a prayer

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago (the divine hours), I have been aiming to engage in midday prayers each day.

Today's "Concluding Prayer of the Church" was brilliant:

O Lord my God, to you and your service I devote myself, body, soul, and spirit. Fill my memory with the record of your mighty works; enlighten my understanding with the light of your Holy Spirit; and may all the desires of my heart and will center in what you would have me do. Make me an instrument of your salvation for the people entrusted to my care, and let me by my life and speaking set forth your true and living Word. Be always with me in carrying out the duties of my salvation; in praises heighten my love and gratitude; in speaking of You give me readiness of thought and expression; and grant that, by the clearness and brightness of your holy Word, all the world may be drawn to your blessed kingdom. All this I ask for the sake of your Son my Savior Jesus Christ. Amen

Amen is right!

making music

I'm often amazed an in awe of writers who can put words into such beautiful pictures that they move me. I'm currently reading "The Secret Message of Jesus" by Brian McLaren, and he writes:

"Jesus forms a movement of people who trust him and believe his message. They believe that they don't have to wait for this or that to happen, but rather that they can begin living in a new and better way now, a way of life Jesus conveys by the pregnant phase kingdom of God. Life for them now is about an interactive relationship - reconciled to God, reconciled to one another - and so they see their entire lives as an opportunity to make the beautiful music of God's kingdom so that more and more people will be drawn into it, and so that the world will be changed by their growing influence." (p 83)

What a fantastic picture of participating in the word of God. In sharing with my friends Simon and Luke this morning, we talked about how different that is from the "to do list" version of Christianity so many of us are used to. It also struck me that the music is playing, all the time, in people's lives, including our own, and our role is to stop long enough and often enough to hear the music, and help others to hear it and be drawn into it and influenced by it.

the divine hours

I re-read "Presence-Centered Youth Ministry" by Mike King (magnificent work that has shaped me a lot) a few weeks ago, and I'll probably put some key quotes up here soon (don't want to overwhelm you with book reviews!) One astounding comment which has changed my disciplines was this:

"I like midday [prayers] mainly because of the time of day it happens. Lunchtime is when I would set my course either toward or away from God. Midday is a great way for me to pause, reflect on God's character and invite him into everything I do throughout the rest of the day" - Nick, college student (p 135).

Those words smacked me between the eyes, and for the last while, I've been trying (at least when I'm at work) to implement them (I do hope to make it a routine every day, but one step at at a time...) A really useful site I've found is The Divine Hours. The great thing about the site is you can localise it to your timezone, and when you open it up, it comes up with morning, midday, evening (called vespers) and compline (to use just before you go to bed) prayers as appropriate. I've set a reminder in my calendar for noon and I stop whatever I'm doing, and take some time to work through the readings. As Nick says, it changes the direction and focus of the rest of the afternoon, and I try to take one main thought away to kind of digest throughout the arvo.

Give it a try and tell me what you think.

If anyone has any "portable" (ie PDA) versions you know of (I'm not always at my computer (!)), please let me know.

the ragamuffin gospel

While I was on leave, I read "The Ragamuffin Gospel" by Brennan Manning. Manning is quickly becoming one of my favourite authors. I love his emphasis on a personal, relational, grace-full God, and the implication on us that this brings. I'll only give a couple of quotes here, because there are so many great things he says that I could fill up the page with them if I wrote them all out.

On Prayer:
" Pray as you can; don't pray as you can't (Don Chapman) ... A little child cannot do a bad colouring, nor can a child of God do bad prayer" (p 123-4)

On repentance and forgiveness:
"[The saved sinner] knows repentance is not what we do in order to earn forgiveness; it is what we do because we have been forgiven" (p 54)

On guilt:
"Preoccupation with self is always a major component of unhealthy guilt ... Yes, we feel guilt over sins, but healthy guilt is one which acknowledges the wrong done and feels remorse, but then is free to embrace the forgiveness that has been offered" (p 90)

On our past:
"Whatever past achievements might bring us honour, whatever past disgraces might make us blush, all have been crucified with Christ and exist no more except in the deep recesses of eternity, where 'good is enhanced into glory and evil miraculously established as part of the grater good'" (p 36)

On "needing" to feel loved:
"In trembling insecurity the disciple pleads for proofs from the Lord that her affection is returned. If she does not receive them, she is frustrated and starts to suspect that her relationship with Jesus is all over or that it never even existed. If she does receive consolation, she is reassured but only for a time. She presees for further proofs - each one less convincing than the one that went before" (p 89)

On the Kingdom:
"The Kingdom is not an exlcusive, well-trimmed suburb with snobbish rules about who can live there. No, it is for a larger, homelier, less self-conscious cast of people who understand they are sinners because they have experienced the yaw and pitch of moral struggle" (p 7)

To finish, a prayer Manning quotes from Charles Foucauld:

"Abba, I abandon myself into your hands. Do with me what you will: I accept all. Let your will be done in me and in all your creatures. I wish no more than this, O Lord. Into your hands I commend my spirit. I offer it to you with all the love of my heart, for I love you, Lord, and I give myself, surrender myself int your hands without reserve, with boundless confidence, for you are my Father" (p 94)

weeds

Yesterday, I did my first weeding of our newly landscaped front yard (picture of my fantastic work down below...)

I can so see why Jesus decided to use weeds as an analogy - he must have done some gardening growing up, methinks. There's so much depth in it - the fact that if you deal with them early, they're easy to pull up, if you let them grow, they can get so interwoven with other plants it's hard to tell where one starts and the other finishes, sometimes you can pull weeds out, other times they just need to be sprayed, the plants grow a lot bigger and quicker when the nutrients aren't being stolen by the weeds... I could go on.

Apart from anything else, I'm going to keep trying to weed, just so that it reminds me to think of the weeding that I need to do in my own life.