by Kathy Brasby | Mar 31, 2025 | The Listening Project
See how the incense arises like liquid smoke, curling in waves of sweet aroma?
My Israelite children understood how incense symbolized their prayers. So, also, your prayers flow as perfume to me.
Now breathe in the sweet and cleansing scents of my presence.
Inhale my presence. Do you feel me calm your heart? I will stroke your head and give you fresh wisdom. New life.
Don’t let today’s responsibilities steal away what I offer you: my care and my breath.
Allow me to permeate your day as the fragrance of my love and life reaches deep within you.
Rest in me, dear one.
Let me strengthen you always.
When the days thicken with loss and dread, breathe in my fragrant love.
I am here.
This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Look! I am going to put breath into you and make you live again. I will put flesh and muscles on you and cover you with skin. I will put breath into you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.
Ezekiel 37:5-6
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. All rights reserved.
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by Kathy Brasby | Mar 25, 2025 | The Listening Project
A rose bud opens in the storm and a new kind of beauty emerges.
Battered but resilient.
You didn’t think you’d grow from grief. Such fierce loss demands a great deal: so many details, so many responsibilities. Bank accounts. Relationships. Decisions.
And always the gaping crater of loss.
But compassion and kindness can bloom in a tempest. The slashing pain of grief can harden a heart or soften it.
Something of value has been released in you through this battle. I brought you understanding and unveiled deep love. So that you are able to give what I have given to you.
Stand tall, my love, and let your new life unfurl.
We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed.
2 Corinthians 4:8–9
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. All rights reserved.
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by Kathy Brasby | Mar 20, 2025 | The Listening Project
You crawled when the pain drilled into your heart. Rocks bit into your knees and tore through your skin.
But you stretched out a hand, feeling the grit of the path scrape your palms.
You reached out anyway.
Then a day came when you planted your feet and stood. When I whispered, “Can you take one tiny step?” you spread your arms wide to steady your balance and inched forward.
Now you walk. Your knees still ache and your hands remain bruised.
Look where you have come. You have climbed rugged rocks and towering boulders.
Microscopic steps have lengthened into strides.
New life whispers. Do you see the glimpses of new direction ahead? Of hope?
I walk with you, as I have every inch of the way. I’ve never left you. My love surrounds you like a warm pool, washing your torn knees and aching palms.
You move with faltering progress now, my love, but one day you will dance with me. We will spin and twirl, celebrating new life.
Keep walking, my love.
For who is God except the Lord?
Who but our God is a solid rock?
God arms me with strength,
and he makes my way perfect.
He makes me as surefooted as a deer,
enabling me to stand on mountain heights.
Psalm 18:31-33
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by Kathy Brasby | Mar 4, 2025 | The Listening Project
Outside your window, birds sing, anticipating spring.
Their life is simple yet dangerous. But how they sing – about the simple things. They celebrate the dawn, the cool air of the morning, the discovered meal.
Let their song rise within you, its lightness flowing to your heart, to your limbs, to your shoulders. To your mind.
Fresh hope longs to blossom within your heart. Your loss does not block my love for you. It isn’t the final action.
My strength can flow through you and heal you moment by moment.
Notice the dawn, the cool air of the morning, the meal from a friend. Sing about the simple things, my love.
Anticipate the newness of this season.
Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?
Matthew 6:26-27
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. All rights reserved.
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by Kathy Brasby | Mar 3, 2025 | The Listening Project
Rise, my child.
Your cocoon of sorrow, of responsibilities, of loss has protected you. The time is coming, though, when you must break out.
Study my beautiful butterflies, rich with vivid blues and oranges and blacks.
Do you recognize their energy, their zeal? See how they flit from blossom to blossom, scattering beauty in their flight?
Life is the breath beneath their wings
Hear the melody of their flight?
Soon, you will sing with them.
Open your wings. Those first few moments of flight will make your heart pound, but that is the essence of living free.
You will shed your cocoon as you search for my artistry.
Get ready.
You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. John 3:31-32
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. All rights reserved.
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by Kathy Brasby | Feb 18, 2025 | The Listening Project
The branches outside your window appear dead, don’t they? Dry wood. No leaves. No growth.
It is winter but you know that buds will sprout soon. They always do.
Life will come.
These dead-looking trees know resurrection. New life.
You lost your life with your husband, a life you expected to continue for much longer.
But it is gone. Like the branches outside, dead in the winter of life.
But new life is possible and you sense it. Your branches are not dead, only resting.
Although you won’t fully heal in this world, you will send out new buds. You will produce leaves and blossoms yet.
Why? Because I bring new life. I am the way, the truth, the life.
Watch as my spring approaches.
There will be joy and songs of thanksgiving, and I will multiply my people, not diminish them; I will honor them, not despise them.
Jeremiah 30:19
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. All rights reserved.
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