182 – Common Business – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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Last year I got an ebook edition of Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals (edited by Shane Claiborne and others).  I skipped around in it, read some and was impressed and pleased.  This year I decided to read the office for each day.  The reading for this past Saturday, January 11, had a few sentences from Practicing the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence that I want to pass on to you,

Men invent means and methods of coming at God’s love, they learn rules and setup devices to remind them of that love, and it seems like a world of trouble to bring oneself into the consciousness of God’s presence.  Yet it might be so simple.  Is it not quicker and easier just to do our common business wholly for the love of him?”- Brother Lawrence

 What do you think?

Maybe when the “means and methods … and rules and … devices …” fall short should we turn to our “common business wholly for the love of him?”

This prayer was offered as a refrain for that day –

Enable us, Lord, to love you with all that we are and in all that we do.

What today do you find Holy in the common?

 

181 – Standing Alongside – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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This past Sunday my wife shared with me a thought she found on the http://www.d365.org/todaysdevotion/ website and I would like to share it with you this morning,

It’s not what someone does for us that matters most; it’s the very fact that they are with us when we need them that’s important.

In moments of struggle and suffering – and in times of celebration and joy – we want another alongside us to share our experience.

The overriding message of Christmas is that God has come to be with us. And God is with you now.

Can I add to those closing sentences that not only is God with you but his daughters and sons are with you and stand ready to walk beside you.  Let them walk with you.  Ask God to open your eyes to see them with you.  You need not be alone.

 

180 – The Day is Done – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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Another year “begins” for us.

Let me share two thoughts today.  First a short quote,

“Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.” — Brooks Atkinson

Second, there is a beautiful prayer from the order for Evening Prayer in the New Zealand Prayer Book,

Lord, it is night.
The night is for stillness.
Let us be still in the presence of God.

It is night after a long day.
What has been done has been done;
what has not been done has not been done;
let it be.

The night is dark.
Let our fears of the darkness of the world
and of our own lives rest in you.

The night is quiet.
Let the quietness of your peace enfold us,
all dear to us, and all who have no peace.

The night heralds the dawn.
Let us look expectantly to a new day,
new joys, new possibilities.

In your name we pray.
 
Amen.

It seems to me this prayer is appropriate as we move from the last hours of one year into the first hours of a new year.  We can stand ready to let the past go, and look to the new dawn.

May you be blessed by God’s presence and God’s love in this year.

 

179 – A Christmas Prayer – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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On this Christmas Day, please let me simply share a prayer I found several years ago —

Loving Father,

Help us remember the birth of Jesus,
that we may share in the song of angels,
the gladness of the shepherds,
and the worship of the wise men.
 
Close the door of hate
and open the door of love all over the world.
 
Let kindness come with every gift
and good desires with every greeting.
 
Deliver us from evil by the blessing which Christ brings,
and teach us to be merry with clean hearts.
 
May the Christmas morning make us happy to be Thy children,
and the Christmas evening bring us to our beds
with grateful thoughts,
forgiving and forgiven,
for Jesus’ sake,
Amen!
(by Robert Louis Stevenson)

 

178 – The Gift – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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A few months ago Plough Publishing restarted emailing a daily thought they call “Daily Dig.”  As you might expect Advent and Christmas has been the theme for the last several weeks.  Below is a recent posting that captured my attention by how it starts and had more than my attention by the ending.  I trust you will find it worth reading and hearing today.

“Two thousand years ago God gave his Son to the world. But Mary was afraid, Joseph worried, and Herod became so incensed he was determined to destroy the child. The Apostle Paul writes that the Greeks thought God’s gift was foolishness, and the Jews an obstacle to their liberation. And in John’s Gospel we read that the light shone in the darkness, but the darkness had not understood it; God’s Word had come to his own but he was not welcomed.

“And yet some did receive him. Those who believed became children of God. They saw first-hand God’s glory, full of grace and truth, and henceforth they received one blessing after another: Freedom from sin, peace on earth, goodwill toward all people.

“Christmas is not about getting what we want or even giving what we think others want. Christmas is about letting God enter our world so that he can transform and free it. His gift was small, it came in a feeding trough, unexpectedly – barely recognizable. That’s how God’s gift is. His gifts may assault our desires, confound our feelings, insult our thinking, threaten our sense of control, but they always come to us from his very heart. For God is love; he always wants to give. Not as we want him to give, not as the world gives, but in a way that transcends the imagination and brings true healing and redemption to our world.”

(from “The Christmas Question” by Charles Moore)

http://www.plough.com/en/daily-dig/odd/december/daily-dig-for-december-13

 

177 -The Story – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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Sunday morning I was looking over the Advent and Christmas songs in a hymnal (Celebrating Grace) and came across these lines in a litany –

The time has come!
God’s church relives the drama
of the story we inhabit.
 
It is His story!
It is our story!
Let us confess together.
 
In Advent the church yearns for Christ.
At Christmas we receive Him.
 
In Epiphany the church follows Christ’s light.
Through Lent we share His struggles.
 
“At Easter the church beholds Christ, risen and coming again.
At Pentecost we receive His fire to live His life anew.

I very much like this summary of the Christian year and will come back to that later but this morning I want to call your attention to the first six lines and especially to “His story … our story!”

Time and time again we will hear people say “the Christmas story” and in many churches and homes someone will say to those gathered there, “Let’s read the Christmas story.”  And that’s what they do.  They read the story.

Put look at these words again,

The time has come!
God’s church relives the drama
of the story we inhabit.
 
It is His story!
It is our story!
Let us confess together.

Are we going to relive the drama this year?  Are we going to inhabit the story and let God’s story inhibit us?

Do we really, really believe it is “our story”?  And if we do catch the vision that this is our story, how does that call us to live into Advent, Christmas and Epiphany?

I already see I need to put myself into the story as it is retold and then to put the story into me as I walk each day and encounter each person along my way.

 

176 – Writing Prayers – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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A few weeks ago I saw a note on Englewood Review of Books regarding the recently published A Prayer Journal by Flannery 0’Connor.  This got me thinking about the practice of some of writing prayers but when I read the following excerpt I began to think more about passion and honesty in prayer.

“Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to.  You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon.  The crescent is very beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see; but what I am afraid of, dear God, is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing.”

“I do not know You God because I am in the way.  Please help me to push myself aside.”

How does her prayer strike you this day?  Does she offer you any thoughts about how we come to God?

Here is the link to Englewood Review of Books excerpt

http://erb.kingdomnow.org/flannery-oconnor-a-prayer-journal-excerpt/

and a link to a review on NPR

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=246409443

 

175 – Thankfulness – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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I receive David Lose’s blog posts in email (and find so much in his writing worth reading) and last week a post came that seems just right for today.  I was already a fan of e. e. cummings and this reminded me why,

i thank You God for most this amazing
 
i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
 
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
 
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
 
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

http://www.davidlose.net/2013/11/i-thank-you-god-for-most-this-amazing/

My prayer is that each of us today, tomorrow (on Thanksgiving Day) and throughout the weeks to come can pray with one another “now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened.”

What do you hear and see?

 

174 – Restoreth my soul – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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The past several weeks we have been thinking about the balance between the passive and the active in our lives.

With that lens in mind I invite you to spend time meditating on Psalm 23.

When I recently came to the Psalm the words “makes me lie down” (and others) struck me in a new way.  I think I had become so use to repeating the Psalm from memory, I was not hearing it any longer.  On that day, with the question of when am I to be passive in my walk with God, the words “makes me lie down” came through very loudly.  It seemed to challenge me to give up control I did not want to give up.

I encourage you to find time to reread some of the words from Underhill, Peterson, and Willard that have been shared here and then to slowly and quietly hear Psalm 23.  Don’t try to force anything from the Psalm.  Let it find you where you are and let it lead.

Psalm 23 (KJV)

The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.

 He restoreth my soul:
he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil:
for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:
thou anointest my head with oil;
my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

 

173 – Abstinence and Engagement – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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As I have continued to think about passivity (and activity) in our Christian walk and practices, I remembered some words of Dallas Willard I shared many months ago on “abstinence and engagement.”

He identifies the disciplines of abstinence as solitude, silence, fasting, frugality, chastity, secrecy, sacrifice, and watching; and the disciplines of engagement as study, worship, celebration, service, prayer, fellowship, confession, and submission.

He writes,

“In the disciplines of abstinence, we abstain to some degree and for some time from the satisfaction of what we generally regard as normal and legitimate desires…. By the carefully adapted arrangement of our circumstances and behavior, the spiritual disciplines will bring these basic desires into their proper coordination and subordination within the economy of the life in his Kingdom….. The disciplines of abstinence must be counterbalanced and supplemented by the disciplines of engagement.  Abstinence and engagement are the outbreathing and inbreathing of our spiritual lives, and we require disciplines for both movements.  Roughly speaking, the disciplines of abstinence counteract the sins of commission and the disciplines of engagement counteract tendencies to sins of omission.  Life … does not derive its power of growth and development from withdrawal but from action – and engagement. Abstinence, then, makes way for engagement….  If the places in our souls that are be indwelt by God and his service are occupied by food, sex, and society, we die and languish for lack of God and right relation to his creatures.  A proper abstinence actually breaks the hold of improper engagements so that the soul can be properly engaged in and by God.”  (from The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives, pp 159 – 176.)

So “abstinence … makes way for engagement.”

Does that offer any parallel that might help us think of “passivity” as making way for something else?

Where might a Spirit breathed passivity lead you today?