Prayer

Today’s Word: Rest

Steve · July 29, 2013 · 5 Comments

larry — Rest. My friend, Larry, about halfway up our climb up Volcan Cerro Negro in Nicaragua in 2009. SJG photo.

We are called, in the paraphrased words of St. Teresa of Avila, to be the body of Christ to the world:

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus issues an invitation that reverberates down through the ages: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28) Jesus doesn’t promise to take away the hard work of our lives. He never says we will always be healthy or happy or that following him will be easy. He prepares us for quite the contrary, actually. But he promises rest and relief for those who have the courage to walk in his way and the faith to bring their burdens and weaknesses to him in prayer.

When we place ourselves in the service of others and nearly collapse at the end of the day, it is Jesus’ tired arms and legs that fall into our beds. When we work as Christ for those around us, we can know that our labor will never be in vain and the effect of our work will be blessed and multiplied by the divine energy that pervades and transforms our efforts. And perhaps best of all, we are promised rest at the end of the day in the loving arms of God.

Ask yourself in silence: Do I let myself just rest in God once in a while?

Hard at work in Chenendega, Nicaragua, 2009. SJG photo.

Today’s reflection is for some of my friends and a bunch of teenagers from our church who are back in Nicaragua working hard this week at Amigos for Christ. But believe me, they rest well at night in the arms of God…

Today’s Word: Marrow

Steve · July 27, 2013 · 6 Comments

votive — Votive candle at the Chapel of the Holy Cross, outside Sedona, Arizona. SJG photo.

When we say we sense something in the marrow of our bones, we mean that we sense some truth deep down inside us, at the very core of our being. And although we say this in a metaphorical and perhaps even metaphysical sense, there’s some physical truth involved in the saying. As someone who has had my bone marrow tapped a couple of times (a wonderful experience…) I know what the doctors found there. They found my stem cells, those building blocks of who I am, telltale signs of what makes me, me.

Those of us who feel called to lives of faith sense that call deep down at our centers in a way that is even more profound and meaningful than the biological material that makes us who we are. We sense a quiet voice that beckons us toward a presence that has been named God for us, a divine light that both urges us to serve others and invites us into communion. That’s what we feel, in the marrow of our bones, and so we respond.

Ask yourself in silence: What do I sense in the marrow of my bones? What is at the very core of my being?

With thanks to my wife, Sue, and our good friends, John & Karen and Larry & Dianne, for this “word of the day challenge” and for good conversation and lots of laughter around the table last night. These kinds of evenings remind me of all that is important in life. Yet another thing I can sense in the marrow of my bones.

Today’s Word: Psalm

Steve · July 26, 2013 · 3 Comments

Once, when a friend sensed in my voice some pain, he sent me Psalm 61, written for the chief musician and for a stringed instrument. He knew I’d like that. He also knew, as I do but sometimes forget, that we all long to shout: “Hear my cry, God. Listen to my prayer.” My friend is wiser than he sometimes lets on, for he really knows what it means to say: “I will call to you when my heart is overwhelmed.” We all feel overwhelmed from time to time, and for those times, God gives us the Psalms.

I needed my friend’s prayers and this Psalm, and some day he may need mine. This is what makes us Church, the body of Christ, broken yet unbroken. It is this mutual love and care that leads us to a rock higher than we ever could reach on our own. Together and separately we seek refuge there, dwelling under God’s tent and huddling beneath his protective wings, baby birds open-mouthed and hiding from the storm. Singing.

There we stay, sometimes hiding, sometimes peeking out, but always enthroned in the nest of God’s hands. Seeking to be fed. Always singing a psalm of praise or pain, assured that God hears both.

Ask yourself in silence: Do I have the confidence to cry or sing out to God, even in my darkest times?

Today’s Word: Restless

Steve · July 25, 2013 · 10 Comments

In his book, Doing the Truth in Love, Michael J. Himes writes: “at the center of our being is an endlessly nagging sense of, ‘Yes, yes, yes, but more.’” Likewise, St. Augustine famously wrote, at the beginning of his Confessions: “You made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” We can be a restless people, especially when it comes to our relationship with God. We want more.

As it turns out, this restlessness is a gift. It’s all the nagging, confusing, irritating work of the Spirit. God made us to be restless, made us to be wondering and discontented and wandering about our spiritual lives, because God knew this restlessness would ultimately lead us right back to him. God knew that, with the help of the Spirit, we wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t accept the easy way of just meeting obligations and skimming by on the bare minimum of spiritual living. God knew that contentment can be the death of spiritual growth. So God made us restless.

Ask yourself in silence: Are you restless for God? What is the “more” you want right now?

Today’s Word: Doxology

Steve · July 23, 2013 · 4 Comments

The other night, Sue and I were sitting on the deck at the very end of the day as the light was fading and darkness was just creeping in. The crickets and the frogs were doing their thing incredibly loud, a crescendo of spindly legs and balloon-throated amphibians, a symphony of sound that rose and fell every 30 seconds or so, as if led by an invisible, knowing, baton-wielding hand. But whose?

“The whole of creation comes from God, goes back to God and is in God,” Paul Coutinho writes in his newest book, An Ignatian Pathway. “Creation finds its identity in God and the interconnectedness of all life.”

Ignatius once described the trinity as a three-note chord. And so I wonder, listening to the crickets and frogs, how many individual notes are sounding tonight, all of them resonating with the pure tone of the trinity ringing throughout the universe?

Praise God from whom all music flows. Praise God all singers and players here below. Praise God above the heavenly strains of sound and silence. Glory be to the composer, and to the singer, and to the conductor, one God forever and ever. Amen.

Ask yourself in silence: What do I hear when I take the time to be silent and listen? How does music connect me to God?