A Brief Prayer for Today

 

A brief prayer on this Friday, O God, for You to anchor each of us amid the current of life in these days.  When images of war in Ukraine still cause us to wonder, “What can I do?”  When the pain of discrimination and stories of other’s hurts sit uneasy on the shelf of our souls.  When the constant chatter in our minds has endless color commentary of ways we are bumbling and stumbling, we need Your Resurrection power and emphatic, “Yes!” to life.  We long to remember that You are hovering in our lives.  We need Your surprising grace to remind us who and Whose we are.  We need Your love to feed and fuel what we do and say. So as we enter this day, help us move in concert with You.  Help the melody of our lives be in tune with You.  And let our words and actions be part of Your symphonic fanfare in these days.  Alleluia and Amen.

Thursday Pause

 

Thursday pause comes with an invitation today.

Name the ways God surprised you this week.

Notice moments you stayed open to God’s movement and caught a glimpse of God’s grace.

Even as the world roared and gnashed teeth, you bravely and boldly said, “Resurrection happens”.

New life is happening here, even as the constant drip of negativity soaked and saturated your soul.

Easter-ing is a verb and way of being.

Easter-ing is an openness and anticipation of God.

Easter-ing is naming and noticing how God shows up.

The more we are awake and aware of the Holy hovering, the more we keep searching for God.

Join me today…breathing in God’s joyfulness and exhaling the tension.

Breathe in God’s promise…breathe out the sense that “it” is all up to you.

Breathe in God’s creativity…breathe out the idea that you are all alone.

Breathe in God’s mystery…breathe out that responsibility to solve every problem.

Breathe in God’s energy…breathe out the temptation to toss in the towel.

Breathe in the new life of this day God has made…breathe out the belief that there is nothing new under the sun.

Today is brand new…tomorrow is too.  May this truth guide your life with every breath you take.  With great love for this day to be an Easter people.  Alleluia and Amen.

Poem and Prayer

 

Being playful isn’t always the definition of prayer.

We believe talking to God is to name our errors;

Or to bow our heads at the floor to glare.

Or to open our hearts and souls lay bare.

But, what if, the Easter-ing prayer has flair.

Connecting with God joyfully as a daily affair.

Not as a place where we feel trapped or snared,

But rather that holy peacefulness that today is so rare.

We could find promise and possibility in music we blare.

We find laughter talking with a friend in our armchair.

Being present over perfect, seeking to be open and aware.

So this day, write bad poetry or try a new style with your hair.

Pick out an outfit that is brash and bold that you wear.

Or just find ways to shine your light, your love to share.

God’s presence isn’t found in a hostile stare and glare.

God’s presence is found here and whenever we risk to care.

So come with me to live Easter if you are willing and dare.

Your life and mine can be caught up in God’s symphonic fanfare.

 

Christ the Lord is risen today, may you and I find ways to stay open to God’s guidance and grounding every hour.  Alleluia and Amen.

Searching for Strength

 

This week we are exploring various ways to be open to discovering God woven and working in our lives.  Sometimes these moments come as a surprise, catch us off guard.  Other times, we arrive at a moment praying to encounter the Eternal.  Easter holds both.  For example, Mary went to the tomb on the first Easter not plotting or planning on Resurrection.  It takes time for Mary to awaken to God bringing life from death (and as we heard on Sunday, it takes even longer for the disciples who were locked in a room to be aware of the holy hovering in their lives).  New life can be a surprise because it comes packaged in change.  And you and I know that change can be challenging.  Look around your life right now to places where change is slowly at work.  This can come in the form of age, relationships, volunteer opportunities, or the countless subtle changes that are always happening.  One of the great contradictions of life right now is that while we often get excited about what is new and next, there is something in our souls that will crave the familiar and known.  Hold that tension.  The moments we long for things to change (which is always a slow process), but as we take a step toward that new direction and destination that is something within us that points out all the flaws of the moment.  We are great at pointing out what isn’t quite right, so better to turn and go back to what is known.  One part of the Holy surprise on Easter is that Jesus was both familiar/recognizable and different.   Jesus was instantly recognizable and at the same time had changed.  Not only could he now enter rooms that were locked, as we heard on Sunday.  I love how Mary could not see that it was Jesus on Easter, thought him to be the gardener, perhaps because her eyes were full of tears, but upon hearing Jesus say her name, she knows!  I have seen the Lord.  Where has the holy surprised you recently?  Maybe this week as you prayerfully complete the sentence, “I have seen the Lord…” you might fill in the blank of that sentence today with places you’ve been surprised.

And Easter-ing can be moments of intentionally opening our attention to God.  You do this every Sunday when you come into worship.  You enter a time of prayer and praise ready to encounter the Eternal.  This happens differently each week.  Sometimes it is a hymn or anthem or sentence in a prayer or seeing someone you had not seen in a while.  I pray every Sunday you leave worship able to complete the sentence, “I have seen the Lord…”

Being open to God as God enters our lives in ways that surprise and we anticipate.  Being open to God as God moves about each moment of today.  That is being an Easter people during the fifty days of this season.  It is a prayer practice and posture.  May you and I sense God's strength sustaining us every day this week. 

Easter-ing ~ Week Three?!?

 

Painting by Brenda Robinson

Easter Meditation for this week

Wait…you may think, “Why are we still talking about Easter?”  After all, the lilies are long gone from the sanctuary and the stores have clearance out all the chocolate bunnies for another year.  We have moved on to May, a new month, so time for a new theme.  Right?  Actually, the season of Easter lasts fifty days ~ ten days longer than the season of Lent.  Hold that for a moment.  Often we see Lent as a somber and serious time; a prayerful time; a time set aside to focus our intention and attention on places where we need healing and help.  To counterbalance this, Easter arrives not just for a day or a few weeks, but for day-after-day, longer than the season of lent.  During these weeks you can:

 

Practice resurrection ~ paying attention to places of new life, new beginnings, new rustling within you;

Cultivate joy ~ this is that space within your soul that is an anchor in the currents of life.  Yes, my heart breaks at the news each night AND I trust God is not finished yet.  God’s character and creativity is to bring life from death.

Touch Creation ~ Resurrection is not only for humans but all creation.  God so loves the world, says John 3:16.  Moreover, many psychologists suggest that being in nature nurtures us in healing ways.

Notice and name gratitude ~ we need to see the promise and possibility of life, not only the pain in life.  Negativity in our world is like Velcro, it sticks and stays with us.  We can ruminate and let hurt live rent free in your mind.  Too often we are quick to discount, even evict, the moments of peace and joy for staying in our lives.

Keep praying the sentence I offered on Easter, “I have seen the Lord…”  You may see the Lord in the face of friends or a stranger who helps you in the store.  You may see the Lord in vivid, vibrant colors as you take a walk.  You may see the Lord in moments of quiet or laughter or reading or painting. 

 

Seeing the Lord is not just something you need to wait passively for God to arrive.  One the one hand, God comes disguised as our ordinary, everyday lives.  God arrives unexpected, in serendipitous ways.  On the other hand, you can cultivate practices that create space for God.  What if before you go into the meeting today you think, “I will stay open to seeing the Lord”.  Or before you go to a lunch date.  Or before you take a walk outside.  Or before you call someone.  Pausing for a moment before joining the Zoom or walking into an event reminding yourself that God is already there!! 

 

To be sure, this isn’t some magical formula that will offer a money back guarantee.  The meeting might go off the rails and people could hide knives in their sarcastic words.  And also in that meeting someone may do something to lower the temperature in the room or you might try to let the Easter-ing light of God shine through you.  To see the Lord starts to be a metamorphosis within us that takes time.  Which is why, perhaps, our earliest Christian ancestors designated the season of Easter to be longer than Lent.  If we spend 40 days being serious, perhaps we can look at these 50 days of Easter in a lighter way.  If we hold Lent as a somber season, Easter is the playful reminder that prayer is both. 

 

May these fifty days of Easter find you steeped in the sacred and surrounded by a holy love that continues to meet us in the wounds and wants ~ but doesn’t leave you in the darkness of the tomb ~ rather guides you to the new life and light of God’s, “Yes” to love.  Alleluia and Amen.

Looking back and Looking Around

 

Artwork by Brenda Robinson

As we wrap up and wind down the month of April, rewind and remember with me.  What was one moment this month when joy leapt in your heart?  What is one thanksgiving you can name right now from the last four weeks?  What is one moment you wish you had a mulligan or do over?  When did the ordinary seem holy?  This month, we leaned in, listened, and learned from the wisdom of Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman who had an epiphany of God’s presence under a tree in Florida.  We waved green palm branches and sang, “Hosanna”! ~ a heartfelt prayer for God to save us from brokenness.  We laid that brokenness and pain down at the foot of the cross.  We came to a tomb, from which God’s emphatic, “Yes” evoked our “Alleluias”.  Last Sunday, we celebrated our Creation Justice covenant on Earth Day Sunday.  The theologian, Joy Moore says that the God who donated dignity and divine DNA to dirt at creation does the same for death in the resurrection.  Re-read that great quote.  Dr. Moore is pointing toward the truth that Creation has been, is, and always will be God’s first testament and deepest truth.  On Easter we focused on the transformation of a butterfly as an image that can speak, sing, settle into our souls during the season of Easter.  We do this because butterflies teach and tell us that there is a struggle emerging from the chrysalis; transformation isn’t easy; and yet change can color our lives in beautiful ways. 

Where is your soul longing to emerge, unfurl, and shine forth in these days as we turn the calendar to May?  How is God, who blesses dirt with dignity and divinity blessing your life in new ways?  How can we continue to be an Easter-ing people, individually and collectively, in the coming weeks?

May the season of Easter continue to guide you and ground you as we seek to live the truth of this holy time of year.  Alleluia.  Alleluia.  Amen.   

Thursday Pause

 

You are invited this morning to push pause.  To hold your life lightly for the preciousness, fragility, and faithfulness that is contained therein.  I invite you to take a deep breath.

Breathe in Easter-ing ways of God surprising Earth with Heaven in the most peculiar ways…breathe out the internal demand that we have to comprehend, even control, everything.

Breathe in God’s light shining from an empty tomb…breathe out an understanding that there is nothing new under the sun.

Breathe in the word, “Alleluia”….breathe out the words that someone said that caused hurt or harm, a wound that won’t heal.

Breathe in slowly and deeply…breathe out letting your exhale be even longer.

Breathe in trusting in God…breathe out all the voices that want to fix or save or solve your problems.

Breathe in….breathe out.

Be still in this moment and feel God’s love.  Amen.