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Thursday, September 18, 2014

our identity in Christ, thursday

Thursday, September 18

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.
         
Opening 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 in Christ—objects of your extravagant love and tender affection.  Amen.
                               
Scripture Reading for the Day: Luke 15:11-32

Reading for Reflection:
 
     It’s true, Lord, that you are always thinking of us.  It’s true from the beginning of time, before we existed, even before the world existed, you have been dreaming of me, thinking of me, loving me.  Not assembly line, but unique, the first one so made, and the last, indispensable to humanity.  It’s true that you have an eternal plan for me alone, a wonderful plan that you have always cherished in your heart, as a father thinks over the smallest details in the life of his little one still unborn.  It’s true that, always bending over me, you guide me to bring your plan about, light on my path and strength for my soul.  It’s true that you are saddened when I stray or run away, but that you hasten to pick me up if I stumble or fall.
     Lord, you make beautiful lives, you, the divine Attentive One, the divine Patient One, the divine Present One, see that at no time I forget your presence.  I don’t ask you to bless what I have decided to do, but give me the grace to discover and to live what you have dreamed for me.
     Lord, living in your grace, let me share a little, through the attention I give to others, your loving care for us.  Let me, on my knees, adore in them the mystery of your created love.  Let me respect your idea of them without trying to impose my own.  May I allow them to follow the path that you have marked out for them without trying to take them along mine.  May I realize that they are indispensable to the world, and that I can’t do without the least of them.  May I never tire of looking at them and enriching myself with the treasures you have entrusted to them.  Help me to praise you in their journeyings, to find you in their lives.  Grant that not an instant of their existence go by, not a hair of their heads fall, by me, as by you, unheeded.  (Prayers of Life by Michael Quoist)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself
                                   
Closing Prayer: O Thou who art the only-begotten Son, teach us, we beseech Thee, to pray, “Our Father.”  We thank Thee, Lord, for these Living Blessed Words which Thou hast given us.  We than Thee for the millions who in them have learnt to know and worship the Father, and for what they have been to us. (With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray)

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