following Jesus, thursday

Thursday, July 17

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

Opening Prayer: Dear Lord Jesus, I am still so divided.  I truly want to follow you, but I also want to follow my own desires and lend an ear to the voices that speak about prestige, success, popularity, pleasure, power, and influence.  Help me to become deaf to those voices and more attentive to your voice, which calls me to choose the narrow road to life.  I know this will be a very hard road for me.  The choice for your way has to be made every moment of my life.  I have to choose thoughts that are your thoughts, words that are your words, and actions that are your actions.  There are no times and places without choices.  And I know how deeply I resist choosing you.  Please, Lord, be with me at every moment and in every place.  Give me the strength and courage to live my life faithfully, so that I will be able to taste with joy the new life which you have prepared for me.  Amen. (The Road to Daybreak by Henri J.M. Nouwen)

         

Scripture Reading for the Day: Mark 1:14-20

Reading for Reflection:

 

     I am not sure that following Jesus is always a matter of leaving everything behind.  That is what it meant for Andrew and Simon and James and John; that is what following meant in their particular lives.  But if the story is about being swept into the flow of God’s will and giving ourselves over to it, then it seems to me that it will be a different story for every one of us in our own particular lives.

     Sometimes following may mean staying at home.  It may mean letting the hired servants go and taking care of Zebedee when he gets too old to fish.  Sometimes following may mean casting the same old nets in a new way, or for new reasons.  It may mean doing something different with the fish you catch, or spending the money they bring at market in a different way.  It may mean reorganizing the whole fishing business so that the drifters down at the pier have work to do, and so that everyone who works receives a decent wage.  It may mean doing less every day, not more, so that there is time to watch how the light changes on the water, and how the happy fish leap out of dusk, happy to have outsmarted you one more time.

     The possibilities for following seem endless to me.  Sometimes they will be big, no doubt about it, and sometimes they will be too small to mention, but it would be a mistake, I think, to focus too hard on our own parts in the miracle of discipleship.  The God who called us can be counted on to create us as a people who are able to follow.  Whenever and however our wills spill in to the will of God, time is fulfilled—immediately!—and the kingdom is at hand. (Home By Another Way by Barbara Brown Taylor)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

            

Closing Prayer: I ask you, Lord Jesus, to develop in me, your lover an immeasurable urge towards you, an affection that is unbounded, longing that is unrestrained, fervor that throws discretion to the winds!  The more worthwhile our love for you, all the more pressing does it become.  Reason cannot hold it in check, fear does not make it tremble, wise judgment does not temper it. (The Fire of Love by Richard Rolle)