risen, day 4

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

Opening Prayer:
Power of Love, shining through the risen Jesus, radiantly shine in the dark places of my pain.  Let their power to infect me be broken and drawn into your heart. (Feed My Shepherds by Flora Slosson Wuellner)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 80

Scripture for the Day: Luke 24:13-34

Reading for Reflection:

But the proclamation of Easter Day is that all is well.  And as a Christian, I say this not with the easy optimism of one who has never known a time when all was not well but as one who has faced the Cross in all its obscenity as well as in all its glory, who has known one way or another what it is like to live separated from God.  In the end, his will, not ours, is done.  Love is the victor.  Death is not the end.  The end is life.  His life and our lives through him, in him.  Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared dream.  Christ our Lord has risen. (The Magnificent Defeat by Frederick Buechner)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Arise, My Soul, Arise

Arise, my soul, arise,
Shake off thy guilty fears:
The bleeding Sacrifice
In my behalf appears:
Before the Throne my Surety stands,
My name is written on his hands.

He ever lives above,
For me to intercede,
His all-redeeming love,
His precious blood to plead;
His blood atoned for ev'ry race,
And sprinkles now the throne of grace.

Five bleeding wounds he bears,
Received on Calvary;
They pour effectual prayers,
They strongly plead for me;
Forgive him, O forgive, they cry,
Nor let that ransomed sinner die!

My God is reconciled;
His pard'ning voice I hear;
He owns me for his child,
I can no longer fear;
With confidence I now draw nigh,
And "Father, Abba, Father!" cry.


Closing Prayer:

O God, who by your One and only Son has overcome death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life; grant, we pray, that those who have been redeemed by his passion may rejoice in his resurrection, through the same Christ our Lord.  Amen.

                                                                ~Gelasian Sacramentary