faith

Today’s Word: Trace

Steve · August 20, 2013 · 4 Comments

Walking along the dried Mississippi River bed, I came across the deer tracks pictured to the right. Looking behind me, I saw that I was leaving some tracks of my own in the wet mud. And in a moment of insight, I realized that we all leave a mark wherever we go, some sign that we are here, good or bad, if even for a brief moment. The question is: what kind of trace do we leave behind?

We all leave lots of surface impressions on the world. Often, as the saying goes, we only get one chance to make a best first impression. In spiritual terms, someone once said that we may be the only Christ the people around us meet on any given day, so we need to be constantly aware that we have that power and responsibility. We most effectively model Christ and divine love to the world not with Christian t-shirts and noisy preaching but rather by making a quiet impression of love on those around us. For it’s most often the gentle touch and the caring word that leaves the deepest mark.

Ask yourself in silence: What do I leave behind? Can the people around me tell that God dwells in me?

Today’s Word: Solitude

Steve · August 19, 2013 · 4 Comments

View of the river from Vision of Peace Hermitages. SJG photo.

“In the morning, long before dawn, he got up and left the house, and went off to a lonely place and prayed there.” Mark 1:35

As I mentioned late last week, this past weekend I spent at a wonderful, quiet and secluded place just south of St. Louis in Pevely, Missouri, on grounds that overlook the Mississippi River. Called the “Vision of Peace Hermitages,” the six pristine acres and nine small dwellings provide a simple oasis from the world for anyone looking to get away and be alone with God. We all need that time once in a while to unplug (physically and metaphorically) and recharge our spiritual batteries. I came back refreshed and quieted and filled with a peace and contentment that I know comes from God alone. Just before I left on Sunday morning, I wrote in my journal:

In this solitude, this holy quiet
I hear your word in the wind blowing through the trees
In the caw caw caw of the crows (always three times, it seemed)
In the tap tap of a distant woodpecker
In the slap of water on rock at the bottom of the hill.

Morning on the river. SJG photo

You speak in my ear
As if standing beside me
As if lingering in my shadow
As if I mattered somehow to you
And I hear words you likely speak to me
All day, everyday
But I cannot hear over the drone of me
Over the busy-ness and the scuttling of hurrying feet.

But here I slow down.
I become quiet.
I listen.
I remind myself
To pray more than “do.”
To reach out more than hold back.
To listen more than speak.

Turn to me.
Say that again.
I am ready to hear.

Ask yourself in silence: Do I value solitude? Can I tell the difference between loneliness and solitude? Can I easily and peacefully be alone, knowing that I’m not alone at all?

Today’s Word: Fruit

Steve · August 15, 2013 · 5 Comments

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “I love your Christ but not your Christians, because they are so unlike Christ.” All too often, this is so true. I’m not calling out any individuals here, and I’m not pointing fingers. We’ve all fallen short at one time or another. We’ve all failed to show those around us just what it is that this Christ means to us. Maybe we got the words right — or think we have them right — but we fall short on the way we live out the words. We’re missing the fruit of our faith.

If the Christ we see and learn from in the gospels is to be seen and known through us, it will be through the fruits of the spirit working in us. These fruits are not correctness, judgment, self-righteousness, or orthodoxy. These fruits are not liberalism or conservatism, and they are not the property of any one religion, creed or nation. The fruits of God’s spirit are found in the small deeds and actions that govern our lives and in the ways we love our families, our friends and even our enemies. They are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22). These fruits speak for themselves, and no one will ever fail to find Christ in us if we nurture these fruits in our lives while pruning back the vices and sins that separate us from God and from those around us.

Ask yourself in silence: When have others failed to see the fruits of the spirit in my life? Do I nurture these fruits or have I let them wither on the vine?

I’ll be taking a break for a few days as I head out tomorrow for a few days of solitude at the Vision of Peace Hermitages in Pevely, Missouri, nestled on the banks of the Mississippi River just south of St. Louis. I’ll be back on Monday with some new words and plenty of new photographs.

Today’s Word: Grace

Steve · August 14, 2013 · 1 Comment

Grace is one of those words we use almost without thinking about it. We say someone is graceful. We say grace before meals. We have a grace period to pay our bills. And, of course, we sing that most famous and well loved of all Christian hymns: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me…”

But grace, especially in its Christian meaning, is a word that deserves our attention. The grace we receive from God through Christ deserves to be mulled over, contemplated and prayed. We shouldn’t toss it off like a found penny, unaware of its deep meaning and power. For if we have a relationship with God, it is only because God initiated that relationship by his grace — by his free and undeserved communication and union with us. God’s gift to us is grace, and our ability to accept it is the work of grace.

We are surrounded by grace as fish are surrounded by water, unaware that it is there at all even though we would die without it. God’s grace is pervasive and complete in our lives — our very life and breath are, after all, gifts and not mere happenstances. Once again, I’ll give a contemporary songwriter the last word today. John Mark McMillan writes in his beautiful song “How He Loves”:

And we are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If His grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.

Ask yourself in silence: If not God’s grace, what have I surrounded myself with? Am I trying to earn God’s love and grace, or am I able to just accept the free gift being offered?

Today’s Word: Alive

Steve · August 13, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Detail of America Windows, stained glass by Marc Chagall, the Art Institute of Chicago. SJG photo

The second-century Christian writer Irenaeus once wrote: “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” What a contemporary sounding idea! God is most happy — is in his glory — when we are fully alive. So what does it mean to be fully alive? This thought reminds me of that great question in Psalm 8 (and I paraphrase): Who are we that God pays any attention to us at all?

Irenaeus has a comeback for the Psalmist: I’ll tell you who we are…we are his GLORY — as long as we’ve living lives of abundance, as long as we’re living lives that complete God’s purpose and hope for us. To be fully alive is to live fully in God, for God, of God. It is to seek God with every fiber of our being and in every moment of our lives. Or as a much more contemporary source (songwriter David Crowder) writes: “You make everything glorious. And I am yours. What does that make me?”

Ask yourself in silence: What am I doing when I feel I am most fully alive?