the way, day 5

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

Opening Prayer:
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts, see if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 25

Scripture for the Day: John 1:29-50

Reading for Reflection:

The picture of the Lord Jesus as the Door properly belongs to the beginning of the Christian life…But what lies beyond the Door?  Scripture could have pictured the Door leading us into a house or a garden.  If it had done so, we would have gathered that the Lord Jesus brings us into a static experience of salvation, peace, and holiness, and that once having entered in, we would more or less stay there, enjoying it all without continuous co-operation on our part.

     Scripture, however, gives us the picture of the Door leading us, not into a house, but on to a Way.  Said the Lord Jesus, “Narrow is the Gate, and straitened the Way that leadeth unto life” (Matthew 7:14 RSV).  The Gate opens on to a Way that stretches right ahead.  And the Lord Jesus who had said, “I am the Door”, now says, “I am the Way” (John 14:6) that lies beyond the Door.  Both Door and Way are the same blessed Person.

     Now a Way speaks not of a final settled blessing but rather of a walk, of an experience which is continuous.  A walk is simply a reiterated step, where something is happening each moment in the present; after one step, the next step; after the one “now”, the next “now”.  This illustrates the fact that our experience of Christ is to be a continuous present tense, a glorious “now”. (We Would See Jesus by Roy and Revel Hession) 

 

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Come and Welcome

From the cross uplifted high
Where the Savior deigns to die
What melodious sounds I hear
Bursting on my ravished ear
Love¹s redeeming work is done
Come and welcome, sinner, come.

Sprinkled now with blood the throne
Why beneath thy burdens groan
On my pierced body laid
Justice owns the ransom paid
Bow the knee and kiss the Son
Come and welcome, sinner, come.

Spread for thee the festal board
See with richest dainties stored
To thy Father¹s bosom pressed
Yet again a child confessed
Never from His house to roam
Come and welcome, sinner, come.

Soon the days of life shall end
Lo, I come, your Savior, Friend
Safe your spirit to convey
To the realms of endless day
Up to my eternal home.
Come and welcome, sinner, come.
Come and welcome, sinner, come.


Closing Prayer:
May those without hope take heart in you, O Christ. May those with no home find shade at your right hand. May those near the end see beginnings; may those at the last become first. At the foot of your cross, O Christ, I come in prayer. O Christ, be my help, O Christ, be my hope. Amen. (Pamela Hawkins, Weavings Volume XXVI, Number 2)