Five Minute Friday: Gift

Around here we write for five minutes straight on Fridays--no editing, no pre-writing, just raw writing.  Today's theme is gift and here's the thought of the day:

What is a gift?  In the secular sense it is something received that is not earned.  The spiritual sense goes further:  that gift given, but not earned, must be shared.  It is the paradox of the loaves and the fishes--the more there were to feed, the more the meager lunch stretched.  It is a bedrock of the faithful walk.

To each is given spiritual gifts to be used, alone or in congress with others, to be His hands and feet in the world.  Over and over again He promises me that He will supply all of my need; what prevents me from fully sharing His gift?

Disturb me, Lord, when I hide Your light within me beneath the basket of busyness, business, fatigue, ignorance, and selfishness.  Prod me, Lord, to remove the basket to let Your light beam.  Lead me, Lord, to those dark places that will be my mission field to share Your gift to me, and your one true Gift.

FINIS

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Five Minute Friday: Loud

On Fridays, we write along with our other Five Minute Friday wordsmith. Here's today's little offering:

For someone who like solitude, the word loud can be threatening. It intrudes upon the solitude; it drives away deep thought. It interrupts concentration. It is a preventer, a roadblock.

My mother, at times, used the word loud to describe visual things, too. A visual—fabric, picture, decorating scheme-- that was loud was colorful without regard to what matched. It was garish, and it fairly hummed with tension as well as harmony between colors. A loud visual always evoked emotion—either the strong desire to fix it, or the intense attraction to the life the colors created. It could not be ignored.

Maybe I should be loud more often.

Five Minute Friday: Brave

Brave? 

Sometimes brave is just putting one foot in front of the other--hoping and praying that things will be better with persistence. 

Sometimes brave is stepping out onto an unknown path.  What if it's rocky?  What if it's muddy and slows me down?  What if it's dim and hard to find?  What if?

But to be truly brave, I have to turn my face into the wind, into that which terrifies me, into that which pushes me back.  Like an airplane which takes advantage of the velocity of the oncoming wind to create lift, I must see the challenge as a means by which I can fly.

And so I turn my face into the wind.

Five Minute Friday: Empty

I'm tired of feeling bad about feeling empty. I'm developing a new attitude about it. Instead of seeing “empty” as the end of something, I resolve to see it as the beginning of something: a state of portent, of hope. And so I must set about filling the emptiness.

Shall I fill it with cheap trinkets, kitschy, flashy, and, in the end, shallow? I hope not, although that is certainly the easier path.

I would like to fill it slowly, with carefully selected, worthy treasures: things that feed my happiness, my intellect, my soul. Yes. Ah, yes. So how?

It is the quest of a lifetime.

Here I go.

Five Minute Friday: Ache

An ache, dull and persistent and unrelenting, thrums in my brain.  An ache that throbs away in the background of my days like a heartbeat.  An ache to which I am becoming too accustomed, too complacent.  This ache is not from excess but from absence, like the phantom pain of a missing limb.  They are gone; the words are gone, and I fear they will not return.

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