Thanksgiving Week 2

 

Morning Meditation ~ Love

By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.  Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.

 
Yesterday we prayerfully pondered letting God’s love have the first, second, third, and last word in our lives.  To be caught up in a concert of love that can change everything.  Today, I want to encourage you to make a list of encounters and experiences with love.  Start with yesterday, where were concrete moments you can point to God’s presence in ways that warmed your heart, soul, mind, and whole life?

~ Perhaps it was a phone call you had with a friend. 

~ Meal with your spouse or family.
~ Something you read.

Now, go deeper and be more specific about the sacred.

~ It was when your friend on the phone said that particular combination of words.
~ It was the laughter you shared between bits of potatoes at the dinner table.
~ It was that sentence you highlighted.

Great!  Try to dive deeper one more time, even more specific.

~ It was because I needed to hear those words from my friend on the phone, I felt affirmed.
~ It was because laughter is a wonderful way of prayer.
~ It was because words create worlds and that sentence in the book gave me a vision of a world I want to inhabit.

So often, we skim the surface of our lives.  We let ourselves skate by rather than swim in the sacred.  To know God is love means we are called to interact with this love for longer periods of question and answer time.

I invite you to keep a list – three ways every day this week you encounter and experience God’s love.  Try to be as descriptive as possible.  Write a few words…then step back and with anticipation write more…then step back again and write some more.  Savor what comes to the surface like the first fork full of fresh made pie.  Don’t race through this process, but let it slow you down to taste the experience fully. 

I pray this prayer practice will help you know deeply God’s love as what can feed and fuel our lives in such a time as this.

Prayer: Open my ears, eyes, heart, and whole life to Your movement today, O God.  Amen.