God's Calling ~ Knowing God's Name

 

I pray you have found the reflections this week meaningful.  I pray that the Divine names we have already explored have caused new insights and ideas within you.  More than that, I pray that the images/descriptions/names of God have been experienced in real ways in your life this week.  Today, we turn to the final way the New Zealand Lord’s Prayer describes God:

Loving God

God is love.  I am taken by the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis’ description of God’s fierce love as inclusive of all.  God’s love as moving us toward compassion, care for ourselves, others, and the world.  God’s love is at the center and core.  As Rob Bell says, “We shape (name/describe) our understanding of God and then our understanding of God shapes us.”  In other words, if God is judgmental, this give us permission to be judgmental.  If God is justice-seeking, then we will be justice seeking.  If God is Father and Mother, we will see all parenting as part of who God is.  If God is the Source, we will search for God swirling each day in our ordinary life.  If God is a Pain-bearer and Life-giver and Earth-maker and Eternal Spirit, so will our hearts yearn for encounter and experiences of God in all these ways.

Moreover…because we are in the image of God ~ you and me ~ so we will seek prayerfully to embody these images.  When we name God in this prayer, we name our deepest Divine self too. 

Please re-read that last paragraph.  We don’t just name God, we name our prayer for who we want to become because God is not distant or disconnected ~ God is working in our lives shaping us more and more to reflect the Sacred.  That is what this whole week is about.

That is what the story of Moses is about.  God is I AM ~ present tense ~ God in this moment.  God is love in this moment.  God is calling us to do/be/incarnate/embody/embrace the same.  This is what it means to not just talk about good news, but to BE the good news, especially today.

May the love of God enfold you, hold, be embraced and embodied by you as we continue to explore the ways God is calling us to each be God’s people in such a time as this.  Amen.

God's Calling ~ Knowing God's Name

 

We continue exploring images and names of God from the New Zealand’s version of the Lord’s Prayer.  Today we open our hearts to this one:

Father and Mother of us all.

I love imagining God as both father and mother.  Do you find yourself resonating with one or the other?  Do you gravitate toward God defined, described as Mother or Father?  How might you experience God in each of these holy genders?  I don’t mean that rhetorically, I invite us to have some conversation around this.  How might God be a father and mother to you?  I sense God’s love as father helping me with quiet presence and protective care.  I sense God’s love as mother in warm hugs and strength that keeps me going. 

Now is your turn.  Prayerfully reflect on the ways God’s presence comes to you like a Father and Mother.  What might that mean?  Do you sense any resistance, reluctance as a response to these images? 

Remember, the power of the New Zealand’s Lord’s Prayer is that the authors did not limit us even to these two images.  Rather they offered us a rich way to engage our imagination and soul.  I pray today you will step into the invitation to encounter God’s parental love for you.

God's Calling ~ Knowing God's Name

 

This week we are holding and exploring ways we encounter, experience the Divine.  We have brought close to our hearts God who is Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, and Life-giver.  Now we turn toward:

Source of all that is and that shall be.

God was, is, and will always be woven into human history.  This is true not only in the good times, but also in the not so great.  This is true not only in our individual life, but in our shared communal, collective life.  Look back in the rearview mirror of the past month, where and when have you encountered God?  Look around right now, where and how do you sense God moving?  Look toward the unknown future, where do you pray God’s presence might show up in life-giving ways?

I also appreciate naming God as the Source.  Notice the name in this prayer is not “Cause”.  Source means that God’s presence can be found always.  There is nowhere God is not.  Yet, not every experience, event, or encounter is aligned and reflective of God’s will for this world.  The daily news you read this morning testified to that truth.  God’s will is for flourishing and thriving for all creation.  God’s will is for Holy love to be let loose.  God’s will is for us to continue move toward the vision of Revelation where all people and all creation find life under the twin trees where the leaves are for the healing of the nations (Revelation 22:2).

I also believe that the more we can return to the Source, the more we can be renewed and refreshed.  I write these daily devotionals each morning that you would be saturated by the Source of life ~ to bath and be drenched by the Divine. 

What other ways do you find you can wade in the water of the Source ~ Creator ~ Imagineer of all that is and will be?  I invite you to name these in the comments today.

May the Source of this moment and each moment today infuse you, especially when life goes off the rails or the pain comes for an unannounced/unwelcome visit.  Amen.

God's Calling ~ Knowing God's Name

 

This week we are turning toward and tuning our hearts to various names of God; the One who said, “I AM” as the divine name.  Yesterday we held the images of God as Eternal Spirit and Earth-maker.  Today, we open to the next two ways the New Zealand prayer describes God as:

Pain bearer and Life-giver

What are your initial responses to these images of the Holy?

What would it mean for God to be the pain-bearer?  What about life-giver?

I find the phrase, Pain-bearer complex.  Part of me rejoices that God is there in the deepest, darkest valleys of life when I am stumbling and staggering around.  I give thanks that God’s love is found in a cross ~ not because God had an accounting problem to solve but because God was willing to embody and embrace suffering to show us that there is nowhere God is not.  I am grateful that the stress and strain of life today can be sacred.  Richard Rohr says that moments of great love and great pain show us God.  Yet, as a church, we have emphasized the love…not so much the pain.  Because of that, to call God, Pain-bearer sounds peculiar and puzzling.  God is supposed to be a mighty fortress and omnipotent and Superman times Wonder Woman with all the intelligence/strength of Black Panther.  What if God isn’t a superhero or shero?  What if God’s super strength is to hear and hold the suffering of this world?  What if God’s grace isn’t power and privilege but powerlessness and vulnerability?

Wait…that isn’t the God we sing or preach about.  Maybe that is on us ~ not God.  Let that image of God Pain-bearer roam and rummage around your life right now…meeting you especially in the difficulty, disappointments, and discouragements of today.

Out of pain comes life ~ just ask any woman who has given birth.  To be sure, not all pain leads to new life; but some does.  I think about the pain of this last year giving life to:

Worship on-line;

Bible study with people across the country on Zoom;

New ministries like these morning meditations;

Funerals that can connect us to celebrate the life of God’s beloved;

Our Creation-Justice Covenant, Open & Affirming Covenant, and Racial Justice Ministry Group;

Sacred Conversations on Race;

Oasis Ministry beginning to grow;

And so much more!!

In what ways has your life reflected the truths of God being the Pain-bearer AND Life-giver?  When have you sensed God as Pain-bearer and Life-giver as interconnected?  When have your experiences and encounters with the Divine in suffering and new life been distinctive? 

Prayer: God who is in all, even the broken and bruised, help us continually stay open to You in all the wonderous and mysterious ways we can connect.  Amen.

God's Calling ~ Knowing God's Name

 

Yesterday, we heard and held how Moses, at the burning bush amid his ordinary life, received the Divine name, “I AM WHO I AM”.  This week, I want to explore other names for God.  Specifically, I want us to open our imaginations to the words/images/names for God in the New Zealand version of the Lord’s Prayer.  The first few words to describe and define God in this prayer are:

 

Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker.

 

What is evoked for you when you hear that?

 

Perhaps you hear God as the Creator, Crafter of all that is and will be.  God is the One who shapes the smallest quark to the tallest mountain.  God is the One found in the soil of our backyards and the star dust over our heads.  Mystics have said that creation is God’s first testament.  Creation was how God first communicated and communed with us.  Remember, in the second creation narrative of Genesis 2, God forms a human being out of dirt/dust and then sets out to find a companion or helper or partner for the human.  God is the earth-maker.

 

Perhaps the words Eternal Spirit sing to your soul in another way.  God is the beginning, middle, and end.  There is no time when God has not been or no place where God is not already present.  You could say God is Eternal, Everlasting, and expansively embracing the evolving universe.  God is a Spirt that can stretch beyond – just as Moses went beyond the wilderness of what was known.  God is a Spirit that will continue unfolding into the unknowness of tomorrow.

 

I love the inter-play of these two.  Eternal Spirit is beyond my comprehension and control.  Eternal Spirit is what Karl Barth called, “Holy Other”.  God is God and I am not.  On the other hand, Earth-maker brings God as close as my feet touching the soil.  Earth-maker brings God as close as my next breath.  As Paul Tillich called the divine, “Ground of our being.”  We need both.  The wisdom of these two images of God is that they are Scriptural.  In Genesis 1, God is the Eternal Spirit hovering over the waters and singing Creation into being.  In Genesis 2, God sinks God’s fingers into the mud/dirt/earth forming not just humans but everything as Earth-maker. 

 

Honoring both parts of God – Eternal Spirit who is Holy Other who calls out to us awaking our souls AND the Earth-maker who meets us here in our everyday lives.  May these two descriptions of God be experienced in YOUR life today in real ways.  Feel free to share in the comments your encounters of God in these two names.

 

Prayer: God of many names, God who moves in endless new ways, center us and open us this day to experience You in meaningful and life-giving moments.  Amen.

God's Calling

 

How has this week gone?  Were you able to listen to your life and let your life speak?  Did you find a new path of curiosity to travel down?  Did you take that first tentative step in response?  Or were you reluctant or resistant ~ which is totally understandable!  Remember, letting your life speak is NOT about getting it perfect all the time.  There will be moments when our liabilities and limits, our trespasses and shadows cause us to stay stuck on the sidelines.  Thriving is not about being awesome all the time.  Thriving has a rhythm embedded within it or seasons as I said on Tuesday.  Moments when we are caught up in the spirit and moments when we need to rest on the sidelines.  Moments when we feel our fuel tank full and times we run on empty.  When our souls slouch, we don’t help ourselves by berating ourselves.  We don’t help by trying to compare ourselves to others or giving ourselves a swift kick in the pants to snap out of it.  Compassion and care are God’s give to everyone – including you.

 

To practice self-compassion today.  To notice the ways you are tough, resilient, savvy, and yet shy.  How might you be kind to yourself?  Sometimes our brains are bossy and impatient.  We don’t share love with ourselves, rather we keep pushing and prodding and trying to prove we are worthy.  You can’t earn God’s love, God’s love for you is.  It isn’t about demanding or deserving grace, faith is accepting grace as a gift, then letting that grace beautifully disrupt your life.

 

How can you be kind to yourself this day?  How might that kindness help your shy soul come out into the light to let your life speak?  May those question guide you on a prayer journey that unfolds today.  Amen.

God's Calling - 20th Anniversary Edition

 

Today is my twenty-anniversary of ordination.  On this day, September 9, 2001, I was ordained into ministry ~ “with all the rights and privileges thereof” as the ordination service says.  Never have totally figured out what that phrase meant! 

 

How do you measure a ministry over twenty years?

 

Sermons preached? (Over 1000 by my count).

Funerals or baptisms or weddings? (I’ve lost track)

Pastoral care visits or cookies ate together? (Again, I stopped counting)

Bible Studies? (Never too much Bible Study in my humble opinion)

Meetings attended? (I probably don’t want to know!)

New members?

Budgets met?

 

Or what about measuring ministry by ~ moments of God’s love shared?  Experiences of the Holy encountered and changed lives?  Laughter and tears openly expressed, letting God’s healing presence move in our hearts?

 

Or maybe ministry can’t be quantified or counted.  Maybe ministry can’t be measure.  If this is true for me, then that can be true for all of us as we explore our callings ~ God’s callings to you and each of us.  Your calling does not need to “produce”…it is about presence.  Your presence being offered with your full, open, deepest self to the world.

 

Here is what I do know on my twenty-anniversary.  I feel as called today as I did twenty years ago to be a pastor.  I feel what the church can offer this hurting world is healing, love, and hope (all are in short supply right now by some accounts, but God will never stop sharing these with us).  I sense deep in my soul that God isn’t finished with us and is prompting us to be the good news ~ not just in words but to embody God’s good news of acceptation and peace and grace for the sake of the world God so loves.  Thank you for the privilege of serving as your pastor.  Thank you for the ways we are crafting and creating the church in these days.  May you and I find ways to be the good news each day this week.  Amen.