flourishing

Opening Prayer: O Lord, thank you that you want more for us than simply surviving, you want us to flourish.  Help us to never settle for anything less than that.  Amen.

Scripture: Genesis 26:12-22

Journal: Flourishing or surviving, which best describes your life right now?  Why?  How can you move from surviving to flourishing?

Reflection: Flourishing or surviving, which word best describes your life right now?  And why?  And how do you move from one to the other? 

     I recently got an email from some dear friends who described in detail how they were attempting to be intentional with their hours and their days in the midst of this “hunkering down” that we are all being asked to do as a result of the coronavirus. You see, they wanted more than simply to survive this season of life, they wanted to thrive and grow and flourish.  And they believed in their hearts that God wanted that for them as well.  So they put their heads and their hearts together, prayed, asked themselves some great questions about what they most deeply wanted out of this particular season of life, and then set some things in motion.  

     It was so encouraging!  And it challenged me to examine my own heart and life.  It caused me to ask myself some hard but great questions about what kind of days I really wanted these to be.  Because flourishing, for the most part, doesn’t just fall on our heads; it takes us arranging our lives in certain ways, in order to make it more of a possibility.  And that takes intentionality.  Circumstances, or living in survival-mode, may have blocked our wells, and it is going to take some work to open them back up again.  They are not going to magically unblock themselves.  And the needs and duties and demands of this life are going to crowd us and keep us from having the elbowroom our souls need in order to bloom and blossom and grow.  Room to flourish doesn’t just happen by chance, it must be sought out and arranged for. 

     The question is: How will we do that?  What is the life we most deeply want to live, and how are we going to move in that direction?  How will we be intentional about flourishing, rather than just surviving?  What does room to flourish look like these days?

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Give us room to flourish, O Lord.  And give us the wisdom to know how to intentionally arrange our lives so that it is more of a possibility.  Amen.