becoming, friday

Friday, May 16

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

Opening Prayer: God of our creation and re-creation, you who are constantly at work to shape me in the wholeness of Christ, you know the hardness of the structures of my being that resist your shaping touch.  You know the deep inner rigidities of my being that reject your changing grace.  By your grace soften my hardness and rigidity; help me to become pliable in your hands.  Even as I pray this, may there be a melting of my innate resistance to your transforming love.  Amen. (Invitation to a Journey by M. Robert Mulholland Jr.)

Scripture Reading for the Day: Matthew 5:1-16

Reading for Reflection:

     The journey between the dreaming and the coming true is a journey made on holy ground.  It is a journey made through silence and longing where, if we will listen, we can hear the whisper of the Dreamer echoing deep within us, calling us to become what the Dreamer sees when our names were first whispered: saints who believe in and pay attention for and recognize the Voice; saints who live our lives in joy and confidence and hope rather than judgment and anxiety and desperation; saints whose hours and days and lives are spent carrying people to the Christ, lending each other a hand when one has fallen, slipping along the river that brings joy to the heart of God, carrying God’s peace and love and presence and life to those we meet along the way.

     That is what we have been sent here to do.  And we will.  The Dreamer’s dream will always come true. (Between the Dreaming and the Coming True by Robert Benson)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

                                           
Closing Prayer: Father, the image you long to form me into is so radically different from that of the world around me.  And, to be brutally honest, radically different from the things I tend to pursue on a daily basis.  Give me your heart, and pour out your Spirit, that I might value the things you value, love the things that you love, and pursue the things—and the people—that you long for me to pursue.  For the sake of your Son Jesus. Amen.