down, day 5

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

Opening Prayer:
Lord, how great is our dilemma! In Thy Presence silence best becomes us, but love inflames our hearts and constrains us to speak. Were we to hold our peace the stones would cry out; yet if we speak, what shall we say? Teach us to know that we cannot know, for the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Let faith support us where reason fails, and we shall think because we believe, not in order that we may believe. In Jesus’ name. Amen. (Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 138

Scripture for the Day: Mark 10:35-45

Reading for Reflection:

Years ago, someone told me that humility is central to the spiritual life.  That made sense to me: I was proud to think of myself as humble!  But this person did not tell me that the path to humility, for some of us at least, goes through humiliation, where we are brought low, rendered powerless, stripped of pretenses and defenses, and left feeling fraudulent, empty, and useless—a humiliation that allows us to regrow our lives from the ground up, from the humus of common ground.

     The spiritual journey is full of paradoxes.  One of them is that the humiliation that brings us down—down to ground on which it is safe to stand and to fall—eventually takes us to a firmer and fuller sense of self.  When people ask me how it felt to emerge from depression, I can give only one answer: I felt at home in my own skin, and at home on the face of the earth, for the first time. (Let Your Life Speak by Parker J. Palmer)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: How Great is Our God

The splendor of the King clothed in majesty
Let all the earth rejoice, All the earth rejoice

He wraps himself in Light and darkness tries to hide
And trembles at His voice, trembles at His voice

How great is our God, sing with me
How great is our God and all will see
How great, how great is our God

Age to age He stands and time is in His hands
Beginning and the end, beginning and the end

The Godhead three in One, Father, Spirit, Son
The Lion and the Lamb, the Lion and the Lamb

How great is our God, sing with me
How great is our God and all will see
How great, how great is our God

Name above all names
Worthy of all praise
My heart will sing
How great is our God

Closing Prayer:
Lord Jesus, give us the grace and the strength and the courage to follow your invitation downward—to the place where there is only you and nothing else. In your name and for your sake we pray. Amen. (JLB)