Can it be that from our endings, new beginnings you create?
Life from death, and from our rendings, realms of wholeness generate?
Take our fears, then, Lord, and turn them into hopes for life anew:
Fading light and dying season sing their Glorias to you.
Words by Dean W. Nelson, 1988, in Wonder, Love, and Praise
My Prayer
Lord, as this year ends I thank you for all the days and the ways that you touched my life. As the new year begins I look with anticipation to the days ahead, believing that you will continue to bring light and wholeness to all the areas of my life. I look around at the events of this earth and it would be easy to enter this new year in fear for the future, yet I choose instead to enter it in faith, praying that you will bring about the fulfillment of your plans for this planet. I pray that you will bring into reality the things you have spoken to my own heart, and that I will accept the challenges and allow you to form me into the person I really am. Jesus, dear Jesus, you came and you changed everything. It is in you that I hope. It is for you that I sing: Gloria! Amen
Kids say the most interesting things.
Today I heard one little boy say to a friend, “My brain just had a burn-out.” I’m not quite sure what he meant by that, but I think I might know the feeling!
OUR PART is to pray;
God’s part is to weave everything
into the tapestry
of the divine will.
From page 95 of Talking in the Dark: Praying When Life Doesn’t Make Sense by Steve Harper. Copyright © 2007 by the author. Published by Upper Room Books.
Professional weavers of old often had assistants who performed the task of setting up the loom with the warp threads. After that, the master weaver wove the tapestry. Only he or she would have the skill to use the warp and weft threads together to form the intricate pattern envisioned for the tapestry.
When we pray we are as the assistant, setting things up. Only God can actually weave the tapestry. Yet how often do we try to tell the Master Weaver how to weave? We need to remember that we simply do not have the skill, nor the vision, to do this. Our headstrong attempts would lead to disaster should the Weaver allow us to have our way.
**Prayer ** Lord, help me to pray and then completely release those prayers to you. Only you can see the whole picture. Only you can use those concerns I lift to you in prayer to weave the divine tapestry of my own life and the lives of the others for whom I pray. I worship you, Master Weaver. I desire to trust you more. Amen.
He who would travel happily must travel light.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
French writer (1900 – 1944)
There’s a lot of truth in this little phrase. On a practical note, think about traveling by plane. On a recent trip I took only a carry-on bag. I managed to pack enough for the four days I was gone and avoided the stress of picking up luggage and maybe having it get lost. I hope I can manage to pack as light the next time I take a trip.
Now lets consider another type of travel; the life journey. It’s a little harder to pack light on this one. Some things are like lead weights in the bag; bitterness, unforgiveness, and envy are three of a long list. Then there are the things that aren’t so heavy but just take up a lot of space, like needless regrets and people and things we just can’t seem to let go of. Some people even insist on carrying other people’s baggage, making travel even more complicated and exhausting.
Prayer for Life Travel
Lord, help me pack my bags well, with only the things you know I need for the journey. Give me the courage to leave the unnecessary behind. Give me the strength to lay aside, once and for all, those heavy things that weigh me down. Finally, reveal to me any bags I carry that don’t belong to me. Set me free, dear Jesus, the Master of traveling light. Set me free to travel light. AMEN.
“Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge,
fitter to bruise than polish.”
Ann Bradstreet (1612-1672)
What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?
Dr. Robert Schuller
This is a really good question!
I’m not sure what this says about me, but I’ve been thinking on this question for more than 24 hours now and I still don’t have an answer.
What would YOU do?
Loving Spirit, loving Spirit,
you have chosen me to be;
you have drawn me to your wonder,
you have set your sign on me.
(p.742 Wonder Love and Praise, Shirley Erena Murray, 1987 The Hymn Society)
These words really spoke to me when we sang this hymn yesterday in church. (Really the whole hymn really spoke to me, but I hesitate to copy it here in it’s entirety since it is copyrighted.) I have often felt that I am indeed ‘marked’ in some way; that God’s sign is upon me and that even if I wanted to, which I do not, I could not escape my destiny of relationship with God through Christ. Even at the very worst times in my life, in despair and in willful sin, I still cried out to God. I don’t think I could be any other way. Without God, without the ever deepening relationship that I have with God, I would be as a fish thrown upon the sand flapping about until I died. Why is this so? It is a mystery for which I have no answer, but know only to be grateful for it’s reality.
Sunday’s Reflection
FOREVER I AM leaving off the dream
that I could ever walk this road alone —
or struggle in my own imperfect strength
against the breadth and depth and height and length
of all that darkness claims me for my own.
Yet though I know all this, the road looks long;
no cloud of deep refreshing gathers yet.
In faith all I can do is not forget
that there is still the promise of a song;
parched lips shall raise through pain their sweetest praise,
and journeying down this road because I must,
I know that with each step of desperate trust
I turn a quiet corner of your grace.
- Jennifer Lynn Woodruff “Reluctant Pilgrim” Weavings Journal
From pages 29-30 of Weavings Journal, May/June 2001. Copyright © 2001 by The Upper Room.
Upper Room Daily Reflections
I’ve nothing to add to this, but I encourage us all to ponder these words as we begin this Holy Week.
Embrace the Mystery
I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.
-Harry Emerson Fosdick
I think that often we, I’m speaking as humans in general, feel the need to figure things out. We want to have an explanation of why things are the way they are, and how things happened, and what will happen next and who made these things happen, and what we can do about it. If it is beyond our mental capacity to figure something out we take some “expert’s” word for it and may never give it another thought. We feel in control if we have the answers.
It’s been a risky business, but in the last couple of years I’ve dared to question the “right” answers I’ve held on to in matters of faith and discovered that I don’t know half of what I thought I knew. I’ve had to admit that even the things of which I feel quite sure, may not in reality be quite the way I think they are. Further, I’ve concluded that for many questions there really are no definitive answers, and that it really does not matter. I trust that God loves not only me, but all of creation, enough to lead us through life and get us where we need to be by the time we’re done.
Living a life of faith in God means trusting enough to give up control and embrace the Mystery. I find that the universe if full of possibilities now that I no longer feel the need to have all the answers. I am not saying that there are no absolutes in faith; of course there must be. I am finding though, that there are far fewer absolutes that I once thought and that my faith becomes stronger the more I realize this. There is such freedom in embracing the mystery! Alleluia!