space, sunday

Sunday, August 10

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

Opening Prayer: Teach me, God to make room for you in all the events and affairs of my days.  Then I shall find rest.  Then I will be at peace with myself and with you. (Norman Shawchuck in A Guide To Prayer for All Who Seek God)

Scripture Reading for the Day: Genesis 26:12-22

Reading for Reflection:

 

In biblical Hebrew, the letters yodh and shin combine to form a root that connotes “space and the freedom and security which is gained by the removal of constriction.”  From this YS root come words like yesha and yeshuah, referring to salvation.  When you think about it, it makes sense that space would be intimately associated with salvation.  Space is freedom: freedom from confinement, from preoccupation, from oppression, from drivenness, and from all the other interior and exterior forces that bind and restrict our spirits.  We need space in the first place simply to recognize how compelled and bound we are.  Then we need space to allow the compulsions to ease and the bonds to loosen.  In the Hebrew sense, our passion needs elbowroom.  To the extent that space is permitted by grace and our own willingness, we discover expanding emptiness in which consecration can happen, room for love to make its home in us. (The Awakened Heart by Gerald G. May)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

          

Closing Prayer: O Lord, the house of my soul is too small for you to enter: make it more spacious by your coming. 

                                                                       ~St. Augustine