Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do. Pope John XXIII
Meditation: In these political times when it feels many gains are being wiped away and we go to bed frustrated with the news of the day, fear creeps in based on the rhetoric of war engagement and the heightened aggressive talk everywhere. If we consult our fears we will go and buy literal or symbolic “survival bunkers”, as some of the richest Americans do these days. If we allow our frustrations to occupy every hour of our day, we walk around angry and poisoned. And if we stare at the loss of eight years of progress, we might get overwhelmed by feelings of despair. God’s Spirit wants to lift our Spirit to instead consult our hopes and dreams, to look at our unfulfilled potential as a person and as a nation, and to focus on what we can do today, each day, and engage the possible we can do.
Prayer: God, you see the Spirit of hate that tries to ignite fear in people. You hear the language of war and aggression that suddenly creeps into our conscious and unconscious as a nation. You know how threatened many people feel. And You know how many of us are being impacted by the new laws and by a changed political climate. Your promise to never leave us emboldens us. Your Spirit of hope is what sustains us. And we are grateful. Amen
For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we may boldly say: “The LORD is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?” Hebrews 13:5-6
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