wholeness, day 1

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

Opening Prayer:
Gracious and loving God, you know the deep inner patterns of my life that keep me from being totally yours.  You know the misformed structures of my being that hold me in bondage to something less than your high purpose for my life.  You also know my reluctance to let you have your way with me in these areas.  Hear the deeper cry of my heart for wholeness and by your grace enable me to be open to your transforming presence.  Lord, have mercy. (Invitation to a Journey by M. Robert Mulholland Jr.)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 122

Scripture for the Day: Mark 5:24-34

Reading for Reflection: 

Few words in all of the Old Testament are as rich as the Hebrew word shalom.  As a matter of fact, the translations of this one little word are varied and numerous—trying in vain to capture the fullness of the idea it is meant to communicate.  The most common translation we have for the word is peace, but that does not seem to go far enough.  Therefore, it is also translated prosperity, tranquility, well-being, safety, and security.  Maybe the best word we have in the English language, however, that even comes close to capturing the true essence of shalom is the word wholeness.  Because at its core shalom is about experiencing the creation intent of God.  Shalom is life as God intended it to be—life before sin and brokenness.  Shalom is finding our way back into the garden where we were created to enjoy and experience God in His fullness as we “walk with Him in the cool of the day.”  It is what our souls are really and truly longing for—deep communion and connection and intimacy with our God.

                                                                 ~Jim Branch

                                                                 September 2006

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: We Fall Down

 

We fall down

We lay our crowns

At the feet of Jesus

The greatness of His mercy and love

At the feet of Jesus

 

We cry Holy, Holy, Holy

We cry Holy, Holy, Holy

We cry Holy, Holy, Holy

           Is the Lamb

Closing Prayer:
My God, I wish to give myself to thee.  Give me the courage to do so.

                                                             ~Francois Fenelon

risen, day 7

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

Opening Prayer:
Power of Love, shining through the risen Jesus, radiantly shine in the dark places of my pain.  Let their power to infect me be broken and drawn into your heart. (Feed My Shepherds by Flora Slosson Wuellner)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 80

Scripture for the Day: John 21:1-25

Reading for Reflection:

     It’s a good thing Easter is a season and not just a day because some resurrections take time. Like the coming of spring, some resurrections happen gradually; they are not overnight sensations. And yet somehow, we need to experience these as miracles too.
     Fortunately, the Easter season (fifty days, eight Sundays, seven weeks—however you want to look at it) is longer than Lent because there are some areas of our lives where resurrection takes longer than dying. The Church calendar itself teaches us that “the implications of the resurrection—its explosive force—call for an extended period of exploration and appropriation.”* For us mere mortals. Easter cannot be done in a day. (When Resurrection Takes Time by Ruth Haley Barton)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Arise, My Soul, Arise

Arise, my soul, arise,
Shake off thy guilty fears:
The bleeding Sacrifice
In my behalf appears:
Before the Throne my Surety stands,
My name is written on his hands.

He ever lives above,
For me to intercede,
His all-redeeming love,
His precious blood to plead;
His blood atoned for ev'ry race,
And sprinkles now the throne of grace.

Five bleeding wounds he bears,
Received on Calvary;
They pour effectual prayers,
They strongly plead for me;
Forgive him, O forgive, they cry,
Nor let that ransomed sinner die!

My God is reconciled;
His pard'ning voice I hear;
He owns me for his child,
I can no longer fear;
With confidence I now draw nigh,
And "Father, Abba, Father!" cry.


Closing Prayer:

O God, who by your One and only Son has overcome death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life; grant, we pray, that those who have been redeemed by his passion may rejoice in his resurrection, through the same Christ our Lord.  Amen.

                                                                ~Gelasian Sacramentary

risen, day 6

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

Opening Prayer:
Power of Love, shining through the risen Jesus, radiantly shine in the dark places of my pain.  Let their power to infect me be broken and drawn into your heart. (Feed My Shepherds by Flora Slosson Wuellner)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 80

Scripture for the Day: Mark 16:1-8

Reading for Reflection:

It is not enough to say that God is on the cross, sharing our pain—unique and redemptive though that sharing is.  God is also the God of resurrection.  In fact, the Resurrection not only followed the crucifixion but was inherent in it all along.  This inherency is what Jesus explains to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-27).  The wounds of Christ are not swallowed up and forgotten; they become radiant centers of deep love and healing.  Within the Christian experience, the cross and the Resurrection cannot be divided. (Feed My Shepherds by Flora Slosson Wuellner)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Arise, My Soul, Arise

Arise, my soul, arise,
Shake off thy guilty fears:
The bleeding Sacrifice
In my behalf appears:
Before the Throne my Surety stands,
My name is written on his hands.

He ever lives above,
For me to intercede,
His all-redeeming love,
His precious blood to plead;
His blood atoned for ev'ry race,
And sprinkles now the throne of grace.

Five bleeding wounds he bears,
Received on Calvary;
They pour effectual prayers,
They strongly plead for me;
Forgive him, O forgive, they cry,
Nor let that ransomed sinner die!

My God is reconciled;
His pard'ning voice I hear;
He owns me for his child,
I can no longer fear;
With confidence I now draw nigh,
And "Father, Abba, Father!" cry.


Closing Prayer:

O God, who by your One and only Son has overcome death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life; grant, we pray, that those who have been redeemed by his passion may rejoice in his resurrection, through the same Christ our Lord.  Amen.

                                                                ~Gelasian Sacramentary

risen, day 5

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

Opening Prayer:
Power of Love, shining through the risen Jesus, radiantly shine in the dark places of my pain.  Let their power to infect me be broken and drawn into your heart. (Feed My Shepherds by Flora Slosson Wuellner)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 80

Scripture for the Day: Matthew 28:1-20

Reading for Reflection:

One of the consequences of having been sick enough to die once myself is that I am now much more interested in any celebrations regarding being raised from the dead than  I once was.

     For some years, I prepared for Easter by attending a Good Friday service and watching the cross go out the back door, its ominous and unsettling black veil flowing in the breeze, trying to summon up the courage to imagine and to face some semblance of the sense of loss the disciples must have felt on that day, trying to come to grips with what it means if there is another word after good-bye and what it means if there is not.  Being close to being draped in black and carried out the same door myself has, shall we say, made the whole thing a bit easier for me to imagine.

     I was in the hospital around Easter, and the doctors gave me a pass to go to church on Easter morning.  My sister came to pick me up and help me get there.  Sitting in the pew that morning, barely two blocks from the hospital where I was told I might well have been dead instead of alive on this Easter morning, it came to me that the resurrection is a theological concept that may well be ignored unless one’s death cannot be.

     It follows that forgiveness is not much of a concept without something for which to forgive and be forgiven.  Healing has no meaning in the absence of illness.  Peace is no treasure at all to those who have known no war and no strife.  Saying hello has no joy in it without the saying of good-bye. 

     I am coming to believe that the thing God said just before “Let there be light” was “Good-bye, dark.”  And that Noah could not say hello to the rainbow without first having said good-bye to the world as it disappeared beneath the waters of the flood.  And that something deep and mysterious about saying good-bye from the bottom of the pit made the hello that Joseph spoke to his father all those years later all the more wondrous.  “Good-bye, Egypt” turned out to be another way for the Israelites to say “Hello, Canaan.”

     “Good-bye, Jesus of Nazareth,” whispers Mary through her tears at the foot of the cross on Friday afternoon.  “Hello, Lord of the Universe,” she murmurs to the one she mistakes for a gardener, on Sunday morning. (Between the Dreaming and the Coming True by Robert Benson)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Arise, My Soul, Arise

Arise, my soul, arise,
Shake off thy guilty fears:
The bleeding Sacrifice
In my behalf appears:
Before the Throne my Surety stands,
My name is written on his hands.

He ever lives above,
For me to intercede,
His all-redeeming love,
His precious blood to plead;
His blood atoned for ev'ry race,
And sprinkles now the throne of grace.

Five bleeding wounds he bears,
Received on Calvary;
They pour effectual prayers,
They strongly plead for me;
Forgive him, O forgive, they cry,
Nor let that ransomed sinner die!

My God is reconciled;
His pard'ning voice I hear;
He owns me for his child,
I can no longer fear;
With confidence I now draw nigh,
And "Father, Abba, Father!" cry.


Closing Prayer:

O God, who by your One and only Son has overcome death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life; grant, we pray, that those who have been redeemed by his passion may rejoice in his resurrection, through the same Christ our Lord.  Amen.

                                                                ~Gelasian Sacramentary

risen, day 4

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

Opening Prayer:
Power of Love, shining through the risen Jesus, radiantly shine in the dark places of my pain.  Let their power to infect me be broken and drawn into your heart. (Feed My Shepherds by Flora Slosson Wuellner)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 80

Scripture for the Day: Luke 24:13-34

Reading for Reflection:

But the proclamation of Easter Day is that all is well.  And as a Christian, I say this not with the easy optimism of one who has never known a time when all was not well but as one who has faced the Cross in all its obscenity as well as in all its glory, who has known one way or another what it is like to live separated from God.  In the end, his will, not ours, is done.  Love is the victor.  Death is not the end.  The end is life.  His life and our lives through him, in him.  Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared dream.  Christ our Lord has risen. (The Magnificent Defeat by Frederick Buechner)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Arise, My Soul, Arise

Arise, my soul, arise,
Shake off thy guilty fears:
The bleeding Sacrifice
In my behalf appears:
Before the Throne my Surety stands,
My name is written on his hands.

He ever lives above,
For me to intercede,
His all-redeeming love,
His precious blood to plead;
His blood atoned for ev'ry race,
And sprinkles now the throne of grace.

Five bleeding wounds he bears,
Received on Calvary;
They pour effectual prayers,
They strongly plead for me;
Forgive him, O forgive, they cry,
Nor let that ransomed sinner die!

My God is reconciled;
His pard'ning voice I hear;
He owns me for his child,
I can no longer fear;
With confidence I now draw nigh,
And "Father, Abba, Father!" cry.


Closing Prayer:

O God, who by your One and only Son has overcome death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life; grant, we pray, that those who have been redeemed by his passion may rejoice in his resurrection, through the same Christ our Lord.  Amen.

                                                                ~Gelasian Sacramentary

risen, day 3

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

Opening Prayer:
Power of Love, shining through the risen Jesus, radiantly shine in the dark places of my pain.  Let their power to infect me be broken and drawn into your heart. (Feed My Shepherds by Flora Slosson Wuellner)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 80

Scripture for the Day: Luke 24:1-12

Reading for Reflection:

There was one resurrection; there are four narratives of it.  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John tell the story, each in his own way.  Each narrative is distinct and has its own character.  When the four accounts are absorbed into the imagination, they develop rich melodies, harmonies, counterpoint.  The four voices become a resurrection quartet.

     Yet many people never hear the music.  The reason, I think, is that the apologetic style for years has been to “harmonize” the four resurrection stories.  But it never turns out to be harmonization.  Instead of listening to their distinctive bass, tenor, alto, and soprano voices, we have tried to make the evangelists sing the same tune.  Differences and variations in the resurrection narratives are denied, affirmed, doubted, and “interpreted.”

     There is a better way.  Since we have four accounts that supplement one another, we can be encouraged to celebrate each one as it is, and to magnify the features that make it distinct from the others.  Instead of melting them down into an ingot of doctrine, we can burnish the features that individualize them.

     When we do that, our imagination expands, and the resurrection acquires the sharp features and hard surfaces of real life.  Through the artistry of the four evangelists, the particularity and detail of local history, the kind we ourselves live in, becomes vivid. (Subversive Spirituality by Eugene Peterson)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Arise, My Soul, Arise

Arise, my soul, arise,
Shake off thy guilty fears:
The bleeding Sacrifice
In my behalf appears:
Before the Throne my Surety stands,
My name is written on his hands.

He ever lives above,
For me to intercede,
His all-redeeming love,
His precious blood to plead;
His blood atoned for ev'ry race,
And sprinkles now the throne of grace.

Five bleeding wounds he bears,
Received on Calvary;
They pour effectual prayers,
They strongly plead for me;
Forgive him, O forgive, they cry,
Nor let that ransomed sinner die!

My God is reconciled;
His pard'ning voice I hear;
He owns me for his child,
I can no longer fear;
With confidence I now draw nigh,
And "Father, Abba, Father!" cry.


Closing Prayer:

O God, who by your One and only Son has overcome death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life; grant, we pray, that those who have been redeemed by his passion may rejoice in his resurrection, through the same Christ our Lord.  Amen.

                                                                ~Gelasian Sacramentary

risen, day 2

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

Opening Prayer:
Power of Love, shining through the risen Jesus, radiantly shine in the dark places of my pain.  Let their power to infect me be broken and drawn into your heart. (Feed My Shepherds by Flora Slosson Wuellner)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 80

Scripture for the Day: John 20:19-31

Reading for Reflection:

Why did Jesus still have wounds on His risen body?  The traditional answer is that the wounds proved it was really he and not an imposter.  Carrying and revealing the wounds were acts of swift, discerning mercy for his friends who were in a condition of mixed confusion and suspicion.  But I believe the wounds had a deeper meaning with radically transforming implications that affect us through the ages.  I believe the wounds were the sure sign that the eternal God through Jesus has never and will never ignore, negate, minimize, or transcend the significance of human woundedness.  The risen Jesus is not so swallowed up in glory that he is beyond our reach, beyond our cries.  He is among us, carrying wounds, even in a body of light.  His every word and act shining forth the meaning and heart of God means that God’s heart carries our wounds.  God suffers with us. (Feed My Shepherds by Flora Slosson Wuellner)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Arise, My Soul, Arise

Arise, my soul, arise,
Shake off thy guilty fears:
The bleeding Sacrifice
In my behalf appears:
Before the Throne my Surety stands,
My name is written on his hands.

He ever lives above,
For me to intercede,
His all-redeeming love,
His precious blood to plead;
His blood atoned for ev'ry race,
And sprinkles now the throne of grace.

Five bleeding wounds he bears,
Received on Calvary;
They pour effectual prayers,
They strongly plead for me;
Forgive him, O forgive, they cry,
Nor let that ransomed sinner die!

My God is reconciled;
His pard'ning voice I hear;
He owns me for his child,
I can no longer fear;
With confidence I now draw nigh,
And "Father, Abba, Father!" cry.

Closing Prayer:

O God, who by your One and only Son has overcome death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life; grant, we pray, that those who have been redeemed by his passion may rejoice in his resurrection, through the same Christ our Lord.  Amen.

                                                                ~Gelasian Sacramentary