How does God provide what a parent does not?

What might have happened if Mary hadn’t accepted Jesus’ healing, if she had refused to do the work necessary to become a resilient, strong, healed woman?

Help me to be fierce in my commitment to keep my past from harming my present.

Dealing with memory gives us the opportunity to live our lives more authentically and more in control.

God takes suffering and brings from it incredible beauty, strength, resolve, and wonder. James Cone knew this. Sojourner Truth knew this. Harriet Tubman knew this. We all know this. It is written within us (cf Genesis 1:27). We have no excuse but to be heroes.

A glimpse of God, just a glimpse, has this effect — you stumble back because of the profound realization that everything fits and everything is okay.

What you know is within you by the hand of God. It’s God’s image within you, put there before you were born, just waiting to be realized and put into action.

When we put ourselves, open and vulnerable, in God’s presence, something will happen, and that something will have the force of God.

Spend time pondering God. Listen! Discern! Expect to receive. You will not come away unchanged.

It is the image of God within us that cries! It is the image of God within us that writhes, questions, and “mourns her children.” We’re not waiting for God to show up. God is already here!

The image of God within us may be telling us we can be a whole lot more than we are.

It is holy ground when we’re challenged to see things as God sees them.