loved by God, day 6

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

Opening Prayer:
I feel your love as you hold me to your sacred heart, my beloved Jesus, my God, my Master, but I feel, too, the need I have of your tenderness, and your caress because of my infinite weakness.
                                                                                ~Charles de Foucauld

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 36

Scripture for the Day: Isaiah 54:10

Reading for Reflection:

This inexhaustible love between the Father and the Son includes and yet transcends all forms of love known to us.  It includes the love of a father and mother, a brother and sister, a husband and wife, a teacher and friend.  But it also goes far beyond the many limited and limiting human experiences of love we know.  It is a caring yet demanding love.  It is a supportive yet severe love.  It is a gentle yet strong love.  It is a love that gives life yet accepts death.  In this divine love Jesus was sent into the world, to this divine love Jesus offered himself on the cross.  His all-embracing love, which epitomizes the relationship between the Father and the Son, is a divine Person, coequal with the Father and the Son.  It has a personal name.  It is called the Holy Spirit.  The Father loves the Son and pours himself out in the Son.  The Son is loved by the Father and returns all he is to the Father.  The Spirit is love itself, eternally embracing the Father and Son.
     This eternal community of love is the center and source of Jesus’ spiritual life, a life of uninterrupted attentiveness to the Father in the Spirit of love. (Making All Things New by Henri J. M. Nouwen)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Jesus Lover of My Soul

Jesus, lover of my soul,
let me to thy bosom fly,
while the nearer waters roll,
while the tempest still is high.
Hide me, O my Savior, hide,
till the storm of life is past;
safe into the haven guide;
O receive my soul at last.

Other refuge have I none,
hangs my helpless soul on thee;
leave, ah! leave me not alone,
still support and comfort me.
All my trust on thee is stayed,
all my help from thee I bring;
cover my defenseless head
with the shadow of thy wing.

Thou, O Christ, art all I want,
more than all in thee I find;
raise the fallen, cheer the faint,
heal the sick, and lead the blind.
Just and holy is thy name,
I am all unrighteousness;
false and full of sin I am;
thou art full of truth and grace.

Plenteous grace with thee is found,
grace to cover all my sin;
let the healing streams abound,
make and keep me pure within.
Thou of life the fountain art,
freely let me take of thee;
spring thou up within my heart;
rise to all eternity


Closing Prayer:
O Thou who ordered this wondrous world, and who knowest all things in earth and heaven:  So fill our hearts with trust in thee that by night and day, at all times and in all seasons, we may without fear commit all that we have and hope to be to thy never-failing love, for this life and the life to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen. (The Book of Worship)