room to flourish

Thursday, March 21, 2013

hunger and thirst, day 4

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

Opening Prayer:
You called, You cried, you shattered my deafness. You sparkled, you blazed, You drove away my blindness. You shed your fragrance, and I drew in my breath, and I pant for You. I tasted and now I hunger and thirst. You touched me, and now I burn with longing for your peace. (Confessions by St. Augustine)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 81

Scripture for the Day: Isaiah 55:1-5

Reading for Reflection:

All of us are willing to admit pangs of hunger and feelings of emptiness inside us. We experience half-formed dreams and vague drives for something more than human resources can promise or produce. There is in each of us a dynamic, a mystique or drive that, unless detoured by human selfishness, leads to search for God, whether we know it or not. It is this desire that carries us beyond what we can see into the darkness and obscurity of faith. It is a hunger that can be satisfied in God alone. Obviously, God does not intend to satisfy this desire completely in this world; its function is to draw us closer and closer to God who alone can give us complete satisfaction. This is the truth which St. Augustine discovered, after the discouragement of so many blind alleys: “our hearts were made for you, O God, and they shall not rest until they rest in you.”

The experience of God touching and involving the human will in search may come to different men in different ways. There are many avenues of attraction to God. Some are drawn to him through his beauty, others to his peace, and still others are attracted by his power. Most men find themselves drawn to God as the source and wellspring of the very meaning of life, the ultimate ground of human existence. But it may be that the first motion of God within the believer-to-be is one of disturbance. Sometimes we forget that God comes to us, not only to give us peace but also to disturb us. He comforts the afflicted and he afflicts the comfortable. For some men life becomes a hopeless mess, and they find themselves aware of a demand to know what it is all about. This inner restlessness and disquiet can well be God sowing the first seeds of faith in the human heart. (A Reason to Live! A Reason to Die! By John Powell)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: All Who are Thirsty

All who are weak
Come to the fountain
Dip your heart in the stream of life
Let the pain and the sorrow
Be washed away
In the waves of his mercy
As deep cries out to deep (we sing)

Come Lord Jesus come (3x)

Holy Spirit come (3x)

Closing Prayer:
O God of tender mercies, I know I’ve kept you at arms length. I’ve kept you safe in heaven. But heaven has leaned down to the earth and I’ve been touched anew. Like thirsty ground I long for you. Forgive my casualness about your Love. Forgive my shallow life. I am finished with shallowness. I used to pray that I be saved from eternal death, but now I pray to be saved from shallow living. Eternal death? Shallow living? Is there a difference? O God, deliver me from shallow living! (A Tree Full of Angels by Macrina Wiederkehr)

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

hunger and thirst, day 3

We stand in the midst of nourishment and we starve. We dwell in the land of plenty, yet we persist in going hungry. Not only do we dwell in the land of plenty; we have the capacity to be filled with the utter fullness of God (Eph. 3:16-19). In the light of such possibility, what happens? Why do we drag our hearts? Lock up our souls? Why do we limp? Why do we straddle issues? Why do we live feebly, so dimly? Why aren’t we saints?

Each of us could come up with individual answers to all these questions, but I want to suggest here a common cause. The reason we live life so dimly and with such divided hearts is that we have never really learned how to be present with quality to God, to self, to others, to experiences and events, to all created things. We have never learned to gather up the crumbs of whatever appears in our path at every moment. We meet all of these lovely gifts only half there. Presence is what we are all starving for. Real Presence! We are too busy to be present, too blind to see the nourishment and salvation in the crumbs of life, the experiences of each moment. Yet the secret of daily life is this: There are no leftovers.

There is nothing—no thing, no person, no experience, no thought, no joy or pain—that cannot be harvested and used for nourishment on our journey to God.

What I am suggesting here is that everything in your life is a stepping-stone to holiness if only you recognize that you do have within you the grace to be present to each moment. Your presence is an energy that you can choose to give or not give. Every experience, every thought, every word, every person in your life is a part of a larger picture of your growth. That’s why I call them crumbs. They are not the whole loaf, but they can be nourishing if you give them your real presence. Let everything energize you. Let everything bless you. Even your limping can bless you. (A Tree Full of Angels by Macrina Wiederkehr)

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

hunger and thirst, day 2

“Are you thirsty?” said the Lion.

“I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill.

“Then drink,” said the Lion.

“May I—could I—would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.

The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.

The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.

“Will you promise not to—do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.

“I make no promise,” said the Lion.

Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.

“Do you eat little girls?” she said.

“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.

“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill

“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.

“Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”

“There is no other stream,” said the Lion. (The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: All Who are Thirsty

All who are weak
Come to the fountain
Dip your heart in the stream of life
Let the pain and the sorrow
Be washed away
In the waves of his mercy
As deep cries out to deep (we sing)

Come Lord Jesus come (3x)

Holy Spirit come (3x)

Closing Prayer:
O God of tender mercies, I know I’ve kept you at arms length. I’ve kept you safe in heaven. But heaven has leaned down to the earth and I’ve been touched anew. Like thirsty ground I long for you. Forgive my casualness about your Love. Forgive my shallow life. I am finished with shallowness. I used to pray that I be saved from eternal death, but now I pray to be saved from shallow living. Eternal death? Shallow living? Is there a difference? O God, deliver me from shallow living! (A Tree Full of Angels by Macrina Wiederkehr)

Monday, March 18, 2013

hunger and thirst, day 1

Unlike the Samaritan woman, most of us do know who Jesus is. We know all about the cross and the resurrection. We have accepted his gift of forgiveness for our sins, been baptized, and joined the church. We may even serve on a committee or volunteer in church missions. We, at least, are not Samaritans. We even love the temple. But we still yearn for something more. We yearn for something more in our relationships and families. We yearn for something more in our jobs and sense of purpose. We yearn, most of all, for something more in our experience of God.

George Barna, one of the leading researchers on church and religious issues, recently published statistics showing that seventy-five million people attend church every Sunday. But less than one-third of these people believe that they interacted with God during the worship service, and over one-third say they have never experienced God’s presence. That is amazing. But one statistic Barna didn’t cite is even more striking: one hundred percent of us thirst for more of God than we now have.

Like the woman at the well, sooner or later, perhaps in a quiet, reflective moment, we must all come to terms with the honest truth that we were looking for more than we’ve found thus far. We certainly don’t resemble the Samaritan woman. We keep our marriages to a minimum, and we hold down respectable jobs and pay our bills on time. We may look pretty respectable and orthodox. But still our souls are very thirsty.

Perhaps your prayer life has dried up, or in spite of your best efforts you still are not making much of a difference in anyone’s life, or maybe you’ve lost all the joy, all the passion, in your life. You have the same sadness buried in your soul as all those Samaritans had. You may have a head full of knowledge about God, but you still yearn to experience something sacred, something that will at long last calm the ache from deep within. As this story unfolds, take your place next to this Samaritan woman.

It’s part of my pastoral calling to look closely at the lives of those who go to church. They all clean up pretty nicely on Sunday morning. But just below the surface of their navy-blue suits and colorful dresses lie souls that are not nearly so tidy. On a typical Sunday in our church, I sit facing the congregation while the choir sings the anthem before the sermon. I gaze into the faces of people I know and love. I see the elder whose marriage is hanging on by a thread. Next to him is the Sunday school teacher whose daughter was arrested last week for driving under the influence of alcohol. Two pews behind them is the church’s newest widow, who is wondering how she will survive sitting in church alone for the first time in forty years. She happens to be sitting next to a young couple who desperately want to be parents, but not a single one of the fertility treatments seem to be helping. The details may change as I look from face to face, but the essential story remains the same. They are all thirsty.

My job is to remember that what we are struggling with is not just our families and jobs. No, the stakes are much higher than that. The real struggle is with our parched souls. We were created with a need to satisfy our physical thirst, and every morning of our lives we are reminded of this thirst. But this physical thirst is a symbol, maybe even a sacrament, that points to the deeper spiritual thirst of the soul. So also is our longing for better families and more satisfying jobs a symbol of our deeper yearning to be a part of the family and mission of God. We simply cannot satisfy the thirst of our souls by pouring on new relationships, experience, achievements, or careers.

As the Samaritan woman discovered, it doesn’t matter how many times we may try to rearrange our relationships and reorder our lives. Until we find relief for the soul, everything else will be nothing more than a distraction—a very temporary one at that—from our fundamental craving for living water.

Most of us haven’t gone through five spouses, but we have gone through jobs, five moves, five weight-loss programs, or five churches—and still the insatiable thirst continues. We will never find what we are looking for in the things we pick up along the way. Not even the religious things. Not even important things like relationships. All of these things will leave our souls empty if we try to force them to satisfy our thirst. The true object of our search is nothing less than an encounter with the Holy One. (Sacred Thirst by M. Craig Barnes)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: All Who are Thirsty

All who are weak
Come to the fountain
Dip your heart in the stream of life
Let the pain and the sorrow
Be washed away
In the waves of his mercy
As deep cries out to deep (we sing)

Come Lord Jesus come (3x)

Holy Spirit come (3x)

Closing Prayer:
O God of tender mercies, I know I’ve kept you at arms length. I’ve kept you safe in heaven. But heaven has leaned down to the earth and I’ve been touched anew. Like thirsty ground I long for you. Forgive my casualness about your Love. Forgive my shallow life. I am finished with shallowness. I used to pray that I be saved from eternal death, but now I pray to be saved from shallow living. Eternal death? Shallow living? Is there a difference? O God, deliver me from shallow living! (A Tree Full of Angels by Macrina Wiederkehr)

another note

If you are following the Lenten Devotion, this week's theme is Letting Go, which was posted on this site in September 2012. Rather than me reposting it, please feel free to go back to Septemeber 2012 in the archives, you can find all 7 days there.

Blessings,
JB

Sunday, March 17, 2013

down, day 7

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

Opening Prayer:
Lord, how great is our dilemma! In Thy Presence silence best becomes us, but love inflames our hearts and constrains us to speak. Were we to hold our peace the stones would cry out; yet if we speak, what shall we say? Teach us to know that we cannot know, for the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Let faith support us where reason fails, and we shall think because we believe, not in order that we may believe. In Jesus’ name. Amen. (Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 138

Scripture for the Day: Matthew 5:1-12

Reading for Reflection:

Humility means staying close to the ground (humus), to people, to everyday life, to what is happening with all its down-to-earthness. (The Contemplative Pastor by Eugene H. Peterson)

I love the fact that the word humus—the decayed vegetable matter that feeds the roots of plants—comes from the same root that gives rise to the word humility. It is a blessed etymology. It helps me understand that the humiliating events of life, the events that leave “mud on my face” or that “make my name mud,” may create the fertile soil in which something new can grow. (Let Your Life Speak by Parker J. Palmer)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: How Great is Our God

The splendor of the King clothed in majesty
Let all the earth rejoice, All the earth rejoice

He wraps himself in Light and darkness tries to hide
And trembles at His voice, trembles at His voice

How great is our God, sing with me
How great is our God and all will see
How great, how great is our God

Age to age He stands and time is in His hands
Beginning and the end, beginning and the end

The Godhead three in One, Father, Spirit, Son
The Lion and the Lamb, the Lion and the Lamb

How great is our God, sing with me
How great is our God and all will see
How great, how great is our God

Name above all names
Worthy of all praise
My heart will sing
How great is our God

Closing Prayer:
Lord Jesus, give us the grace and the strength and the courage to follow your invitation downward—to the place where there is only you and nothing else. In your name and for your sake we pray. Amen. (JLB)

Saturday, March 16, 2013

down, day 6

Everybody wants to be somebody. Since the dawn of history, human beings have been trying to move up the scale of importance. The clincher used by the serpent to tempt Adam and Eve was "when you eat of [the tree of good and evil], your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3:5). Henri Nouwen says that ever since then, we have been tempted to replace love with power. "The long painful history of the church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led." This is a theme running through the Bible, through human history and through our own psyche.

We should not be surprised nor excessively judgmental with James and John. Although their brashness may not be our style, the motive underlying their request is not strange: "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory." Shared glory, honored positions, closeness to powerful people--these are popular means of being somebody. If we can't be the glory or the honored guest or the one with the power, then being close by is the next best thing. Some of the glory will make us shine. Some of the honor may spill over onto us.

Religion is fertile soil in which the seeds of ambition subtly grow. Being close to God has deadly dangers. Some of history's most dastardly deeds have been done by those who claimed to be sitting on God's right or left hand. It is easy for those of us who deal daily with holy things to be presumptuous. James and John apparently felt their closeness to Jesus gave them special entree. They prefaced their request for prominence with "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you."

It is easy to assume that relationship with God translates into entitlement. Career advancement, upward mobility, assignments or calls to bigger churches with larger salaries and more prominent leadership positions are popular expectations of clergy. Their competition for prestigious pulpits and powerful positions threatens their witness. Their drive for the honored and well-compensated positions contributes to the weakening of congregations located in mission fields. Small, impoverished congregations become temporary stepping stones in the pursuit of prominent places.

Insights from the social sciences fill contemporary books on effective leadership. But although the social sciences provide helpful tools for understanding the dynamics of leadership, they must not be foundational for leadership in the church. Without a firm theological foundation, leadership is only a sophisticated means of upward mobility through institutional advancement. Much of the material I read sounds more like James and John pursuing prominence than Jesus calling us to a life of servanthood and downward mobility; it has more to do with the pursuit of power than the implications of leadership as the power of love.

Jesus' response to James and John challenges popular assumptions about greatness, power and prominence: "Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" The other disciples were angry, perhaps afraid that James and John would be given positions which they had sought. But Jesus said to all the disciples, "Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be a slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

The cup from which Jesus drank is self-emptying love, the giving of one's own life for others. The baptism with which he was baptized is a burial of the old world with its power games and the rising of God's reign of justice, generosity and joy. This is downward mobility.

The world's image of greatness is hierarchical, with the greatest at the pinnacle of the pyramid and God hovering over the top. The closer one gets to the pinnacle, the closer one is to greatness and to the image of God. Success, upward mobility and being served are signs of faithfulness to a hierarchical god.

The way of Jesus leads in another direction. Nouwen writes: "The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which the world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross.... It is not a leadership of power and control, but a leadership of powerlessness and humility in which the suffering servant of God, Jesus Christ, is made manifest."

Giving our lives "as a ransom for many" involves making ourselves available to others in response to the One who laid down his life for us. It is offering our total being—our hope and our despair, our doubts and our faith, our fear and our courage, our ambition and our humility.

James and John at least knew where true greatness lay. They may not have understood what they were asking when they asked to be seated on the right hand and left hand of Jesus, the victorious Christ. They were, however, asking the right person. They suspected that Jesus was the One who would "come into glory," although they did not understand the full implication of their request.

The disciples' request to be positioned near Christ reflects the ambivalence of the human spirit. On the one hand there is the drive to be somebody, a drive often expressed in substituting power for love. On the other hand there is the lure of Incarnate Love, whose power is manifested in weakness. Following the Christ toward downward mobility and giving oneself to others is authentic greatness. (The Call to Downward Mobility, Christian Century, Oct 8, 1997 by Kenneth L. Carder)