wilderness, tuesday

Tuesday, March 11

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

Opening Prayer: Lord I so want to make all of me ready and attentive and available to you.  Please help me to clarify and purify my intentions.  I have so many contradictory desires.  I get preoccupied with things that don’t really matter or last.

     I know that if I give you my heart whatever I do will follow my new heart.  In all that I am today, all that I try to do, all my encounters, reflections, even the frustrations and failings and especially in this time of prayer, in all of this, may I place my life in your hands.  Lord I am yours, make of me what you will.

~Ignatius of Loyola

Scripture Reading for the Day: Hosea 2:14-20

Reading for Reflection:

     What an incredibly interesting choice of words God uses as he speaks of His unfailing love for His beloved spouse--unfaithful Israel.  When other lovers might be tempted to wash their hands and walk away because of the hurt and the heartache she has caused by chasing after other lovers, this Lover chooses a much different path.  His heart simply will not let him walk away because he is still deeply and hopelessly in love with his beloved Bride, so much so that he decides to pursue her with all of his might rather than give up on her altogether, in order to completely capture her heart. 

     Therefore, I will allure her are the exact words He uses, and incredible words they are.  In fact the word for allure in the Hebrew means to open.  It is a profoundly intimate word that carries with it a profoundly intimate image, an image of the quality and the intensity of life and love that God longs for with each of us.  God is going to lead her to the desert and speak tenderly to her, all in a passionate desire to open her—to (and for) himself—that he might enter in and show her the depths of his love.  God leads each of us to the desert for one reason: because he desires intimacy with us that is deeper and wilder, more tender and more passionate than any relationship we will ever know. (Becoming by Jim Branch) 

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Closing Prayer:

Lord, you know me better than I know myself.
Your Spirit pervades every moment of my life.
Thank you for the grace and love you shower on me.
Thank you for your constant, gentle invitation to let you into my life.
Forgive me for the times I have refused that invitation,
and closed myself off from you.
Help me in the day to come, to recognize your presence in my life,
to open myself to you, to let you work in me,
to your greater glory. Amen.

                                                            ~Ignatius of Loyola