who are you? day 6

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

Opening Prayer:
Dear Jesus,
     Who am I really?  What do you see in me that you would move heaven and earth to capture my heart?  My life feels like a collection of other people’s expectations and disappointments.  I do not even know anymore who I truly am.  Reveal to me my true identity, my true place in Your story.  Give me grace to hear your voice; shut out all other voices, and let me hear from you alone.  I ask this in your name.  Amen. (The Sacred Romance Workbook by John Eldredge)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 62

Scripture for the Day: Luke 15:11-32

Reading for Reflection:

Then an amazing paradox begins to dawn upon me:  that I am never more truly myself than when I have given myself up to God.  My actions are never more authentic than when they are the Spirit’s actions through me.  I am never more genuinely human than when I am most godly.  The more harmoniously God lives within me, the more freely I live.  God has most glory before the world when I am most genuinely human.

     Perhaps there is an echo of Jesus’ final prayer here, that the Father is glorified in the Son, and the Son is glorified in those the Father has given him.  As the early church writer Iranaeus recorded:  

 

The glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding God.

 

Left to ourselves, we can never handle our own uniqueness.  We have to give the burden of “being me” to God’s care and nurture.  But in doing this, we discover more of the greatness of our loving Father.  For if God is indeed God, then he has a separate perception and thought for everything that exists.  Every creature at every moment is specifically known and sustained by him.  An infinite love has an infinite attention to loving each creature in its own specific way.  As Jesus said, not a hair of our head goes unnoticed by our heavenly Father.

     Because of this, it is no idle pretence or false arrogance on our part to believe that each one of us has a unique journey to make in the company of God.  It is this profound individuation of our whole life before God that gives substance to the reality:

            He loved me; he gave himself for me.

(The Transforming Power of Prayer by James Houston)


Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Arise (by Ryan Long)

 

Beloved can you hear me

I call across eternity

I am your God

Are you listening?
Arise my Love and Come with me

Arise my Love and Come with me

Your heart is sore. Your feet are weary.

Your hope is gone. Your head is hung.

Leave behind the nothing

That you've become.
Arise my love and come with me.

Arise my love and come with me.
Arise and come and become what you believe.

Lay down your burdens my love and come with me.

Arise my love and come with me.

Arise my Love and Come with me

 
Closing Prayer: 
O God, our Heavenly Father, who created us beautifully and wonderfully, may we always look to You for our value and worth, remembering that we are a unique expression of your infinite love, care, and creativity.  Help us, O Lord, to see ourselves as you see us—objects of your extravagant love and tender affection.  Through Christ.  Amen. (JLB)