“The sun lives in the heavens where God placed it. It bursts forth like a radiant bridegroom after his wedding. It rejoices like a great athlete eager to run the race. The sun rises at one end of the heavens and follows its course to the other end. Nothing can hide from its heat.” Psalm 19:4b-6

Most of us are familiar with the challenge of settling our hearts to be with God in prayer. As C.S. Lewis noted, this happens “the very moment you wake up. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job in the morning consists in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice.”  Then there’s the further challenge at the end of prayer to retain the sense of God’s presence as we enter our day with its demands and distractions. By God’s grace he holds us and is present to us in spite of our awareness of him being easily dissipated. In his great mercy and provision, we are also gifted to see and know him in unexpected times and places.

Contemplative author and speaker James Finley has a beautiful and helpful expression to describe such gifts:  “moments of spontaneous contemplative awakening.”  In such instances the eyes of our hearts may unexpectedly be opened to God’s presence. Finley suggests that though these experiences are usually fleeting, they are glimpses into eternal realities, and they leave an indelible mark on our hearts. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4 that “the things that are visible are temporary but the things that are invisible are eternal” (vs 18).  In moments of spontaneous contemplative awakening we may see beyond the exquisite beauty of creation and apprehend God himself.

This was the Psalmist’s experience. “The sun lives in the heavens where God has placed it.” Similarly our minds may be awakened from the “lethargy of the familiar” to sense the wonder of the rhythms of the natural order, and we see all creation as being infused with God’s presence and sustaining power (Hebrews 1:3). This kind of awakening includes seeing with new eyes the miracle and mystery of life of all kinds, especially human life: people we encounter by design or in passing, all of whom bear the image of their Creator.

Finley uses a further phrase to denote unexpected experiences of God. He describes moments in which we may encounter “a holiness in progress.” The context of this expression is an address Finley gives on the inexhaustible attributes of God, his infinite love and his eternal power to sustain all aspects of the natural world. Like the psalmist observing the motion in the heavens so we may be witness to the  glorious varieties of motion in creation. Finley describes his own such experience as seeing a large flock of geese take flight from the surface of a lake.

As contemplatives we treasure and practice stillness (“be still and know” Ps. 46:10), and there is also breathtaking stillness in nature. But we may still be reminded that the holiness we seek is not ultimately static but “in progress.” God’s purposes for us and work within us are ongoing even though it may feel otherwise sometimes. We may think of Moses’ surprise experience of the burning bush (Ex 3) as an example of “a holiness in progress.” Fire is such an evocative entity – even more so if we reflect on its place in the ancient world. The bush was not consumed by the flame, and God was explicitly present. Moses had been on the sidelines and dwelling in the obscurity of extreme wilderness, both literally and figuratively. He was not likely living with much expectation. God’s message to Moses: “I see, I know, I am present, I will be with you.” While this occasion was momentous and unique for Moses as God’s choice to rescue Israel, such experiences may be part of any humble quest to see and know God in all things.

Moments of spontaneous contemplative awakening are the seeds of a deeper walk with God and they enlarge our hearts and our view of God. Spiritual director and author Tilden Edwards quotes a beloved elderly nun he knows as saying: “Only the sky is an adequate icon for God.” May we, through the practice of prayer, cultivate our hearts to be receptive to God’s unexpected initiatives within us and to see him in all things.

“And the church is his body; it is filled by Christ, who fills everything everywhere with his presence.” Ephesians 1:23.

Paul Woodyard
Imago Dei Christian Community

For group discussion:

1.Can you recall/describe an experience in which you were awakened to a wonderful aspect of creation?

2.The dissipation of our sense of God following a time of prayer is natural to a degree. How do you experience this and what practices might sustain this sense of God or bring recall of his presence?

3.How do you perceive God’s “motion” or activity in your life versus the in-between times of stillness and silence?

For Prayer:

Let us welcome God’s initiative within us to awaken, in his good time, our hearts to his glory and beauty; and seek his grace to grow in the knowledge of his nearness.

Jesus welcomed them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed healing.                             Luke 9:1
People live for many years with what might be called “open wounds.”  Open wounds are places where we feel stuck by the memory of a particular pain.  These memories, still active in our hearts, trigger fears in us that such injuries will reoccur.  Even minor wounds in life can result in unresolved stresses that end up determining, much more than we realize, the way we respond to the world and to others.

Open wounds prevent us from fully embracing freedom.  They act like a tether that keep us from moving forward.  We feel apprehensive about life and less hopeful about the future because our unresolved pains are always suggesting to our imagination the threat of imminent danger.

If this description of an “open wound” resonates in your life, there is a prayer for healing based on the Ignatian prayer of Examen that might be helpful for deepening your dialogue with Jesus in these areas.  Here are some steps to lead you in this prayer of Examen.
·      Begin your prayer by first placing yourself in the loving presence of God.  Here you are reminded that you have always been loved and that, even in the realization that an “open wound” exists in you, there is a potential gift from God that will help you grow in your faith if you are willing to accept it.  You may need the Lord’s help before you are able to fully accept these difficult experiences as gifts from God.  Allow whatever time is necessary to “negotiate” this first crossroads of grace.

·      Ask next for the courage to “take up your cross” in order to accept this experience of life as the very place where you might seek and find the Lord.  Ask Jesus to meet with you there for it is likely that you have long excluded Him from this area of your life, or assumed He is more distant from your wound than He actually is.  In prayer ask instead for a new relationship to this narrative—to see your wound as something that Jesus is fully aware of and that He cares deeply about.

·      Ask next for a deeper understanding of what the Lord might wish to show you—not only for insight but also for the ability to embrace whatever God reveals to you.  Are you prepared to accept your “open wound” as part of the truth of who you presently are?  Speak honestly with Jesus about what you are feeling as you revisit this wound.

·      Because you are no longer trying to manage your wound—to heal or protect yourself—you are now more prepared to let Jesus minister to you.  Allow the Holy Spirit to guide you in this process, following wherever He might lead you and stopping wherever He would have you note something particular regarding this wound.  Let God gently untangle the tight knots of your painful history.  Spiritual healing is a slow and subtle process.  It takes time for this type of prayer to evolve naturally.

·      Whenever the Lord shines His light on a particular event related to your “open wound” do not overly analyze it, nor jump too quickly to a solution.  You should simply pay attention to your feelings, acknowledging and bringing these insights into your dialogue with Jesus. Ask the Lord to show how faith can be applied to this otherwise fearful memory.

·      When you have finished your prayer ask Jesus to sustain the hope you have regarding this process, and to protect you from the despair you might otherwise feel around this topic.  Be willing and resolved to return again to this dialogue as often as the Lord requires.

The healing of our “open wounds” is a slow and deliberate work.   A sustained faith will help us remain in the hands of the Physician long enough for a relationship of healing to take place.  We must learn to approach our open wound less as a problem to be solved and more as a place of dialogue with Jesus about the truth of who we are and who we are becoming. As we enter these places with an open posture we will be led to a more genuine encounter with grace.  Gratitude for the God who works out His salvation in our lives will eventually replace the hopelessness of our wounds.

Rob Des Cotes
Imago Dei Christian Communities
(written for March 19, 2015)

FOR GROUP DISCUSSION:
1.    In what ways are you afraid of life, or with regards to the future?  Can you trace this fear to some past injury?

2.    What relationship do you presently have to these wounds?  In what ways do they overly determine your responses to life?  How do they curtail your freedom?

3.    How does the slow and deliberate process of this prayer inspire hope in you?  In what ways does the memory of past failures to heal yourself quench this hope?

FOR PRAYER:  Take a full week (or longer) to explore this prayer with regards to a particular open wound in your life.  Observe closely the process by which God untangles the knots that such injuries have caused in you.  Once you have established a deep and lasting relationship with Jesus at the place of your wound ask the Lord if there are other areas of your life where He would like you to also apply this prayer.

Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory. Isa. 6:3

 Adrienne Von Speyr was a disciple of Hans Urs von Balthasar.  So impressed was Balthasar by the depth of Von Speyr’s spiritual vision that, soon after her death in 1967, he started compiling her writings into what has become an important library of over sixty books on Catholic mystical theology.

In one such book called The World of Prayer Von Speyr explores how prayer opens our eyes to the presence of God in all things.  This awakening establishes us in a “world of prayer” in which God’s purposes in and through us become increasingly evident.  She writes,

• In prayer the Christian receives assurance about everything that God requires and expects of them.  They understand that they are called to remain always in the presence of God, ready to do his will and to receive his word as fully as they can. This assurance gives them certainty that not only is God concerned for them and that nothing in their daily life is an accident, but also that everything has meaning in God and that, as a believer, they are called to seek this meaning.

Our awakening to this fact—that God is found in everything—invites us to re-examine all the circumstances of our lives through the eyes of Christ.  It is the conversion that Paul refers to when he tells us to “be transformed by the renewing of our minds” (Rom. 12:2). As Von Speyr writes,

• When someone realizes that a relation to God can be discovered in everything, they then understand that the only way to attain the correct view of life is to behold and evaluate everything through the eyes and disposition of the Son who reveals. 

As prayer becomes the key to our interpretation of life we come to understand all our relationships and all the events of our day more and more from God’s point of view.  This opens our eyes to the real world—the world in which “we live, move and have our being” in God (Acts 17:28).  In Von Speyr’s words, ”All things become signposts mysteriously leading to God, revealing proofs of His existence and presenting ever new ways of drawing closer to Him.” 

The old hymn says that, “To those who live a life of prayer, God is present everywhere.”   This is the experience that Von Speyr is trying to identify—of a growing awareness of God’s presence that is the natural fruit of prayer.   Jesus promised that the pure in heart would be blessed, “for they will see God.”  (Mat. 5:8).  May such an awakening to His presence in our lives be the fruitful outcome of our own spiritual practices as well.

Rob Des Cotes
Imago Dei Christian Communities
 (written for Oct 16, 2014)

FOR GROUP DISCUSSION: 

 1.      Would you say you are more aware of God’s presence in your life today than in the past?  If so, how has God brought about this awakening in you?

 2.      What effect does it have on you to know that God is present and active in all of life?  What posture does such knowledge invite you to assume in your relationship to all things?

 3.      How does your growing perception of “God in all things” also create, in Von Speyr’s words, “ever new ways of drawing closer to Him?”

 FOR PRAYER:  Spend time in prayer observing whatever takes place in you through Christ’s eyes.  Note how this different perspective offers new insights as well as new possibilities for relationship with yourself and with the circumstances of your life.  Thank God for the hope that this gives you.

Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him.  Luke 2:25

One of the noblest examples of Advent faith is found in this passage from the gospel of Luke.  Simeon is described as a righteous man who patiently “waits for the consolation of Israel.”  In spite of the discouraging political and social realities all around him, he has kept this unfulfilled hope alive in his heart for many years.  We know very little about Simeon, but it is difficult to imagine that his prayers are overly tinged with anxiety or impatience over the delayed fulfillment of God’s promise.  We picture rather a man who is peacefully resigned to the fact that God will reveal to him, according to the Lord’s good timing, all he needs to know.

Unlike Simeon, most of us are not as patient with God, especially when it comes to waiting for our destiny to unfold.  We often feel stuck in the mud with the slow “progress” of our lives, and have trouble understanding why God seems to delay the promises we feel He has made.  Why is there such a lapse between the Word and its fulfillment?  What is God’s purpose in allowing so much in-between time?  Perhaps it has everything to do with how the God-given necessity of waiting—the very posture that we highlight at Advent—helps purify our faith.

There are many dispositions from which to wait on the Lord.  Some postures honour God while others simply highlight our anxieties or lack of trust.  We often despair when we are made to wait too long for something we feel our hearts so desperately need.  And yet those who are peaceful in their waiting exhibit a unique grace that must surely be the fruit of God’s purposes in the protracted delays we often endure.

Scripture is full of examples of people who deal poorly with their unfulfilled needs.  Most obvious are the many episodes of the Israelites in the desert, acting out their impatience when things don’t unfold as expected.  The prodigal son is another example of someone being impatient with the slow progress of their lives.  We know what we need.  God is taking too long.  We can’t wait.  And so we act on our own.

But Scripture also offers examples of how to wait well for God.  We see quite a different disposition, for instance, in Abraham—a much more gracious expression of godliness in waiting.  The Lord tells the patriarch to leave his homeland and “go to the land I will show you.”  Without questioning the vagueness of this command, Abraham seems to exhibit no anxiety over the where, when or why of its fulfillment.   He just keeps walking, trusting that God will reveal to Him what he needs to know, when he needs to know it.

And then there is Simeon—a man Luke characterizes as righteous and devout—who waits in the temple each day for the “consolation of Israel.”  Because of his devout prayer life Simeon is able to maintain a posture of hope with regards to the mystery of God’s ways.  He waits in the certainty of faith, and his faith is rewarded.  Like the wise virgins, he has kept his lamp full of oil in anticipation of the fulfillment of God’s promise.  And, like Abraham, such devout and patient faith is credited to Simeon as righteousness in God’s sight.

Rob Des Cotes

Imago Dei Christian Communities

written for Advent 2014

FOR GROUP DISCUSSION:

1. Why do you think faith, expressed in waiting, is credited to us as righteousness? How does our waiting in faith honour God?
2. What characteristics of waiting do you see in the prodigal son story? Can you think of examples in Scripture where people did not wait well?
3. In what areas of your life have you been tempted with impatience or a challenge to faith over unfulfilled hopes? Have you found a way to wait?

FOR PRAYER:  Take time in prayer to express your trust in the Lord’s timing for every God-given hope you have.

Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him.  
2Tim. 2:11
 
Consider this alternative version of the Lord’s Supper:
The Lord Jesus, on the night He was betrayed, sat at table with His disciples and there suddenly appeared on the table a golden crown.  Jesus lifted up the crown, and when He had given thanks, He passed it among his disciples saying, “This is my crown, which is for you.  Take it and put it on, each one of you.  Do this in remembrance of me.  For whenever you place this crown on your head, you proclaim the Lord’s victory until He comes.”
 
Why didn’t Jesus choose this as a sign of remembrance?  Why not call us to remember Him with a symbol of His ultimate victory instead of the graphic reminders of His suffering and death on a cross?  Wouldn’t a celebration of His resurrection be enough to inspire hope for us in the worst of our circumstances?
 
At a recent Imago Dei fellowship we explored, at a very personal level, the nature of lost things in life—lost health, lost relationships, lost hope, lost opportunities.  We all expect more from life and it is so disappointing when our experience falls short of the hopes we had for ourselves.  We feel robbed, short-changed, somehow singled-out by this diminishment of our expectations.  And it seems especially unfair when we can readily think of scores of people who do not suffer similar losses. 
 
Where is God when our circumstances end up being so much less than we conceived possible?  Where is Jesus when we are down about our lives?  Where is the hope that comes from His victory when it doesn’t seem to apply to us?  Our ritual of remembrance, the bread and wine of Eucharist, answers us in those times in the same way as when we are feeling on top of the world—He is right there with us.
 
We celebrate Communion.  We contemplate how Jesus curiously invites us to form an intimate relationship with Him around this symbol that commemorates His place of greatest loss.  The broken Body and poured Blood that these elements represent invite us to come and fellowship with Jesus at the point of His greatest sense of bankruptcy, His ultimate aloneness, and the apparent sacrifice of all His life opportunities.  And it is from such a place that we are called to draw realistic hope.  Take and eat, every one of you.  In such places of loss, He stands with us.
 
No other religion celebrates, in the way we do, the signs of their leader’s vulnerability.  Jesus invites us to do just that.  No other God personally demonstrates grace, even in the diminishment of life.  Jesus does just that.  That the Lord Himself would invite us to the very depths of lostness, and assure us that He stands there with us, victorious, is what makes Christianity the precious pearl that it is.
 
Rob Des Cotes
Imago Dei Christian Communities
(written for May 4, 2006)
 
For Group Discussion:
 
1.      Consider a time when you have felt a ‘lostness’ in your life, or a place of great desolation. What was your response to God in that?
 
2.      How does Jesus’ vulnerability and humility strike you, as you consider your hopes and expectations of God and life?
 
3.      Do you have a sense that Jesus is standing with you in the changing or difficult situations in your life? How do you experience that?
 
For Prayer:
Help us, O God, to recognize that you are standing with us in the hard places of our lives. Thank you for the gift of grace you offer us in Jesus.

“David was now in serious trouble because his men were very bitter about losing their wives and children, and they began to talk of stoning him. But David found strength in the Lord his God.” 1 Samuel 30:6.

I love this concise statement about David finding strength in God. It comes in the harrowing account (I Samuel 30) in which he and his fugitive companions return from battle to find their camp looted and their wives and children gone.  The story is a wonderful encouragement for those who seek to walk with God in the midst of life’s most difficult times. It also resonates authentically with the realities and challenges that we encounter in prayer.

Jesus taught that we are to take one day at a time, “each day has enough trouble of its’ own” (Matt 6:34). There is a version of trouble that we could perhaps describe as “wear and tear” trouble, chronic challenges, reversals of all kinds, new irritants, vexing decisions. There are times, however, when circumstances converge to form a perfect storm of trouble and crisis.

David was now in serious trouble. Serious trouble is complicated and multilayered. It defies management. It’s not a storm that happens in the confines of one’s own heart but involves other players, and often menacing, real time circumstances that require a response. In David’s case, he had been on the run for his life from Saul in the wilderness for years. It was in this place of weariness that those closest to him considered turning violently against him. At the same time he and his companions were in deep anguish at the loss of their wives and children.

But David found strength in the Lord his God. In the extremity of his situation, a precious transaction occurs between David and his God. The oppressive and torturous circumstances are invisibly eclipsed by the faith realities of God’s presence and strength.

How may we participate in this peace and faith in times of extreme trial? How may we subdue our panicked inner first responders when facing crisis? Times of serious trouble are both inevitable and unpredictable. We may say, “nothing could have prepared me for this!” Our theology affirms God’s presence and sovereignty but we covet the capacity to rest in Him and His strength.

Prayer nourishes this capacity. Prayer is the practice of being “out on a limb” with God. It is the practice of having “no visible means of support.” It’s the practice of setting aside every prop and scheme in favor of receiving God’s provision and being completely dependent on him. Often, serious trouble seems to suspend time. Again, prayer acclimatizes us to this strange environment.

Most of us occasionally find the silence and unproductivity of prayer to be uncomfortable and challenging, “I’m not doing anything!”; “Nothing is happening!” But perseverance in prayer is perhaps the best preparation for the inevitable “day of evil” that Paul refers to in Ephesians 6:13. In the same chapter Paul punctuates a wonderful list of God’s attributes and graces (armor) for spiritual battle with the call to “pray in the Spirit on all occasions”(vs.18). By God’s grace, time spent with Him in prayer takes the truths of God in scripture and metabolizes them in our hearts.

The outcome of David’s trouble on this occasion was total restoration. We know from the biblical record and from life that it is not always so! Whatever the outcome of our trials, through humility and prayer we may cultivate a heart that by God’s grace may know the encouragement of his presence and strength.

 “I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows, but take heart, I have overcome the world.” John 16:33.

Paul Woodyard
Imago Dei ChristianCommunities

For group discussion:

1.Reflect from your own life on occasions of “serious trouble.” Why are these times such an assault on our faith?

2. In our humanity we will never react perfectly to trouble! How may we nevertheless learn and grow in faith through difficult experiences?

3. How does the obscurity and simplicity of prayer cultivate a heart of faith?

For prayer:

We thank you, Father, that whatever we may feel and experience in times of trial, we are never alone. We thank you for your constant presence and for your invitation to us to remain in your love. We ask that you would help us to do this no matter what the circumstances, Amen.