Friday Prayer

 

God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction – Meister Eckhard

God of grace and God of glory, fill us this day with Your love to fuel and feed our lives.  Help us release the pain, knowing that life leaves an imprint on all of us.  Remind us that everyone is going through something.  When we cling to afflictions as a badge of honor on our faith scout sash, help us remember that Your love is not earned.  Help unclog our ears to hear the stories we are telling about ourselves and clear our eyes to see the patchwork remnant fabric of the past we are using to create the quilt of the narratives we are living.  Grant us wisdom that You are found not by doing more, trying harder, adding more to our lives, but by being.  You call “rest” holy.  You rest on the seventh day, making this a wide-open space.  Yet, in a world that is 24-7-365, we never unplug.  This weekend may we breathe and be, may we rest.  And may we rest in You.  When our mind starts to rummage and ruminate on that thing we did last week or a month ago, grant us courage to say, “God take this broken part of my life with Your shalom.”  And may I release the grip I have on that pain so that the pain might release its grip it has on me.  God of mystery, wide-open spaces, You are found in delight and affliction; in moments of rest and work; in time of prayerful play; let Your present be our guide in these hours this day.  Amen. 

Why Did I Do that Part 2

 

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.  Romans 7

 

Paul is clear that it isn’t just that we are a mystery to ourselves, it is that we can find ourselves doing that very thing we didn’t want to do.  Your life and mind can be like Wiley E. Coyote always chasing after the elusive Road Runner; constantly buying the next great item from the Acme Catalog that promises to be the antidote for what troubles us.  And more than that, we can act in ways that contradict our values.  Of course, that is not what we post to social media.  If we want to project a healthy life, we don’t post the video of us consuming the whole container of ice cream.  We don’t broadcast our implicit bias which caused us to miss a moment.  What are humans, O God, that You are mindful of us.  Is there something that you have done recently where the prevailing emotion is guilt or shame?  It is important to differentiate these two ~ guilt is that thought that I did something bad…shame is the persistent thought that I am something or someone bad.  The two together are a toxic cocktail that too many of us drink daily.  Guilt is never a great motivator for change.  Oh sure, in the short-term pointing out our foibles and where we fall short can produce some change.  But eventually we pour so much energy into trying to outrun our guilt that we get exhausted.  To be sure, the church has gone to the guilt well so many times that it has run dry for many people…and might be one of the reasons people no longer attend.  The message of the Gospels is God’s love is.  Period.  Full stop.  God doesn’t deny our boneheaded or broken moments.  God doesn’t love us despite our humanness or because of some strange accounting jujitsu of the cross.  God is love.  And love to be love is unconditional.  To be sure, others will offer the word “love” that comes with terms and conditions in tiny print that make the ones you agree to when you buy a phone or sign up for a gym membership look tame.  But love in its Gospel form doesn’t depend on the shiny halo we wear.  Hold this.  I believe God’s love for us is the force that can shape us to be exactly who God formed and fashioned us to be for such a time as this.  Amen.

Why Did I Do that?!??

 

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.  Romans 7

 

Yesterday we had the “fun” homework assignment of thinking about our afflictions.  I know that blog post has probably gone viral by now with thousands of people, because it is everyone’s favorite topic…said no one ever in the history of the world.

 

Paul talks about afflictions producing endurance.  Well, at least sometimes, because other times the challenges and mountains of life cause us to reach for the remote control to binge watch the latest season of your show of choice.  We want to numb our afflictions not endure through them ~ not that we share this reality of our lives with others.

 

Paul says endurance produces character.  This is a reminder that the rituals and routines of life persist in our life.  How we live each day is how we live our life.  Our honest values are shown in how we show up.  And the more aware we are of this truth, the more we can be intentional and prayerful about moving about this bruised and broken world. 

 

This is why one of my top ten favorite verses is Romans 7.  I often don’t understand why I do or say what I do.  Often it is because I say something and I can hear the color commentary in my brain say, “Oh for the love of Pete!  Don’t say that!”  Insert door opening and my brain leaving.  Of course, the truth is that I don’t exactly know why I do what I do, that doesn’t stop me from deflecting or defending myself.  As Brain McLaren says, we prefer a confident lie to a convoluted, contradictory truth.  The truth is that we are all a messy recipe of contractions.  We say one thing to this group of people, because we don’t want to get unfriended or ghosted.  Then, we turn around and say something exactly opposite to another.  God forbid if the two groups ever encounter each other.  Eek! 

 

Is there something you have done this week that you don’t know why you did?  This doesn’t have to be major.  You laughed at a joke told at another’s expense.  You gossiped.  You participated in the parking lot meeting afterwards where you pulled someone down to prop yourself up.  Hold these human moments, not with shame or guilt, but because these moments can be your teacher.  God often moves through our mistakes more than our successes, or maybe I can see God’s redemptive work in my bumbles a bit better.  May you sense God’s shalom/wholeness/unconditional love in moments when you bonk your head with your hand thinking, “Wes, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into!”  Amen.

The Strangest Words on Boasting Ever

 

Therefore, since we are justified/healed/made whole by faith, we have peace/shalom with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.  Romans 5

 

Wait, you think, we just heard this passage yesterday!  It is like the morning meditations are in summer re-run mode.  Yesterday we focused on the first part of this passage, today I want to focus on the second ~ namely that we boast in our afflictions. Note the word, “in”.  My grammar check wants to change the word to “about”, which is not what Paul says.  Paul says we boast in the midst or middle of our afflictions.

 

Wait…you think…what?

 

I don’t boast in my afflictions…I whine my way through them.  Okay, maybe, there is a part of me that boasts a bit when someone offers the strangest modern-day compliment of saying how busy I am.  There is a part of us that needs to be needed.  We like others to notice that we are working hard.  On the other hand, we can overschedule as a form of addiction to hurry and busyness.  Dallas Willard once said that to be spiritually healthy, “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”  This doesn’t mean we join a monastery, but it does mean that our souls need a slower pace.  Evey new technology promises to make our life easier and give us more flexibility and free time, but rarely does.  My cell phone is a blessing, but it also means that I am always accessible.  I can write this morning anywhere and save the words to the cloud so I can always edit.  I can scroll social media anywhere, anytime, which means that mentally I can be anywhere at any time rather than right where I am.  We know that busyness has not only an external reward of being noticed by others, but also can release certain brain chemicals.  The questions for me are:

 

Are there afflictions that come from the way I am living my life?

Are there afflictions that come from the way I have formed God?  That is, I can act like God’s employee rather than God’s beloved child.

Are there afflictions that I keep letting define me?  Remember God says to Adam and Eve, who told you that you were naked?  Who told you that you don’t measure up to some standard, and why does that voice get to live rent free in your mind?  Why do you keep returning to and resurrecting that hurt rather than the love of the person right in front of you?

 

Paul is on to something that our afflictions, or pain, do need to be processed so that we can let go of the power they have over our life, rather than passing them along to others.  I continue to invite you this week to listen to the stories you share with others.

 

Are you often the underdog in the story?

Are you always the hero?

Are you often the zero, the bumbling idiot? (this tends to be my story of choice)

Are you on the sideline, silently watching?

 

What story are you telling yourself and how are you facing the afflictions from that story?  What struggles come from the stories other people are telling you to live?  When do you accept another’s script for your life without question?  May these questions rummage around the cobweb corners of your soul this day help you hear afresh and anew the story of life that is shaping you and me and we in these days. 

Formed by what we Form

 

Therefore, since we are justified/healed/made whole by faith, we have peace/shalom with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.  Romans 5

 

Paul, the writer of the letter to the Romans, never met a run on sentence he couldn’t improve with just a few more words!  I invite you to go back and re-read the two sentences above letting the syllables sing and sink into your soul.  Where do you need healing right now?  Could be physically, emotionally, relationally, spiritually, communally, or all the above.  How does your faith help in the process and is there any practices or rituals that are “supposed” to help because the church said so…but don’t seem to be?  What does the shalom/wholeness/peace of God feel like/sound like/taste like?  Maybe what filled you with shalom/wholeness/peace is the past doesn’t seem to be helping right now…then what!?!

 

The truth is we form the image of God in our mind and then are formed by that which we created.  The image of God in your heart is a collage of hymns, snippets of sermons, random quotes, and words your grandmother told you.  Pause, what is part of the collage of God in your imagination?  Truth is, if that portrait is made up of images of anger and fear and a smiting God…that is going to form us.  If the portrait is one of the Prodigal God who races out to greet both sons as beloved…that is going to form us.  If the portrait is one of God who is distant or disconnected or demanding…that image of the holy will form us too.  We form an image of God from the remnants and random pieces of faith we are handed by others.  When do we step back and prayerfully examine the painting of God in our mind?

 

Jesus said, you cannot put new wine in old wineskins.  Is there an image of God, you might need to let go to make space for the peace/shalom/love of God that makes us whole?  I encourage you to consider where and when and who is shaping your understanding of the sacred and prayerfully ask if that is how you encounter and experience God still today?  May this invitation awaken you to the Holy hovering in your life this day.  Amen. 

Blessing for Today

 

God of questions that set us in new directions and toward destinations we never considered. God of doubts that dance and open us to different insights and ideas.  God of delights that loves to inquire and inspect our one wild and precious life together, meet us this day we pray.  As summer wears on, as the humidity zaps our energy, as our souls daydream of refreshing breezes, meet us where we are.  Amid too much criticizing, both externally and internally, amid too much violence as our first, middle, and only response, amid a world that is dizzying and disorienting, God continue to ground us in Your centering presence.  Holy One, we wish that our story was more like a comic book where You would swoop in and save us.  We wish things would be better or we would be better or that others would change.  Our expectations and experiences are the exact place that we are afraid to stand and where we might just meet You.  In this uncomfortable, untidy, unusual place meets us with a sustaining strength we need today.  May we continue to find micro moments to encountering Your mystery again and again this day.  All this we pray in the name of the One who danced in a burning bush, sent a whale to swallow Jonah, and bravely faced the cross to show us love.  Amen. 

Blessing for Doubt

 

This week we’ve held our expectations and experiences of the Eternal.  We’ve begun to assess some of the assumptions that are operating in our faith just beneath the surface.  Honestly, this can stir up the dust of doubt.  We can start to feel uneasy or queasy about this venture.  We might even want to turn around the bus of our beliefs from this journey because it seems safer back there ~ before you began to think about what your beliefs and experiences.  We may want to rewind before you let the light of Christ shine too bright on your human size, beautifully, less than perfect life.  Let us hear this encouraging reminder that doubt is not the opposite of faith, doubt is the ants in the pants of faith.  Doubt is the gift of life that is engaged and exploring and getting lost only to be found again and again and again to the delight of the Divine.  Here is one of my favorite blessings.

a blessing for the gift of doubt by Kate Bowler

Oh God, I long for understanding, but life is full of unanswered questions.
God, reveal to me what I need to know and for all the rest….show me how to live with so much uncertainty.

 

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end, nor do I really know myself.. But I believe that the desire to please you, does in fact please you.…”
— Thomas Merton

 

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”
— Voltaire

 

Blessed are we who come to You in the discomfort of our doubt, for we trust that our honest unknowing is a truer and better prayer than bootstrapping efforts at certainty.

 

Blessed are we, receiving the gift of doubt, for we trust that it is a doorway, freeing us to become that we could not otherwise have known.

 

Blessed are we, remembering that You God, hold all things together. You are the invisible scaffolding that supports us, the canopy of love that protects us in the present, the stable pillars, sunk deep into our past, and the Dove that flies confidently toward the future bearing for us the peace we could never have attained for ourselves.

 

Blessed are we, settling into the truth that there are things that we can’t know, settling into the humility that knows this one thing — that we are of the earth, and You are our God.

 

Notice this day what you do know and trust. thank God for it. And leave the rest.