GRACE UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST (UCC)
"Serving Justice, Loving Kindness"
A United Church of Christ Congregation in Flemington, NJ
WHEN I DESPAIR...

When I despair,
I remember that all through history
the ways of truth and love have always won.
There have been tyrants, and murderers,
and for a time they can seem invincible,
but in the end they always fall.

Think of it - always.
--mahatma gandhi - early 20th century


PEOPLE SAY…

People say, “What good can one person do? What is the sense of our small effort?” They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time. We can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fishes.

--Dorothy Day (from Loaves and Fishes)

All I REALLY NEED TO KNOWN I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I
learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school
mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things
I learned:

  1. Share everything.
  2. Play fair.
  3. Don’t hit people.
  4. Put things back where you found them.
  5. Clean up your own mess.
  6. Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
  7. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
  8. Wash your hands before you eat.
  9. Flush.
  10. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
  11. Live a balanced life–learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
  12. Take a nap every afternoon.
  13. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
  14. Be aware of wonder.
  15. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
  16. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup–they all die. So do we.
  17. And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned–the biggest word of all–LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all–the whole world–had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or
if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are– when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

--Robert Fulghum


SLOW ME DOWN LORD

Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting of mind. Steady my hurried pace. Give me, amidst the day’s confusion, the calmness of the everlasting hills.

Break the tensions of my nerves and muscles with the soothing music of singing streams that live in my memory.

Help me to know the magical, restoring power of sleep. Teach me the art of taking “minute vacations”…slowing down to look at a flower, to chat with a friend, to read a few lines from a good book.

Remind me of the fable of the hare and the tortoise; that the race is not always to the swift; that there is more to life than measuring its speed.

Let me look up at the branches of the towering oak and know that it grew slowly and well. Inspire me to send my own roots down deep into the soil of life’s endearing values…that I may grow toward the stars of my greater destiny.

Slow me down, Lord.

--Wilferd Arlan Peterson


YOU ARE WORTHY

  • Do not undermine your worth by comparing yourself with others.  It is because we are different that each of us is special.
  • Do not set your goals by what other people deem important- only you know what is best for you.
  • Do not take for granted the things closest to your heart.  Cling to them as you would your life, for without them, life is meaningless.
  • Do not let your life slip through your fingers by living in the past nor for the future.  By living your life one day at a time, you live all the days of your life.
  • Do not give up when you still have something to give.  Nothing is really over until the moment you stop trying.
  • It is a fragile thread that binds us to each other.
  • Do not be afraid to encounter risks…It is by taking chances that we learn how to be brave.
  • Do not shut love out of your life by saying it is impossible to find.  The quickest way to receive love is to give love; the fastest way to lose love is too hold it too tightly; in addition, the best way to keep love is to give it wings.
  • Do not dismiss your dreams.  To be without dreams is to be without hope; To be without hope is to be without purpose.
  • Do not run through life so fast that you forget not only where you have been, but also where you are going.  Life is not a race, but a journey to be savored each step of the way.

--Anonymous


MEDITATIONS:
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