Santa Cruz Sundays

In praying about what to send to you for your last Santa Cruz Sunday of the year before you head home for Christmas, this question kept coming to mind..... What’s the invitation?   I shared this quote from my friend Lilly Lewin when I asked you all to be praying specifically for the trip for the banquet with the kids: “What if we view all of Advent as a series of Invitations from God?... This Advent we have an Invitation to believe-- Invited to believe in the incarnation… Invited to believe that we are not alone… Invited to believe that God is with us… Invited to believe that God sees us as we are and knows our hearts…”   And all, week the question has continued to be at the forefront of my mind in almost every situation—“What’s the invitation?”     This quote below is one that marks this rich week in Kenya so beautifully and the invitations I have received here which have taught me so much: Come…let us adore him. The Hebrew word for praise is  tehilla,  wh...

This comes from a set of emails I received from a website called Grateful Living , and I thought this snippet was perfect for a little study break (and some perspective as you enter into finals)... Look for joy this week!!  The team at NPR’s health and development blog,  Goats and Soda , invited photographers to submit photographs of happiness from around the globe. While there are distinctions to be made between happiness and joy — often summarized as happiness being a temporary experience and joy an abiding state of mind — these photos found on the link below certainly tap into joy and its many manifestations. Allow them to serve as inspiration for your own practice of finding joy in a complicated and challenging world. How Do You Take a Picture of Happiness? Research Highlight In three studies of the relationship between joy and gratitude, research revealed that joy and gratitude have a reciprocal relationship. “Not only does gratitude promote joy…over time dispositional jo...