True Poverty

For those who don't know why I entitled my blog "Rants of a Ragamuffin" its because I have a deep love and respect for author Brennan Manning. Manning spoke at my college my first year there and the words God spoke through him forever changed my life. I can honestly say that I was a changed person when I walked out of the gym at PBAU after the final night of the conference. I wish I could accurately explain what took place in my heart that week, my feeble attempt is this: God wrecked me....in the best way He ever could. I realized that God loved me just as I am...and not as I should be, because I will never be as I should be. Think about that, it should wreck you.
 This year I decided to go back to my favorite devotional "Reflections of a Ragamuffin" by none other than Brennan Manning. This mornings reading... I pray that it penetrates, comforts, encourages, moves, or wrecks you. That truly is my prayer.

"True Poverty"

 Jesus, my Brother and Lord, I pray as  I write these words for the grace to be truly poor before you, to recognize and accept my weakness and humanness, to forgo the indecent luxury of self-hatred, to celebrate your mercy and trust in your power when I'm at my weakest, to rely on your love no matter what I may do, to seek no escapes from my innate poverty, to accept loneliness when it comes instead of seeking substitutes, to live peacefully without clarity or assurance, to stop grandstanding and trying to get attention, to do the truth quietly without display, to let the dishonesties in my life fade away, to belong no more to myself, not to desert my post when I give the appearance of staying at it, to cling to my humanity, to accept the limitations and full responsibility of being a human being-really human and really poor in Christ our Lord.

"The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord"

Lamentations 3:25-26