12/29/07

Run, run as fast as you can...

As I attempt to "catch up" with bills, paperwork, cleaning projects, and other things before the year ends, I've been forced to face the reality that I'll never actually stay on top of it all.

I don't like this very much. I'd rather not file monthly statements. I'd prefer dust never returned to my bookshelves. I wish businesses owed me checks instead of the other way around.

But more than the bills and the dust, there is another thing I can never repay, never outpace. I'll never "catch up" with the grace that always runs alongside me, constantly available from the Lord who makes all things new.

This makes me feel awkward, too, I guess. I can never give enough back to God. It's simply me He wants. Not my organizational skills or my clever efficiency. Just the whole of the unfinished me -- disheveled closets, unkempt drawers, and all.

May we all rest in this reality as we enter the new year.

"To live accepting God's grace is to live in eternal debt. It demands that I wait, I accept, with no chance of keeping the score balanced. It's letting go of control. I'm forced to acknowledge I'll never even things up. I practice solitude, which means staying open to receive. Making time to be alone. Putting things on hold." ~ Cindy Crosby

Dec 30-Jan 4 Suggested Lectio: The Journey Continues

The passages below are for reading, meditation, and lectio this week. Feel free to post your comments or reflections. The prompts are also here for your use.

Isaiah 30:21
Jeremiah 6:16
Proverbs 4:23
Isaiah 50:4
2 Corinthians 3:18
Ephesians 1:18
Romans 8:5-6

Read: Seek a phrase or verse that attracts your attention. Repeat the phrase and savor it.

Reflect: What meaning is offered to you as you consider the phrase or verse?

Respond: What response do you have to the word? What is God’s invitation to you?

Rest: Relax in God’s transforming power and presence.

12/22/07

Dec 23-29 Advent Lectio: Kingdom Peace


The passages below are for reading, meditation, and lectio this week. Feel free to post your comments or reflections. The prompts are also here for your use.


Matthew 11:28-29
John 1:1-5
Luke 17:20-21
Matthew 13:31-32
Matthew 13:44
Luke 13:20-21
Matthew 13:45-46


Read: Seek a phrase or verse that attracts your attention. Repeat the phrase and savor it.

Reflect: What meaning is offered to you as you consider the phrase or verse?

Respond: What response do you have to the word? What is God’s invitation to you?

Rest: Relax in God’s transforming power and presence.

12/15/07

Incarnation: Honoring the Body


Christmas is a vivid reminder that God uses flesh and bones, hands and feet, voices and ears to spread his Kingdom in the world. Mary made herself available to God and literally had Christ formed in her own body. The result was the birth of a giddy mystery: Word-become-flesh; God with us!

This year in SFCC, we've been given the opportunity to read the chapter in Sacred Rhythms about honoring our own bodies. If you haven't had the chance yet, give yourself an hour or two to read and rest with this material.

If you have read the chapter, you might also enjoy this essay and its ideas for honoring our bodies.


An Act of Love

There's a new book out that I've seen in Starbucks and heard advertised on the radio. It's called Listening is an Act of Love, and it contains stories shared between friends and family, recorded by the StoryCorps Project. I haven't read it, but the title snags my attention every time I encounter it.

This week of Advent, we focus on love. And in the push and hurry of the season, I am challenged to make room for love by making room for attentive listening. God gives his ear to us. What can I do to better turn my ear to him? What can I do to listen better?

"Let us pray that, above all, God would make us listeners to himself, so that we may be neither idle nor self-sufficient; not rash in our deeds, but ever pausing to listen, and then to follow him, moving in consonance with his will."
~ Dr. Klaus Bockmuehl

Dec 16-22 Advent Lectio: Love

The passages below are for reading, meditation, and listneing this week. Feel free to post your comments or reflections. The prompts are also here for your use.

1 John 5:3
Isaiah 49:15-16
1 John 4:7-12
Ezekiel 34:11-12
Luke 2:34-35
1 John 3:1-2
Luke 1:46-55

Read: Seek a phrase or verse that attracts your attention. Repeat the phrase and savor it.

Reflect: What meaning is offered to you as you consider the phrase or verse?

Respond: What response do you have to the word? What is God’s invitation to you?

Rest: Relax in God’s transforming power and presence.

12/8/07

Be Something Special

"The intensity and strain that many of us bring to Christmas must suggest to some onlookers that, on the whole, Christians do no seem to have gotten the point of it. Probably few of us have the faith or the nerve to tamper with the hallowed Christmas traditions on a large scale, or with our other holiday celebrations. But a small experiment might prove interesting. What if instead of doing something, we were to be something special. Be a womb. Be a dwelling for God. Be surprised."

~Loretta Ross-Gotta

Dec 9-15 Suggested Lectio: Hope

The passages below are for reading, meditation, and lectio this week. Feel free to post your comments or reflections. The prompts are also here for your use.

Psalm 73:25-26
Isaiah 43:18-19
Romans 5:3-4
Isaiah 40:3-5
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Romans 8:22-25
Psalm 62:5-8


Read: Seek a phrase or verse that attracts your attention. Repeat the phrase and savor it.

Reflect: What meaning is offered to you as you consider the phrase or verse?

Respond: What response do you have to the word? What is God’s invitation to you?

Rest: Relax in God’s transforming power and presence.

12/1/07

The Coming


Advent is the season of anticipation and arrival.


Remember the ancient Israelites, yearning for freedom, awaiting a promised Messiah? Remember the miraculous coming of a Savior ~ A tiny child, born to an ordinary girl, in a barren stall, greeted by angels and livestock.


Do you recognize your own yearning for freedom, awaiting the return of our promised Lord? Anticipate a second arrival and an eternal kingdom ~ A rider on a white horse, like blazing fire, restoring creation, and gathering us in His arms.


But most of all, look for the Christ who came as an infant and who will come again as a King, and see that He is coming right now, right here. Look and listen and feel and know all of the ways Jesus is alive and entering the world today ~ into your heart, through your hands, always already among us.

Dec 2-8 Advent Lectio: Faith

The passages below are for reading, meditation, and lectio this week. Feel free to post your comments or reflections. The prompts are also here for your use.

2 Corinthians 5:7
Psalm 13
Isaiah 11:1-5
Hebrews 11:1
Mark 10:15-16
Hebrews 11:13-16
Luke 1:68-79

Read: Seek a phrase or verse that attracts your attention. Repeat the phrase and savor it.

Reflect: What meaning is offered to you as you consider the phrase or verse?

Respond: What response do you have to the word? What is God’s invitation to you?

Rest: Relax in God’s transforming power and presence.