Come Hungry

Come hungry.  That’s the standing invitation to prayer, meditation, solitude with the One. Come hungry, not all put together, not having figured everything out, not full of ideas or problems you want resolved or worse, solutions you’ve come up with.

Come hungry. No grocery list of items to pick up at the God Store. No “TO DO!” list for the One. Come without expectations. Come thirsty. Come weak and weary. Come wanting. Come listening. Come because you have nowhere else to go. Or, come here first and save yourself the trouble of traipsing all over creation’s inner and outer spaces looking for answers. Come without requirements and parameters and stipulations and druthers.

Just come…and come hungry.

Refreshing Reflections

Monday: Listen for the Holy
Today, having entered into what the church calls "Holy Week," let's listen whole-ly...wholly...for the holy in each day. Faith says it's here. Hope says if we give ourselves to such listening, we'll hear it. Love says it will be holy for us...that is, it will be what we truly need to hear.

Tuesday: A Radiance Within
Rather, the radiance within comes from beyond us and from beyond anything we can do. Through a staid commitment to pray and/or meditate, or in other words, to wonder, to ponder, to stop and take in both the physical world around us and the spiritual world within us, we become exposed to this Radiance. And we glow.

Wednesday: Available
The Christian's walk is about something even deeper. It's about making ourselves available to God above all others. It teaches that as we do this, we come to see and experience God helping us sort out how and where to make ourselves available in the world today.

Thursday: Simple As That
Thank you, Lord, for giving me such a simple way of understanding my life's purpose. Thank you for all the people who will make themselves available to You and to me today in order to make my life good. And, most of all, thank you for giving me opportunities to go and do likewise. Simple as that. Amen. 

Friday: So
I don't think any of us has the one, right answer when it comes to understanding God. I do believe, however, that when we stop long enough to ponder just this much of John 3:16 ("For God so loved the world...") we can all agree on one thing: We are so loved.

So

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." (John 3:16)

These words from gospel writer John's account of Jesus' life are probably the best known, most cherished--and possibly the most disagreed upon words in the Bible. Did God actually believe in human sacrifice like the pre-Judaic religions did? Would God require that of his followers? Would he actually give up his own and only son to provide the human? Is this the same God whom Jesus spoke so lovingly of? Is this real love?

I don't suspect we're going to come to agreement on this today--this Good Friday.

But what can we agree on?

Let's just take the first part of that verse..."For God so loved the world that he gave..." Just that much is so much! God so loved the world and everything and everyone in it (not just the ones who believe in him) that God freely gave (didn't barter or bargain, didn't charge, didn't even charge interest on the account)--freely gave the world his own and only son. What an incredibly loving gift!

I don't think any of us has the one, right answer when it comes to understanding God. I do believe, however, that when we stop long enough to ponder just this much of John 3:16 we can all agree on one thing: We are so loved.

And that is so good to know and remember on this Good Friday.

Simple As That

The Christian Church's observance of Holy Week (which immediately precedes Easter) focuses on a different theme each day. Today is called Maundy Thursday. "Maundy" is the Latin word for commandment and the commandment being referred to is the one that Jesus gave his disciples when, after a meal together, (probably their last), he washed their feet--an ultimate act of servanthood in that culture. He said to them, "So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. 15 For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you." (John 13)

Was he literally telling them they were to go out and wash people's feet? No. He was using his action as a metaphor. Its message was simple: Our life's purpose (and therefore, meaning) will be discovered through the act of being available to each other--in helping meet each other's needs. Simple as that.

This being Holy Week, this maundy or commandment implies that to live this way is act-ually holy. That is, it's a way of making ourselves available to God through treating all of God's creation with reverence--one person, one situation, one experience at a time.


Lord,
     Thank you for giving me such a simple way of understanding my life's purpose. Thank you for all the people who will make themselves available to You and to me today in order to make my life good. And, most of all, thank you for giving me opportunities to go and do likewise. Simple as that. Amen. 

"...and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8)
 

Available

We want God to be available 24/7. If God is God, we reason, God can do anything and everything. Further, if God is love, as the Bible tells us, then God should be "there" (here) for us...available. Always available. 

But it doesn’t seem to work that way. Maybe because this approach attempts to turn us into God and God into our lackey--instead of our Lord. 

No, the message of the Bible seems to be quite the opposite: that we are here to make ourselves available to God...to be God's servants, God's hands, feet and heart, God's presence in the world. 

With this message comes a promise: If we do this, we will discover that God is already available to us. Which, in a roundabout way, starts us back at the beginning. God is, in fact, available 24/7. 

The Christian's walk is about something even deeper. It's about making ourselves available to God above all others. It teaches that as we do this, we come to see and experience God helping us sort out how and where to make ourselves available in the world today.

Holy Week is all about Jesus Christ being available to God above all other availabilities. Easter is about the promise of what happens because God is available to us.

 

A Radiance Within

"God does not die on the day we cease to believe in a personal deity. But we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance of wonder renewed daily, the source of which is beyond all reason." (Dag Hammarskjold, UN Secretary General 1953-1961 and Nobel Peace Prize recipient)

I love it when people say things that make my thinking stop in its tracks. Dag Hammarskjold had that ability. It's like the first crocus in the Spring. Once you see it, you can't help yourself. You just have to stop for a moment and take it in. Its tiny radiance doesn't just fill you with a sense of joy. It points to something far bigger than itself. It heralds Spring!  

The radiance that Hammarskjold says can be present within each of us isn't based on a particular set of beliefs about God--be they Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Christian or whatever. These are all human constructs created in an attempt to understand something far beyond all reason--that which we have named "God." Our beliefs have their place, yes, but they are not the source of our radiance.

Rather, the radiance within comes from beyond us and from beyond anything we can do. Through a staid commitment to pray and/or meditate, or in other words, to wonder, to ponder, to stop and take in both the physical world around us and the spiritual world within us, we become exposed to this Radiance. And we glow.

Listen for the Holy

There it sat perched on a small coffee table next to Dad's favorite chair.  It was a mug we kids gave him at his 80th birthday party. Inscribed on one side was the caption, “Dad...thanks to your lectures, I never change horses in the middle of a job worth doing, I know the squeaky wheel gets the worm, and I never count my chickens until I’ve walked a mile in their shoes.” and on the other side, it read,”And you thought I wasn’t listening!” 

“How true!” we chuckle.  But what, exactly, is the truth of it? Sadly, it seems to be this: we listen in half.  Oh, we may hear the whole but only half (on a good day!) is heavy enough to sink into our consciousness to be applied at the moment or stored for future retrieval. Then, having listened in half, we attempt to put the whole back together.  It doesn’t work and we chide ourselves, “Why didn’t I listen more carefully?!”

And it gets worse.  We may think we really were listening!  We may think we heard our parents’ words correctly so we proceed—but on an erroneous basis.  No wonder we get confused.  No wonder things go awry in our lives.  It’s like trying to navigate New York City while reading a map of Minneapolis. We wander. And we wonder. 

Today, having entered into what the church calls "Holy Week," let's listen whole-ly...wholly...for the holy in each day. Faith says it's here. Hope says if we give ourselves to such listening, we'll hear it. Love says it will be holy for us...that is, it will be what we truly need to hear.

“If you continue in my word you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” (John 8:31-32)