Prayer for Today

 

Who are You, God?  And, who are we?  These twin questions take a lifetime to explore and experiment with, and we will never fully answer.  Who are You, God that You come to us as a vulnerable infant, made friends with the least, lost, lonely as well as the religious and rich and move through humanness in all our messy diversity?  Who are You, God that You heal and feed and meet us where we are?  Who are You, God that You call us to love even our enemy, which we struggle mightily and can’t do on our own.  Who are You, God, that Your closest “friends” would deny and desert and betray You with a kiss?  Who are You, God, that You faced the cross, Rome’s violent suppression and lynching of people to remind everyone who was in charge?  Who are You, God, that You cried out and offered forgiveness (not vengeance) from the cross?  Who are You, God, that You were laid in the tomb that became a womb of new life of resurrection light streaming forth?  Who are You, God, that You entrust us as vulnerable human beings to share this news amid a world that gospels us in fame and fortune and measuring success by the balance of our bank accounts and trips taken?  Who are You, God and who are we who claim to follow You?  We are not the “we” You call us to be.  We mask our vulnerability.  We deflect and defend our way as the right way.  We mock.  We justify our actions saying, “S/he/they made me do it.”  Help us, O God.  We are not the “we” You formed and fashioned and loved us to be.  As Black Friday emails pour into our computers promising us “The Best Christmas Ever!!!”  You are born in a barn.  As we consume more and more from the earth, You put Your fingerprint on all creation from the soil to stars.  As we get caught up in hustle and bustle, You continue to whisper to our souls about a silent night when the world was turned upside down, or right side up.  We need more than a month to process all this, we need our whole life.  And while Advent, preparing for Your arrival afresh and anew doesn’t start technically until December 1, we can begin today to come to clear out the clutter of our souls for You to meet us in our vulnerability through Your own.  Let Your mystery and marvel stir and sing to our souls every day this month and for the rest of this year.  Amen.  

Vulnerability Part 4

 

On this Thanksgiving Day, when we count our blessings, I offer you these words from Leonard Cohen’s beautiful poem that goes

 

Ring the bells that still can ring.

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything.

That’s how the light gets in.

 

The light of God’s love comes not through the perfectly polished, shining halos, the heavenly sashes with merit badges earned for all our time volunteering and trying to help others, the endless meetings, the running and racing.  God’s love is unconditional, which is to say, unearned.  This sits in tension with my Iowa grandmother who said, “There is no such thing as a free lunch”.  We must earn our keep.  We talk of deserving time off rather than sabbath resistance of rest that is a holy rhythm God established in the beginning for God’s self and for us.  We talk of strength and overcoming obstacles and pain is just weakness leaving the body, we push ourselves and judge others who don’t measure up.  We are caught in a world of grading and employee evaluations and feedback sandwiches (where your boss would say something nice and then something bad and then something nice again ~ confusing you). 

 

What cracks are there in your life?

In your family and friends?

In the system and structures around us? (It is usually easiest to name these because there are many cynical voices out there that feed us the bad news every day).

 

As we prepare to stand in the straw, kneel next to the manger, stare into the face of God as vulnerable infant who reflects to us the truthiest truth of our humanness, what will we be able to see and sense and stir within us? 

May the light of God stream through our vulnerabilities and insatiable desire to hide from the beautiful brokenness of our life.  Amen.

Vulnerability Part 3

 

As we continue to dwell and discern our own vulnerability, here is another quote from Maggie Smith, “We’ll confess how we deny our intrinsic vulnerabilities, how instead of approaching God from need ~ we try to earn our own salvation.  We’ll confess our efforts to dominate emotions, to manipulate God through prayer, to tame Scripture, to control church culture, to force leaders into our mold (or we will vote them out of office).  We’ll confess how we desire to be superhumanly productive and successful, to determine the development of others.  We will confront our overcompensation for powerlessness we feel when we can’t fix everything, we can’t understand everything, we can’t hold back the post-Christian tide.”

 

I know that is a lot.  It makes my eyes glaze over, my mind start spinning (because I see myself in those words), it awakens my inner defense attorney.  “Your honor, I am but a humble servant of the Lord.  I beseech thee to please remind Maggie Smith to please not say the quiet part out loud!  To please quit reading my journal.  To please stop holding up a mirror to reflect to me the thoughts I’d prefer to remember that I have thought.”

 

I invite you to re-read the words above, not with blame or shame, not with guilt or anger, not with defensiveness or deflection or denial, but with openness.  God doesn’t ask us to be Superman or Wonder woman (Jesus wasn’t ~ remember how on the cross people mocked him saying, “He saved others, let him save himself” …oh we as humans can be so cruel).  Read the words with the vulnerability of a human-size person, created in God’s image with bruises and brokenness of life, with the lumps and bumps of a winter squash…with the reality that there are gospels all around us that want to tell us what salvation/the good life/success looks like.  Hold these words close to your heart that is like a glass ~ fragile and vulnerable to be shattered into a thousand sharp shards.  Hold Maggie’s beautiful words with love as if whispered by the Holy One who longs for us to see the ways we try to outlast, outwit, outrun our own finite fragility.  May God, who comes to us in vulnerable human form, meet you this day and in the days to come with a grace and love that makes us whole.  Amen.

Vulnerability Part 2

 

This week, I am sharing some quotes from Maggie Smith’s work on vulnerability.  Yesterday, we explored and examined our own vulnerability.  If you felt yourself shifting uncomfortably in your chair as you read the words yesterday, if you felt a gnawing sense that something felt off, if you argued with me that God is all powerful, all knowing, and all present, thus saith that Lord, that points to the uncomfortable truth of how we’ve gospeled our lives.  Brian McLaren says we prefer a confident, simple lie to a complex/contradictory truth.  We want the microwave, drive-thru, instant and immediate resolution ~ not the wrestling and limping of Jacob who struggled with the sacred.  The gospel of our economy and world (that what we venerate, we emulate) says, to quote the Burger King commercial, “You deserve to have it way.”  This is our mantra and how we measure our lives.  And yet, in Christ we hear, “No greater love have you than to lay down your life for a friend/neighbor/those around us” (John 15:13).  How do we reconcile this? 

 

Right now, I am sure you might be thinking, “Thanks for this, Wes.  If I wanted to feel uncomfortable, I’d schedule an appointment with my dentist!

 

Faith stretches us beyond our confidence, control, and comprehension. 

 

Faith is not something we can keep confined or contained in a box, even as we try our best to do just that. 

 

Maggie Smith writes, “In the end none of it (all our plotting and planning and preparations) helps us feel any better about our ability….and the more desperate we feel, the more we try to mask how far in over our heads we are, hoping no one will be able to tell.” 

 

I realize this is not popular, probably won’t be liked or shared on social, but perhaps as we look toward the arrival of God incarnate in a baby born in a barn (cow shed or stable) to two unprepared parents (which is how every parent always feels because children don’t come with owner’s manuals and there is not a YouTube video to solve our own inadequacies), it is good to sit with the gospeling truths that compete for our attention and application and affiliation. 

 

Know that I sit with you in this uncertainty and uncomfortableness as someone who stands up on Sunday mornings trying to offer some words (any words) to help meet you in our human size lives.  May we remember that God incarnate in a baby sits with us, and shows us this truth as well.  May the light of God’s love meet us in the beautiful messiness of life today.  Amen.

Vulnerability Part 1

 

Author Maggie Smith writes about our vulnerability as humans.  This is not something we easily admit or accept.  Most of us spend our whole lives trying to defend, deflect, deny, and distance ourselves from the truth that we are fragile, finite beings.  Smith writes, “Whether or not we talk about it, we’re aware of our own limitations.”

 

Pause with me, what limitations have you been confronted or confounded by this month or this year?  Maybe a physical limitation that with every birthday candle on our cake, the mileage on our bodies shows.  Maybe emotional limitations trying to deal with the exhaustion hangover from the storms of the summer and the election and now on the cusp of the holidays with family.  Maybe it is relational limitations of trying to deal with other featherless bipeds.  Maybe it is a spiritual ceiling or wall of frustration with God. 

 

Where are you bumping up against the boundaries of life in ways that might evoke fear or frustration or freezing or flocking to others for reassurance?

 

Smith continues, “We are reminded every day how we’re not witty or educated or talented enough.  And when we get that sinking feeling of knowing our own limitations, when we are dragged down by the weight of our own emptiness, we want to do whatever we can to fix it.”

 

How are you trying to fix/solve the limitations of life?  I know my tool of choice is to work harder, do more, activity my “super” power of trying to be all things to all people.  Or maybe you numb the pain of not measuring up with alcohol, social media, sugar/food, or cynicism and criticism pointing out others flaws to make you feel better about your own.  Or maybe it is the culture that says buy this phone and take this amazing trip to solve your problems.  Or maybe it is the church that gives you a set of beliefs to soothe the struggle within your soul. 

 

Owning our own vulnerability is not popular or preached in our world today.  Yet, as we prepare for the mystery and marvel of Christmas, we know that God’s appearance came not in a splashy or spectacular way, but in a tiny vulnerable infant.  Maybe you want to get out your nativity set, hold the fragile ceramic baby Jesus and sing that unanswerable holy question, “What child is this?”  Which is to say, what kind of God is this who comes not with military might or preaching that God will save and fix everything, but comes to us a dependent infant?  If this is God we offer our prayer and praise to, what might that say to us who are created beautifully in God’s image?  May these questions stir and swirl within you this day.  Amen.  

Tiptoe

 

This week I have given you a few examples of antiphons.  Monday, we explored the sentence, “O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge”.  Tuesday, we turned toward, “Hide me in the shadow of your wings”.  Wednesday, we held (were held by) the four words, “Release my trapped heart”.  And yesterday, we embraced and explored the words of Emily Dickinson, “I dwell in possibility”.  Today, I invite you to find/write your own antiphon.  A few thoughts on how you can do this.  The psalms are full of one sentence invitations/thoughts/prayers you can take with you.  Note, you don’t have to memorize, you can type the words into your phone, so you have them or put them on a scrap piece of paper and put in your pocket.  Open the psalms and start scanning until you find one that captures your imagination.  Remember, it doesn’t have to be the most perfect, best, most awesome-est sentence ever to carry forever and ever.  Just find a few words for today, that is enough.  Or you can go to the familiar psalms of 23 or 121, slowly reading to find one verse that makes your heart sing.  Or you can recall a poem your high school English teacher made you memorize, is there one sentence there you would like to sit with today.  Or maybe you’ve been reading a book and one sentence from the author you underlined and highlighted and wrote, “YES” in the margin.  Sit with words you’ve discovered (been a detective of the divine – which we talked about last week).  For example, Maggie Smith in a book I am reading right now writes, “My heart stands on tiptoe”.  That is a beautiful sentence that evokes and provokes so much for me.  Hopefully that gives you enough to go on.  You can, of course, Google antiphons for more examples, but my hope is that you will let loose your creativity and find a short sentence that stirs your heart, mind and soul today.  May God’s still singing and speaking voice move in you and through you as we continue to pray antiphons in these days.  Amen. 

Possible

 

Antiphons, short sentence prayers that you can memorize and carry with you, need not only come from scripture.  One example is from the poet Emily Dickinson and is a wonderful follow-up to yesterday’s antiphon concerning feeling trapped.  Dickinson once wrote, “I dwell in possibility.”  Now, if you really want a scriptural parallel it could be Mark 10:27, “With God all things are possible”.  But I like Dickinson’s wording because it tells me where I want to be rooted and reside, in the possibility.  To be sure, this is not the same as predictability.  Possibility is about openness and curiosity rather than feeling trapped.  Possibility is about lifting my gaze to notice what is around me.  Possibility says that what I am facing right now is not the final word from our still creating and composing God.  Possibility invites creativity, what will I do with this hodge podge of items (words, feelings, experiences, encounters) I carry around in the luggage of my life?  What can God and I create?  Can I turn this into a group project with others?  Can together we compose a new song, a new painting, a new moment from these leftover remnants of our life? 

 

I dwell in possibility ~ says I don’t know the ending of the story.  I don’t know everything.  I remain nimble and humble to God’s movement in my life.  Jeremiah talked about God as a potter gently molding our lives with grace and love.  How do you sense God’s presence?  Where is God nudging you right now?  What does it look like, feel like, smell like, taste like, to live your life in the possibility of the Holy?  May these questions stir within you this day and throughout the days to come.  Amen.

Trapped

 

As we continue to pray the antiphons each day, during the hours of the day, today I offer one from Psalm 25,

“Release my trapped heart”. 

 

What is trapped in your heart today?  What is lingering on and on in your mind/heart/body right now?  Is there an emotion that keeps fueling and feeding your life?  What are you returning to and why?  These are not easy questions as we spend a lot of our life on autopilot. 

 

Or maybe ask, who holds the key to the locked door of what you are holding?  Often we think others do, but there is a choice we make in continuing to give the power to feel trapped to another person, to let loose of our own agency.  To be sure, I don’t hold the keys to every locked door in my life, but I do hold several of them. 

 

These four words, “release my trapped heart”, hold so much possibility and promise of the Holy entering.  God is One of liberating love.  God is One who brings us out of tight, confining spaces and places into a sacred spaciousness where we can breathe.  Too often we stay trapped in corners because that is where we feel safe.  Connect this to yesterday where we prayed the antiphon about being hidden.  Yes, we need bench time away and we need to let loose our own wings to fly.  I remember the college orientation for our kids and the phrase that stuck with me is, “You gotta let them go so they can grow.”  My kids were not going to grow if I locked them in their room and tried to stop time.  They needed to step out, knowing that we were there, to test out their wings.  Too often, I blame others for keeping me trapped, when it is really my own fears and not wanting to fail.  What and where do I feel trapped, and who told me that I needed to stay there?  Are there other voices encouraging and inviting you to part-take in God’s liberating love?  Hold this antiphon as a prayer for the rest of this day and year, for I believe these four words can be some of the most powerful and profound in our lives today.  Amen.

Shadow

 

This week we are exploring antiphons, short – one sentence – prayers usually drawn from scripture that can provoke and evoke a whole world.  Abraham Heschel once said that words create worlds.  Because we hear so many words from politicians, pundits, preachers, and people posting on social media, we are exhausted by trying to live in so many worlds at once.  It can be holy to sit and stay in one world formed and fashioned by a sentence in scripture.  Hold this verse from Psalm 17:8

 

“Hide me in the shadow of your wings”.

 

I love the image of God with wings, God who hovers around us, God who swoops and soars, God who touches the sky and gracefully descends to perch on our soul. 

 

What do you want to hide from today?  Is there is a situation/setting/individual or group that you want to run away from leaving skid marks on the ground?  Note, this may be similar or the same to your thoughts from yesterday about what/where/from whom you wanted refuge! 

 

We do hide from others, and we hide from ourselves.  During Halloween week I used the image of a mask to remind us that we are a mystery to ourselves.  Hiding is not always a bad thing, sometimes it is a coping strategy amid a world that is too broken and bruised, amid our souls too exhausted and overwhelmed by it all.  Yes, we do need to step from the sidelines of life bravely at times and we also need refuge/rest to hide away from being “on” all the time.  Yes, we need to step into and out of the spotlight.  Recently, I have incorporated what I call “bench time” into my life.  I think about athletes who rest on the bench or go out for a few plays.  Bench time isn’t about being productive.  It is sitting still and letting the sacred catch up to my often too frantic pace of life.  In those moments, I can take a phrase like, “Hide me in the shadow of your wings”, returning to those words time and time again, twisting and turning this sentence in my mind like a Rubik cube to see what new patterns arise. 

 

The beauty of antiphons is you can carry the short sentence with you ~ write on a post it or your note app.  When stopped at a light, pray, “Hide me in the shadow of your wings”.  In the doctor’s office, in the grocery store, in church, before meetings, during meetings, when you feel that tiny vein in your neck pulse with anxiety because of what another person said, when you are bored, when you are tired, when you eat lunch, these words become a companion and commentary for your life this day.

 

May you take the words, “Hide me in the shadow of your wings” and my you find moments to draw close to the comforting warmth of God’s wings where you sense your belovedness this day. Amen.

Refuge

 

One of the professional hazards of being a preacher is needing to fill fifteen minutes every Sunday with words.  That is almost eight hundred minutes a year.  Over twenty-three years of ministry, that means, I have filled almost 18,000 minutes or twelve days.  So, it is good to slow down and savor just a few words, rather than drone on and on and on with more words trying to fill space and time, offer just one phrase for you to sit with each syllable.  This is an ancient prayer practice called, “antiphons”.  These are short sentences, usually taken from scripture.  Today, I invite you to sit with this one verse from Psalm 7:1

 

“O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.”

 

What do those nine words initially evoke and provoke for you?  What are the images that come to mind?

 

What, where, and from whom do you need to take refuge?  Maybe from a chaotic situation that feels like it is spinning out of control.  Or maybe from feeling like you have to save everyone from everything right now.  Maybe from a relationship, politics, family, friends, volunteering, or running/racing around.  What, where, and from whom do you need refuge?

 

What would it feel like to take refuge?  What would you do in that space?  How would you feel?  How long would you stay?

 

You may want to get out a piece of paper to draw the refuge or describe/define through words. 

 

What would it mean today, in this imperfect and grace-filled moment, to be in the refuge of God’s sheltering love?  To breathe and be with God right now.

 

You may want to close your eyes and repeat this sentence several times.  You may want to pause on each word letting that word sink and sing and settled into your soul ~ pay attention to what that word awakens in your awareness.  You may want to pray this sentence slowly like this:

 

O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.

O Lord, my God, in you.

O Lord, my God.

O Lord.

 

I pray you take this sentence with you out into the world today and these words would be for you a holy structure of stability in such a time as this.  Amen.

Friday Prayer

 

Serendipitous Sacred One, You show up in ways that delight my soul.  You evoke and provoke within me new stories.  You deconstruct my defenses and long to sing a new gospel for me to live my life with others and with all Your creation.  Grant me wisdom and strength to continue to be open to You.  Grant me a discerning detective heart that I don’t know everything, I don’t see down the block and around the corner, that my five-year plan is not as brilliant as I think it is (nor is my five-day-plan).  Yet, O God, You love to move in our hearts and lives with Your presence.  You continually show up and sing out to us.  Help us be open to You.  Help us delight in discovering Your fingerprints in our lives.  Help us when we get caught in narratives that define us, confine us, and confuse Your gospel with our own agenda.  Help us break out of systems that hurt and harm ourselves and others.  Grant us energy, for the hard holy work of being human in these days.  Let our imaginations roam to new places, let our lives magnify You like Mary, and let our interactions with others be a source of grace.  Guide and ground us this day and every day in the coming weeks.  Amen. 

Detectives of the Divine

 

At some point, in being a detective of the Divine, we must pause, step back, and look at the clues that have congregated together.  Today is a good day to examine the evidence you’ve collected.  What are the ways you have noticed God show up this week?  What is your soul magnifying over the last few days?  And how did a person surprise you yesterday?  Is there a thread or theme in all this evidence?  Sometimes the answer is “Yes” and sometimes, we are baffled and bewildered.  We don’t always get to the “Aha” moment quickly or on our timetable.  I find it helpful to write down, because I can’t keep everything abstractly in my mind.  I am a visual learner.  Plus, the act of writing things down activates kinesthetic learning, where our mind and body celebrate their interconnectedness.  One of my favorite quotes is that your mind is designed to have ideas not hold ideas.  Your mind is designed to be generative, not just some repository of data like a computer.  Plus, we know that when we retrieve moments from the past from our minds, it is soaked and saturated by emotions and experiences that shade the encounter in certain ways.  An experience I had ten years ago has been influenced and impacted by experiences I had ten days ago in ways I can’t always unpack or understand or untangle.  Write down the detective work you’ve done this week.  Then, let God sit beside you as you prayerfully ponder what the sacred might be up to in your life.  To be sure, it might not be crystal clear.  The life of faith is to follow this pattern of gathering the glimpses of grace and then seeking to let God help us make meaning of what we have noticed and name.  May this invitation awaken you to God’s grace and love this day.  Amen.

Detectives of the Divine

 

Yesterday, I invited you to listen to the words that fall from your lips, the stories you tell and share.  We shape our stories which in turn shape us.  Today, I want to invite you to pay attention to how you are being shaped by others.  We are not isolated individuals who live in a vacuum.  Our interactions, encounters, and experiences with fellow featherless bi-peds do impact us ~ both in good and in not so great/grand ways.  Rather than trying to do this with everyone you meet or greet today, which even for my extroverted friends would be a lot.  Choose three interactions that happen today.  This could be a phone call you have with a friend or with the store clerk or a meeting you have on the calendar.  As you are present in the moment with the beloved of God in front of you, be aware of what is happening within you.  Or, you can even be proactive and examine what assumptions you bring with you before you even enter the room or pick up the phone.  Much of what passes for interaction today falls into a broken script that keeps getting replayed and rehearsed.  If I think, “There is that person who always annoys me.”  I will probably be annoyed even if it is only by the person breathing.  Or if I say, “Here is someone I love.”  Chances are good that I will look for ways that person is a blessing, even if that person is mean or angry or is having a no good rotten day and takes it out on me.  Part of what makes the detective work of the Divine in our lives so hard is that the threads are twisted and tangled like a strand of Christmas lights, so we don’t see as clearly as we think we do.  Trying to unravel what is happening in us and what is happening between us takes a lot of energy, effort, and thought.  Honestly, sometimes we just don’t want to do it.  We’d rather go through life on autopilot where the systems are perfectly designed to give us what we expect.  Today, note one way you were surprised by another person.  Maybe you went into a meeting with that person, and she said something nice.  Or maybe it was the phone call where you thought the person was going to tell you again that story you’ve heard a thousand times, only there was one new subtle nuance you might have missed previously.   I pray God surprises you in beautiful ways today.  Amen. 

Detectives of the Divine

 

And Mary said (sang), “My soul magnifies the Lord” (Luke 1:46-47)

 

All great detectives have a magnifying glass. Okay, maybe it is just Sherlock Holmes who has that, but still it is cool.  I don’t know why that became a toy in the toybox of this profession.  Perhaps it was so the detective could spy with her little eye the subtle clues that were small ~ the piece of thread from the coat of the murderer or a smudge of a fingerprint.  For me, our faith is a magnifying glass. 

 

The truth is that we magnify all sorts of things in our words and actions.  A few weeks ago, I put that as, “What we venerate, we emulate”.  Or we are all living out of a gospel.  The stories we share shape us as we retell them.  One of the ways to wield the magnifying glass in your life is to listen to what you are saying and sharing.  Do you share only the good or only the bad?  Do you try to dissuade others that yes, the sky is falling or no, everything will be fine.  Do you dismiss and discount the evidence the magnifying glass of your life picks up that doesn’t conform or contort to your conclusion you’ve already reached? 

 

When we notice that our stories are magnifying glasses, we wake up and become aware of what is happening within us.  Listen to the stories you tell friends; notice the words you say and what is reflected back to you.  Finally, this is not done with judgement, blame or shame, but an openness to follow the thread of the holy in our lives as we become detectives of the Divine.  As you stay open to the stories you are sharing, where is God showing up in beautifully disruptive ways?  May this invitation awaken you to God’s grace and love this day and this week.  Amen.

Detective of the Divine

 

I love a good mystery book or show.  The twists and turns, the invitation to follow the breadcrumbs slowly putting the pieces together, collecting clues that point you in a particular direction.  Detectives need to suspend judgement, stay open, curious, humble, and have a stick-with-it-ness, because there can be a lot of dead ends and U-turns in the investigation.

 

This can be true in our lives and in our interaction with God. 

 

This week, I invite you to be a detective of the Divine.  I believe God offers glimpses of the holy, traces of grace, and comes disguised as our ordinary life.  One of the first toys in the toybox of being a detective is to be present to the moment.  Too often our minds ruminate on the past or catastrophize the future.  We can lug in the luggage of our life comments and past pain that leave us exhausted in the present moment.  Or we can be so caught up in trying to be five steps ahead of everyone, that we miss what is right under our nose.  The reality is that while the pain of the past does matter, we can’t rewind time.  The reality is that we know bad things can happen, but so can beauty even amid the brokenness.  Today, be open to the mystery of your life.  I encourage you to name and notice three ways God shows up.  This may not be splashy or spectacular.  Usually for me it is not a neon sign saying, “God is here” or a burning bush or the hem of God’s robe filling my office.  However, there are moments of love that wrap around me and warm my heart.  I wonder, why do we act as if the negative is more real than the goodness?  Is it that we’ve been taught and caught that the other shoe will fall?  Is it that we deny ourselves enjoyment because we know others are hurting?  Is it that we dismiss goodness because we don’t think it can really be trusted or maybe that we don’t deserve/haven’t earned it? 

 

Three ways God shows up in a word of love spoken by family or friends.  A smile of someone you pass by in the aisles of the grocery store.  A moment to sit outside letting the sun warm your skin.  A bird singing or music coming from your stereo.  Turn toward the goodness and God-ness that is woven into this day and this week.  And may you delight as a detective of the Divine in the unfolding, unknowable hours ahead.  Amen.

Persistent Prayers

 

Holy, holy, holy God, You have been woven into the world from the beginning.  You surfed and splashed in chaos, You parted Red Seas and wept with exiles by the rivers of Babylon, be with us here this day.  We continue to pray for our each other, for our country, for our world, for Your creation.  We continue to open our hearts to Your wisdom that we need now more than ever.  We continue to commit to the calling You sing and serenade us with in these days.  Open our eyes when we are blinded by idols and lies of the gospels of fame and fortune.  Open our ears clogged with noise from 24-hour news cycles that repeat ad nauseum but we keep watching while scrolling our phones.  Open our minds dulled by the exhausting thoughts that won’t stop.  Hold us, God.  Gather us, God.  Order our hearts, O God.  Let Your Spirit create in us a new way of being and belonging.  Let Christ continue to be our hope and healing Savior.  Let Your presence infuse and inspire our hearts for the living out of this day and every day for the rest of 2024 and the dawning of 2025.  Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on our hearts, homes, community, country, and all Creation that reflects Your holy hard work.  Amen. 

Continuing to Pray

 

Here we are on this day, hear God is with you.  I invite you to breathe.  Many of us have held our breath since Monday (or maybe even for the last several weeks of Mondays) uncertain what would happen.  Many of us are holding our breath at the uncertainty of the future and because catastrophizing thoughts are reigning and roaming.  God, we know in our heart that How we live matters.  What story we tell ourselves matters.  What thoughts we think matter.  Just because you have a thought, doesn’t mean you have to cling to it or share it or hold it as gospel truth.  You can have a thought, notice it, and let it go knowing that we don’t know what will happen tomorrow or next month or next year.  We don’t have a crystal ball that predicts everything, even though every talking head on T.V. - or tic tok influencer - seems to think they (and they alone) possess that ability.  Something within us loves to prophesize that we have seen the future and know exactly what will happen.  Something within us believes we have glimpsed the unfolding and unknowable future, and know what God plans.  In some ways we do.  We know God works for justice, equity, shalom for all creation, honoring the humanness of each person who is created in God’s image.  We know God’s symphony is one of calling all “Beloved”, even as we cannot imagine or accept that name for the person we hate or fear.  God, save us from ourselves and save us for each other.  I continue to pray for each of you.  I continue to commit to pouring my energy in our values of expansive welcome, vibrant worship, expanding belonging, God’s justice, passionate care and deepening faithfulness.  That is more than enough on my to do list, as I trust this day to God’s guidance and grounding and care.  Amen.

Prayers for our Country

 

Please pray with me:  God the beautiful spiritual says it best, “Precious Lord, take my/our hand to lead us on and help us stand.  We are tried, weak, and worn.” As Isaiah sought to comfort to people who were in exile, we long for your comfort and compassion.  We are bruise and broken, hurting and aching, we long for Your healing.  Gracious God, it can often feel like we are watching the same screen, but seeing a different movie.  How is that we all live agreeing it is November 6, but not much beyond that?  Our phones all sync with the same time in our time zone, and yet we are as distant and disconnected as if some people were on Pluto.  God, as humans, we have always struggled with loving those who are different.  We have justified judgement based on gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, identity, geographic location, and countless other ways we sort each other into boxes meant to confine and define each other.  This muscle of judging is so strong that the gospeling muscle of Jesus’ truth has atrophied over the years.  God, we need Your wisdom, strength, peace, love, and presence today and this week.  God help us be the people and church You are calling us to be in such a time as this.  Go continue to guide us and ground us and govern us with a gospeling love of Your presence now and always.  Amen.

Prayers for our Country

 

Prayer for our country:

O God, You are our help in ages past and You are the hope in us and through us for the days to come.  We pray today for our fellow citizens, some of whom we struggle to love.  We get caught in cycles of dismissing each other.  We are quick to point out the splinter in another’s eye, while ignoring the log in our own.  Help us, O God.  We remember how Isaiah was told to preach to people who would not listen, change, or return to You.  Is that still the sermon You sing to us today?  We know we cannot change another person or convince them of our own correctness, yet we still spend our effort and energy trying. Open our hearts in this time of uncertainty.  Meet us in our fears and frustration, meet us in our division and derision, meet us on this election day.  God, we pray for the future of our country.  We pray for a new spirit to stir in our lives, our neighbor’s lives, our community, and from sea to shining sea.  We pray for those who will be elected to serve, not that we would follow blindly, but that we, as people of faith, would be infused and inspired with Your call to do justice, to show loving kindness, and to remember our humanity, that we are made of the earth.  God ground us and guide and let Your governing presence be what is at the center of our lives every day to come.  Amen.

Prayers for our Country

 

Tomorrow is election day in the United States.  There is so much sitting, stirring, and swirling in the air around us.  There is fear and frustration we feel we are inhaling with every breath.  There is uncertainty and confusion.  There is angst, anxiety, anger, and almost every emotion available exhaled with each breath, felt in each keystroke posted onto social media.  The truth is, we may not know the results of the election for several days as election workers count ballots and verify results.  It is hard, holy work.  Today and tomorrow, I want to invite us into a time of prayer for our country.  I invite you to be open to God’s presence.  We have been listening to the prophet Isaiah for the last several weeks.  This was intentional and prayerful ~ he was brash and bold in the face of chaos and challenge.  Isaiah lived during Exile, when the people of God could smell the Cheetos on the breath of the Babylonian army surrounding them.  The people of God would be defeated.  The temple would be ransacked, left in rumble and ruin.  Life would be turned upside down.  Faith seemed foolish or shattered or at least dented, as leaders were carted off to live in Babylon where they sat and wept.  How can you sing to God in a foreign land?  How can you sing to God when everything has gone to you know where in a handbasket?  How can you sing to God when all the exterior evidence of goodness and grace have been shattered like glass that has fallen on the tile floor?  Those ancient questions are still our questions.  How do we sing to God when the debris on our curbs and scars on the landscape from trees uprooted from hurricanes are a daily reminder of what we have gone through?  How do we sing to God when we are exhausted mentally, physically, and emotionally?  When wars still rage on ~ with violence begetting violence?  When we struggle to love our enemies as Jesus calls us not just as a good consideration but a commandment?  Please pray with me:

 

God, we pray for our country tomorrow.  We pray for people as they vote that election spaces will be safe, and people can exercise this right.  We pray for election workers who may face difficult and demanding situations, because of the anger and angst.  We pray for the leaders of our country; those who are running and those who will continue to serve.  O God, we lament that perhaps what unites us the most right now is our dissatisfaction and dismay and distrust of each other.  What unites us now is fear of the other.  What seems to be acceptable is our cynicism and criticism and calling out everything that is wrong.  We lament that we lack courage to weep.  We confess that we prefer a confident lie to a messy truth.  We confess that we judge and throw stones on social media and treat each other as less than created in Your image.  Have mercy on us, O Christ.  You call us, Jesus, not just to believe in you, like it some kind of test, but to let You, O Christ, abide in us.  Let Your gospeling wisdom interrupt, intercede, and inform our hearts, words and very lives every moment this week.  In the strong name of the One who was with the people of God in good times and bad, through Exodus and Exile, and everything in-between.  Amen.

All Saints Day

 

This Sunday we will celebrate All Saints Day.  Today, I invite you to light a candle and name your saints.  For me, that includes my grandma, my mom, people whose love I felt at the church, and those whose fingerprints are on my life.  Recently, my Uncle Keith passed away.  I got to see him a few years ago when I was visiting Iowa.  I admired my Uncle Keith.  He was optimistic, caring, smart, energetic, and loving.  Uncle Keith sent handwritten letters, until arthritis caused him to turn to a typewriter.  Uncle Keith left fingerprints upon my heart.  I think about my grandma who lived with us growing up.  She was stern and serious, classic German personality.  But, as the baby of the family, I think she let me get away with things.  I remember watching soap operas with her during the summer and how her hugs let me know I was fully loved.  I remember my mom who sought to share love in the best ways she could.  My mom loved Christmas so much that the day after Thanksgiving, the Christmas boxes came out of hibernation in the basement.  How mom and dad baked cookies and candy for everyone.  How mom was the one who went to church with me.  I remember former pastors who shared God’s love with me, and I have lost touch with over the years.  One of the myths of life in America is rugged individualism, that we get to decide who we want to be.  We are shaped by those around us (see Monday’s meditation).  I pray today, you will light a candle to symbolize those whose love made you who you are.  Name your saints.  May this spiritual practice open you to Sunday when we honor the saints of our church.  With God’s love which comes to us disguised in the lives of those who love us. Amen.