between, day 3

Come to Stillness:

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

Opening Prayer:

O Lord, our God, so much of this life is lived in between; between the now and the not yet, between arriving and departing, between birth and death and rebirth, between growing up and growing old, between questions and answers. Help us not to live only for some distant day when the in between will be no more, but help us to step into the mystery of that sacred space here and now—knowing that it will be a place of genuine change and true transformation. (JLB)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 46

Scripture for the Day: Psalm 71:1-24

Reading for Reflection:

     Why didn’t God just keep us, instead of sending us here to wander through all of this stuff we call our lives?  Would God really run the risk of some of us not making it home again?  What is the object of the exercise here, and what are our lives about?  Selfish creature that I am, what am I supposed to be about while I am here?

     “I don’t know even now what it was that I was waiting to see,” says a character in one of Eudora Welty’s stories, “but in those days I was convinced that I saw it at almost every turn.”  I too have been looking, waiting all my life to see something I am not sure I will recognize, but know for certain is there.  “You are traveling a new road with which you are very familiar,” a friend once said to me at a critical juncture in my life. 

     I need to see why it is that we are here to see anything at all.  I have caught only fleeting glimpses of it from time to time—as through a glass darkly, one might say—no matter how fiercely I watch.  I hear a rustling behind me or a whisper on the wind, detect a smile or a gesture between friends or lovers or strangers, touch a stone or a blossom or the hand of my children—and it is there.  I watch and listen with a fierceness reserved only for this search.

     When I was younger, I worried a good deal about whether or not I was going to make it home to God.  I was never quite convinced that those who interpreted the Story in the way that the trap-the-teacher man did were right, but I met enough of them to be more than a little afraid.

     What I fear now is that I will somehow miss what it is that I am supposed to learn here, something important enough that the Dreamer dispatched me, and the rest of us, here to learn.  What I fear now is that I will somehow miss the point of living here at all, living here between the dreaming and the coming true. (Between the Dreaming and the Coming True by Robert Benson)

 

 

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Cleft of the Mountain

I will run to the cleft of the mountain and wait for You
Will you come and meet with me?
I will wait in the cleft of the mountain for You to pass by
Will you come and meet with me?

Oh, what a joy it would be
Just for a moment to lay at the feet of the Lord
Oh more than anything that’s what I long for
Oh, what a change it would bring
Just to look deep in the face of the King Who gave all
You gave everything so You could meet with me
Will You meet with me?

Closing Prayer:
Lord Jesus, Help me to trust you fully in the midst of this life that seems so chaotic and unsure at times. Give me, this day, a firm place to set my feet as I walk toward you through this ever-changing world. Amen. (JLB)