Steve

Today’s Word: Gratitude

Steve · November 28, 2013 · 7 Comments

noah — Grateful for Noah. Photo by Ellen Sala.

It’s hard to believe how quickly time flies. Today marks the fourth anniversary of this blog. I started it on a crisp Thanksgiving Day at the Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri in 2009, feeling extremely grateful for everything and everyone around me. Not much has changed on that front, except that life just keeps getting better and fuller with every passing day and year.

These four years have brought disease and healing, and they have given us new family members, including Jenny’s boyfriend Zach, our beautiful daughter-in-law Jess and, of course, the new keeper of our hearts, our grandson Noah. We treasure the time with older family members and friends and learn to lean in a little closer when they tell stories that we want to make sure we never forget. Our friends — both old and new — become all the more precious to us as the years pass, and the opportunity to spend time with all those we love is a blessing beyond measure. When you face any kind of serious health issue you learn this fast: It is the presence of those special people that enriches our lives, and everything we have or own pales in comparison to the gift of that time together.

Sunset — Grateful for each passing day. SJG photo.

And so we learn to live in gratitude and come to know that “thank you, God” can be the most important and deepest prayer we can ever say. For “thank you, God” means, “I’m paying attention.” It means, “This is not all just about me.” It means, “Everything is gift.” With Noah in our family, we have a fresh and beautiful reminder of the gift of life, a little divine nudge that we should never take any of this for granted, but rather embrace it all with gratitude.

Ask yourself in silence: For what am I grateful today that I couldn’t even have imagined four years ago?

Today’s Word: Changed

Steve · November 26, 2013 · 2 Comments

Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard once wrote that, “the function of prayer is not so much to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”

We grow up learning to pray by asking for things – take care of me and my parents, give me things I think I want or need, answer my prayer, hear my prayer, be with me during this difficult time. In short, we pray to try and grab God’s attention and influence God’s will for our lives. If we just pray hard and often enough, we believe, God will certainly bend his ear to us, hear our prayer and give us what we want. And, certainly God can do just that and sometimes does. Scripture, indeed, tells us to ask for what we need: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8)

We perhaps never give up this approach to prayer entirely, but as we grow in our faith we learn that we are the ones changed by prayer, not God. God is the unchanging changer. We are changed by placing ourselves in the presence of God, by spending time in gratitude and contemplation of all that God is and has done. We are changed not by what we are given, but by the giver of the gift, by the Spirit of God that moves and works and lives in us. We cannot help but be changed when we empty ourselves of our desires and open ourselves to the presence of our loving God, content to be held and sustained by the mere touch of the hand of the giver of all that is good and holy.

Ask yourself in silence: When and how have I been changed by prayer?

Today’s Word: Dwelling

Steve · November 22, 2013 · 1 Comment

While in Arizona a few weeks ago, we visited Montezuma Castle National Monument, with its amazingly preserved Pre-Columbian cliff-dwellings that were built and inhabited by the Sinagua people beginning around 700 AD. Standing far below and looking up at the five-story structure, it’s hard to imagine what life must have been like when the structures were inhabited, hard to believe just how treacherous it would have been to live under such conditions, scampering up and down ladders carrying fish and water from nearby Beaver Creek and clinging to the side of a mountain for shelter from weather and enemies.

cliff2 — Montezuma Castle National Monument, Arizona. SJG photo

And yet, life remains treacherous even today. Our dwellings may be more sophisticated, but we often still live under the dangerous conditions imposed by both the society around us and the decisions we make that contribute to those dangers. Our streets and roads are as treacherous as any hand-crafted ladder, and we still cling to things because we somehow believe they will protect us in one way or another. And so we must consider just where we place our trust and where we seek our shelter from the spiritual storms and enemies of our lives. Equally important is our ability to provide a place for God to dwell within us, as Paul suggests in his letter to the Ephesians (3:17-19): “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

Our dwelling place is in God and God’s in us. We fit perfectly together, rooted in love, a communion carved of one piece and clinging inseparably together through time.

Ask yourself in silence: To what do I cling?

Today’s Word: Holy

Steve · November 21, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Sacred Heart in Chinandega, Nicaragua market. SJG photo

Sanctus — holy — the brass candleholder gleams,
here in the chapel at noon.
I am making my presence known to the Holy One
and the Holy One to me.
We behold each other
and I know I am not worthy to even be here,
know that mounds of dark failure and sin,
— a life full, day full, moment full —
(it doesn’t matter how much or how little)
should separate me from sanctus but do not.

The stained-glass face on the side window,
above the radiating and sacred heart,
holds my glance like a Word I’ve never seen before
as I try to puzzle out its meaning and source.
And yet this face knows my name, my life,
and never blinks or changes expression,
revealing divine compassion and grace
so abundant I would drown
were it water.

For I am covered in grace, not sin.
Enveloped in hope, not in my past.
Secure in that gaze.
Wrapped in that holy.
Held in that love.
Sanctus. Sanctus. Sanctus.

Ask yourself in silence: Where do I experience the holy and sacred? What holds my gaze and points me to the divine?

Today’s Word: Erosion

Steve · November 20, 2013 · 1 Comment

Standing on the south rim of the Grand Canyon just a few weeks ago, I watched the setting sun splash its light against the ancient red walls of the canyon, aware that all this beauty was created by the destructive force of the Colorado River over millions of years. The continuous flow of water over stone created this natural wonder of the world. From erosion comes beauty and new life.

We spend the first halves of our lives growing and gathering — families, friends, careers, financial stability. All good things. But we are also aware as we grow older that things are slowly eroding around us, a flood of undercurrents and losses that can leave us speechless and hanging on for our lives. We watch as family and friends die and our own bodies begin to change and fail us. We look in the mirror and find someone we hardly recognize. And yet, there is beauty that comes with this aging process and, if we pay close attention, we receive a gift — an awareness of God and God’s presence that perhaps we did not see when we were younger. For what once was just water and rocks — the stuff of life — has become evidence of a love that extends beyond time and knows no boundaries. A love and grace wider than the Grand Canyon. For from the erosion of self comes the bounty of God and the newness of a new kind of life.

Ask yourself in silence: What do I see now that I couldn’t see when I was younger? How has the presence and image of God changed in my life?