a few more exerpts from Celtic Daily Prayer

I've got to get Celtic Daily Prayer back to the library (so far, less than a buck in late fines, so pshhh), but I want to write down some of the excerpts from the daily readings section. The themes of the mid-to-late April readings were suffering and seasons, and how to best approach such. I am certainly familiar with seasons, less so with deep suffering, but these seized my attention because of family and friends who are familiar with both. I find comfort in the thought that when we pray prayers or read psalms that don't seem to apply to us right then, we become more in tune with the rest of the world, knowing that others are facing what we're not, and hoping that our faith can help carry them.

April 14
"What kind of Christian can best endure suffering? That Christian doesn't exist. I could handle your problems easily. You could handle mine with a yawn. But it didn't happen that way. I got the ones I couldn't handle; so did you."
accompanying Scriptures: Psalm 44:17-26, Isaiah 54:11, John 21:17-22

April 15
"Many a Christian worker has raised up a work that perhaps was worth to be called 'church life' or 'body life'. Once built, problems developed. He fought tooth, tong and nail to preserve his work. Why? I wonder. Why fight to preserve it? It will stand if it is Christ. If part of it stands, and that part is really Christ, then having nothing but that little part surviving is far better than a large work that has to be held together by reason, logic, theology, fear, accusation, doctrine or whatever. In my judgement, the worker might seriously consider stepping back, even out - dying to his work, letting the fire fall on that work and seeing just how much of it can survive."
accompanying Scriptures: Psalm 141:1-10, 2 Samuel 15:10-14, Acts 14:1-7

April 24
"What can you do, in your hour of hurting, that might please your Lord? My guarded answer is: very little. You can rejoice. That's one possibility. You can yield to Him. With joy you can offer up to Him the situation and say, 'Lord, I know this is from Your hand.' But the chances are you are not going to get anywhere near that. So what can you do in the midst of adversity? You can kneel; you can weep, and weep, and weep. This you can do. There is one thing you must not do. Complain if you must, groan if you must, and get angry if you must. But oh, dear brother, stay far distant from bitterness, and from blaming others. Do that and you are dangerously close to forfeiting all future spiritual growth."
accompanying Scriptures: Psalm 102:1-4, 2 Samuel 12:16-23, Hebrews 11:14-15

April 28
"The Lord did not complete His suffering. It has been given to the church to complete the sufferings of Christ. Suffering not yet filled up waits out there for you...each one of us - because we are in some mysterious way one with Him - will taste some part of His experience of suffering. One within your fellowship may know ridicule. Another will partake of physical pain, another will know rejection, perhaps someone else may taste what it means to be vilified and verbally, socially crucified. And perhaps, just perhaps, there will be one within your fellowship who will touch that awful thing which Christ touched in that last moment on the cross: the dark night of the spirit. There is one aspect of the cross that none of us will ever know - praise God! We will never know what it means to be the sin-bearer."
accompanying Scriptures: Psalm 22:1-8, Isaiah 53:6-7, Matthew 5:11-12

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These were written by various anonymous members of the Northumbria Community, which is a "geographically dispersed Community, scattered all over Britain and beyond...journeying, alone and together, seeking and exploring a new monasticism." (as stated in the book's Introduction)