HUG Corner: Thought for the Week 8/6/18

August 6, 2018

Healing After Loss (Martha Whitmore Hickman)

In prayer, you encounter God in the soft breeze, in the distress and joy of your neighbor and in the loneliness of your own heart.

-Henri Nouwen

What does it mean to pray? Sometimes we think of prayer as being consciously articulated thoughts, petitions, and thanksgivings addressed to God. We speak, or think, and nothing more than a mood of being attentive to what is going on. Joan Baez has described prayer as paying attention.

Perhaps in the mood of paying attention, we can welcome God into our lives – our joys and sorrows – as one who is also paying attention. God, in that attentiveness, understands and shares our sorrow, even as his love wraps us around in his mystery and makes us feel we’re going to make it home. 

God is present in my joy and in my sorrow.

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