Thursday, September 28, 2006

Today’s reading

Philippians 1:27-30

“Only, live your life in a manner worthy of Christ, so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you, I will know that you are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel, and are in no way intimidated by your opponents. For them this is evidence of their destruction, but of your salvation. And this is God’s doing. For he has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well” (Phil. 1:27-29).

Prayer

Silently, you speak in the soft glow of morning, O Eternal and Constant One. The day is born, alive in pinks and lavender with mountains of bulbous purple clouds resting their weight on the lake’s horizon. They signal with certainty that fall has come once more. The season’s insistent turn, assured and unyielding reminds me again that I am not.

So I turn again to you, Eternal Wonder. You alone are more certain than the morning. You are constant and firm, your love for me and all I see remains sure, amid the passing of days into seasons, and seasons into the years of my lifetime.

May I share in the constancy of your life and purpose? I long for you. I want my heart and my days to be marked by a calm and quiet confidence, resting in the arms of your eternity. Then, perhaps, Paul’s words will trouble me less. For I know: I avoid pain … religiously. I have well-practiced strategies for self-protection. I escape struggle whenever I can, or so it seems. And opponents I meet, they do intimidate me, so that sometimes I am no longer me, no longer that self I am when I rest in the eternal constancy of your infinite nearness.

My heart is too little given to you and your eternal desire to love all things into life. O Christ, ever the same, and more insistent than the seasons, awaken in me such a sense of your constancy and compassion that I may be fully given to your eternal purpose; however it appears in my days. Grant me the privilege of suffering for your holy desire that all the world should live in the eternity of your love. Amen.