and earth are better than we can imagine.

7 August 1956

Would you believe it!—I had recently felt anxious as to how you were getting on and in praying for you (as of course I do for all who correspond with me on religious matters) I had added a prayer that I might soon hear some good news of you. And also at once your letter . . . arrived.

All you tell me is good and very good. Your mother-in-law has done good to the whole circle by the way she died. And where she has gone I don’t doubt she will do you more still. For I believe that what was true of Our Lord Himself (‘It is expedient for you that I go, for then the Comforter will come to you’ [John 16:7]) is true in its degree (of course, an infinitesimal degree in comparison, but still true) of all His followers. I think they do something for us by dying and shortly after they have died which they couldn’t do before—and sometimes one can almost feel it happening. (You are right by the way: there is a lot to be said for dying—and being born—at home.)

No, I don’t wish I knew Heaven was like the picture in my Great Divorce, because, if we knew that, we should know it was no better. The good things even of this world are far too good ever to be reached by imagination. Even the common orange, you know: no one could have imagined it before he tasted it. How much less Heaven.

• From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III
• Compiled in Yours, Jack

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On God

It is always shocking to meet life where we thought we were alone. “Look out!” we cry, “it’s alive.” And therefore this is the very point at which so many draw back—I would have done so myself if I could—and proceed no further with Christianity. An “impersonal God”—well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads—better still. A formless life- force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap—best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband—that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion (“Man’s search for God”!) suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us!

• From Miracles
• Compiled in Words to Live By

From @FWMission ... Friday Story: “So Excited”

Founded in 2001, Free Wheelchair Mission is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to providing wheelchairs for the impoverished disabled in developing nations. Headquartered in Irvine, California, FWM works around the world in partnership with a vast network of humanitarian, faith-based and government organizations, sending wheelchairs to hundreds of thousands of disabled people, providing not only the gift of mobility, but of dignity, independence, and hope.

---

FWM Photo

Friday Story: “So Excited”

This story comes to you from a team at Right at Home, a Nebraska-based company that has been partnering with Free Wheelchair Mission since 2017.

In late 2019, just months before travel restrictions imposed by the pandemic, a team from Right at Home embarked on a vision trip to distribute wheelchairs in Ecuador. They shared about their experience delivering a wheelchair to a 46-year-old named Jaime ...

• Read the rest of this story ...

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

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And now, for the first time, the Lion was quite silent. He was going to and fro among the animals. And every now and then he would go up to two of them (always two at a time) and touch their noses with his. He would touch two beavers among all the beavers, two leopards among all the leopards, one stag and one deer among all the deer, and leave the rest. . . [T]he creatures whom he had touched came and stood in a wide circle around him. . .

The Lion, whose eyes never blinked, stared at the animals as hard as if he was going to burn them up with his mere stare. And gradually a change came over them. The smaller ones—the rabbits, moles, and such-like— grew a good deal larger. The very big ones—you noticed it most with the elephants—grew a little smaller. Many animals sat up on their hind legs. Most put their heads on one side as if they were trying very hard to understand. The Lion opened his mouth, but no sound came from it; he was breathing out, a long, warm breath; it seemed to sway all the beasts as the wind sways a line of trees. Far overhead from beyond the veil of blue sky which hid them the stars sang again; a pure, cold, difficult music. Then there came a swift flash like fire (but it burnt nobody) either from the sky or from the Lion itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children’s bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying:

“Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.”

• From The Magician's Nephew
• Compiled in A Year with Aslan

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In reading about ancient Egypt one gets the impression of a culture in which the main business of life was the attempt to secure the well-being of the dead. It looks as if God did not want the chosen people to follow that example. We may ask why. Is it possible for men to be too much concerned with their eternal destiny? In one sense, paradoxical though it sounds, I should reply, Yes.

• From Reflections on the Psalms

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On Free Will

The sin, both of men and of angels, was rendered possible by the fact that God gave them free will: this surrendering a portion of His omnipotence (it is again a deathlike or descending movement) because He saw that from a world of free creatures, even though they fell, He could work out (and this is the re-ascent) a deeper happiness and a fuller splendour than any world of automata would admit.

• From Miracles
• Compiled in Words to Live By

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Since God is blessed, omnipotent, sovereign, and creative, there is obviously a sense in which happiness, strength, freedom, and fertility (whether of the mind or body), wherever they appear in human life, constitute likenesses, and in that way proximities, to God. But no none supposes that the possession of these gifts has any necessary connection with our satisfaction. No kind of riches is a passport to the Kingdom of Heaven.

• From The Four Loves

From @chinaaid : " Authorities raid a church in China’s Henan province in 2018 “Smart Religion” app: Christians must submit online form to attend church"

The ChinaAid Association is a non-profit Christian organization - based in Midland, Texas - with a mission to uncover and reveal the truth about religious persecution in China, focusing especially on the unofficial church. They do this, they explain in their website, by exposing the abuses, encouraging the abused and equipping the saints to advance the kingdom of God throughout China.

“Smart Religion” app: Christians must submit online form to attend church

ChinaAid Photo

Distributed by ChinaAid, March 2023 ...

HENAN PROVINCE, CHINA – Christians in Henan province, China, must complete an online form and receive approval to attend church services. Officials refer to applications for church gatherings as a form of governance for “Smart Religion,” but no legal basis has been provided for such a measure...

• More on this story from ChinaAid ...

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TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE: On the hard task of learning to depend only on God and on nothing and no one else.

6 December 1955

I was most distressed by the news in your letter of Dec. 2nd. . . . And I can’t help you, because under the modern laws I’m not allowed to send money to America. (What a barbarous system we live under. I knew a man who had to risk prison in order to smuggle a little money to his own sister, widowed in the U.S.A.) By the way, we mustn’t be too sure there was any irony about your just having refused that other job. There may have been a snag about it which God knew and you didn’t.

I feel it almost impossible to say anything (in my comfort and security—apparent security, for real security is in Heaven and thus earth affords only imitations) which would not sound horribly false and facile. Also, you know it all better than I do. I should in your place be (I have in similar places been) far more panic-stricken and even perhaps rebellious. For it is a dreadful truth that the state of (as you say) ‘having to depend solely on God’ is what we all dread most. And of course that just shows how very much, how almost exclusively, we have been depending on things. That trouble goes so far back in our lives and is now so deeply ingrained, we will not turn to Him as long as He leaves us anything else to turn to. I suppose all one can say is that it was bound to come. In the hour of death and the day of judgement, what else shall we have? Perhaps when those moments come, they will feel happiest who have been forced (however unwillingly) to begin practising it here on earth. It is good of Him to force us: but dear me, how hard to feel that it is good at the time....

All’s well—I’m half ashamed it should be—with me. God bless and keep you. You shall be constantly in my prayers by day and night.

• From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis
• Compiled in Yours, Jack

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The more we get what we now call ‘ourselves’ out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of Him that millions and millions of ‘little Christs’, all different, will still be too few to express Him fully. He made them all. He invented— as an author invents characters in a novel—all the different men that you and I were intended to be. In that sense our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. It is no good trying to ‘be myself’ without Him. The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires. In fact what I so proudly call ‘Myself’ becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never started and which I cannot stop. What I call ‘My wishes’ become merely the desires thrown up by my physical organism or pumped into me by other men’s thoughts or even suggested to me by devils. Eggs and alcohol and a good night’s sleep will be the real origins of what I flatter myself by regarding as my own highly personal and discriminating decision to make love to the girl opposite to me in the railway carriage. Propaganda will be the real origin of what I regard as my own personal political ideas. I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call ‘me’ can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.

• From Mere Christianity
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

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On Forgiveness

I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality (unless I watch myself very carefully) asking Him to do something quite different. I am asking Him not to forgive me but to excuse me. But there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing. Forgiveness says “Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology, I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before.” But excusing says “I see that you couldn’t help it or didn’t mean it, you weren’t really to blame.”. . .

Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the man who has done it.

• From The Weight of Glory
• Compiled in Words to Live By

From @FWMission ... Friday Story: “19 Books about Disability to Read with Your Family (UPDATED 02.06.23)”

Founded in 2001, Free Wheelchair Mission is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to providing wheelchairs for the impoverished disabled in developing nations. Headquartered in Irvine, California, FWM works around the world in partnership with a vast network of humanitarian, faith-based and government organizations, sending wheelchairs to hundreds of thousands of disabled people, providing not only the gift of mobility, but of dignity, independence, and hope.

---

FWM Photo

Friday Story: “19 Books about Disability to Read with Your Family (UPDATED 02.06.23)”

Take a break from the screen!

Between online meetings, classes, and Zoom calls, looking at a screen can be exhausting.

Instead, check out this list of family-friendly books about disability for all ages. These books provide a unique insight into the lives of people with disabilities and are perfect to read as a family ...

• Read the rest of this story ...

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TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE: On the very comforting fact that Jesus was afraid.

2 April 1955

In great haste. I hope your next letter will bring me news that the operation has gone swimmingly. Fear is horrid, but there’s no reason to be ashamed of it. Our Lord was afraid (dreadfully so) in Gethsemane. I always cling to that as a very comforting fact. All blessings.

• From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis
• Compiled in Yours, Jack

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Letter to Mrs Lockley: from Magdalen College, September 1949

I don’t think your objection to ‘setting yourself up as a judge’ is cowardly. It may spring form the fact that you are the injured party and have a v. proper conviction that the plaintiff cannot also be on the Bench. I also quite realize that he didn’t feel the sin as a Christian wd: but he must, as a man, feel the dishonor of breaking a promise. After all constancy in love thunders at him from every love-song in the world, quite apart from our mystical conception of marriage…

As you say, the thing is to rely only on God. The time will come when you will regard all this misery as a small price to pay for having been brought to the dependence. Meanwhile (don’t I know) the trouble is that relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done…

The reason why I am saddled with many people’s trouble is, I think, that I have no natural curiosity about private lives and am therefore a good subject. To anyone who (in that sense) enjoyed it, it wd be a dangerous poison.

• From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis

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On Heaven

But God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it—made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.

• From Mere Christianity
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

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There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket of coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

• From The Four Loves
• Compiled in Preparing for Easter

From @chinaaid : "Residential area around Chinese Cathedral demolished"

The ChinaAid Association is a non-profit Christian organization - based in Midland, Texas - with a mission to uncover and reveal the truth about religious persecution in China, focusing especially on the unofficial church. They do this, they explain in their website, by exposing the abuses, encouraging the abused and equipping the saints to advance the kingdom of God throughout China.

Residential area around Chinese Cathedral demolished

ChinaAid Photo

Distributed by ChinaAid, March 2023 ...

SHANXI PROVINCE, CHINA – The police of Datong, Shanxi province, demolished the residences used by priests and nuns of the local Catholic diocese. The historic Cathedral of the Immaculate Heart of Mary was temporarily spared ...

• More on this story from ChinaAid ...

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TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE: On keeping to a regular pattern of religious life during the storms of life.

9 November 1955

I agree: the only thing one can usually change in one’s situation is oneself. And yet one can’t change that either—only ask Our Lord to do so, keeping on meanwhile with one’s sacraments, prayers, and ordinary rule of life. One mustn’t fuss too much about one’s state. Do you read St. Francis de Sales? He has good things to say on this subject. All good wishes.

• From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis
• Compiled in Yours, Jack

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On Happiness

What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could “be like gods”—could set up on their own as if they had created themselves—be their own masters—invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

• From Mere Christianity
• Compiled in Words to Live By

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Today in the Mission Yearbook: April 9, 2023

EASTER/ONE GREAT HOUR OF SHARING - Kintsugi, the 15th-century Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the broken areas with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold or other precious metal, reminds us that when repaired, formerly broken places reveal new lines of character and beauty.

But what of God’s world? The world God entrusted to our care? So many parts are broken, damaged by cruelty to each other, misuse of Creation or refusal to take God’s commands seriously ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

... the day before The Day ...

Big day, tomorrow ... and not just for all Christians, but for all peoples ... that's what I believe.

"We are the Easter people," Pastor Jim Miles of First Prez-Fort Stockton would remind us, and not just in the days leading up to Easter, but throughout the year. And that is what we affirm tomorrow, the day for which we have been preparing over the past six weeks, the day for which we live - or at least try to live - at all times.

A promise was made on a joyful, star-lit night, in a stable in Bethlehem ... but that promise was kept on a bloody, storm-darkened day, on a hill outside of Jerusalem ... and later in a place of tombs in the early morning.

A photo I took on a highway north of Mason, Texas.

Big day tomorrow, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ ... big day ... THE day, really. But I find myself wondering what it was like the day before The Day ... what was it like during those long hours that passed between Christ's crucifixion and his resurrection? I can't help but think it's easier for us, two-thousand years later, with the benefit of hindsight, with the Word in our hands, our minds, our hearts. But back then ... right then, right there? What was it like for the followers of Jesus on THAT very first day before The Day?

I've always felt a little sorry for Peter, one of the first (and perhaps the greatest) of Jesus' disciples. How many times have I listened to some discussion in Sunday school that included talking some smack about Peter and his shortcomings ... it's especially pronounced now, as we are reminded for the umpteenth time of his denial of Jesus outside the house where Christ was being held. What must it have been like - that day before The Day - for Peter?

Of course, that was Peter before The Day, and before Pentecost. The man that emerges from all that is someone and something else entirely. There is still a growing, learning, developing spirit and awareness in him ... but there is no longer any doubt, or any denial.

But before that? I can only imagine ... because I know, now, and I believe ...

He is risen ...

Christ is risen, indeed ...

Alleluia! Amen!

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

What I like about experiences is that it is such an honest thing. You may take any number of wrong turnings; but keep your eyes open and you will not be allowed to go very far before the warning signs appear. You may have deceived yourself, but experience is not trying to deceive you. The universe rings true wherever you fairly test it.

• From Surprised by Joy

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Provided Photo

Today in the Mission Yearbook: April 8, 2023

INTERNATIONAL ROMA DAY - It humbles me the extent to which our Roma friends and colleagues practice hospitality, always laying a table for us with whatever they have. They are among the poorest of the poor, marginalized by a society that feels threatened by an alien culture living in their midst. I don’t use the word alien as a negative, just a reality ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

From Catholic Charities USA ... "Lent Daily Reflection" for April 8

Holy Saturday

Readings of the Day

“Dear brothers and sisters, on this most sacred night, in which our Lord Jesus passed over from death to life, the Church calls upon her sons and daughters, scattered throughout the world, to come together to watch and pray. If we keep the memorial of the Lord’s paschal solemnity in this way, listening to his word and celebrating his mysteries, then we shall have the sure hope of sharing his triumph over death and living with him in God.”

So begins the solemn blessing of the Easter Vigil. If you have never experienced this liturgy, consider doing so this year!

Of this magnificent liturgy’s many symbols and rituals, the baptismal liturgy is especially significant for social ministers. The baptismal font and waters are blessed; new Christians are baptized and confirmed; baptismal vows are renewed; and the entire assembly is blessed with the baptismal water.

The Vigil’s baptismal liturgy closes with this prayer: “And may almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has given us new birth by water and the Holy Spirit and bestowed on us forgiveness of our sins, keep us by his grace, in Christ Jesus our Lord, for eternal life.”

And how many times are we bearers of new water to suffering victims? In 2016, a poisoned water crisis in Flint, Michigan came to a head. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder declared a state of emergency in Genesee County, of which Flint is the major population center. Shortly thereafter, President Barack Obama declared a federal state of emergency. Between 6,000 and 12,000 children were exposed to drinking water with high levels of lead. As a parish minister that year, I transferred newly blessed baptismal water from one worship site of our parish (which hosted the Vigil that year) to our two other worship sites. And I prayed for our Michigan neighbors who did not have safe, life-giving water.

Many of us assist or have assisted disaster response efforts, often providing life-giving water. This Easter - as we experience the Vigil’s blessing of baptismal water and many sprinkling rites during the season- may we be ever mindful of our neighbors who lack this life-saving element for cooking, washing, and drinking, while supporting our colleagues on the ground who provide this life-giving element.

Steve Herro is a Norbertine brother of St. Norbert Abbey, De Pere, Wisc. A past staff member of CCUSA, he presently serves the Church as a trained spiritual director, archivist, blogger, small group facilitator, and volunteer for local charitable agencies.

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The mission of Catholic Charities is to provide service to people in need, to advocate for justice in social structures, and to call the entire church and other people of good will to do the same. Catholic Charities is a network of charities with headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. The organization serves millions of people a year, regardless of their religious, social, or economic backgrounds.

From @FWMission ... Friday Story: “Join Us and Move For Mobility”

Founded in 2001, Free Wheelchair Mission is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to providing wheelchairs for the impoverished disabled in developing nations. Headquartered in Irvine, California, FWM works around the world in partnership with a vast network of humanitarian, faith-based and government organizations, sending wheelchairs to hundreds of thousands of disabled people, providing not only the gift of mobility, but of dignity, independence, and hope.

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FWM Photo

Friday Story: “Join Us and Move For Mobility”

This May, get moving for a great cause—anytime, anywhere!

Millions of people with disabilities around the world are still waiting for wheelchairs. By doing the Move for Mobility this year, you will be helping us send thousands of wheelchairs to those in need.

In the Move for Mobility, you can run, walk, hike, roll, swim, jump, bike, or do any other activity of your choice, for any distance you choose, while raising funds to provide new wheelchairs to people with disabilities in developing countries.

The Move for Mobility is fully customizable. You can complete your distance all at once or throughout the month of May.

Invite your friends, family, coworkers, church, sports teams, training partners, or other groups to form a team and Move for Mobility together!

All fitness levels are welcome!

To learn more about the Move for Mobility, please visit MoveforMobility.org. 

Sign-Up Now!

Watch the promo video here ...

When you register, you'll receive a Move for Mobility athletic T-shirt and wristband, access to a fundraising toolkit, an invitation to a private Facebook training group, and a medal for completing your goal and submitting a finish-line photo with your race time.

To learn more about the Move for Mobility, please visit MoveforMobility.org.

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

To shrink back from all that can be called Nature into negative spirituality is as if we ran away from horses instead of learning to ride. There is in our present pilgrim condition plenty of room (more room than most of us like) for abstinence and renunciation and mortifying our natural desires. But behind all asceticism the thought should be, ‘Who will trust us with the true wealth if we cannot be trusted even with the wealth that perishes?’ Who will trust me with a spiritual body if I cannot control even an earthly body? These small and perishable bodies we now have were given to us as ponies are given to schoolboys. We must learn to manage: not that we may some day be free of horses altogether but that some day we may ride bare-back, confident and rejoicing, those greater mounts, those winged, shining and world- shaking horses which perhaps even now expect us with impatience, pawing and snorting in the King’s stables. Not that the gallop would be of any value unless it were a gallop with the King; but how else— since He has retained His own charger—should we accompany Him?

• From Miracles
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Today in the Mission Yearbook: April 7, 2023

GOOD FRIDAY - Maundy Thursday was the start of what is known as the Easter Triduum — triduum, which is Latin for “three days.” Three days, which include Good Friday and Holy Saturday, in which before we get to the joy of the resurrection, we are reminded how quick we are to betray, to cry “crucify him” and to sink into the depths of despair when we are left in the limbo of loss ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

In the interval I had some good talk with Prince, mainly about the distinction of essence and existence, with a digression on Croce’s aesthetics. We look at things from rather similar standpoints. I should like to see more of this man. He opened the discussion in a style that amused me – it was so characteristically Oxfordish and donnish. Perhaps he will outgrow it. He took up (I think only for dialectical purposes) the line that the distinction between willing, judging etc., was only ‘sophistication’: that when one said one was hungry one simply contemplated attractive food without ‘enjoying’ in Alexander’s sense, the act of wanting it. This led to some good discussion.

• From All the Road Before Me