christmas in july

Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you that you came quietly and humbly into the world you had made, and it is still how you are likely to be born anew in each of us.  Help us to be open, humble, and attentive as we await the new birth that you are inviting us into. 

Scripture: Luke 2:4-7

Journal: What is this passage inviting you to?  How does Christ want to be born in you these days?  How is he being born in you? 

Reflection: Okay, so I know it’s not July yet, but close enough.  I also know that the whole idea of new birth is gaining a ton of life in me these days.  Mostly because I feel like it’s what God is inviting me to―a quality and depth of life that I have not yet known.  In fact, it’s what he’s inviting all of us to.  It’s the way that he’s doing it that’s surprising, although it should not be.  The way to this new life is through my weakness, frailty, and vulnerability.  It’s coming through embracing my humanity.  It’s coming, as Sue Monk Kidd so beautifully writes, through the dung and the straw:

     “In the passage of emergence, as birthing begins, the soul becomes a nativity.  The whole Bethlehem pageant starts up inside us.  An unprecedented new star shines in our darkness―a new illumination and awareness.  God sends Wisdom to visit us, bearing gifts.  The shepherding qualities inside us are summoned to help tend what’s being born.  The angels sing and a whole new music begins to float in the spheres.  Some new living, breathing dimension of the life of Christ emerges with a tiny cry that says, I am.

     One of the best parts of the whole drama is that it happens in the dung and straw of our life, just as it happened in the dung and straw of Bethlehem. Birthing Christ is an experience of humility. Emerging to newness after the rigors of the cocoon isn’t a spiritual ‘promotion.’ There’s no presentation of a twenty-four-carat halo and a fancy new Christian persona without scuffs. If we’re consumed with holy pride, convinced that we’re spiritually ‘right’ and on a higher plane than others, we haven’t birthed a wider experience of the inner Christ but a new creation of the ego.

     The Christ life doesn’t divorce us from our humanity: it causes us to embrace it. It makes us more human. It humbles us. Genuine transformation always connects us to our essential nature, both sacred and profane. When we go through its passages, we plumb the depths of our humanity. We become intimate with what lies inside—the wild and untamed, the orphaned and abused, the soiled and unredeemed. We hold our falseness in our hands and trace our fingers over the masks we wear, like a blind person feeling the unseen faces of those she wants to know. We stare into the sockets of our pain and glimpse the naked truth of who we are.

     All this we bring with us into the new life. It ushers us into a new humility. Oh, yes, no doubt about it. We birth Christ, on a pile of ordinary straw.” (from When the Heart Waits by Sue Monk Kidd)

Christ wants to be born anew in us, but that new birth is most likely to come in our places of greatest weakness and vulnerability. In the dung and in the straw of our own humanity.  In our flaws and in our frailty, that's where his transforming power shows up best.

Pray

Closing Prayer: Lord Jesus, in this world we are most likely to find you in the dung and the straw.  Help us not to be afraid to look for you there.

becoming bartimaeus

Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Scripture: Mark 10:46-52

Journal: Put on your beggar’s clothes today and slip into the life of Bartimaeus.  What does he have to teach you?  What does he want you to know?  What is Jesus saying to you today through him? 

Reflection:

there is a beggar

inside each of us

dying to get out

longing to be set free

from the illusion of

strength and adequacy

a lowly pauper

waiting to be seen

and acknowledged

yearning to live out of

authentic dependence

neediness and weakness

instead of trying to

fool the world via

autonomy and control

but in order to make the leap

from falsehood to truth

we must be willing to

put on our beggar’s clothes

and allow the deepest cry

of our hearts to be

Lord, have mercy on me

only then do we have

any real hope of finding

genuine transformation

Pray

Closing Prayer: Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!

wait for the Lord

Opening Prayer: “For God alone my soul waits in silence.  He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress; I will not be shaken.”  (Psalm 62:1-2)

Scripture: Psalm 62:1-12

Journal: How does God have you waiting for the Lord these days?  What does that look like?  Are you putting your hope in him?

Reflection: What does it mean to wait for the Lord?  What does it really look like?  And why do we have such a hard time doing it?

As a culture, we’re really not into waiting—for anything.  And when we do it’s usually only because we have no other choice.  And if we’re honest, even when we do try to wait for the Lord, we’re really not waiting for him but for a favorable outcome or a change in circumstance.  Most of the time, our version of waiting for the Lord is just trying to use him to get what we want.  He is not the end, but merely a means to our preferred end.  And anytime we approach God not as the end, but as a means to an end, we’re not really approaching him at all.  We’re only trying to get our way or further our agenda.  And that’s not what waiting for the Lord is at all. 

Waiting for the Lord is just that—waiting for the Lord. Waiting for the Lord is laying aside our plans and schemes and agendas.  It is letting go of autonomy and control.  It is surrendering our wants and needs.  Waiting for the Lord is a refusal to try and manage, maneuver, or manipulate outcomes.  It is standing before God totally empty and fully open, willing to do whatever he asks and to go wherever he leads.  Waiting for the Lord is the determination not to charge ahead until we receive a word from him.

Waiting for the Lord is not just something we do until the Lord shows up.  Waiting for the Lord is God showing up.  It is through waiting for him that we are changed.  We are not waiting for transformation; it is in the waiting that God is transforming us.  We cannot do it ourselves.

Thus, waiting for the Lord involves a total dependence upon God.  It involves the realization that we cannot do things on our own.  For whenever we try to do it on our own, we cease to wait for the Lord.  That’s why the psalm says: “For God alone my soul waits in silence.”

Pray

Closing Prayer: “For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence; my hope comes from him.” (Psalm 62:5)

wait

Opening Prayer: “Wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.  My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.” (Psalm 130:5-6)

Scripture: Psalm 130:5-6

Journal: How does God have you waiting for the Lord these days?  What does that look like?  Are you putting your hope in him?

Reflection: Eventually God leads each of us to the place where all we can do is wait for him.  It is as maddening as it is challenging, but the truth is that we can either embrace it and enter into it or we can drive ourselves crazy trying to avoid or escape it.  Which will we choose?

Pray

Closing Prayer: “O Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love, and with him is full redemption.” (Psalm 130:7)

an old clay jar

Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, I am a mess.  Fortunately, you do some of your best work in the lives of messy people.  Do that in and through me.

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 4:7-10

Journal: In what ways are you a mess these days?  How might God use that to reveal his love and his power?  How in touch are you with the treasure you contain?  How can you become more aware of its beauty and its value?

Reflection: I am a mess!  I always have been and will be until the day I die.  But I’m okay with that because this old clay jar contains a treasure.  And I can’t embrace the treasure if I can’t embrace its container.  The jar is somehow an essential part of the equation.  

If I never carry around in my body the death of Jesus, how can the life of Jesus ever be fully revealed in my body?  I can never fully appreciate the risen-ness of Jesus if I try to escape, or discard, my brokenness and need for Jesus.  I must somehow learn to embrace this old clay jar before I can fully appreciate, and reveal, the love and power of the Risen Jesus to a world that’s in as desperate need of him as I am.      

Pray

Closing Prayer: Lord Jesus, help me never to hide my messiness or brokenness, because it only gives you the chance to reveal your love and your resurrection power.

alive 2024

Opening Prayer: Thank you, Lord Jesus, that the resurrection is not just a future hope, but a current reality.  Help us to let go of what is dead and dying, so that we can be alive to the risen life you invite us into.

Scripture: Colossians 3:1-4

Journal: Do you see the resurrection as more of a future hope of a current reality?  What does living the risen life with Jesus look like for you right now?  What will you need to let go of?

Reflection: Since, then, you have raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.  Set your hearts on things above, not on earthly things. (Colossians 3:1-2)

Notice that Paul says, “Since you have been raised with Christ,” and not, “Since you will be raised with Christ.”  That means resurrection life is a current reality, not just a future hope.  Because of the resurrection of Jesus, he now invites us to experience resurrection life with him.  We do this by setting our hearts and minds on things above, rather than on earthly things.  We do this by focusing on what is alive within and around us, rather than what is dead and dying.  We do this by recognizing the Risen Jesus whenever and wherever he appears to us, rather than allowing mood, whim, and circumstance to keep us from being able to see him and embrace him in his risen form.  He is the only one who is able to usher us into the life of risen-ness he invites us to.  The only question is, will we take him up on it?

Pray

Closing Prayer: Lord Jesus, help me to live in risen-ness with you today.

holy saturday 2024

Opening Prayer: O God, this day—Holy Saturday—is a day of waiting and resting.  It goes against everything within us, given all that has taken place over the last twenty-four hours, but it is what you ask us to do.  For it is what you, yourself, are doing.  Help us to enter into the Sabbath rest of Holy Saturday and wait patiently for Sunday to come.

Read: Luke 23:50-56

Reflect: The silence must’ve been deafening as they sat idly by.  Their world had stopped spinning; nothing could be done.  A forced solitude had taken hold of them, meant to accomplish eternal purposes.  Space needed to be made; space to reflect, space to grieve, and space to hope.  That’s what this day is all about.

There is a certain powerlessness to Holy Saturday that is really good for us.  We can’t produce, manufacture, or control resurrection; we can’t hasten it or hurry it along.  All we can do is wait.

Ask God to help you to stop.  Ask him to help you stop doing and to start being.  Ask him to help you to stop talking and to start listening.  Ask him to help you to stop initiating and to start waiting.

Pray

Closing Prayer: O Lord, there is still some emptying that needs to be done.  Give us the patience, the courage, the strength, and the trust to make room for that to happen.  Help us to learn how to wait for you during this holy day of waiting and resting.  Sunday will come soon enough, but there is still something you want to do in us first.  Prepare our hearts, Lord Jesus, for your resurrection.