Category: quote

Thank you. For taste buds

 
In Hidden Art, Edith Schaeffer writes,

“God could have created all food as a bland mixture of proper nutrients: something like wheat-germ, yoghurt and honey in a cake form, or some sort of fruit that would have contained everything necessary to good health. However pleasant the mild flavour might be, we cannot imagine eating just one single flavour all the time, the reason being that we have been created with taste buds, a delicate sense of smell, and a sensitive appreciation of and response to texture and colour.”  (p. 114-115)
 

Invitation to the Banquet

based on Psalm 23 and Matthew 22:1-14

Gracious God,
in love You open wide the doors
and welcome us into Your presence —
saints and sinners alike.
You spread a table before us,
filled with the richest fare —
a feast of love and mercy
for the body and soul.

We come with joy to meet You here,
to eat and drink at Your table,
to taste and see Your goodness,
to celebrate Your grace and mercy in our lives.

May Your Spirit inspire our praise and thanksgiving,
our prayers and petitions
as we worship together in Your presence.

In the name of Jesus Christ, our host and Lord, Amen.

from re:worship

From the blog
A new nature
Winter = long nights
In the school of prayer with St Francis of Assisi
 

Time to pause


 

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”

 

August, the in between month

We need off time.
We need thinking time.
We need slower time.
We need bored time.
We need mind wandering time.
We need time without the doing.
That time isn’t just a pause, or a break,
      it is also the way onto whatever lies ahead.

by Anne Brones, from creativefuel.substack.com

From the blog
Theme for July 2020: Time
Open ending
Amazing to consider
 

Trust in the slow work of God


 
Last week I was in Yorkshire for the annual Resound Worship Songwriter Retreat held at Wydale Hall. One afternoon I joined an excursion to Bempton Cliffs, hoping to see a real puffin up close. It didn’t happen for me (others had more luck). I saw lots of birds though, and stunning scenery. Along the cliff path I also stumble on this blooming thistle with a bumble bee bumbling about, sampling the nectar.

May you find time this summer to bumble about and sample things that are sweet and nourishing for your heart and mind and soul.
 

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said,

“Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We would like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet, it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability — and that it may take a very long time. Above all, trust in the slow work of God, our loving vine-dresser.”

 
from Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Enuma Okoro, p. 335
 

From the blog
When hot and bothered
All my days and forever
Bright and beautiful
 

Prayer and the way we are

 

“Prayer is not only a matter of saying the right sort of words to the right kind of God. Our being is involved, the way we are.”

by Eugene Peterson,
from Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer, p. 24
 

A prayer

inspired by Psalm 1

King of all the earth,
Creator of the universe,
Holy Triune God,
from everlasting to everlasting,
      you are Lord.

Your law brings life, O Lord,
      and we meditate on it day and night;

Happy are we when we walk in your ways, O Lord.

You are a rich stream of living waters,
      and we would immerse ourselves in you;

Happy are we when we walk in your ways, O Lord.

You bring forth fruit in due season
      and establish the work of our hands;

Happy are we when we walk in your ways, O Lord.

Who is like our God,
      the One whose ways are full of life?

Happy are we when we walk in your ways, O Lord.

This is our God, the Holy One.
Come before him with thanksgiving
      and offer him the sacrifice of praise.

 
from Oratio Contemplativa, posted on re:worship

From the blog
In the school of prayer with Eugene Peterson
Lament
Continually curious
 

Love planting

 
A sixth-century Jewish rabbi wrote, “God, from the very beginning of creation, was occupied before all else with planting, as it is written, ‘And first of all, the Eternal God planted a Garden in Eden.’ Therefore occupy yourselves first and foremost with planting.”

Lord, give us humility to remember that we are made from dirt so that we might till the dirt and love it as we love ourselves. Amen.

 
from Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Enuma Okoro, p. 249

From the blog
3 Prayers for refugees
Grace notes
A new nature
 

Celebrate supply

 

“Our life is not only travail and labor, it is also refreshment and joy in the goodness of God. We labor, but God nourishes and sustains us. And this is reason for celebrating. … Through daily meals [God] is calling us to rejoice, to keep holiday in the midst of our working day.”

 
Diedrich Bonhoeffer,
from Life Together (New York: Harper & Row, 1954), p. 68
 

From the blog
Theme: Ever sustaining  [prayer sheet]
Food for thought
In all seasons – grow
 

Asking and answers


 

 

‘Prayer is asking, and prayer is sitting. Prayer is the breath. Prayer is not an answer, always, because not all questions can be answered.’

from Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community
by Pádraig Ó Tuama, p. xi
 

A prayer

    I know
that when the stress has grown too strong,
    you will be there.

    I know
that when the waiting seems so long,
    you hear my prayer.

    I know
that through the crash of falling worlds
    you’re holding me.

    I know
that life and death are yours
    eternally.

 
by Mother Janet Stuart (1857-1914),
from The Book of a Thousand Prayers by Angela Ashwin, #241
 

From the blog
Jesus, pray for us
Bend down low
The Gift #2 : For the asking
 

In the school of prayer with Eugene Peterson

 

Here are some extracts on the topic of prayer by Eugene Peterson from his book, Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer.

 
 

I

What is essential in prayer is not that we learn to express ourselves, but that we learn to answer God. The psalms show us how to answer. (p. 6)

II

The practice of Christians in praying the Psalms is straightforward: simply pray through the Psalms, psalm by psalm, regularly. … That’s it: open our Bibles to the book of Psalms and prayer them – sequentially, regularly, faithfully across a lifetime. This is how most Christians for most of the Christian centuries have matured in prayer. Nothing fancy. Just do it. The praying itself is deliberate and leisurely, letting (as St. Benedict directed) the motions of the heart come into harmony with the movements of the lips. (p. 7)

III

All the psalms are prayers in community: people assembled, attentive before God, participating in a common posture, movement and speech, offering themselves and each other to their Lord. Prayer is not a private exercise, but a family convocation. … the believing community at worship, at regular times and in assigned places, is the base of prayer. All the psalms were prayed in such communities. … The primary use of prayer in not for expressing ourselves, but in becoming ourselves, and we cannot do that alone. (p. 18-19)

IV

Human beings are in trouble most of the time. Those who don’t know they are in trouble are in the worst trouble. Prayer is the language of the people who are in trouble and know it, and who believe or hope that God can get them out. (p. 36)

V

We do better to simply enter the sequence of psalms as they are given to us in the Psalms, go from one to the next, one day to the next, one week to the next, taking what comes, learning to enter into what comes, whatever, practicing a sense of the presence of God, deepening that awareness into colloquy* with God. (p. 108)

 
*  colloquy: dialogue, conversation, heart-to-heart

So I answered

Psalm 40:1-8, The Message (translated by Eugene Peterson)

I waited and waited and waited for God.
    At last he looked; finally he listened.
He lifted me out of the ditch,
    pulled me from deep mud.
He stood me up on a solid rock
    to make sure I wouldn’t slip.
He taught me how to sing the latest God-song,
    a praise-song to our God.
More and more people are seeing this:
    they enter the mystery,
    abandoning themselves to God.

Blessed are you who give yourselves over to God,
    turn your backs on the world’s “sure thing,”
    ignore what the world worships;
The world’s a huge stockpile
    of God-wonders and God-thoughts.
Nothing and no one
    compares to you!
I start talking about you, telling what I know,
    and quickly run out of words.
Neither numbers nor words
    account for you.

Doing something for you, bringing something to you—
    that’s not what you’re after.
Being religious, acting pious—
    that’s not what you’re asking for.
You’ve opened my ears
    so I can listen.

So I answered, “I’m coming.
    I read in your letter what you wrote about me,
And I’m coming to the party
    you’re throwing for me.”
That’s when God’s Word entered my life,
    became part of my very being.
 

From the blog
In the school of prayer with Anselm
In the school of prayer with Michael Mayne
In the school of prayer with Ignatius of Loyola
 

Open gates

 
David Adam writes,
 
“Every now and again ‘our eyes are opened’ and we see beyond the narrowness of our day-to-day vision. This was expressed by Jacob when he awoke out of sleep, a sleep he felt he had been in all his life up to that point: ‘Jacob awoke out of sleep and said, “How aweful is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!”‘ (Genesis 28:16-17). Jacob had not been looking for his experience, it had suddenly opened before him. I believe that such experiences are offered to all of us at one time or another in our lives. But we in our turn have to be open enough to receive them. … If we face the unfamiliar it may open all sorts of gates for us.”
 
from The Open Gate: Celtic Prayers for Growing Spiritually
by David Adam, p.2
 

Prayer

O Lord,
    Open our eyes to your Presence
    Open our minds to your grace
    Open our lips to your praises
    Open our hearts to your love
    Open our lives to your healing
    And be found among us.

 
by David Adam,
from The Book of a Thousand Prayers by Angela Ashwin, #15
 

From the blog
Turn to the light
Holy moment beneath the stars
Slow learners and bright ideas
 

Bloom where you’re planted

“There are times to bloom where we are planted, and times for us to be transplanted so we can bloom even better elsewhere. Just follow the Lord where he leads.”

(Danielle Bernock, from an article on www.christianity.com)
 

Benediction

inspired by Colossians 2:6-7

Just like you receive Christ Jesus the Lord,
so go on living in him — in simple faith.
Grow out of him as a plant grows out of the soil it is planted in —
becoming more and more sure of your faith.
If you do this,
your lives will overflow with joy and thankfulness.
And the mercy of God,
the love of Jesus Christ,
and the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit
will surround you and uphold you
wherever you go.
Go in God’s peace.

posted on re:worship

From the blog
Quiet near a little stream
Slow learners and bright ideas
Theme: Part of creation  [prayer sheet]