Tag Archives: Confidence

835. There’s a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there’s a seamlessness in you, and where there is confidence and tranquility in you. ~John O’Donohue

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In out-of-the-way places in your heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
A beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening…

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May your heart never be haunted by ghost-structures of old damage.
May you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.
And waste your heart on fear no more.
~Both passages are excerpts
from John O’Donohue

For the Lord takes delight in His people; He crowns the humble with victory. ~Psalm 149:4  ✝

**Edited image via Pinterest

823. Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love. ~Claude Monet

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 It has been said that art is a tryst,
for in the joy of it maker and beholder meet.
~Kojiro Tomita

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Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet
and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale
‘til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Monet’s ambition of documenting the French countryside led him to adopt a method of painting the same scene over and over again in order to capture the changing of light and the passing of seasons. And as he had unwavering confidence in himself as an artist, he would do whatever it took to advance his career including purchasing a boat at the age of thirty-three which with his knowledge of boats he rendered into a studio boat, an act significant both on a personal and a practical level. At Giverny Monet’s lily ponds would become the subjects of his best-known works. It was in 1899 that he began painting the water lilies, first in vertical views with a Japanese bridge as a central feature, and later in the series of large-scale paintings that were to occupy him continuously for the next 20 years of his life.

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So be very careful to love the Lord your God. ~Joshua 23:11  ✝

**I found the above information about Monet on the Internet; the first collage I created included my photos of poppies at Giverny along with a photo of Monet’s famous “poppies” painting. In the second collage I included a photo of one of Monet’s paintings of his Japanese bridge and lily pond along with some photos I took of such. Then for the final collage I used a photo of a signed painting of his studio boat and an assortment of flowers I found at Giverny along with a part of two rooms in his house and signs pointing the way to Giverny.

512. We need beauty because it makes us ache to be worthy of it. ~Mary Oliver

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Beauty of whatever kind,
in its supreme development,
invariably excites
the sensitive soul to tears.
~Edgar Allan Poe

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I see the work of Your Hands
Galaxies spin in a Heavenly dance oh God
All that You are is so overwhelming

I hear the sound of Your Voice
All at once it’s a gentle and thundering noise oh God
All that You are is so overwhelming

I delight myself in You
Captivated by Your beauty
I’m overwhelmed, I’m overwhelmed by You

God, I run into Your arms
Unashamed because of mercy
I’m overwhelmed, I’m overwhelmed by You

I know the power of Your Cross
Forgiven and free forever You’ll be my God


All that You’ve done is so overwhelming
I delight myself in You
In the Glory of your Presence
I’m overwhelmed, I’m overwhelmed by You…

~Lyrics from Big Daddy Weave’s song Overwhelmed
written by 
Adams, Yolanda Yvette /Belcher, Ryan Kent / East,
Rodney L. / Mccalla, Errol W. Jr. / Ecby, Marcus

Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. ~Hebrews 4:16   ✝

** Image via the Internet

287. Hope is some extraordinary spiritual grace that God gives us… ~Vincent McNabb

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Sit by the edge of the dawn / and the sun will rise for you.
Sit by the edge of the night / and the stars will shine for you.
Sit by the edge of the stream / and the nightingale will sing for you.
Sit by the edge of silence / and God will speak to you.
~from an ancient Hindu text

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“The semi-colon tells you that there is still some question about the preceding full sentence; something needs to be added…It is almost a greater pleasure to come across a semicolon than a period.  The period tells you that that is that; if you didn’t get all the meaning you wanted or expected, you got all the writer intended to parcel our and now you have to move along.  But with a semicolon there you get a pleasant little feeling of expectancy there is more to come; read on; it will get clearer.”  ~Lewis Thomas, American doctor and essayist

I think of nature’s seasons as junctures followed by divinely positioned, albeit invisible, semi-colons because they impart “a pleasant little feeling of expectancy.”  There are always more of them to be had, and it is that expectancy of “more” that keeps me hopeful not only in nature’s seasons but also in the seasons of my life when what I see tries to delude me into thinking things won’t ever change or this is the end.  In the passage above from the old Hindu text the use of “slashes” and “ands” could instead have been replaced with semi-colons because there is something more that comes after each of the suggested occasions to sit and wait.  In the same way, the fact that gardens keep an unfaltering “punctuation of continuance” right in front of me is one of the reasons I’m so drawn to spend time in them.  I need endless expectancy that breeds hopefulness.

And you will have confidence, because there is hope; you will be protected and take your rest in safety.  ~Job 11:18   ✝

**Even the two mauve hellebores in the photo look a bit like a semi-colon if one uses his/her imagination.