...Emmanuel, God with us

Life on the Potter’s Wheel

And yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, and you are the potter.

We are all formed by you hand.

Isaiah 64:8

 

December 15, 2012

 

One of my favorite authors is Lauren Winner.  Her first book that I read was “Mudhouse Sabbath”.  It speaks about how many of Sabbath rhythms of her Jewish upbringing inform her understanding of Sabbath as Christian. Winner was one of those kids who were hard after God from a remarkably young age. In my own journey, I was blessed to come from a sweet heritage of faith but I wasn’t nearly as sophisticated in my spiritual thoughts as she was.  It wasn’t until just recently I picked up her first book, “Girl Meets God” which tells of her young life and her journey toward Jesus.  Here’s a passage from the chapter entitled “Advent”…

“The very first thing I liked about Christianity, long before it ever occurred to me to go to church or say the creed or call myself a Christian, was the Incarnation, the idea that God lowered himself and became a man so that we could relate to Him better. In Christianity, God got to be both a distant and transcendent Father god, and a present and immanent Son god who walked among us.  Christians, unlike Jews, spent their time talking to a God who knew from experience what it was like to go hungry, to go swimming, to miss a best friend.” (pg. 51)

Now, this wasn’t the end of her consideration of Jesus, this was very early in it.  She still has a long way to go and to be honest I haven’t gotten that far in the book yet.   I have found myself today thinking about the Incarnation that we will be celebrating in just a little over a week.   Especially today in light of the heartbreaking devastation that visited a little elementary school in Connecticut yesterday.  The Incarnation is truly the only source of hope that I have found.  The wonder of the Triune God who came to earth as the full reflection of the Lord’s love and the Spirit that was commended to us by Jesus….

“But when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative – that is the Holy Spirit – he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you. I am leaving you with a gift – peace of mind and heart.  And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid.  Remember what I told you: I am going away, but I will come back to you again.

(John 14:26-28a NLT)

As hard as these days are right now and as little sense as we can make of what happened yesterday at Sandy Hook Elementary we can focus on the hope of the Incarnation.  We still live in Advent, a season of expectation and preparation of the coming of the Messiah, the Christ, the Living Word, the Prince of Peace, Emmanuel – God with us.

O’ Come O’ Come Emmanuel!!!

Potter’s Wheel gathers again Sunday evening. Laura Stack has invited us to come to her home!  Laura’s address is 7135 Cherokee.  You take 71^st off of Mission and follow the fork in the road to Cherokee.  We’ll gather at 5:00. We’ll enjoy a potluck meal and continue to share the journey together…on the Potter’s Wheel. COME JOIN US! If you need more information, please feel free to contact me.

God’s Peace!!!

Mary

 

Abiding in the real...

October 28, 2012

 

One of my favorite (if that’s the appropriate word for this) passages of Scripture is found in the first chapter of Colossians.  It became more significant in my life of worship several years ago when we were having an extended time of fasting at our church.  We had noon worship during that season and one day as I sat in the sanctuary my eyes came upon this passage and it was so fresh and new and it almost seemed like it was highlighted.  It’s Colossian 1: 15-22.

 

“Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.

He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation,

for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth.

He made the things we can’t see – such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world.

Everything was created through him and for him.

He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together.

Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body.

He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead.

So he is first in everything.

For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him

 God reconciled everything to himself.

He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth

by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.

This includes you

who were once far away from God. You were once his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. 

Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.” (NLT)

 

Last week at the soul healing prayer conference as several of us sat in the prayer room, this passage again came to my mind.  We had taken turns reading passage aloud.  There is something so powerful about hearing the Word together.  The truth of this passage seemed to just hover in the air and we could breathe it in and out together.  The healing and restoration so clearly presented in this passage speaks with such clarity of the wholeness of God and the reconciliation that offers wholeness to us and it’s totally, completely REAL!  I find so much hope and joy in this!!!  It’s sooooo incredible to just sit and consider this!  As we sat together last week, all of us were deeply touched and a little overwhelmed by God’s goodness and loving intent toward us.  The sufficiency of Christ feels so safe and complete.

Potter’s Wheel gathers Sunday evenings at 5:00. We’ll enjoy a potluck meal and continue to share the journey together…on the Potter’s Wheel. COME JOIN US! For more information, please feel free to contact me.

 

God’s Peace,

Mary

 

Wondering about worship...

I was sitting and thinking back on my week and I came to a place of real gratitude and as I was letting that roll over in my mind, I found myself in a place of worship. I’ve been thinking about worship recently and as I consider what that might really look like in my life as Christ-follower. It’s easy to let my heart, mind and spirit slide into worship when I’m feeling grateful but what about when I’m not?

 

So often, I let my emotions dictate my heart of worship. When I find myself light and joyful worship can seem as spontaneous and effortless as feather flying on the breeze. When life feels so hard and overwhelming it feels like a drowning person in desperate need for air. What about those other times? What about those times when the mundane dailyness of life just feels relentless. What about those times when there is an oppressive quality to what’s going on and I just don’t know what I think about God and I don’t understand what is wanted from me and my mind and my being are just confounded by it all and there is a sense that since I can’t get myself around it all that I’m just going put it off until I can. The next thing I know I’m going through the motions and my heart is nowhere near it. Sometimes when we find ourselves in this place it’s easy to slide into the oughts and shoulds of faith and the next thing, we know we’re smack dab in the middle of legalism. It seems like it ought to draw us nearer to God. We want to draw nearer but as I’ve experienced it, in reality, it does just the opposite.

 

It’s been interesting in this season, there have been so many times when I get to the point where I just find myself at a place where I’m just flummoxed and I’m not at all sure what the next thing is and worship seems to be a distant thing because I can’t seem to get a grip on things. What I’m learning is that this is actually a great place for worship. When I’m in that place where I sense the Lord nudging the question, “What’s going on Mary?” It’s just fine for me to say…. “I don’t know.” There’s usually an underlying reality that is embedded in that statement. Where am I looking? That’s where the worship happens. Right there in the middle of ordinary life. In the midst of the mundane and the mayhem. That’s where worship happens. I may be in a place where I’m absolutely confounded and I really don’t have a clue about what I think about anything…how do I respond to that question… “What’s going on?” Where will I look? Whom do I choose to trust? As I answer those questions…that’s where worship happens.

 

In the Old Testament there are two books, 1^st and 2^nd Chronicles, that essentially look at the history of the people of Israel over lives and generations of 16 different kings of Israel and Judah. There are all kinds of ups and downs of daily life with all the drama and boredom that go along with it. Kings and common people get confounded over and over again; sometimes in the incredibly ordinary and sometimes in huge struggles and battles.

 

In 2 Chronicles 20, the people are just about to be attacked by a huge army of two nations and on the face of it; they are going to get completely creamed. In that kind of moment there’s that question again, “What’s going on?” and the underlying one, “Where am I looking?” The people in that moment are just so incredibly human and respond, “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” (2 Chron 20:12) I love that declaration of worship but even more is the very next sentence. “All the men of Judah, with their wives and children and little ones, stood there before the Lord.” (2 Chron 20:13) They didn’t know what the answer would be. What they did have was the opportunity to decide where they were going to look. That’s worship. Every time we make the choice of where we’re going to look, we decide whom we will worship. In the huge and the small, the horrible and humble but also in just the incredibly ordinary, worship happens, every time I make that choice.

 

What I’m continuing to find is that God is very willing to take me right where I am. When I’m blissfully peaceful, when I’m totally panicked and when I’m just in the middle of life and don’t feel like I have a clue. I’m learning that that is exactly what a life of worship looks like. I don’t have any idea what to do Lord, but I’m going to look to you and I’m just going to wait and move, slowly and intentionally, into the next thing you put before me no matter. It’s there, in those moments and in the next that we see God and as I look back, I see the Lord’s fingerprints all over my life.

 

Potter’s Wheel will gather again this Sunday at 5:00pm on the courtyard at Second Church at 55^th and Brookside. We’ll enjoy a potluck meal and continue to share the journey together…on the Potter’s Wheel. COME JOIN US! If you need more information, please feel free to contact me.

 

God’s Peace,

 

Mary

 

Lessons from the community of the cloister...

 

September 15, 2012

 

This week I started reading a book by a man, Jon Sweeney, who for years had been trying to discover the place and way to ­­­­live out a more faithful, real relationship with God.  His life, like most of ours, seemed to be pulled in lots of directions and all the while he deeply wanted his life of faith to be pleasing to God, to be profoundly intimate with God and to find this in middle of an extremely busy, very ordinary life. Over the years he had been going to church, involved in mission, listening to tapes, reading books, going to monasteries all looking for those “ah-ha moments” that would give him sense that his life was where it ought to be.

If I may, there is a section early in this book that gives an image of this in a conversation he had with Father Ambrose at a monastery in Kentucky. It’s a little longer than the passages I usually share with you but I thought it was such a good reflection of the wrestlings that so many of us go through as we seek to connect more deeply with God and live in that place consistently.  One morning in December, Jon and Father Ambrose go for a walk and Jon shares his dilemma.

“I never want to leave when I’m in a place like this, with people like you, and yet, I love my wife and family and even my work very much.  What do you think this means?’ I asked.  He shrugged and he smiled. We walk a little further… ‘Busy people like you come here all the time.  I see them in church, the retreat house, and walking around the grounds.  You come here to slow down, we know that.’… ‘If I had to give you one piece of advice it would be this: don’t look for sudden enlightenment.  People call them ah-ha moments; don’t worry about those. I know that you may feel your time is wasted here if you haven’t had enough ah-has, but I assure you it won’t be.’

‘So what should I be doing?’ I asked him, feeling confused and more than a little bit foolish.

‘When you finally quiet down enough you’ll begin to hear a splinter of the divine voice.’ … ‘When you visit here, don’t walk around looking for moments of enlightened insight,’ Ambrose advised me, ‘For one thing, we’re not that smart!’ He laughed. ‘Instead, you should walk around praying. Sit in the church before dawn, praying. Or just shut your mouth for a few days. Listen to the talks given by the retreat master, if you like. Just sit. Try your best to stop thinking.’

    It sounded too easy to me.  I told him that.  ‘What I’m suggesting is much harder than you might think. You’ll see.’

    At that point, I felt the need to lighten things up. ‘What about a little old-fashioned scourging? Wouldn’t that be easier?’

    “Yes, well,’ he said, smiling, ‘we Trappists aren’t much into asceticism anymore. Beating yourself up doesn’t do for you what the monks of earlier centuries thought it would do: purify you. In fact, it only confuses things further.’…
 
    ‘So, here’s your ascetical work for this week: Try your best not to be clever or insightful. Try your best not to look in the mirror…Think of this time as a stripping away of paint to reveal what’s underneath.

    ‘If you’re lucky, you’ll discover some of your truer self before you leave – and it will change you, or stick with you much better than an ah-ha ever could.’ Ambrose concluded.

    He was right.” **

 

One of the things I’ve noticed in my own life and in conversations that I’ve had with others is how often we get stuck because of how fearful we are about what God might think about us if he really knew. So we go through all kinds of gyrations trying to get ourselves in that place where God would be pleased. This summer I was listening to a CD of a teaching about how God uses our time “in the wilderness”.  The speaker reflected on how often we are fearful that God might be disillusioned of us if our real weaknesses were revealed.  But the speaker laughingly reminded us that God can’t become disillusioned because the Lord has no illusions about us! 

 
God knows all our weakness and weirdness.  God knows the fears that we might have that we’re terrified to admit even to ourselves.  God knows all the brokenness, all the places where we trip up and the Lord still calls us to come closer!
 
Another place we are fearful is that we tend to think we’re the only ones who wrestle with our particular kind of weakness and weirdness. We aren’t. They may be variations on a theme but we all have them. 

I think about this a lot when I think about the call in Hebrews that we “…think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good deeds. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another…”  Heb. 10:24

 
Just as Jon and Father Ambrose did, we are called to share ourselves as we share our journey.  It does help us to lean into that wondrous sweet relationship with our Lord that molds us and shapes us into the vessel God has in mind for us. Sharing the realities of our journey, to live out our faith is so central to whom we are as followers of Jesus Christ.  This final thought is not original but I love it. Instead of living our lives and sharing our faith what if we live our faith and share our lives.  We have many places we can do that, worship, retreats, community, service, work, school, in our families and most essentially with our Lord.

Potter’s Wheel will gather again this Sunday at 5:00pm on the courtyard at Second Church at 55th and Brookside.  We’ll enjoy a potluck meal and continue to share the journey together…on the Potter’s Wheel. COME JOIN US!  If you need more information, please feel free to contact me.

 

God’s Peace,

 

Mary

 

** Sweeney, Jon, Cloister Talks: Learning from my Friends the Monks, (Brazos Press, 2009) pgs.18&19,

 

 

Thoughts on how to slow unraveling...

And yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, and you are the potter. We are all formed by you hand.

Isaiah 64:8

 

September 8, 2012

This has been one of those weeks when I don’t feel like I ever really got my feet under me.  I was really struggling with trouble sleeping…either wide awake way too late or go to bed at a reasonable hour and wake up in the middle of the night.  It’s really made hay with my head.  How often do I let things like this impact how I connect and relate to the Lord.

When my days…and my nights…seem to get all sideways, I confess that I have a natural tendency to kind of follow my unraveled brain and find myself getting somewhat unraveled by my circumstances.  Far too often when I go this way the unraveling or at least the feeling of unraveling seems to speed up and the next thing I know I feel like I’m standing there with an empty spool and everything else on the floor.  Hmmm….

As I’ve been thinking about this two different scriptures have come to my mind.  The first is Psalm 46:10.  In the New American Standard translation it reads, “Cease striving and know that I am God.”  In other translations it often reads, “Be still and know that I am God.”  This one sentence contains a call that is perhaps the most challenging for our culture (and honestly this includes our church culture) where faster, bigger, more is the order of the day.   When I was in in Chicago at my spiritual direction training at North Park one of the guys in my cohort was sharing about a church where he thinks they live this out about as well as anyone he’s aware of.  It’s a church in England where anytime it seems that they are “striving” the leadership of the church says, okay wait….we’re striving.  Then with great intentionality the church leaders and all in the church stop the area where the striving is happening and they go to prayer and simply do not begin the area again until there is deep peaceful certainty that they are on God’s time table and moving in the way that the Lord is leading and only then to they move forward.  Boy does that fly in the face of the way that our culture tends to go!  Not only does this demand the ceasing and the stillness but it is clearly calls to account us knowing God.   What a huge call to faith!  What a profound call to determine our trust….whom do we trust especially in light of that which seems to be unraveling?

This brings me to the second passage…again, just one jam packed sentence, this time in Hebrews. Chapter 10, verse 23, “Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise.”  Quickly my mind went to promises such as Hebrews 13:5b “I will never fail you. I will never abandon you” or Lamentations 3:23 “Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning” or Matthew 28: 20b “And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age”.

As I’ve be letting my mind dwell on these promises I find that the unraveling slows waaaaaaay down and if there’s picking up or rewinding that needs to happen, I’m able to engage there slowly and with the confidence that only comes from hope in the Lord who can be trusted.  

So, when the unraveling happens next time…and it most certainly will…I can join our brothers and sisters in England in responding with stillness and prayer – deeply seeking the God who can be trusted until the certainty of the Lord’s timing and direction no matter what the circumstances might indicate.

Oh….by the way, this church in England….it’s called Holy Trinity Brompton and it’s the place where the Lord started at little ministry called Alpha.

Potter’s Wheel will gather again this Sunday at 5:00pm on the courtyard at Second Church at 55^th and Brookside.  We’ll enjoy a potluck meal and continue to share the journey together…on the Potter’s Wheel. COME JOIN US!  If you need more information, please feel free to contact me.

 

God’s Peace,

Mary

 

...clay at it's essential level

Life on the Potter’s Wheel

And yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, and you are the potter. We are all formed by you hand.

Isaiah 64:8

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel.  But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

Jeremiah 18:1-3

I just got back from Chicago where I finished my training as a spiritual director through North Park Seminary’s Center for Spiritual Direction. It’s a two full year program that has a week’s intensive for three summer sand then classes during the school years in between. It’s been an incredible experience and I’ve made friends who have impacted me significantly.

On the last day, my friend Julie offered our afternoon devotional. I didn’t know it but Julie has been learning how to make pottery for a number of years.  She told us that when someone opens a new package of clay to work on, it’s important that the potter kneads and presses the clay because the clay remembers the touch of the potter’s hand. It literally impacts the clay at an essential, cellular level.  She went on to describe the importance of the process of how the clay is molded and handled in the shaping of a bowl or plate because the smoothing and shaping requires a certain number of times when the potter must use their fingers to press into and move the clay and if they try to skip or shorten that time then the plate will develop an “S”- crack when it dries and if it’s fired in the kiln that way it won’t be useable.

Certainly, Julie’s description and images spoke to me about the essential nature of the touch and work of the potter’s hands on the clay of our lives but actually there was another truth about clay that she shared that’s really stuck with me.  When a piece of pottery dries in such a way that it reveals flaws that indicate that it won’t fire well, the potter breaks it apart so that it can be shaped again. When the potter does this, it is done by hand and the clay is broken into the smallest pieces possible because of the next step that needs to happen. The broken clay pieces are put into a bucket and water poured over it until it stands about an inch or two above the top level of the broken clay pieces.  Then it has to sit, wait and rest…FOR AT LEAST A WEEK.  This can’t be rushed.  If the clay doesn’t sit in the water and slowly soak in just exactly the amount that it needs it won’t be ready to respond to the molding and shaping that the potter wants to do with it.  One of the interesting things Julie shared was that this doesn’t mean that the clay goes back to where it was before it was touched by the potter at the very first.  The clay still has that essential cellular memory and when it’s been resting in the water it becomes as it was after the potter’s initial preparation and it’s again ready to be crafted beautifully into whatever the potter wants it to be. The smaller the pieces, the better it responds to the water and the essential step of resting and soaking the water that enters into the smallest of pieces and brings it to the place where it responds to the skilled and known hands of the potter.  I’d never heard this before I had no idea that this was such an essential step. 

All of us have times in our lives when we feel like we’ve been broken into little pieces.  It’s when we are that God’s Spirit enters in at our most essential level…that smallest, deepest place of who we are…our soul. The Lord is the one who refreshes and replenishes. In John 7 we hear about this very clearly,

“Jesus stood and shouted to the crowds, ‘Anyone who is thirsty may come to me! Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will be flowing from his heart.’ (When he said ‘living water’, he was speaking of the Spirit who would be given to everyone believing in him…)”

John7: 37b-39a

Isn’t that great!  This truth is so important to Jesus that he shouted it so that the crowds would hear. It’s that important to the Lord that we know that God alone is our source.

One of my favorite songs about this idea came out about 20 years or so in an arrangement of “Jesus Lover of My Soul” by Ken Medema.  There’s a wistful quality to it that has come to my mind as I imagine being a piece of clay that’s feeling pretty worked over and is serious need of rest in the Living Water. If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to share it with you.  It’s really the music I want to share with you so if you want to skip the visual images feel free.  I’ve just been closing my eyes and soaking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuQOXRJ-xzc

There is always a place and time for us to be deeply touched by the One who is called the Potter.  Whether we’re actively on the wheel or resting in the Living Water it is all part of the essential, unique and very personal way God engages us, molds us, crafts us, delights in us.

Potter’s Wheel will gather again this Sunday at 5:00pm on the courtyard at Second Church at 55^th and Brookside.  We’ll enjoy a potluck meal and continue to share the journey together…on the Potter’s Wheel. COME JOINUS!  If you need more information, please feel free to contact me.

God’s Peace,

Mary

Searching for....and FINDING...a portable chapel of prayer

Life on the Potter’s Wheel

There is a community of people who live in the very northeastern part of England where it is bordered by Scotland and the North Sea.  It’s called the Northumbria Community.  It’s not monastic in the idea of living all together, sharing the dwelling and a common purse, rather it’s about intention because the people of this community are scattered all over Great Britain and well beyond.  There are those who live this rugged part of England but it appears that in most cases there are those who never do.  They just continue to live ordinary daily lives with all the usual demands of work and family, school and home and all the little and big things that go along with it. 

I was reading the introduction to their book, “Celtic Daily Prayer”. In it Richard Foster tells of a visit to Northumbria and conversations with two of the actual residents who show him unique isolated places that have been and in one person’s case is still used as a solitary, out of the way spot where they have been able to connect with God.  After visiting these two places, Foster comments, “I am profoundly struck by the image of a prayer chapel right at the center of this place of retreat and renewal. How appropriate, how fitting, how right.  I am drawn to consider how at the very center of my home, my place of work, my very life, there could always be a portable chapel of prayer.”  This sentence really gave me pause because of how it reflects my own recent journey.

For the last number of weeks I’ve been visiting a wide variety of coffee locals – both busy and quiet, a couple of parks, and a few other places and the exploration continues.  In truth there is a part of me that’s looking for that “portable chapel of prayer”.  This week as I’d been thinking more about it and came upon Foster’s words I’ve been really considering that this portable chapel has far less to do with any actual location, although certainly there are places where God meets us in unique and wonderful ways, rather it’s so much more about accessing that place in my heart, my soul where I offer myself up most fully to engaging with God.  Sometimes it’s outside in a beautiful setting, the corner of the couch in my living room, a coffee house in Brookside or in my car driving across town.  So, while there are always wonderful aesthetic qualities to places or prayer tools or music but the real portable prayer chapel is quite simply that place in me, “the very center of my home, my place of work, my very life…” 

The journey of this discovery is something that the people of Northumbria share no matter where they are physically.  It’s something that we can share as well.  That’s the community; together or apart that is a unique sharing that this missional community of Potter’s Wheel can do “together” no matter our location through the week.

We'll be gathering for a time of refreshment and prayer at 5:00 Sunday evening at the court yard at Second Church at 55^th and Brookside.   Come join us!

God’s Peace,

Mary

Discovering Gratitude in Unexpected Places

Life on The Potter’s Wheel

July 19, 2012

It’s been an interesting few weeks, the kind of time where things feel more unraveled than together.  The kind where goofy things keep happening and you’re horrified to realize you’re the one doing them.  The kind of time where I discover I have been softer clay in The Potter’s hands even though it really didn’t have all that much to do with me being obedient or responsive but more because I’ve unintentionally done just really squirrely things that have me feeling rather small and discovering sometimes that’s the best place to be.

During this season there have been many times when I’ve really sensed that the Lord wanted me to consider two specific ideas: 1) What does it mean to pray without ceasing 2)Gratitude 

A couple of weeks ago at our Potter’s Wheel gathering on Sunday evening we were talking about gratitude.  Lois, one of our group, mentioned that some time before she heard about a gratitude exercise which encourages a person to be open to getting stretched beyond those maybe few things that quickly come to their minds when they think about things they’re grateful for.  The idea is that each day for a month you identify five things that you’re grateful for.  Sounds easy enough but here’s the tricky part.  You do this every day for a month and you cannot repeat anything that you’ve already listed.  Believe me it starts getting harder rather quickly and then a remarkable thing happens. You start noticing things you hadn’t even considered. Then you start noticing how that changes how you view more and more things and that gratitude begins to expand and go deeper.  I’ve noticed many little things that bring me to a place of gratitude and then that moves me to a place of worship and I’ve found myself rejoicing to God for some of the most remarkable things that I would never have thought about.  For me it’s not the big things rather it’s the very little things that I truly believe God has brought to my awareness.  Let me highlight a few just from this week.

v  A glass of cold iced tea in the afternoon

v  Driving past a beautifully green corn field in Iowa (yes it truly exists along I-80) and this field is so dense and tightly planted that it actually reveals the rolls of the ground where it’s planted and it’s just breathtaking.

v  A really good sneeze

v  Praying with friends in the morning

v  Going into my day know I have friends praying for me

v  Hope in a God who is gracious so that when I really goof I receive the Lord’s mercy new each morning.

Seriously, those are some that have just come to my mind this week.  Now I can’t tell you that I’ve written these down every day and that I’m going to have a long list at the end of the month.  But I will tell you it’s giving me new things to bring before the Lord in prayer.  It’s opening up a new idea of praying without ceasing.  I find the gratitude grows exponentially and joy follows.

Yesterday, I met with my friend Jamie.  Jamie ministers to college students and she’s going to be working on a new campus this fall so we met there to pray for the campus, the students and all the other people who are part of that community.  As we sat in the chapel on campus and prayed we were looking through Scripture for those passages that might pop out to us. As I turned through Colossians I came to Colossians 4:2 and it’s really stuck with me since. “Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart.”   I’m discovering that as I do this…the joy builds.

                                                          ******

A couple of special notes about our Sunday gatherings over the next couple of weeks.  I’m going to be traveling to Chicago for the last of my classes for the Spiritual Direction certification I’ve been pursuing through North Park Seminary.  Laura Stack was gracious in leading the gathering last Sunday and this Sunday Louise Mathis will be leading.  Because of the extraordinary heat forecasted for Sunday, we’ll gather again at The Roasterie Café at 63^rd and Brookside Blvd.  Because Hillcrest’s Annual Meeting is scheduled for Sunday, July 29^th, we won’t be gathering that evening but will come together again the next Sunday, August 5^th.  Hopefully we’ll be back on The Courtyard at Second Church at 55^th and Brookside.  We’ll watch the weather and let you know. We want everyone to be safe so stay tuned for more details.

*******

I’m grateful to be journeying with you…

On the Potter’s Wheel!

God’s Peace,

Mary

Every little thing....

A sparrow just hopped by.  It picked up a quick crumb from the deck before it seemed to dash off for fear of being noticed.  I’m not sure anyone noticed.  The Bible tells us that God notices.   A little spider is crawling across a tile just more than an arm’s length away.  I don’t think that it knows that its location is very fortunate as it, for the moment, ensures its survival.  I’ve already killed at least three little intruders which have daned to cross my table or run under the cover of my journal as if it might somehow read the private thoughts on the pages.  They don’t seem so awfully significant because they are small.  I am small to God and yet the Bible tells me how significant I am.

In the book on Celtic prayer I’ve been reading I’m reminded of the extraordinary juxtaposition of the centuries.  We’ve tended to think about people who live such fragile lives as different, distant, God-forgive-us, less than our more highly “developed” “self-important” contemporary existence. They now strike me as quite brave and strong and wise.  I wouldn’t last five minutes in their ruthless environment (which actually is part of my heritage and ancestry).  All of the sudden I, again, feel quite small. 

Another sparrow has just hopped onto the base of the table next to me.   I see him. God sees us both. 

“But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground with you father knowing it.  And the very hairs on your head are all numbered.  So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows” Matt. 10: 29b-31

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