The Spirit of God

It was a long day and we were out-of-town on an installation for most of it. I lit candles at the church, mostly for all the suffering people in Japan, and for all the challenges the world will face because of natural and man-made catastrophes there. I also lit a few candles for all the dreadful people claiming the Japanese are being made to suffer for some sin that they feel they are qualified to judge and declare. I'm truly appalled by such idiotic comments. I lit one candle for my own sin of condemning them to some unspeakable fate. If I were God, they'd be in Hell already, so it's just as well I'm not.

I like and agree with what Henri Nouwen says in the book Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith (p. 48):

I learned that Protestants belong as much to the Church as Catholics, that Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims believe as much in God as Christians, that pagans can love one another as much as believers, that the human psyche is multidimensional, that theology, psychology, and sociology are intersecting in many places, that women have a real call to ministry, that homosexual people have a unique vocation in the Christian community, that the poor belong to the heart of the Church, and that the Spirit of God blows where it wants.  All of these discoveries gradually broke down many fences that had given me a safe haven and made me deeply aware that God’s covenant with God’s people includes everyone.
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It was almost like summer today - projected high of 77 at home, but closer to 80 degrees where we spent the day, almost on the Kansas border. Way too hot for mid-March to my way of thinking.