Tag: Bible

Tears Today

~ Brianne Turczynski ~ 2 Comments

For months I did my own personal study on tears, because I was crying everyday for various reasons, mostly for other people. Not really knowing what would come of it, I began journaling my experience and realized that my tears for others and tears for my family were a form of contemplative prayer for them. I confided in a priest, telling her that I was crying a lot and, for example, I wept over the story of Jesus learning that his beloved friend, John the Baptist, was beheaded. I wept for John and I wept for Jesus. The priest just blinked at me and she said, “but weeping for someone is not doing anything to help them.” I said “surely my weeping is felt in heaven and my tears are cast upwards as a prayer and shed back down to earth as a blessing of love for whom I am weeping.” I said this in so many words, and as I spoke I realized for the first time that my weeping was prayer. These days when all we CAN do is pray and weep, surely our tears are blessed. It is OK to cry. Tears heal us in so many ways. They are a prayer for your people and a blessing for you. .

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Lorna Byrne: The woman who sees angels.

~ Brianne Turczynski ~ Leave a comment

Maybe this will be white noise today, but maybe it will be some relief.

I recently watched a documentary about Lorna Byrne, the woman who sees angels. She has seen them her whole life. They speak to her, they tell her things. They are with everyone, she says. Everyone is born with a guardian angel that stays with them their whole life. Despite all the detailed stories about what they say and what they look like, I think her most valid point or lesson is that it doesn’t matter if you’re an atheist or if you practice a different religion, you have a guardian angel. We all do, because we are all a piece of God’s light. We are all very special this way. The angels are here to protect us, we are their treasure. And if we think about this for a moment, one can really understand that every single person deserves dignity and mercy, because every single person is

an extension of God, no matter what. While the whole world is battling against a sickness that is trying to kill our sense of peace

if not our elderly loved ones, perhaps it has instead unified us? It

has proved that we are all in this together. It seems every person is

scared or concerned. And even though we have laid oceans of distance between us, making ourselves islands, it is only to save each other and in this we are closer than ever.

I have posted the documentary on Lorna Byrne to my bio. Enjoy!

The First Book of Chronicles

~ Brianne Turczynski ~ Leave a comment

These are my own contemplative thoughts. You might disagree and that’s OK!

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“…Go and count the Israelites from Beersheba to Dan. Then report back to me so I may know how many there are.” —1 Chronicles 21:2

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Most of the first part of Chronicles is a genealogical list, which I skipped in my reading. But then the book goes on to speak of David’s

rule as king. As king, David did the best he could, but like all humans he was not perfect. He’s written some of the most beautiful psalms (poems & songs) deticated to God,

because he truly felt he and God were in it together, he truly felt God’s presence in his life and it overwhelmed and inspired him. So the fact that he asks for his troops to be counted so he can measure his army’s strength is very unlike him. In this action he separates himself from God and is relying only on numbers, & on his own strength and pride. The simple definition of ‘sin’ is an act which separates us from God. So David was wrong to count the strength of his men, when he knew (and it had been proven to him many times) that God had his back, that God was with him. By this he pushed God away, thus separating himself from God, thus committing a ‘sin’. But don’t worry, our ‘sins’ are not counted by God. I think this shows that fact. That neither we should count against God, nor should we think God is counting against us. We simply try to keep our faith, and pray God will help us keep our faith in Him. We must hold fast to the sleeve of God’s robe or to God’s hand like a child who does not want to be lost in a world crowded with trivialities. In David’s case he said he was sorry to God and went on his merry way, hand in hand with Him (or if you like, Her) after this, and left with us his beautiful and inspiring dedications to his One & Only True Love.

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#bibleverse #bible #biblejournaling #church #episcopal #episcopalchurch #readersofinstagram #writersofinstagram #catholic #christ #god #jesuschrist #bookstagram #bibliophile #bookphotography

First Corinthians…

~ Brianne Turczynski ~ Leave a comment

These are only my own contemplative thoughts. You may disagree and that’s OK!!

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I

reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of

childhood behind me.”

—1 Corinthians 13:11

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To doubt His mercy is like being a child when they sob and carry on

because they do not get what they want, and you, their guardian, are

appalled at the greed and neglect they display when they say they hate you, or when they storm off and say “you don’t love me!”. When my kids do this I just want to hit my head against the wall! Do they not

remember all the previous love and tender care I gave them in the

past? But they are children. They cannot see the bigger picture or the

life lessons I’m trying to teach them. Nor can they fathom all that

previous love I gave them, they are greedy for the ‘right now’. If you’re not giving them what they want ‘now’ you must hate them, you

must not want them, you must have forgotten them. Sometimes we can be the same way to God—if our prayers are not answered swiftly we feel He is not there, He has forgotten us, He doesn’t want us. But He is merely looking out for our best interest—maybe that job you wanted wasn’t for you? Maybe you would have gotten into an accident had you left for work on time today? We have to trust His guidance and keep our faith. We must not be like spoiled children, but humbled always and patient to put those childish ways behind us. I must remember this next time my kids are throwing a fit. I’m sure God rolls his eyes and shakes his head up there a lot, but always with a loving, tender

smile—for His love for us is great.

Seasons of Grace by Leslie Tentler

~ Brianne Turczynski ~ Leave a comment

Possibly the driest book I’ve ever tried to read, but I feel like this might just change my thinking somehow or maybe even my life. Why do I think this? I don’t know. It was a recommendation from one of the archivists at the Archdiocese. I trust this guy’s opinion, though I think he may be on a different level. When I first met him he was translating an 18th century journal from Latin to English. 😬

I’m going to give it a try and see what I learn—probably more than I’d ever want to know! I was so desperate for it I ordered it from the lending library program! 🤷‍♀️ Hey, maybe when I finish I’ll pick up some lessons in Latin!

The book of First Kings

~ Brianne Turczynski ~ 6 Comments

I have no authority to teach you, these are only my own contemplative thoughts. You might disagree and that’s OK. .

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So they wanted a king, eh? Ok, give them a king.

And so, the Israelites got their wish. They rejected God as their king and asked for a human king. These human kings committed mistake after mistake(because they are not perfect), and it made me want to pull my hair out reading both first kings and second kings, because these guys witnessed some of God’s greatest miracles but then would reject God soon after. How could they do this?

It would be so easy and here’s why, and this is where my philosophy comes in: this ‘world’ is a heavy place—literally we are pulled by its gravity, held captive by it in many ways. We are getting heavy doses of worldly, secular stuff every day which keeps us tangled and confused. God will hand us a miracle today, but tomorrow we forget when someone cuts us off or a neighbor does something irritating. This is why the journey with God, completely and wholly without influence from the world—the place btw that lives and breaths around us and where most of us only see with our human eyes and the place we must move in daily—can be so difficult. We must try to see beyond the cloudy ether of this world. So, I almost sympathize with the terrible kings in these books, I too have been like them. The way with God is a way of constant discipline and much praying in silence to sometimes only receive silence in return. However, I think the key to setting ourselves free from worldly captivity is to establish a routine where we spend some time with God each day. Designating a time for you and God to be together, have coffee, talk, contemplate, just think about Him each day ( but try not to leave him completely behind, let Him remain in the back of your mind, carry Him with you) and watch the miracles unfold. At the very least (which is everything) it will lead you on the path to His gift of inner peace and joy. You’ll see. 🙂

The Gospel according to Mark

~ Brianne Turczynski ~ Leave a comment

Is it wrong to say I found the book of Mark a little dry? It is wonderful to have the stories of Jesus told to us several different ways through the Gospels of Mark, Luke, John and Matthew, but I have in my notes from a year ago that I thought it was the driest version of Jesus’ ministry on earth. When I researched this a bit I learned that the Gospel of Mark was written by John Mark who was not a close follower of Jesus but who hung around Peter and sort of wrote down Jesus’ story through what Peter (an apostle) had to say about Jesus. It is the shortest of the gospels (which basically means, the good news), and the first. Mark’s gospel, some say, was meant to remember verbatim in order to recite or to use as a sermon, which explains its dry, straightforward quality. Which makes this post equally dry and straightforward. I put a link to the video I watched about this in my bio. I find this scholarly stuff really interesting. If any of this information is incorrect, I apologize, as it was gathered from the video. 🙂

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