When: Wednesday, July 02, 2008 12:00 AM to Thursday, July 03, 2008 12:00 AM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada).
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Words written in red; Words of Jesus
3 And he stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, "I will; be clean." And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.
13 And to the centurion Jesus said, "Go; be it done for you as you have believed." And the servant was healed at that very moment.
14 And when Jesus entered Peter’s house, he saw his mother-in-law lying sick with a fever; 15 he touched her hand, and the fever left her, and she rose and served him.
22 But Jesus said to him, "Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead."
26 And he said to them, "Why are you afraid, O men of little faith?" Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm.
32 And he said to them, "Go." So they came out and went into the swine; and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and perished in the waters.
34 And behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus; and when they saw him, they begged him to leave their neighborhood.
Matthew 8
It is true that God’s power triumphs over everything, but humble and suffering prayer prevails over God Himself.
— St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina
Abba, Father, Lord God, I count every blessing and give thanks; I walk knowing You are with me, my source of source. Yet I know my nature is weak in its desire to satisfy its self serving ways. I come to You each morning knowing I am not worthy, but be it for the passion of Jesus; I come to You each morning knowing I will be convicted, shamed and embarrassed by and in myself because I know in Jesus I can capture and become what You meant me to be, Your image, the image of Jesus I come. I do not wish to be what I have been or as the people of the city of Gadarenes in today’s Gospel, asking Jesus to leave their neighborhood whatever the reason; be it fear of His Divine Power, inability and or lack of understanding of what they had witnessed as "He took our infirmities and bore our diseases", or the fact that they could not bear the same conviction, shame of embarrassment that I myself often feel during this time before You. For what I seek is Jesus image and I struggle with myself and fight the ways under the sun knowing that all I am and all I can be is in Jesus, for without Jesus I am nothing but that person that is shamed and embarrassed in and by myself. So knowing and believing that I must first workout that which prevents me from reflecting Jesus image I keep coming to You, humbled in and suffering with myself, but full of faith, seeking hope and trying to love, asking You to have mercy on me – O Lord God for the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on me and on the whole world. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Audio books I am listening to and other books or readings I am reading:
The Art of Presence By: Eckhart Tolle In The Art of Presence, Eckhart guides you through seven hours of transformational insights that allow "presence to naturally arise" in you. With his one-of-a-kind instruction, you will learn how to ground yourself in the vibrancy of your "inner body" while simultaneously breaking free from the illusion of separation from the outside world.
The Brain That Changes Itself: Personal Triumphs from the Frontiers of Brain Science (Unabridged) By: Norman Doidge The discovery that our thoughts can change the structure and function of our brains – even into old age – is the most important breakthrough in neuroscience in four centuries.
The Shack Mackenzie Allen Philips’ youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack’s world forever. In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant "The Shack" wrestles with the timeless question, "Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?" The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him. You’ll want everyone you know to read this book!

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