Here’s a one sentence paradox consistent with the joy of Christmas. Happy Christmas, friends.
“We are cradled close in your hands-and lavishly flung forth.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke
by Ben Palpant
by Ben Palpant
by Ben Palpant
Well, friends, it looks like A Small Cup of Light has finally made it really big! After only three months on the market, the book has reached the dog demographic. Traditionally difficult to please, the dog market still has a wide reach and might, if pleased with the book, catapult my debut effort to the New York Times Bestseller list. Reviews from dogs worldwide are still pending…I’ll keep you posted!
(This beautiful dog belongs to friends of mine. They say he has claimed his copy of the book. Look for Shiloh’s review of the book in The Bark magazine and Modern Dog magazine.
Get the paperback for less then 10.00 and the Kindle version for about 7.00 bucks HERE!
by Ben Palpant
I live on the fringe of suburbia with all that comes with living there, including the white picket fence. Although farms and their open fields are only a stone’s throw away, it’s not very often that I hear a rooster. I heard one, however, the other morning. Its voice brashly cut the crisp, silent air. Honestly, it felt like everything, including me and the distant cars, shuffled off our sleep and wandered more alertly into the dawning day because the rooster crowed.
That experience nudged a little thought slowly into my mind: a rooster can’t help waking up and pronouncing to a drowsy world that the morning has come. Is it possible that God wired a rooster to proclaim the coming dawn and thereby to remind us that God’s mercies are new every morning?
It occurred to me on that cold morning that if even a dumb animal can rise early to alert the sleeping world that a new day has dawned and, with it, new mercies, then why can’t I? Why am I prone to stumble through my morning, bereft of the joy that comes with a new day? That tendency is worth exploring, it seems to me, if only to remind us of the fundamental need we have for mercies that are renewed each day.
Ironically, a rooster’s call haunted Peter his whole life. Each time he heard one, the sting of shame probably knocked on the door of his mind. It was, after all, the rooster’s cry that heralded his betrayal of Christ. And yet that the same rooster call also proclaims the deep, theological fact that God’s mercies are new every morning. Ironic, isn’t it?
Every morning, the rooster cries out to the world, “Wake up! Wake up! Yes, rise and shine and give God ALL the glory.”
What if we did the same?
Would our lives be different?
Would the world change?
Even a rooster reminds us that it’s time to tell a new story.
by Ben Palpant
“Whom should I turn to, if not the one whose darkness is darker than night, the only one who keeps vigil with no candle, and is not afraid-the deep one, whose being I trust, for it breaks through the earth into trees, and rises, when I bow my head, faint as a fragrance from the soil.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke