Elevating Hearts: Finding Divine Presence in Everyday Life

"was but I don't start there I start with words that I love um the Latin phrase is Corda lift up your hearts and it's a phrase that's used in scripture it's the invitation for today it's uh ancient liturgy in the early centuries of the church Augustine wrote about this phrase quite often and when the people would Gather in the morning a priest would say the Lord be with you and the people respond and also with you and then lift up your hearts and then we will lift them up indeed it is right and good for us to do so." [00:38:04]

"sunflowers uh are actually created to face the Sun and when they are young their little heads will actually track the Suns all through the day just always be aware of and seeking to live in the presence of the sun right now as they get a little bit more mature they face the East they face the East so that when the sun comes up they will be ready to see it cers some cour lift up your hearts folks who study this sort of thing say actually when they're facing the East they gain more warmth and more energy and they attract more bees and they pollinate and they reproduce more effectively." [00:127:92]

"Vincent Van go was actually the Son and the grandson of Dutch reformed ministers and he planned to go that Direction with his life he was also going to become a pastor they sought to serve the poor to be the hands and feet of Jesus and so he was going to do that but he actually flunked out he did not pass a seminary examination so he was rejected for that he became a kind of a missionary for a Time apparently to Belgium coal miners that lived a very difficult life uh and he lived on almost nothing gave away all of his possessions but could be kind of a uh difficult person uh kind of ragged and so he was actually fired from that job as well and he did not get the story he wanted." [00:241:28]

"he did not get the story he wanted of course he became a painter and what a good thing it is that he did not get to do what he wanted to do so that the world could be blessed by uh a Transcendent gift of his uh even though it was often very painful to him and uh as you might know he struggled with um emotional health issues he was institutionalized several times with alcoholism he was in a Christian Asylum not long before he died uh his faith is somewhat controversial but folks who have read through a lot of his letters talk about um how deeply it shaped him and shaped his work." [00:290:08]

"Peter leghart who has an article about him in first times and he writes this about uh van go that he found inspiration in scriptures lofty ideas Christ haunted I love that phrase Christ haunted s s some cor lift up your hearts Christ haunted he regarded Jesus as a greatest artti greater artist than any other because his medium was not marble clay or color but living flesh every corner of creation pulses with divinity flowers that look up to the sun he wrote I think sometimes I see something deeper more infinite more eternal than the ocean and the expression of the eyes of a little baby when it wakes in the morning." [00:334:24]

"all nature seems to speak I do not understand why everyone does not see and feel it nature or God does it for everyone who has eyes and ears and a heart to understand and then uh he wrote to his brother Theo of his desire to paint men and women with that something of the Eternal which the used to symbolize and for Van go of course often it was that color yellow which we seek to convey by the actual Radiance and vibration of our coloring van go did not reject the supernatural he found it in nature what Terror there is in his paintings is the sublime Terror evoked by The Uncanny beauty of what scripture identifies as the glory of God." [00:390:919]

"look for the glory of God hunger for the glory of God be curious about the glory of God identify see it in a field of sunflowers in the dogs which are out today and I'm waiting for them to come at any moment in the thoughts that occur to your own heart in the beauty of the earth and the rising in the setting of The Sun most of all in the people that you see in the eyes of a little baby in the eyes of a stranger in the voice of a friend the glory of God is all around us sers some core to lift up your heart today." [00:458:80]

"wherever you have messed up wherever you have failed wherever there is sin that would weigh you down do not be weighed down today I charge you this day lift up your heart Jesus put it like this uh I wouldn't worry about the day look at the flowers of the field they neither toil nor spin yet I tell you Solomon in all of his glory was not a raid like one of these if that's how God clothes the grass of the field that is here today and gone tomorrow will he not much more clothe you oh you of little faith he will clothe you in the glory of God." [00:491:639]

"you never know when you don't get the story the position the job the future that you thought you were going to get the contribution that God has yet in store for you lift up your heart." [00:540:680]