broken, day 5

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

Opening Prayer:
O persistent God,

deliver me from assuming your mercy is gentle.

Pressure me that I may grow more human,

not through the lessening of my struggles,

but through the expansion of them…

Deepen my hurt

until I learn to share it and myself openly,

and my needs honestly.

Sharpen my fears until I name them

and release the power I have locked in them

and they in me.

Accentuate my confusion

until I shed those grandiose expectations

that divert me from the small, glad gifts

of the now and the here and the me.

Expose my shame where it shivers,

crouched behind the curtains of propriety,

until I can laugh at last

through my common frailties and failures,

laugh my way toward becoming whole.

(Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 31

Scripture for the Day: Luke 22:54-62

Reading for Reflection:

 

The first response, then, to our brokenness is to face it squarely and befriend it.  This may seem quite unnatural.  Our first, most spontaneous response to pain and suffering is to avoid it, to keep it at arm’s length; to avoid, circumvent or deny it.  Suffering—be it physical, mental or emotional—is almost always experienced as an unwelcome intrusion into our lives, something that should not be there.  It is difficult, if not impossible, to see anything positive in suffering; it must be avoided away at all costs.

     When this is, indeed, our spontaneous attitude toward brokenness, it is no surprise that befriending it seems, at first, masochistic.  Still, my own pain in life has taught me that the first step to healing is not a step away from the pain, but a step toward it.  When brokenness is, in fact, just as intimate a part of our being as our chosenness and our blessedness, we have to dare to overcome our fear and become familiar with it.  Yes, we have to find the courage to embrace our own brokenness, to make our most feared enemy into a friend and to claim it as an intimate companion.  I am convinced that healing is often so difficult because we don’t want to know the pain.  Although this is true of all pain, it is especially true of the pain that comes from a broken heart.  The anguish and agony that result from rejection, separation, neglect, abuse and emotional manipulation serve only to paralyze us when we can’t face them and keep running away from them.  When we need guidance in our suffering, it is first of all guidance that leads us closer to our pain and makes us aware that we do not have to avoid it, but can befriend it. (Life of the Beloved by Henri J. M. Nouwen)

 

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Come Ye Sinners

Come, ye sinners, poor and needy,
Weak and wounded, sick and sore;
Jesus ready stands to save you,
Full of pity, love and power.

I will rise and go to Jesus,
He will embrace me in His arms;
In the arms of my dear Savior,
O there are ten thousand charms.
Come, ye thirsty, come, and welcome,
God’s free bounty glorify;
True belief and true repentance,
Every grace that brings you nigh.

Come, ye weary, heavy laden,
Lost and ruined by the fall;
If you tarry till you’re better,
You will never come at all.


Closing Prayer
Now,
O Lord,
calm me into a quietness
that heals
and listens,
and molds my longings
and passions,
my wounds
and wonderings
into a more holy
and human
shape.
(Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder)

broken, day 4

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

Opening Prayer:
O persistent God,

deliver me from assuming your mercy is gentle.

Pressure me that I may grow more human,

not through the lessening of my struggles,

but through the expansion of them…

Deepen my hurt

until I learn to share it and myself openly,

and my needs honestly.

Sharpen my fears until I name them

and release the power I have locked in them

and they in me.

Accentuate my confusion

until I shed those grandiose expectations

that divert me from the small, glad gifts

of the now and the here and the me.

Expose my shame where it shivers,

crouched behind the curtains of propriety,

until I can laugh at last

through my common frailties and failures,

laugh my way toward becoming whole.

(Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder)


Psalm for the Week: Psalm 31

Scripture for the Day: Isaiah 53:1-12

Reading for Reflection:

The first response, then, to our brokenness is to face it squarely and befriend it.  This may seem quite unnatural.  Our first, most spontaneous response to pain and suffering is to avoid it, to keep it at arm’s length; to avoid, circumvent or deny it.  Suffering—be it physical, mental or emotional—is almost always experienced as an unwelcome intrusion into our lives, something that should not be there.  It is difficult, if not impossible, to see anything positive in suffering; it must be avoided away at all costs.

     When this is, indeed, our spontaneous attitude toward brokenness, it is no surprise that befriending it seems, at first, masochistic.  Still, my own pain in life has taught me that the first step to healing is not a step away from the pain, but a step toward it.  When brokenness is, in fact, just as intimate a part of our being as our chosenness and our blessedness, we have to dare to overcome our fear and become familiar with it.  Yes, we have to find the courage to embrace our own brokenness, to make our most feared enemy into a friend and to claim it as an intimate companion.  I am convinced that healing is often so difficult because we don’t want to know the pain.  Although this is true of all pain, it is especially true of the pain that comes from a broken heart.  The anguish and agony that result from rejection, separation, neglect, abuse and emotional manipulation serve only to paralyze us when we can’t face them and keep running away from them.  When we need guidance in our suffering, it is first of all guidance that leads us closer to our pain and makes us aware that we do not have to avoid it, but can befriend it. (Life of the Beloved by Henri J. M. Nouwen)

 

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Come Ye Sinners

Come, ye sinners, poor and needy,
Weak and wounded, sick and sore;
Jesus ready stands to save you,
Full of pity, love and power.

I will rise and go to Jesus,
He will embrace me in His arms;
In the arms of my dear Savior,
O there are ten thousand charms.
Come, ye thirsty, come, and welcome,
God’s free bounty glorify;
True belief and true repentance,
Every grace that brings you nigh.

Come, ye weary, heavy laden,
Lost and ruined by the fall;
If you tarry till you’re better,
You will never come at all.


Closing Prayer
Now,
O Lord,
calm me into a quietness
that heals
and listens,
and molds my longings
and passions,
my wounds
and wonderings
into a more holy
and human
shape.
(Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder)

broken, day 3

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

Opening Prayer:
O persistent God,

deliver me from assuming your mercy is gentle.

Pressure me that I may grow more human,

not through the lessening of my struggles,

but through the expansion of them…

Deepen my hurt

until I learn to share it and myself openly,

and my needs honestly.

Sharpen my fears until I name them

and release the power I have locked in them

and they in me.

Accentuate my confusion

until I shed those grandiose expectations

that divert me from the small, glad gifts

of the now and the here and the me.

Expose my shame where it shivers,

crouched behind the curtains of propriety,

until I can laugh at last

through my common frailties and failures,

laugh my way toward becoming whole.

(Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder)


Psalm for the Week: Psalm 31

Scripture for the Day: Genesis 32:22-32

Reading for Reflection:

“Heel grabber” is what Jacob’s name means, a name you would expect of a wrestler.  Jacob’s entire life up till now was spent calculating his next move and maneuvering to a position of advantage so he could pry from God’s hands so many of the blessings that God in time had wanted to give him anyway.

     Now it was God’s turn to grab Jacob’s heel, to wrestle with this fundamental flaw in his nature, and touch him in a way so he would never forget the encounter.  Through the ordeal, Jacob learned that God’s blessing comes not from grabbing but from clinging.

     There is something of Jacob in all of us, I think.  If so, there must be a night of reckoning for us as well.  A night when God finds us alone, grabs us, throws us to the ground, and wrestles with that fundamental flaw in our character.  In that dark night of the soul, though He cripples us in the dawn He blesses us.

     For some of us, the crippling is the blessing. (Reflections on the Word by Ken Gire)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Come Ye Sinners

Come, ye sinners, poor and needy,
Weak and wounded, sick and sore;
Jesus ready stands to save you,
Full of pity, love and power.

I will rise and go to Jesus,
He will embrace me in His arms;
In the arms of my dear Savior,
O there are ten thousand charms.
Come, ye thirsty, come, and welcome,
God’s free bounty glorify;
True belief and true repentance,
Every grace that brings you nigh.

Come, ye weary, heavy laden,
Lost and ruined by the fall;
If you tarry till you’re better,
You will never come at all.


Closing Prayer
Now,
O Lord,
calm me into a quietness
that heals
and listens,
and molds my longings
and passions,
my wounds
and wonderings
into a more holy
and human
shape.
(Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder)

broken, day 2

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

Opening Prayer:
O persistent God,

deliver me from assuming your mercy is gentle.

Pressure me that I may grow more human,

not through the lessening of my struggles,

but through the expansion of them…

Deepen my hurt

until I learn to share it and myself openly,

and my needs honestly.

Sharpen my fears until I name them

and release the power I have locked in them

and they in me.

Accentuate my confusion

until I shed those grandiose expectations

that divert me from the small, glad gifts

of the now and the here and the me.

Expose my shame where it shivers,

crouched behind the curtains of propriety,

until I can laugh at last

through my common frailties and failures,

laugh my way toward becoming whole.

(Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder)


Psalm for the Week: Psalm 31

Scripture for the Day: Luke 22:24-34

Reading for Reflection:

Frederick Buechner once said, “To be a writer, one must be a good steward of their pain.”  I think that is true as well for those who would pray.  To be such a steward creates the possibility that others might be healed by your witness to such a thing, that others might see mercies granted to you in your suffering as evidence of the compassion of God for those who are broken.  This gift of our brokenness is often the only real gift that we can give or receive with any real honesty and with any real hope and with any real power.  We do not demonstrate our faith when we live in the light, we show our faith when we live in the dark.

     To embrace one’s brokenness, whatever it looks like, whatever has caused it, carries with it the possibility that one might come to embrace one’s healing, and then that one might come to the next step: to embrace another and their brokenness and their possibility for being healed.  To avoid one’s brokenness is to turn one’s back on the possibility that the Healer might be at work here, perhaps for you, perhaps for another.  It is to turn one’s back on another, one for whom you just might be the Christ, one for whom you might, even if just for a moment, become the Body and Blood. (Living Prayer by Robert Benson)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Come Ye Sinners

Come, ye sinners, poor and needy,
Weak and wounded, sick and sore;
Jesus ready stands to save you,
Full of pity, love and power.

I will rise and go to Jesus,
He will embrace me in His arms;
In the arms of my dear Savior,
O there are ten thousand charms.
Come, ye thirsty, come, and welcome,
God’s free bounty glorify;
True belief and true repentance,
Every grace that brings you nigh.

Come, ye weary, heavy laden,
Lost and ruined by the fall;
If you tarry till you’re better,
You will never come at all.


Closing Prayer
Now,
O Lord,
calm me into a quietness
that heals
and listens,
and molds my longings
and passions,
my wounds
and wonderings
into a more holy
and human
shape.
(Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder)

broken, day 1

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

Opening Prayer:
O persistent God,

deliver me from assuming your mercy is gentle.

Pressure me that I may grow more human,

not through the lessening of my struggles,

but through the expansion of them…

Deepen my hurt

until I learn to share it and myself openly,

and my needs honestly.

Sharpen my fears until I name them

and release the power I have locked in them

and they in me.

Accentuate my confusion

until I shed those grandiose expectations

that divert me from the small, glad gifts

of the now and the here and the me.

Expose my shame where it shivers,

crouched behind the curtains of propriety,

until I can laugh at last

through my common frailties and failures,

laugh my way toward becoming whole.

(Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder)


Psalm for the Week: Psalm 31

Scripture for the Day: Psalm 51

Reading for Reflection:

Jesus was broken at the cross.  He lived his suffering and death not as an evil to avoid at all costs but as a mission to embrace.  We too are broken.  We live with broken bodies, broken hearts, broken minds, or broken spirits.  We suffer from broken relationships.

     How can we live our brokenness?  Jesus invites us to embrace our brokenness as he embraced the cross and live it as part of our mission.  He asks us not to reject our brokenness as a curse from God that reminds us of our sinfulness but to accept it and put it under God’s blessing for our purification and sanctification.  Thus, our brokenness can become a gateway to new life. (Bread for the Journey by Henri Nouwen)

 

 

I am sure God wants us to be whole and healthy in every way possible, but love neither depends upon these things nor ends with them.  In fact, blessings sometimes come through brokenness that could never come in any other way.  In reflecting on my own life, I have to conclude that grace has come through me more powerfully sometimes when I have been very dysfunctional and maladjusted.  Love transcends all possible adjustments and continually invites us through and beyond them. (The Awakened Heart by Gerald G. May)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Come Ye Sinners

Come, ye sinners, poor and needy,
Weak and wounded, sick and sore;
Jesus ready stands to save you,
Full of pity, love and power.

I will rise and go to Jesus,
He will embrace me in His arms;
In the arms of my dear Savior,
O there are ten thousand charms.

Come, ye thirsty, come, and welcome,
God’s free bounty glorify;
True belief and true repentance,
Every grace that brings you nigh.

Come, ye weary, heavy laden,
Lost and ruined by the fall;
If you tarry till you’re better,
You will never come at all.

Closing Prayer
Now,
O Lord,
calm me into a quietness
that heals
and listens,
and molds my longings
and passions,
my wounds
and wonderings
into a more holy
and human
shape.
(Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder)

moving through suffering, day 7

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

Opening Prayer:
Father, I know my wounded and broken places oh so well. At times they can consume me and keep me from being able to hear your voice. Help me to see my pain as an invitation to know you more intimately rather than a reason to doubt the goodness of your heart. Help me to know that through my pain you desire to accomplish something very good in me. In the name of Jesus, the author of our salvation, who was “made perfect through suffering.” Amen. (JLB)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 121

Scripture for the Day: Psalm 42

Reading for Reflection:

Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the outworks of our divining, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys.  For they are moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy perplexity, everything in us withdraws, a stillness comes, and a new, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it and is silent.

     I believe that almost all our sadnesses are the moments of tension that we find paralyzing because we no longer hear our surprised feelings living.  Because we are alone with the alien thing that has entered into our self; because everything intimate and accustomed is for an instant taken away; because we stand in the middle of a transition where we cannot remain standing.  For this reason the sadness too passes: the new thing in us, the added thing, has entered into our heart, has gone into its inmost chamber and is not even there any more,—is already in our blood.  And we do not learn what it was.  We could easily be made to believe that nothing has happened, and yet we have changed, as a house changes into which a guest has entered.  We cannot say who has come, perhaps we shall never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters into us in this way in order to transform itself in us long before it happens.  And this is why it is so important to be lonely and attentive when one is sad: because the apparently uneventful and stark moment at which our future sets foot in us is so much closer to life than that other noisy fortuitous point of time at which it happens to us as if from outside.  The more still, more patient and more open we are when we are sad, so much the deeper and so much the more unswervingly does the new go into us, so much the better do we make it ours, so much the more will it be our destiny, and when on some later day it “happens” (that is, steps forth out of us to others), we shall feel in our inmost selves akin and near to it. (Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke)

 

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: It is Well

When peace like a river attendeth my way;

when sorrows like sea billows roll

Whatever my lot Thou hast taught me to say;

It is well, it is well, with my soul

Refrain:

It is well….with my soul…it is well, it is well with my soul

My sin O the bliss of this glorious thought;

my sin not in part but the whole

Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more;

praise the Lord, praise the Lord O my soul

And Lord haste the day when my faith shall be sight;

the clouds be rolled back as a scroll

The trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend;

even so it is well with my soul

Closing Prayer
Father, heal my wounds and make them a source of life for others; as you did with your Son Jesus. In whose name we pray. Amen. (JLB)

moving through suffering, day 6

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

Opening Prayer:
Father, I know my wounded and broken places oh so well. At times they can consume me and keep me from being able to hear your voice. Help me to see my pain as an invitation to know you more intimately rather than a reason to doubt the goodness of your heart. Help me to know that through my pain you desire to accomplish something very good in me. In the name of Jesus, the author of our salvation, who was “made perfect through suffering.” Amen. (JLB)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 121

Scripture for the Day: Isaiah 61:1-3

Reading for Reflection:

Don’t vex your minds by trying to explain the suffering you have to endure in this life…

     Even in the midst of your suffering you are in his kingdom.  You are always his children, and he has his protecting arm around you…Don’t ask why; don’t try to understand.  Does a child understand everything his father does?  Can he comprehend parental wisdom?  No—but he can confidently nestle in his father’s arms and feel perfect happiness, even while the tears glisten in his eyes, because he is his father’s child (Reverence for Life by Albert Schweitzer)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: It is Well

When peace like a river attendeth my way;

when sorrows like sea billows roll

Whatever my lot Thou hast taught me to say;

It is well, it is well, with my soul

Refrain:

It is well….with my soul…it is well, it is well with my soul

My sin O the bliss of this glorious thought;

my sin not in part but the whole

Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more;

praise the Lord, praise the Lord O my soul

And Lord haste the day when my faith shall be sight;

the clouds be rolled back as a scroll

The trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend;

even so it is well with my soul

Closing Prayer
Father, heal my wounds and make them a source of life for others; as you did with your Son Jesus. In whose name we pray. Amen. (JLB)

moving through suffering, day 5

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

Opening Prayer:
Father, I know my wounded and broken places oh so well. At times they can consume me and keep me from being able to hear your voice. Help me to see my pain as an invitation to know you more intimately rather than a reason to doubt the goodness of your heart. Help me to know that through my pain you desire to accomplish something very good in me. In the name of Jesus, the author of our salvation, who was “made perfect through suffering.” Amen. (JLB)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 121

Scripture for the Day: Hebrews 4:14-16

Reading for Reflection:

I think there is an important lesson for us to learn here about how to help others in the grieving process: it is always futile and unproductive to try and explain tragedy in some comprehensive way.  Saying piously that a loss is “the will of God” does not solve anything and may even create a sense of anger in the person who has been hurt.  The calamities of life are all deeply mysterious and the more we try to “explain” them to each other and fix the blame and responsibility here or there, the farther we get from the truth.  Job’s friends, because of their misguided intellectualizing, actually stimulated in him a seething resentment against God and the whole universe.  Admittedly, he might have come to this position on his own, but there is no doubt he was driven forward by his friends.    

     The basic issue in grief is never a rational explanation anyway.  What matters is the nature of life itself and the One who gives it.  Not until Job got to that level—to having it out with the Ultimate One—did healing begin to flow from him.  This climactic stage finally came when Job, the one who was made, stood face to face with the One who did the making. (Tracks of a Fellow Struggler by John R, Claypool)

 

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: It is Well

When peace like a river attendeth my way;

when sorrows like sea billows roll

Whatever my lot Thou hast taught me to say;

It is well, it is well, with my soul

Refrain:

It is well….with my soul…it is well, it is well with my soul

My sin O the bliss of this glorious thought;

my sin not in part but the whole

Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more;

praise the Lord, praise the Lord O my soul

And Lord haste the day when my faith shall be sight;

the clouds be rolled back as a scroll

The trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend;

even so it is well with my soul

Closing Prayer
Father, heal my wounds and make them a source of life for others; as you did with your Son Jesus. In whose name we pray. Amen. (JLB)

moving through suffering, day 4

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

Opening Prayer:
Father, I know my wounded and broken places oh so well. At times they can consume me and keep me from being able to hear your voice. Help me to see my pain as an invitation to know you more intimately rather than a reason to doubt the goodness of your heart. Help me to know that through my pain you desire to accomplish something very good in me. In the name of Jesus, the author of our salvation, who was “made perfect through suffering.” Amen. (JLB)

 

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 121

Scripture for the Day: Psalm 109:21-26

Reading for Reflection:

Many of us are tempted to think that if we suffer, the only important thing is to be relieved of our pain.  We want to flee it at all costs.  But when we learn to move through suffering, rather than avoid it, then we greet it differently.  We become willing to let it teach us.  We even begin to see how God can use it for some larger end.  Suffering becomes something other than a nuisance or curse to be evaded at all costs, but a way into deeper fulfillment.  Ultimately mourning means facing what wounds us in the presence of One who can heal. (Turn My Mourning Into Dancing by Henri J. M. Nouwen)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: It is Well

When peace like a river attendeth my way;

when sorrows like sea billows roll

Whatever my lot Thou hast taught me to say;

It is well, it is well, with my soul

Refrain:

It is well….with my soul…it is well, it is well with my soul

 

My sin O the bliss of this glorious thought;

my sin not in part but the whole

Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more;

praise the Lord, praise the Lord O my soul

And Lord haste the day when my faith shall be sight;

the clouds be rolled back as a scroll

The trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend;

even so it is well with my soul

Closing Prayer
Father, heal my wounds and make them a source of life for others; as you did with your Son Jesus. In whose name we pray. Amen. (JLB)