Today’s reading
Philippians 4:4:1-7
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God that passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:4-7).
Prayer
Come, Lord Jesus. Teach our hearts that we belong to your new age. Convince our souls that we are citizens of a land alien to the one we typically inhabit. We live what we see. The challenges of our days loom large. We see threats to our ability to succeed, to be accepted, to master that corner of the world we need to control to feel safe. And fear immediately follows, shadowing our hearts, sucking our souls dry until they are mere husks, empty of the abundant joy and vitality that is your desire for all you love.
Come, Lord Jesus. Draw us beyond the illusion of our fears into the world of your grace. Lift us from dread and exhaustion into joy and tears. Our being springs from the Ground of Love you are. We are alive with you. Apart from that love we do not exist. You, Abiding Love, surround and envelop us and all life. We dwell in the atmosphere of Holy Presence. You are near.
Fear evaporates like so much morning mist when our souls release their fearful grip and live into into this awareness. Joy fills our frame, and the beauty you have loved into us is released, sparkling in hope-filled faces alive with anticipation. Even in my face. Thank you.
As we await the fullness of your coming to fill all things, I ask again. Come, Lord Jesus, fill us with the awareness of your nearness that we may live in the presence of Everlasting Love, drawing you in with our every breath. Then, truly, we shall live, with joy, beyond our fearful illusions. Amen.
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Thursday, December 07, 2006
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Today’s reading
Philippians 3:20-21
“But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation so that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that enables him to make all things subject to himself” (Phil. 3:20-21).
Prayer
Come, Lord Jesus transform our bodies. Conform us to your glory. Your glory is clear. You lived transparent to the Loving Mystery you called “Abba, Father,” the infinite source all creation, the fountain of all being, the Living Spring of Love. All you did and are--every act of healing and care, every word of teaching or argument with those who opposed you--conformed in detail to the desire of the Everlasting Love who has haunted us all our days. From your call to enter to your kingdom to your acceptance of your torturous death, you are the face of the Infinite Wonder no eye has seen.
But we have seen you, and seeing you we behold the Loving Mystery who desires to shape our lives and bodies into the image of your eternal beauty. It takes my breath away and scares me. For you reveal a love I don’t and can’t grasp. Your love grasps me and doesn’t let go. It is hungry, discontent and unresting until it fills every empty space where it is not, every corner of every soul that still turns away, clogged by its own fears and preoccupations. You will have all of us, and all of us will be the love you are. But I wonder: What little will be left of my self-absorbed, fear-disfigured life when I, finally, am subject to the love you are?
Still I pray. I must pray, “Come, Lord Jesus.” I know that you do. I look about and see the glory of your hungry, restless love in the lives of your beloved, sometimes even in my own body. Continue to fill us with the divine desire from which your every word flowed like a living spring. Conform our bodies to your own that we might known and shine with the Everlasting Love with whom we cannot live without.
Come, Lord Jesus, our hearts are hungry for you. Amen.
Philippians 3:20-21
“But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation so that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that enables him to make all things subject to himself” (Phil. 3:20-21).
Prayer
Come, Lord Jesus transform our bodies. Conform us to your glory. Your glory is clear. You lived transparent to the Loving Mystery you called “Abba, Father,” the infinite source all creation, the fountain of all being, the Living Spring of Love. All you did and are--every act of healing and care, every word of teaching or argument with those who opposed you--conformed in detail to the desire of the Everlasting Love who has haunted us all our days. From your call to enter to your kingdom to your acceptance of your torturous death, you are the face of the Infinite Wonder no eye has seen.
But we have seen you, and seeing you we behold the Loving Mystery who desires to shape our lives and bodies into the image of your eternal beauty. It takes my breath away and scares me. For you reveal a love I don’t and can’t grasp. Your love grasps me and doesn’t let go. It is hungry, discontent and unresting until it fills every empty space where it is not, every corner of every soul that still turns away, clogged by its own fears and preoccupations. You will have all of us, and all of us will be the love you are. But I wonder: What little will be left of my self-absorbed, fear-disfigured life when I, finally, am subject to the love you are?
Still I pray. I must pray, “Come, Lord Jesus.” I know that you do. I look about and see the glory of your hungry, restless love in the lives of your beloved, sometimes even in my own body. Continue to fill us with the divine desire from which your every word flowed like a living spring. Conform our bodies to your own that we might known and shine with the Everlasting Love with whom we cannot live without.
Come, Lord Jesus, our hearts are hungry for you. Amen.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Today’s reading
Philippians 3:20-21
“But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation so that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that enables him to make all things subject to himself” (Phil. 3:20-21).
Prayer
Come, Lord Jesus. Advent comes again, stirring our longing for a beauty and grace not fully born. Our music assumes a minor key melancholy, the best of it written in the key of yearning. Darkness descends. Earth cools. Snow lately shimmering bright as life now lies a leaden sludge in the gutters. We scurry from door to door before bitter chill chafes our cheeks raw. From task half done, we dash to the next, racing to finish that last paper, prepare for that test, to get this paper off our desks before the holy days, for the most part forgetting that all days are holy.
Come, Lord Jesus. The world is too much with us: death haunts Darfur, murder stalks Baghdad, the way of peace escapes the wisdom of the learned and powerful, the homeless freeze on our streets, disease hunts down our families and e-mail refuses even a moment’s respite from life’s demands and tragedies. The digital highway hurries in with news of friends. Their eagerly awaited child, loved with full hearts before drawing a breath of life’s sweet air, dies in utero. Hopes dash. Darkness descends. Earth cools.
But we hope, and we hope in you. So come Lord Jesus. We do not await your blessed appearance as those who do not know you. You once came, revealing as finite fact the face of the Infinite Wonder who draws us ever to you. You made it clear: this death-haunted Earth and we are loved with an everlasting love by the One who is Everlasting Love. You will subject all that is to the love you are are. We hunger for that.
So come, Lord Jesus. We hope as those who know you. For the hope that animates our hearts, the love bubbling in us for your word and world, the great “no” that speaks in our souls at the sight of all that destroys and disfigures earth and all you love, these tell us that you come even now, already subjecting our lives to your love. May we so live today. Come, Lord Jesus, finish what have started. Amen.
Philippians 3:20-21
“But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation so that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that enables him to make all things subject to himself” (Phil. 3:20-21).
Prayer
Come, Lord Jesus. Advent comes again, stirring our longing for a beauty and grace not fully born. Our music assumes a minor key melancholy, the best of it written in the key of yearning. Darkness descends. Earth cools. Snow lately shimmering bright as life now lies a leaden sludge in the gutters. We scurry from door to door before bitter chill chafes our cheeks raw. From task half done, we dash to the next, racing to finish that last paper, prepare for that test, to get this paper off our desks before the holy days, for the most part forgetting that all days are holy.
Come, Lord Jesus. The world is too much with us: death haunts Darfur, murder stalks Baghdad, the way of peace escapes the wisdom of the learned and powerful, the homeless freeze on our streets, disease hunts down our families and e-mail refuses even a moment’s respite from life’s demands and tragedies. The digital highway hurries in with news of friends. Their eagerly awaited child, loved with full hearts before drawing a breath of life’s sweet air, dies in utero. Hopes dash. Darkness descends. Earth cools.
But we hope, and we hope in you. So come Lord Jesus. We do not await your blessed appearance as those who do not know you. You once came, revealing as finite fact the face of the Infinite Wonder who draws us ever to you. You made it clear: this death-haunted Earth and we are loved with an everlasting love by the One who is Everlasting Love. You will subject all that is to the love you are are. We hunger for that.
So come, Lord Jesus. We hope as those who know you. For the hope that animates our hearts, the love bubbling in us for your word and world, the great “no” that speaks in our souls at the sight of all that destroys and disfigures earth and all you love, these tell us that you come even now, already subjecting our lives to your love. May we so live today. Come, Lord Jesus, finish what have started. Amen.
Monday, December 04, 2006
Monday, December 4, 2006
Today’s reading
Philippians 3:17-21
“Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have seen in us. For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ ... . But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation so that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that enables him to make all things subject to himself” (Phil. 3:17-18a, 20-21).
Prayer
You are purest of heart, Holy One, for truly you will only one thing: the fulfillment of your love in all that is and in me. Thank you. I wake chanting those two words. Thank you for making me one again. You reveal your desire in Benjamin, my one-year-old grandson. He wakes each day, brushes sleep from his eyes, smiles and laughs at the wonder of being alive. He wakes up laughing, joy dancing in his fiery black eyes.
I wake, and consciousness comes accompanied by two words, “thank you.” But for what and from where? For the crazy givenness of my own life? For the graces of relationships that daily surround me with the beauty of your holy future? Yes, surely. But mostly for the startling assurance bubbling from the deep well of my soul, springing from that invisible point where your Spirit and mine meet. A living spring flows from that convergence, an undeniable awareness that I belong to you, to the holy future from which you come to make all things new.
My morning gratitude comes unbidden by conscious willing. It is the natural effluence of a soul that knows itself already being subject to You, whose joy is to subject all the whirling elements of the universe to your loving desire. You subject my soul to your own divine heart, transforming me with all creation into the body of your glory. Your glory, my Lord Christ, is to reveal the loving joy of the One who is Love itself.
We await your final advent when you will subject all things to your desire. Then, all that is and the fullness of our souls will glisten with your glory, even as the eyes of my Benjamin. Until then may our lives grow ever more transparent to the glory and joy of your unquenchable loving. Amen.
Philippians 3:17-21
“Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have seen in us. For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ ... . But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation so that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that enables him to make all things subject to himself” (Phil. 3:17-18a, 20-21).
Prayer
You are purest of heart, Holy One, for truly you will only one thing: the fulfillment of your love in all that is and in me. Thank you. I wake chanting those two words. Thank you for making me one again. You reveal your desire in Benjamin, my one-year-old grandson. He wakes each day, brushes sleep from his eyes, smiles and laughs at the wonder of being alive. He wakes up laughing, joy dancing in his fiery black eyes.
I wake, and consciousness comes accompanied by two words, “thank you.” But for what and from where? For the crazy givenness of my own life? For the graces of relationships that daily surround me with the beauty of your holy future? Yes, surely. But mostly for the startling assurance bubbling from the deep well of my soul, springing from that invisible point where your Spirit and mine meet. A living spring flows from that convergence, an undeniable awareness that I belong to you, to the holy future from which you come to make all things new.
My morning gratitude comes unbidden by conscious willing. It is the natural effluence of a soul that knows itself already being subject to You, whose joy is to subject all the whirling elements of the universe to your loving desire. You subject my soul to your own divine heart, transforming me with all creation into the body of your glory. Your glory, my Lord Christ, is to reveal the loving joy of the One who is Love itself.
We await your final advent when you will subject all things to your desire. Then, all that is and the fullness of our souls will glisten with your glory, even as the eyes of my Benjamin. Until then may our lives grow ever more transparent to the glory and joy of your unquenchable loving. Amen.
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