2 Timothy 4:22 Grace is with us in Christ Jesus!

This is a day that the Lord has made I will rejoice and be glad in it!

Jesus came with shouts of peace, peace to this world that He created. Our joy in our salvation is our hope. Grace, underserved and unmerited, the gift of a loving Father. 

In gratitude with what we have been given we celebrate and embrace life in this moment, however we find it at this time and this place.

2 Timothy 4:22 The Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Grace be with you. Amen.

Our  peace with God keeps us in hope and sustains us in all the ups and downs of this life. Carla

The final note of this book and of Paul’s ministry is grace, a fitting conclusion for this man of God and his faithful service to the Lord Jesus Christ. The NKJV Study Bible

We need no more to make us happy, than to have the Lord Jesus Christ with our spirits; for in him all spiritual blessings are summed up. It is the best prayer we can offer for our friends, that the Lord Jesus Christ may be with their spirits, to sanctify and save them, and at last to receive them to himself. Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary

Galatians 6:18 Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.

Colossians 4:18. This salutation by my own hand—Paul. Remember my chains. Grace be with you. Amen.

Philemon 25 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.

Philippians 4:23 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

2 Timothy 1:12  For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day

And here’s the deal: we can embrace both—light and hope—even, and maybe especially, when the script for our day (or week, or the narrative for the world around us) has been displaced or even dislocated.

I do know this: When life goes off the rails, we tend to let our minds be overrun with “what ifs” and “if onlys”, and we miss the moments to pause, to notice the little things—the beauty, the wonder, the sacred that anchors us. The little, tiny gifts, of people and kindness and generosity, and spaces where sanctuary is real. Where the sacred is alive and well in the ordinary. So, let us begin there: What anchors us?

"In technology you have this horizontal progress, where you must start at one point and move to another and then another," Thomas Merton once commented. "But that is not the way to build a life of prayer. In prayer we discover what we already have. You start where you are and you deepen what you already have, and you realize that you are already there. All we need is to experience what we already possess."

When Kierkegaard wrote, "laughter is a type of prayer", I think he meant that with laughter, we give up our need to control or manage or manipulate. We allow ourselves the permission to receive—this day, this moment, as a gift. You never know what you may see.

The Celtic church had a word for these moments of transformation. They called them thin places. "A thin place is anywhere our hearts are opened," writes Marcus Borg. "They are places where the boundary between the two levels becomes very soft, porous, permeable. Thin places are places where the veil momentarily lifts and we behold (the "ahaah of The Divine")... all around us and in us."

One, this week, let us remember what anchors us. Let us listen to our heart.

Two, for yourself and for everyone you care about, make sure you hydrate your soul. “Sabbath Moments”