thoughts from my grandma
Grandma Brandybuck loves cemeteries. She always has. She used to keep journals with interesting names, epitaphs, and articles about cemeteries in them. My dad brought a couple home the other day, and as I was browsing through one of them, I found this (which has nothing to do with cemeteries):
Notes I liked from "The Bush is Still Burning," by Lloyd John Ogilvie:
"Strength for life's struggles comes from a love relationship with the One who affirms and accepts us and enables us to trust all our affairs to him.
"Each one of Jesus' 'I am' statements is his answer to one of our aching needs. The same words spoken to Moses by God are used by Jesus to declare who he is and what he can do.
"That's the excitement of the adventure of the Christian life. When we least expect it, Christ breaks through with blessings - perfectly timed, magnificently suited to our needs.
"An aching heart is a hungry heart. A heartache is a spiritual hunger pang.
"We always think there's something we should do, rather than something we desperately need to receive. The Bread of Life saves, satisfies, and strengthens. That's the source of healing our heartaches.
"There is not a heartache I know which does not stem from a failure to accept the unchangable fact that we belong to Christ. If your heart aches right now, the cause is one of two things: you have never accepted him as your Savior and Lord; or you believe in him, but are still running your own life. Heartaches are really a method of self-justification. We bridge the gap between what we have been and should have been, what others have done and should have done, with our own obligation of ache. It is our way of atoning or controlling - the most subtle form of arrogance."
Notes I liked from "The Bush is Still Burning," by Lloyd John Ogilvie:
"Strength for life's struggles comes from a love relationship with the One who affirms and accepts us and enables us to trust all our affairs to him.
"Each one of Jesus' 'I am' statements is his answer to one of our aching needs. The same words spoken to Moses by God are used by Jesus to declare who he is and what he can do.
"That's the excitement of the adventure of the Christian life. When we least expect it, Christ breaks through with blessings - perfectly timed, magnificently suited to our needs.
"An aching heart is a hungry heart. A heartache is a spiritual hunger pang.
"We always think there's something we should do, rather than something we desperately need to receive. The Bread of Life saves, satisfies, and strengthens. That's the source of healing our heartaches.
"There is not a heartache I know which does not stem from a failure to accept the unchangable fact that we belong to Christ. If your heart aches right now, the cause is one of two things: you have never accepted him as your Savior and Lord; or you believe in him, but are still running your own life. Heartaches are really a method of self-justification. We bridge the gap between what we have been and should have been, what others have done and should have done, with our own obligation of ache. It is our way of atoning or controlling - the most subtle form of arrogance."
posted by melilotnfosco | 3:05 PM
4 Comments:
i know this wasn't your point, but, for those of you who don't know, grandma brandybuck is suffering from dementia. she's still in the relatively early stages, but i read this and see who she was, and it's just really hard to see how much she's changed in the past couple of years. i think to a large degree, we've forgotten.
sorry - i don't mean to be a downer.
That's really cool (the passage & that you found it in one of her cemetery journals; not that she has dementia). I especially liked this part: "We always think there's something we should do, rather than something we desperately need to receive." (And all the stuff after that, although it was kinda convicting too.) I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but I think it's so cool how your whole family has grown up learning about Jesus and that you have these kinds of treasures. :)
i have been very blessed
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