Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.
Matthew 25.34-36
For a few comments on water as a spiritual practices visit Disciples Walk.
“The Word became flesh,” wrote John, “and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). That is what incarnation means. It is untheological. It is unsophisticated. It is undignified. But according to Christianity it is the way things are.
All religions and philosophies which deny the reality or the significance of the material, the fleshly, the earth-bound, are themselves denied. Moses at the burning bush was told to take off his shoes because the ground on which he stood was holy ground (Exodus 3:5), and incarnation means that all ground is holy ground because God not only made it but walked on it, ate and slept and worked and died on it. If we are saved anywhere, we are saved here. And what is saved is not some diaphanous distillation of our bodies and our earth but our bodies and our earth themselves. Jerusalem becomes the New Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven like a bride adorned for her husband (Revelation 21:2). Our bodies are sown perishable and raised imperishable (1 Corinthians 15:42).
One of the blunders religious people are particularly fond of making is the attempt to be more spiritual than God.
From: Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, p 55 ( www.frederickbuechner.com/content/wishful-thinking-page-55 )
The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.
From: Henri Nouwen
Perhaps nothing helps us make the movement from our little selves to a larger world than remembering God in gratitude. Such a perspective puts God in view in all of life, not just in the moments we set aside for worship or spiritual disciplines. Not just in the moments when life seems easy.
Henri Nouwen
Check DisciplesWalk.org for a few comments on Nouwen’s perspective.
I believe that gratitude is a spiritual discipline on the order of prayer, study, service, etc. God wants us to be thankful, not for His benefit, but for ours! The more grateful we are the closer we draw to God who is the source of all blessings. Our annual celebration of Thanksgiving should be a time when we strengthen the bond between what we are, or what we have, and God’s blessing in our lives. We should become more deeply aware of how greatly God has blessed us.
From: Terry Ellis, “Forever Thankful,” http://gracewavestoday.com/?p=1349
“O give thanks to the Lord for He is good; His steadfast love endures forever.” Psalm 118:1
“Daily, quiet reflection on the word of God as it applies to me… becomes for one a point of crystallization for everything which gives interior and exterior order to my life.”
~~~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Meditating on the Word