letting go, day 7

Come to Stillness:

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

Opening Prayer:
Take, Lord, and receive all that I am and have. You’ve given it all to me; I give it all back to you. Do with me as you want. Just give me your love and your grace and that’s enough. ~St. Ignatius

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 130

Scripture for the Day: Genesis 22:1-19

Reading for Reflection:

     Thus Jesus introduced us to the shocking power of sacrifice, which can turn something that looks for all the world like loss into something that feels for all the world like gain.  According to Frederick Buechner, “To sacrifice something is to make it holy by giving it away for love.”  Even if someone is trying to pry it out of your hands.  Even if those standing around you laugh and shout that you have no choice, you have a choice.  You can still decide how you will let go.  You can still open your hands at the last moment and give up what others thought they were taking from you.  You can even make it holy by doing it for love. (Home By Another Way by Barbara Brown Taylor)

You told yourself you would accept the decision of fate.  But you lost your nerve when you discovered what it would require of you: then you realized how attached you still were to the world which has made you what you were, but which you would now have to leave behind.  It felt like an amputation, a  “little death,” and you even listened to those voices which insinuated that you were deceiving yourself out of ambition.  You will have to give up everything.  Why, then, weep at this little death?  Take it to you—quickly—with a smile die this death, and become free to go further—one with your task, whole in your duty of the moment. (Markings by Dag Hammarskjold)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: I Lift My Hands

I lift my hands to the coming King
To the great I Am, to you I sing
For you’re the One that reigns within my heart

I will serve no foreign gods,
nor any other treasure
For you are my heart’s desire,
your Spirit without measure
Unto you I will bring my sacrifice

Closing Prayer:
Lord God, be the delight of our hearts, even as we are the delight of yours. And help us to leave behind all thoughts, actions, and attitudes that do not reflect the beauty of that delight. May everything else pale in comparison with the passion we have to be truly yours. In the name of Jesus. Amen. (JLB)