devotion, saturday

Saturday, May 24

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

Opening Prayer: Late have I loved you, O Beauty, so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!  And behold, you were within me and I was outside, and there I sought for you, and in my deformity I rushed headlong into the well-formed things that you have made.  You were with me, and I was not with you.                                                                                              

                                                                                                ~St. Augustine

Scripture Reading for the Day: 1 Chronicles 22:17-19

Reading for Reflection:

The Christian way is different: harder and easier.  Christ says, “Give me All.  I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You.  I have not come to torment your natural [false] self, but to kill it.  No half-measures are any good.  I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down….Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit.  I will give you a new self instead.  In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours. (Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

                                         

Closing Prayer: Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. (Isaiah 55:6-7)