A Reflection on the Crucifixion

In The Small Crucifixion from the National Gallery, the artist invites the viewer into the horror of crucifixion, with moving realism and immediacy. The perfect and divine oblation of our Lord on the Cross radiates from the canvas. Christ’s abandonment, desolation, and poverty on the Cross is expressed through every element in the scene – form, line, color, and composition. The viewer is drawn to His emaciated body racked with marks of torture, his bloodied face, and his bowed head, all of which speak of his unbearable agony.

Some Reflections on Reconciliation, Redemption, and the Resurrection

God who is Love, reconciled us to himself.

Man is not the center. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake.¹ ‘Thou has created all things and for thy pleasure they are and were created.²
Love can forbear, and Love can forgive… but Love can never be reconciled to an unlovely object… He can never therefore be reconciled to your sin, because sin itself is incapable of being altered ; but He may be reconciled to your person, because that may be restored.³

Immanuel

Transcendence in Thanksgiving

Recently, I came across a definition of God suggested by the nineteenth century theologian, Adam Clarke. Of all things, it moved me to think about Thanksgiving.

Useful Employment: Summer Reading

In the summer months of my growing up years, sitting in the shade of a tree or feeling the warm breeze of an oscillating fan, I spent many a long afternoon reading. Weekly readings were gathered from the school book club and from the local library (which required a weekly two and a half mile bicycle ride to fill my basket). Afternoons were filled with mystery, people of long ago, men and women who lived in the White House, and characters who, by their adventures, captured my imagination.

An Advent Season in Everyday Life

Haul out the holly;
Put up the tree before my spirit falls again.
Fill up the stocking,
I may be rushing things, but deck the halls again now.
For we need a little Christmas
Right this very minute,
Candles in the window,
Carols at the spinet.
Yes, we need a little Christmas[1]

Faith Framed

Over the Christmas holidays, we visited friends on their farm. It was a brisk sunny day, as we walked corrals, pastures, and woodland, taking in nature’s sights and smells.

After surveying the land, our friends’ young son called me over to the meadow, declaring that he wanted to show me something. Looking into the tall grass, one could see a narrow path with high grasses on both sides. "The deer made the path,” he said.

Deceptive Brain Messages

At any given moment, our amazing brains direct our reactions to life circumstances by integrating current experience with past experience and doing so along habitual lines. Our brains are organs of habit, responding according to established patterns of networked nerve cells. With a little self-reflection, it is easy to recognize that our brain responses are at times less-than-helpful and can even be quite destructive. In their book, You are Not Your Brain, Jeffrey Schwartz and Rebecca Gladding identify these brain responses as “deceptive brain messages.”

Moms and the Power of Presence

The Power of Presence

And perhaps it is not too beautiful a thing to believe in this redeemed world, that, as the babe turns to his mother though he has no power to say her name, as the flowers turn to the sun, so the hearts of the children turn to their Savior and God with unconscious delight and trust.
Charlotte Mason

Training Children as Ministers of Grace

Children are open to vanity as to all other evil dispositions possible to human nature. They must be educated to give and to help without any notion that to do so is goodness on their part. It is very easy to keep them in the attitude of mind natural to a child, that to serve is promotion to the person who serves for indeed he has no absolute claim to be in a position to pour benefits upon another.

Ambleside Schools International

Maryellen St. Cyr's blog