peace be with you

Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, how we desperately long to know your peace.  Make it a reality in our hearts and souls this day.  Amen. 

Scripture: John 20:24-28

Journal: What is your sense of God's peace in your life right now?  Why is that true?  How can you know his peace more deeply?

Reflection:

your wounds
lord jesus
offer healing
your blood
gives life
your life
casts out
fear and doubt
so that
we might believe
and exclaim
my lord
and my god
and know
your peace

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you desire us to live in your peace.  Help us to do that this day and every day.  Amen.

sent

Opening prayer: Give us your peace, O Lord, in the midst of our chaos.  Speak your love into the middle of our fear.  Bring your healing to our broken and wounded hearts.  Breathe your Spirit onto and into us, and send us to be your presence in a lost and broken world.  Amen.

Scripture: John 20:19-22

Journal: What does this scene stir up within you?  How has Jesus spoken love into your fear lately?  How has he offered you his peace?  How is he sending you to do that into the lives of others?

Reflection:

into the midst of their fear
jesus came
and stood among them
offering his peace
and sending them
as he was sent
breathing his spirit
into them as they
embarked on their journey

they were now the god-breathed
sent to offer the life and peace
they had received
by the breath of his spirit

and now it is us
we are the presence of Christ
to a broken world
we are to offer
our risen wounds
as sources of healing and life
we are bearers and sharers
of his peace
we are the mouths
through which he breathes
his life-giving spirit

we are sent as he was sent
on the winds of his breath
to speak love into fear

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.

     O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life. ~St. Francis of Assisi

taken

Opening Prayer: Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you have taken me for your very own; I belong to you.  Help the knowledge of this taking to give me the strength and the courage to live my life this day as your chosen child.  Amen.

Scripture: Isaiah 43:1-7

Journal: What does it mean to you that God has taken you as his very own?  How does that knowledge impact your daily life?

Reflection: To live a spiritual life, we have to claim for ourselves that we are “taken” or “chosen.”  Let me try to expand a bit on these words.  When I know that I am chosen, I know that I have been seen as a special person.  Someone has noticed me in my uniqueness and has expressed a desire to know me, to come closer to me, to love me.  When I write to you that, as the Beloved, we are God’s chosen ones, I mean that we have been seen by God from all eternity and seen as unique, special, precious beings.  It is very hard for me to express well the depth of the meaning of the word “chosen” has for me, but I hope you are willing to listen to me from within.  From all eternity, long before you were born and became a part of history, you existed in God’s heart.  Long before your parents admired you or your friends acknowledged your gifts or your teachers, colleagues and employers encouraged you, you were already “chosen.”  The eyes of love had seen you as precious, as of infinite beauty, as of eternal value.  When love chooses, it chooses with a perfect sensitivity for the unique beauty of the chosen one. (Life of the Beloved by Henri J. M. Nouwen)

Prayer

Closing Prayer: O God, I belong to you.  I am your beloved child.  Help me to live my life out of that truth today.  Amen.

devoted to prayer

Opening Prayer: O God, teach me to pray and then help me pray. Amen.

Scripture: Colossians 4:2-6

Journal: How will you devote yourself to prayer today?

Reflection: We prepare to pray not by composing our prayers but ourselves; forming the inner life so that it is adequate to the reception of truth, not just the acquisition of facts.  But when we engage in the act of prayer itself, there is no preparing, no getting the right words, no posture to take, no mood to assume.  We simply do it.  Prayer is primal speech.  We do not first learn how to do it, and then proceed to do it; we do it, in the doing we find out what we are doing, and then deepen and mature in it. (Answering God by Eugene Peterson)

Prayer

Closing Prayer: O God, help me to know that the only way I will ever learn to pray well is by praying much.  Give me the grace and the strength and the desire to pray much.  Amen.

known

Opening Prayer: You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. (Psalm 139:1-6, NIV)

Scripture: Psalm 139:1-24

Journal: What does this Psalm stir up within you?  What does it tell you about God?  What does it tell you about yourself?  How does it encourage you to live differently today?

Reflection: O Father, you know me inside and out.  I can’t hide anything from you.  You know my thoughts and you know my fears.  You know my insecurities and you know my anxieties.  You are utterly familiar with all my dysfunctional ways.  And yet, for some unknown reason, you still love me with a passion and an affection that I can never fully understand.  It is simply too much for me to comprehend.  You love me so fully and so completely that even my darkness is not dark to you.  For you dreamt me into being and breathed your breath of life into the depths of my soul.  Before the foundations of the world were laid, I was a beautiful thought in your mind; a thought that brought a huge smile to your face and great joy to your heart.  I am your work of art, your masterpiece.  I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

     Your thoughts of me outnumber the sand.  You think of me every second of every day; you can’t get me off of your mind.  You long to take me into your great heart of love again and again and again, constantly reminding me of the delight you take in me.  You desperately want me to know the height and depth and breadth of your unfailing love, so that I will always know myself as you know me—as your very own.  I am your beloved!  Help me to live that way.

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Amen. (Psalm 139:23-24, NIV)

resurrection

Opening Prayer: O God, giver of life, you bring life from death, beauty from tragedy.  Bring us. O Lord through the fire and the water, and into a place of abundance.  And if not this day, then someday.  Amen.

Scripture: Psalm 66:8-12

Journal: What has been raised to new life in you lately?  How has a hard road, or experience, turned out to be a place of abundance for you?  How did God redeem it?

Reflection:

     resurrection
     by Jim Branch

you let men ride over our heads;
we went through the fire and water,
but you brought us to a place of
abundance. ~psalm 66:12


sometimes
we can only see it
in hindsight
this place of abundance
to which we have
been brought

we could never
have recognized it
while our heads
were being ridden over
or as we were
walking through
the fire and water

yet here we are
on the other side
of it all
in a spacious
and fruitful land

who could have imagined
that such a rugged road
would lead to
such a beautiful place

this too is resurrection

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Lord God, help us to trust your heart even when we can't see your hand.  Help us to know that you are always the God of resurrection.  Amen.

easter sunday

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)

Scripture: John 20:1-18

Journal:  What new life is rising in you this Easter Sunday?

Reflection:

     easter by Jim Branch

the silence was deafening
that early morning as she stood,
gripped by a love that would not release her
everyone else was gone
back to their homes and their families

“how could they forget so quickly?” she thought
as she stood in the first light of dawn,
tears streaming down her cheeks
“did they not feel it too…the love?”
“if they did, how could they leave?”

her heart would not allow her to go
so she stayed—as near to him as she knew how
was she waiting?
was she hoping?
or was she simply doing the only thing she could—
to be near the place he was last near
she would rather be near him than anyone or anything
so she stayed…and cried
longing to hear her name from his lips once more

and then suddenly the voice…it startled her
looking through the tears she could not see who it was

“have you seen him?” she asked
“do you know where he is?”

it wasn’t until he uttered her name
that she recognized his voice
and at its sweet sound
everything in her was raised to life again
it was easter you see…and he had risen
and because of that
so had she

Prayer

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