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Monday, October 13, 2014

fear, monday

Monday, October 13

 Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.
         
Opening Prayer: O Lord our God, help us to live our lives with the faith and courage necessary to live by love and not by fear.  Forgive me when my seeing and my thinking get so distorted that I allow fear to control me and make me its slave—even when I don’t fully realize it.  Seize my heart and soul with your perfect love in such a way that it drives out all fear and gives me the freedom to truly love, rather than manipulate, those in my life and world.  In the name of Jesus.  Amen.
          
Scripture Reading for the Day: 1 John 4:16-21

Reading for Reflection:
     We live in a time in which we are constantly tempted to let our fears rule our lives.  More than ever our world gives us reasons to fear.  We are afraid for our own inner impulses which we are not able fully to understand or control, we are afraid of the many strangers surrounding us and threatening to invade our lives, we are afraid of the increasing capability of humanity to destroy itself and we are afraid of a God who can punish us with eternal damnation.  The greater our fears the less our freedom.  In order to alleviate our fears we often become very active, busy and full of worries about our future, always on guard for possible dangers.  Our fears also make us very self-centered since they make us live our lives as an ongoing battle for survival.
     Jesus came to cast out our fears.  He announced a God of perfect love in whom no fear can exist.  He himself and all his messengers, whether angels or apostles, say constantly; “Do not be afraid.” But it is far from easy not to let the many real fears make us deaf and blind to the God of perfect love.  The news of every day, the concrete emergencies of our own daily life and our own inner self-doubt make us often fearful before we are fully aware of it ourselves.
     What we truly need is a safe space to dwell, to take off our heavy armour and let the perfect love of God touch us, heal us and guide us from the land of fear to the land of God. ~Henri J. M. Nouwen (from the foreword to Rule for a New Brother)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself
                                  
Closing Prayer:  O Lord, our God, cast out all of our fear with your perfect love; that we might live in continual union with you and continual community with each other.  Amen.

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