Tag Archives: believe

When help doesn’t come

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“If you believe in GOD’s powers and you ask for help and he doesn’t help you right away, it means he believes in you!

It only takes 20 seconds of insane courage to do the impossible.”

– Ruth J., 9 yrs. old.

After worship at Shepherd of the Hill in Chaska, Ruth and Lily hand me their reflections on the sermon – either in words or in drawings and symbols printed on the backs of yellow visitor/prayer request cards. Their insights blow me away. I look at their cards and ask myself, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Ruth is a young Paul Tillich:

“Faith is the courage to be. Courage can show us what being is, and being can show us what courage is.” – Terry Lectures delivered at Yale University, The Courage To Be, Yale University Press, 1952.

“Believe” in America

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The Sirens

These are the seductive voices of the night; the Sirens, too, sang that way. It would be doing [the Sirens] an injustice to think that they wanted to seduce; they knew they had claws and sterile wombs, and they lamented this aloud. They could not help it if their laments sounded so beautiful.

–  Franz Kafka, Parables and Paradoxes

The Green Dragon

The door opened and what entered the room, fat and succulent, its sides voluptuously swelling, footless, pushing itself along on its entire underside, was the green dragon. Formal salutation. I asked him to come right in. He regretted that he could not do that, as he was too long. This meant that the door had to remain open, which was rather awkward. He smiled, half in embarrassment, half cunningly, and began: “Drawn hither by your longing, I come pushing myself along from afar off, and underneath am now scraped quite sore. But I am glad to do it. Gladly do I come, gladly do I offer myself to you.”

–Franz Kafka, Parables and Paradoxes

Click HERE for Franz Kafka biographical information published by The Kafka Project.