awakening, day 7

Come to Stillness:

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

Opening Prayer:

Lord, awaken me, you whose love burns beyond the stars; light the flame of my lantern that I may always burn with love. (A Traveler Toward the Dawn by John Eagan)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 28

Scripture for the Day: Mark 8:1-30

Reading for Reflection:

Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up.  They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing we call human existence. (Awareness by Anthony De Mello)

The things that have captured our hearts have done so because the Romance was calling to us through them.  As C. S. Lewis said, “It is not in them, it only comes to us through them…they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found.”  (The Sacred Romance by Brent Curtis and John Eldredge)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week:

Closing Prayer:
O God and Father, I repent of my sinful preoccupation with visible things. The world has been too much with me. You have been here and I knew it not. I have been blind to Your presence. Open my eyes that I may behold You in and around me. For Christ’s sake, Amen. (The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer)