becoming, day 7

Come to Stillness:

Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

Opening Prayer:

God of our creation and re-creation, you who are constantly at work to shape me in the wholeness of Christ, you know the hardness of the structures of my being that resist your shaping touch. You know the deep inner rigidities of my being that reject your changing grace. By your grace soften my hardness and rigidity; help me to become pliable in your hands. Even as I pray this, may there be a melting of my innate resistance to your transforming love. Amen. (Invitation to a Journey by M. Robert Mulholland Jr.)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 37

Scripture for the Day: Ephesians 4:17-5:2

Reading for Reflection:

We die; indeed we have to die in order to be resurrected, restored and renewed.  We die and we die and we die in this life, not only physically—within seven years every cell in your body is renewed—but emotionally and spiritually as change seizes us by the scruff of the neck and drags us forward into another life.  We are not here simply to exist.  We are here in order to become. (Absolute Truths by Susan Howatch)

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new,
and yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time...
Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing that His hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete. 

~Teilhard de Chardin

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: May the Mind of Christ, My Savior

May the mind of Christ, my Savior,
Live in me from day to day,
By His love and power controlling
All I do and say.
May the Word of God dwell richly
In my heart from hour to hour,
So that all may see I triumph
Only through His power.

May the peace of God, my Father,
Rule my life in everything.
That I may be calm to comfort
Sick and sorrowing

May the love of Jesus fill me,
As the waters fill the sea;
Him exalting, self-abasing
This is victory.

Closing Prayer:
Father, forgive us when we think that life is more about what we are doing than about who we are becoming. Help us to remember that more than anything else you want our hearts. Allow us to give them to you fully, that we might receive yours in return; changing us more into the likeness your Son Jesus. In His name we pray. Amen. (JLB)