Revitalize Your Church

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will; so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen. Reinhold Niebuhr

  “The thorn is one of the most cursed, and angry, and crabbed weeds that the earth yieldeth, and yet out of it springeth the rose, one of the sweetest-smelled flowers, and most delightful to the eye, that the earth hath. Your Lord shall make joy and gladness out of your afflictions; for all His roses have a fragrant smell. Wait for the time when His own holy hand shall hold them to your nose...” -- Samuel Rutherford Photo credit: Cathy Wilson, who took this picture of a rose blooming in our yard.

For the beauty of the earth, For the beauty of the skies, For the love which from our birth Over and around us lies, Chorus: Lord of all, to thee we raise This our hymn of grateful praise. For the beauty of each hour of the day and of the night, Hill and vale, and tree and flow'r Sun and moon, and stars of light, For the joy of human love, Brother, sister, parent, child, Friends on earth and friends above, For our gentle thought and mild, -- written by Folliott Pierpoint (1835-1917)

How small that is, with which we wrestle, What wrestles with us, how immense; Were we to let ourselves, the way things do, Be conquered thus by the great storm-- We would become far-reaching and nameless. What we triumph over is the small, And the success itself makes us small. The eternal and unexampled Will not be bent by us. This is the Angel, who appeared To the wrestlers of the Old Testament: When his opponent's sinews In that contest stretch like metal, He feels them under his fingers Like strings making deep melodies. Whomever this Angel overcame (who so often declined the fight) He walks erect and justified And great from that hard hand Which, as if sculpting, nestled round him. Winning does not tempt him. His growth is this: to be Deeply defeated by the ever-greater One (Marie Rainer Rilke, "The Man Watching")

A Prayer of a Minor Prophet  by A. W. Tozer (revised/updated by Mark O. Wilson) This is the prayer of a man called to be a witness to the nations. This is what he said to his Lord on the day of his ordination. After the elders and ministers had prayed and laid their hands on him he withdrew to meet his Savior in the secret place and in that silence, farther in than his well-meaning brothers and sisters could take him. And he said: O Lord, I heard your voice and was afraid. You called me to an awesome task in a grave and perilous hour. You are about to shake all nations and the earth and also heaven, that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. O Lord, our Lord, you have stopped to honor me to be your servant. No humans take this honor upon themselves except those called of God as Aaron. You have ordained me your messenger to them that are stubborn of heart and hard of hearing. They have rejected You, the Master, and it is not to be expected that they will receive me, the ser...