Opening Prayer: Lord God, we confess: our lifestyles are too
busy, our focus self-centered, and our world is consumed with fear, greed, and
pride. Sometimes, Lord, we react to the
pains of others with a flippant "who cares?" Yet, in our more receptive times, when Your
Voice calls to our innermost beings, we know with absolute certainty two things
we desperately need: To be loved…and to love.
Hear us, Lord, grateful, thankful to experience occasional breakthrough
moments of unconditional love. Be with
those whose hearts are broken, demoralized by life's blows; those who mirror to
us that unfairness and suffering is not lightened by pat answers or avoidance,
but is made bearable because of fellow travelers who truly do care, and show
it. Walk with us, God. Our trek is not always easy, our vision
shortsighted, our love often hidden. May
we seek the deeper places where our compassion, our joy reflect you, the God
who is Love. Amen. ~Virgil Fry
Scripture: Matthew 14:22-33
Journal: “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”
Reflection:
For the word crisis, the Chinese use a combination
of two characters. These two characters
are those which designate “danger” and “opportunity.” This disjunction seems to be true of every
crisis. It is a turning point, and,
depending on how one makes the turn, he can find danger or opportunity. The forks in the road of human life that
demand decisions of us are always crossroads of danger and opportunity. As in the medical usage of this term, when a
patient is pronounced “critical,” the implication is that he can move either
towards life or death.
In the process of faith, doubts and crises
must occur. Paul Tillich points out that
only through crises can faith mature.
Doubt eats away the old relationship with God, but only so that a new
one may be born. (A Reason to Live! A Reason to Die! By John Powell)
Prayer
Closing Prayer: Disturb us, Lord, when we are too pleased with
ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little, when
we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance
of things we possess we have lost our thirst for the waters of life; having
fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity and in our
efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new heaven to
dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to
venture on wilder seas where storms will show your mastery; where losing sight
of land, we shall find the stars. We ask
you to push back the horizons of our hopes; and to push back the future in
strength, courage, hope, and love. This
we ask in the name of our Captain, who is Jesus Christ. ~Sir Francis Drake
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