joy and celebration, day 4

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

Opening Prayer:
Our Father, giver of all gifts, You love and choose us, your least ones.  Increase our humility so that we might rejoice in the generosity of Your love and be mindful that the good in us comes from You, Creator, Redeemer, and Giver of Life, now and forever.  Amen.
                                                                ~Macrina Wiederkehr

 
Psalm for the Week: Psalm 66

Scripture for the Day: Psalm 118

Reading for Reflection:

Joy is essential to spiritual life.  Whatever we may think or say about God, when we are not joyful, our thoughts and words cannot bear fruit.  Jesus reveals to us God's love so that His joy may become ours and that our joy might become complete.  Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing—sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death—can take that love away. (Here and Now by Henri J.M. Nouwen)

 

 Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee

 

 

Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love;
Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee, opening to the sun above.  Melt the clouds of sin and sadness; drive the dark of doubt away; Giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day!

 

All Thy works with joy surround Thee, earth and heaven reflect Thy rays, Stars and angels sing around Thee, center of unbroken praise. Field and forest, vale and mountain, flowery meadow, flashing sea, Singing bird and flowing fountain call us to rejoice in Thee.

 

Thou art giving and forgiving, ever blessing, ever blessed, Wellspring of the joy of living, ocean depth of happy rest!  Thou our Father, Christ our Brother, all who live in love are Thine; Teach us how to love each other, lift us to the joy divine.

 

Mortals, join the happy chorus, which the morning stars began; Father love is reigning o’er us, brother love binds man to man. Ever singing, march we onward, victors in the midst of strife, Joyful music leads us Sunward in the triumph song of life.

 
Closing Prayer:
O God, quicken to life every power within me, that I may lay hold of eternal things.  Open my eyes that I may see; give me acute spiritual perception; enable me to taste Thee and know that Thou art good.  Make heaven more real to me than any earthly thing has ever been. (The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer)