Others

"We should not be too sure of having found Christ in ourselves until we have found him also in the part of our humanity that is most remote from our own."

Thomas Merton

What will it take for a true Christian revolution to take hold of us?  It's too easy for us to build walls between us.  Who's right.  Who's wrong.  Who's in.  Who's out.  The dividing walls are becoming more numerous.  Thicker too.  Before long we'll be trapped in a maze of our own making.  Prisoners in our own little worlds, having excluded everyone else but those who are just like us.  Far from what it truly means to be human, in-dwelt by the Divine.

Intention: Today, I'll open myself to someone who I would otherwise ignore as too different from myself.  As I do I'll find something of myself, some part of me I've ignored, judged, dismissed, and excluded from the loving embrace of Christ.

Nourishment

Have you ever experienced a moment in prayer when it felt as if a gentle rain was falling on your shoulders? For many of us prayer is a duty--a should, an ought. Of course, there are benefits prayer. We have a sense that the God of the universe had heard what's on our hearts, and we believe that God will do something with what we've expressed. More than that, we've seen answers to prayer, and these answers keep us going, keep us praying.

But prayer as a gentle rain falling upon the thirsty earth of your inner being? When was the last time you felt that?

This nourishment of prayer is not something you can believe; it's something you experience. Beliefs are artifacts of faith; they're derived from genuine spiritual experience, they are not spiritual experiences themselves. Faith, on the other hand, is the experience of God, and that experience cannot be fully described anymore than your love for another person can be fully described. If course, we try. And well we should. Experiences nearly cry out for communication. Poets try to speak of the love that burns in their hearts. Artists paint it. Musicians put it to sound. But these expressions are symbols and metaphors, not the real thing--as lovely as they may be.

So you believe in prayer. That's good. But why not experience it? Get outside the usual cramped space of your praying, and step into the rain. A slow, life-giving rain is falling.

Too few get out of themselves long enough to feel it.

Intention: Today, I'll pause for prayer, but I'll avoid telling God things. Instead, for just a few moments, I'll let the grace of God fall upon my parched soul, like "rain and snow that water the earth" (Isaiah 55.10).

Gordon

Gordon Cosby may be the most influential pastor you've never heard of.  He's a model and mentor of the kind of life I write about in these posts.  And today, we need strong models, witnesses to the life of the Spirit.  He's one who attracted thousands upon thousands to the Jesus of the Gospels, many who were either burned out or turned out by the Jesus of suburbia bandied about buy a large segment of American Christianity.  His vision of Jesus and his way of life is particularly important in these days of increased suspicion, hostility, and violence. Gordon died on March 20, 2013 in Washington DC.  The co-founder of the Church of the Savior co-founder and life-long servant leader he passed into the full presence of God at Christ House, a hospice he helped to found for the homeless.

From the Washington Post:

Gordon was absolutely Christian. He was focused on Jesus and sought to live deeply in Christ. I once asked him if his intense focus on Christ did not get in the way of interfaith conversation and respect. He told me that it was his experience that those who went most deeply into their own religion’s truths seemed to understand each other and communicate with each other best. He was profoundly and distinctively Christian without an ounce of parochialism.

Do

How many of us have dreamed of doing something new, adding something to our lives, cutting something out? And how many of us have done what we've dreamed of doing? Why not?

In this TED Talk, Matt Cutts, an engineer at Google, invites you to do something for 30 days . . . and see what happens. In less than six minutes, he'll embolden you to step out and achieve something new in your life.

Write a novel.

Lose weight.

Break the Facebook stranglehold on your time.

Go deeper in prayer.

Stop dreaming and DO.

Heart

Jesus grew up in Nazareth, a peasant of Galilee. Galilee was hill country and life there was difficult. A drought or bad harvest could endanger whole villages. Infant mortality was about thirty percent, and only sixty percent of children lived beyond teenage years. The peasants' diet was poor: bread, olives, wine; lentils, a few greens, figs, an occasionally some cheese or yoghurt. Religious practices were simple. In the rural villages there were no scribes or priests. Families practiced the faith with great devotion, for their vulnerability meant they had little hope except in God.

Twice a day, upon rising and at the time of sleep, peasant families recited a simple prayer, the Shema Israel: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might" (This portion from the Torah is what Jesus refers to in Mark 12.29-30).

There was little time for extended prayers, and of course, no possibility of reading sacred texts, since no one could read. The prayers were simple, intense, and frequently recited. It reminded these peasants of the one thing that mattered most to them: to love God with every fiber of their being.

Intention: Today, I will gather my life and energy around the simple act of loving God. My head and hands may be busy with ideas and plans and work, but my heart can rest in God through a simple prayer I can return to over an over again.