Devotions

As some may know, one of my favorite saints is Saint Francis of Assisi. Whilst I don't agree on all his teachings I have always admired this wealthy man turned poor Saint.  In a time animals were mere food or inconvenience he loved animals.  In a time of a huge gap between the rich and poor he loved and identified with the poor. In a time of religious corruption he was a reformer before the Reformation.  In a time of ruined and abandoned churches he was a master builder.  In a time where love had waxed cold he loved.  In a time of war and crusades he stood for peace at great expense to himself. His time is not unlike today in fact.  His example is relevant to us.  The Canticle of the Sun ​ (Translation by Matthew Arnold) ​O most high, almighty, good Lord God, to thee belong praise, glory, honor, and all blessing! To thee alone, Most High, do they belong, and no mortal lips are worthy to pronounce thy Name. ​Praised be my L...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A wildflower doesn't apply for permission to bloom. It doesn't calculate whether the ground is fertile enough to be worth the effort, or whether anyone's walking by to see it. It just grows — toward light, toward water, toward whatever small mercy the season offers — and that's the whole of its work. Jesus points to this in Matthew 6:28, and it's a strange thing to hold up as instruction. Not a parable with a moral to extract, not a lesson to file away — just an invitation to actually look at something that exists without justifying itself. Most days don't leave much room for that kind of looking. There's a logic to how attention gets spent: on what needs doing, what needs answering, what needs fixing. It's not a wrong way to move through a day. But it does tend to flatten the world into a checklist, and things that can't be checked off — a colour, a shape, a bit of unplanned beauty — get filed under "later" and quietly forgotten. Here'...

 

 

 

 

There's an old idea, one that St. Francis of Assisi made famous in his Canticle of the Sun, that the sun and moon aren't just distant objects lighting our days and nights — they're kin. Brother Sun. Sister Moon. Family, in a sense, part of the same created order we belong to. It's a small shift in language, but it changes something. When the sun is just "the sun," it's background noise — something we barely register on our way to the car. When it's Brother Sun, it becomes a presence. Something worth noticing. Something worth thanking God for. Ask the Animals Job 12:7 puts it simply: ask the animals, and they will teach you. It's a strange invitation on the surface — what could a bird or a beast possibly have to teach a person? But Scripture keeps returning to this idea that creation itself is a kind of instructor, quietly demonstrating things about dependence, trust, and design that we're often too busy to notice on our own. That raises a few h...