home, day 5

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

Opening Prayer:
Dear God, Help me to see my life here on earth is just the night before Christmas, and that when I awake in heaven, it will be Christmas morning.  The once-empty stockings now bulging.  The once-hidden presents now under the tree, waiting to be unwrapped.  The holiday meal once waiting to be cooked now on the table, waiting to be eaten.  Here, the dream of sugar plums.  There the awakening to wide-eyed wonder of all You have prepared for us…Amen. (Reflections on the Word by Ken Gire)  

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 126

Scripture for the Day: Revelation 21:9-27

Reading for Reflection:

There would be different pastors along the way [at our church], none of them exactly right for us until a few years ago when a tall African-American woman named Veronica came to lead us.  She has huge gentle doctor hands, with dimples where the knuckles should be, like baby’s fists.  She stepped into us, the wonderful old worn pair of pants that is St. Andrews, and they fit.  She sings to us sometimes from the pulpit and tells us stories of when she was a child.  She told us this story just the other day: When she was about seven, her best friend got lost one day.  The little girl ran up and down the streets of the big town where they lived, but she couldn’t find a single landmark.  She was frightened.  Finally a policeman stopped to help her.  He put her in the passenger seat of his car, and they drove around until she finally saw her church.  She pointed it out to the policeman, and then she told him firmly, “You could let me out now.  This is my church, and I can always find my way home from here.”
     And that is why I have stayed so close to mine—because no matter how bad I am feeling, how lost or lonely or frightened, when I see the faces of the people at my church, and hear their tawny voices, I can always find my way home. (Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott)

 

 

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Jesus Let Us Come to Know You

 

Jesus let us come to know You,

Let us see you face to face

Touch us, hold us, use us, mold us;

only let us live in you

 

Jesus draw us ever nearer,

hold us in your loving arms

Wrap us in your gentle presence;

when the end comes, bring us home.  

 

Closing Prayer: 
Dear Lord Jesus,

     Thank you that here and there you have shown me glimpses of heaven, however briefly.  Now and then you have sent me echoes of it, however faintly.  And that once in a while you have allowed it to touch me, however gently.  Those glimpses, those echoes, those touches have awakened my longing for home, and for each one of those awakenings, I thank you.

     Thank you that I have a room in your Father’s house.  A place just for me.  Thank you for all you have done to ready it for my arrival.  For all the longings that lead me there and for all the reminders that let me know that this is not my home, I thank you, O Lord.  Remind me often, for so often I forget, that the very best of homes here on earth is just a shadow of the home waiting for me in heaven. (Moments with the Savior by Ken Gire)