Music will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.
01707 – Music Keeps Joy Alive in You
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01519 – How Much Joy Can You Contain?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
01143 – Remembering Hymns Aids Healing
For many believers--and even communities of faith--congregational song has played an important role in shaping the content of faith and in facilitating the remembering of that faith. It has been a recurring testimony that in times of sorrow, crisis, or need, assurance...
01108 – “What God Has Promised”
God has not promised skies always blue, flower-strewn pathways all our lives through.God has not promised sun without rain, joy without sorrow, peace without pain.But God has promised strength for the day, rest for the labor, light for the way;Grace for the trials,...
00890 – We Should Sing Some Minor Key Songs
We shouldn’t limit ourselves to major key songs! The Psalms reveal that much of the Christian life might be spent in a minor key, and it’s time that the church became honest about this reality as well. The church needs to be able to lament together, and minor key...
00617 – Life is Short; Are You Living it Well?
Jesus refuses to bolster the illusion that we protect ourselves by good and faithful living. …He dismisses that assumption by ignoring [the inquirers’] question. What Jesus does do is recognize [their] vulnerability, their feeling of being small and fragile, which...
00575 – God Wants Us All
It is too small a thing to redeem only a few. God wants us all. This good news deserves our full acceptance. Thomas Merton wrote, “A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found; for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough...
00552 – Opportunities for Growth & Service
Life, with its achievements and challenges, its joys and sorrows, gifts us with many opportunities to grow and serve. We serve when we willingly share the wisdom we have gleaned from our life experiences. The spirit of our life is made visible in the spirit of our...
00435 – God Laughs & Weeps with Us
The story of Jesus enables me to envision God as One who genuinely cares for each and all of us. In Jesus, God confronts the Darkness face to face, Incarnate, for our sake. Jesus is Light to the gentle face of God. The story of Jesus says that God laughs with us in...
00280 – Promise of God’s Presence
We don’t have to believe that God is the author of death and destruction in order to believe that God can speak to us, even in sorrow. God’s answer is not an explanation, but the promise of his presence through every storm of life. —————-Gender-neutral version: We...