The soul is not empty, so long as the desire for sensible things remains. But the absence of this desire for things produces emptiness and liberty of soul, even when there is an abundance of possessions.

"There is a river, whose streams gladden the city of God..." (Psalm 46:4).

The stream flowing through our lives is from eternity to eternity. It is artesian. It is totally adequate. Everything we need is borne by that stream. Its origin is the realm beyond, and it carries infinite resources. In this space-time realm, conditioned as we are, the stream can seem to be a trickle. It seems puny against the drugs we're battling, against the divisions among us or the power of greed that fuels our economy.

When we're up against all the world's needs and lacks--the way we perceive life--the stream seems inadequate. But in fact, it is a powerful, surging, cleansing tide that purifies all it touches. It is a grace torrent. It flows irrespective of merit. It carries everything that a human being has ever needed--and could ever want. Whatever we need will flow by at just the opportune moment. Our problem is that we're not attuned to the stream. We don't see it. We're not even looking in the river's direction.

But when we wait in expectancy, looking at the stream and then recognizing what we need as it floats by, we simply reach out and take the gift. It's an effortless way of living. Usually we're not attuned to effortlessness. We're too busy striving. We're holding forth and carrying on and trying to reach our goals. The wisdom of the stream is the opposite of this. What I'm talking about is moving from a conceptual awareness of God's care--the idea of God's providence--to trusting the flow of that stream that carries everything we need and will bring it at just the opportune moment.

Jesus found it difficult to understand his disciples' anxiety. He was so in the river, he was so aware that the stream carried everything that was needed, that he couldn't understand why others were having so much trouble with the idea. What he says is to set our minds on God's realm, God's justice, before everything else. Everything else will be given by the stream. This is different from achievement and different from making things happen. Do not be anxious about tomorrow, Jesus says. You'll have plenty to think about when tomorrow comes. Now the stream is flowing.

Once we get accustomed to noticing the stream, and we spend more time near the stream, taking from it what is being given, there comes another step: actually getting into the water and resting in its flow. Even when the flow is a torrent, we know we are safe. We trust the flow. We become non-resistant. We become receptive. We trust the power of the divine presence, which longs to take our one little life to its divine destination. Even if we're in deep water, we trust the flow and are not afraid. We simply wait in expectancy to round the next bend, looking in wonder at the view. Always a new view. Effortlessness, expectancy and wonder are how we live, rather than striving.

Faith, in the biblical sense, is trusting the flow and reveling in the view and being carried beyond all existing boundaries. Faith is being excited about the final destination, even when the destination is mystery. When Jesus says, "Believe in God, believe also in me," he is saying, "Get into the stream with us. It's a stream of pure grace and mercy. Go into its depths and find us there."

Gordon Cosby, along with his wife Mary, established The Church of the Saviour in 1947. In this, his 93rd year of life, he still offers his wisdom and vision to the community.

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal.... This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God written in us.... It is like a pure diamond blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it, we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.

Nothing is more difficult than prayer. In all other tasks of religious life, however exacting, one can sometimes rest, but there is no rest in prayer, up to the end of one's life.

To be called to the heights in prayer, however briefly, is to sense a new relationship with God beginning, and to be afraid. It is a definite summons within the summons of prayer itself. It is conversion-beyond-conversion. And when the summons comes, there is a real suspicion, all at once, that the ticket may be for a one-way ride.

Death is now the destination. While no particular number has been revealed, a number has nevertheless been assigned. We don't know the day or the hour. But there is momentum now, there is urgency. Life has a real term and time has to be dealt with.

Winter is no longer winter, a time of year to be gotten through with scarves and snow plows and mittens. It is winter carved more deeply into us because of all the winters that have gone before. Winter is more wintry--its special character etched by repetition.... Because we are older, we know winter: winter itself, shaped like no other thing.

And with time, the list of these uniquely shaped things grows. The intense, collective joy of a public celebration...or the heightened sorrow of some disaster.... There is a web of feeling and memory interconnecting things.... It is not a solitary but a collective memory of some keenly felt experience. The sharpening effect of time and reflection and recognition and recollection--all these together produce a heightening that is, by an odd, unanticipated twist, a hint of bliss.

Everything changes. The kaleidoscope picture of our experience is constantly shattered, dispersed, tiny beads of shape and color rearranging themselves into the next design. At moments in the company of another, and more than one, events make sense, have a pattern, somewhere. Then the image breaks once again. Yet we are conscious somehow that "it" which cannot be grasped or held constant is experience itself. And that experience, however painful, is God's sharing of God's reality, a gift from God's hand.

Now our understanding of Providence must change. Once we had thought Providence was what kept bad things from happening. A thousand would fall, and ten thousand, and not come nigh me. Now it is clear that we, too, are falling, dying, losing our grip, entering into the death-that-is-not....

Does it exist? Is it real or isn't it? Doesn't it seem that death must be tasted in order for us to say that it is not, and then, perhaps, we will already not be? .... And since he has already died our death for us, isn't it true that death no longer is and that we will not die? But isn't it also true that each of us who has been baptized into the Lord Jesus has been baptized into his death? And isn't his death--our chance to share it--the hope we are living for?

Emilie Griffin has written 15 books on the spiritual life. She continues to write about work and spirituality via The High Calling of Our Daily Work.

Teaching about Christ begins in silence.... In so far as the Church proclaims the Word, it falls down silently in truth before the inexpressible: 'In silence I worship the unutterable' (Cyril of Alexandria). The spoken Word is the inexpressible; this unutterable is the Word.... Although it is cried out by the Church in the world, it remains the inexpressible. To speak of Christ means to keep silent; to keep silent about Christ means to speak. When the Church speaks rightly out of a proper silence, then Christ is proclaimed.

No one can know in advance how one will be used, or when, or what one's life will count for in the long run. The young Pablo Casals, while pouring his life energy into years of practice on the cello, could not guess that when Franco came to power, he would stop playing for three years, and that the silence would be heard throughout Spain as if the streets were full of demonstrators....

When the need for bread is met we discover that we have other hungers, and none so deep as the hunger to be understood. The artist helps us to interpret, understand and communicate feeling. When the artist is successful we are led into communion with ourselves and with the world, and the solitary work becomes a communal work. For want of this we walk on parched land.

The beginning of Sunday night's Olympic Opening Ceremony focused on the indigenous people of Canada. Initially, this seemed an enormously progressive perspective until one looked outside the stadium to find groups of native protesters. It seems the tribute was merely a concession to having built some of the Olympic buildings over sacred indigenous burial sites. Ashes.

Almost eight and a half years after the event, the site of the World Trade Center collapse remains a large hole in the ground. While this may indeed be a fitting symbol of all that tragedy represents, in fact it is greed, political posturing and infighting, human pettiness, and wrangling over insurance claims that has kept the site empty. As long as the address continues to be prime real estate, the nearly 3000 memories that linger there will remain dishonored. Ashes.

Another grave was dug this week for a loved one gone from me. Jewelry companies would have us believe that diamonds, with their artificially inflated value, are the most exquisite expression of love on the planet. Yet as the dirt was placed over the body of my old friend, I felt that love itself is the most rare and precious commodity we can know. And in that sorrow, I know less of it now. Ashes.

As a young Christian, I was taught that our faith was about joy and triumph. That it was an ever-upward movement. Our worship reflected it. Our evangelism was fueled by it. Now I look back and see that as folly, as mere ash. Christianity is about life. And life is often about sorrow. Disappointment. Fear. Loss. The unique call we receive as followers of the Crucified One is that we can become companions to the sorrow without being consumed by it. We can take on the ashes without becoming ash ourselves.

The message of the Cross is the same as the message of the Birth--Emmanuel--I am with you. Even in your poverty. Even in your suffering. Even in your dying. Never abandoned. Never alone. 

May this joy of ashes be yours during this Lenten season.

David Wade was a part of The Church of the Saviour before moving to Virginia Beach, where he facilitates The Welcome Table, now celebrating its third anniversary. They meet at 6:00 in the chapel on the grounds of Virginia Wesleyan College.

You know, there is an American myth that denies suffering and the sense of pain. It acts as if they should not be, and hence it devalues the experience of suffering. But this myth denies our encounter with reality.

At night, as I lie in the camp on my plank bed, surrounded by women and girls...dreaming aloud, quietly sobbing and tossing and turning, I am sometimes filled with an infinite tenderness. And I lie awake for hours, letting the impressions of a much-too-long day wash over me. And I pray, "Let me, oh Lord, be the thinking heart of these barracks." That's what I want to be.... The thinking heart of a whole concentration camp. I lie here patiently, and now calmly, and feel a lot better. I feel strength returning. I've stopped making plans and worrying about risks. Happen what may, it's bound to be for the good.

At about midnight we heard the shots ring out. My friend ran to the door and I heard him yell, “Shane, a kid has been shot, come down.” 

As we looked down the street we could see a young man staggering as he walked down our block. Then his knees gave out and he fell to the ground. We called for an ambulance and ran outside to be with the boy. My friend talked to him tenderly, looking into his eyes as they struggled to stay alert. We could see the wounds in his chest, torn by bullets. I grabbed his hand and held it as we prayed … and as we hoped. 

The ambulance came and drove him off. The next morning we heard that 19-year-old Papito died that night from the gunshot wounds, on Feb. 5, 2010.  Papito was the fourth shooting in the last few months within walking distance from our house.

Right now in Philadelphia there is a homicide every 48 hours. A few years ago it was one a day. One a year is too many. I remember Dr. King saying something to this effect: "We are all called to be the good Samaritan, and lift our injured neighbor from the ditch on the Jericho road … but after you lift so many people from the ditch, you start to say, ‘Maybe the whole road to Jericho needs to be reimagined … so folks don’t keep ending up in the ditch.’"

The same love that motivates us to preach the gospel and meet some basic needs should also motivate us toward getting behind the needs to their causes.... The questions don't stop with the structures of society that make victims out of people. The questions continue right down into our lives, into our own homes, into the ways that we personally participate in and benefit from the way the structures are set up. It is painful because we might discover that we are guilty of being a part of an unjust system.