We just finished our November sermon series on simplicity, generosity, and joy. There we gave away keytags with a prayer from Adam Hamilton’s book Enough printed on them. It just struck me that as we start preparing for Christmas this prayer means even more now than then. See if it’s a helpful journey-toward-Christmas prayer for you:
Lord, help me to be grateful for what I have, to remember that I don’t need most of what I want, and that joy is found in simplicity and generosity.
Rueben Job’s book When You Pray, in the chapter for this week (p. 214), talks about keeping on with prayer. Practicing. Because it takes “time to learn how to listen for God.” Think about the things you cherish. Chances are you have taken the time to practice them. Reading novels. Fixing up an antique car. Chipping and putting on the golf course. Playing the piano. The art of conversation. Baking that pie from scratch.
Isn’t it good for us to practice giving thanks? Standing in awe before God? Asking for things for others and for ourselves that aren’t shallow? Confessing our failures before God–being authentic? Receiving, truly receiving, God’s forgiveness and grace?
Practicing. Prayer. The two words go together.
Like many folks at my church, Centennial United Methodist in Roseville, Minnesota, I’m praying through the book by Rueben P. Job, When You Pray. This week there’s a quote from Trappist monk Basil Pennington, who says: “A father is delighted when his little one, leaving off his toys and friends, runs to him and climbs into his arms….Our Centering Prayer is much like that. we settle down in our Father’s arms, in his loving hands. Our mind, our thoughts, our imaginations may flit about here and there…but essentially we are choosing to remain for this time intimately with our Father…It is a very simple prayer.”
I am just learning this kind of prayer. I have to admit that I’m much more used to thanking, or asking, or praising, or confessing. But not to resting. Not to simply opening myself to God. But you know, it’s a new adventure in life–simply resting in prayer, in quiet, in enjoyment of opening myself to God. Opening myself to What IS. I believe that God is a living God, that God is filled with unconditional love and courageous truth, that God is greater than evil. So why not give myself to this kind of prayer? I’m reading the new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (martyred at the hands of the Nazis) by Eric Metaxas, and am moved by the genuine sense of God’s immediate presence that Bonhoeffer had as he prayed, as he read Scripture, and as he lived his life. This is the kind of prayer that Basil Pennington talks about. It’s an adventure.
How about for you? What’s your adventure with God?
I was reading the Scripture assigned yesterday in Rueben P. Job’s book When You Pray, Acts 14:21-28. Relating the far-flung travels of Paul and Barnabas spreading the good news of Christ’s love, we read that they arrived in Antioch, where they shared how God “had opened a door of faith for the Gentiles.” (v. 28)
Do I notice when the door of faith is just cracked open, waiting for me to open it and walk through? Are there times I just brush past it, too distracted to open it? Could it be that I can be an open door of faith for someone today?
I preached on Lectio Divina (Divine Reading) on Sunday, an ancient way of praying through Scripture. It’s an open door for faith. We are invited by the Spirit to walk through it:
I’ve been using Rueben Job’s When You Pray guidebook, and the guide for the week of October 3 asks us to start by centering our hearts by reading Isaiah 51:1. “Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug,” says the prophet who seeks to encourage his fellow Jews who were displaced in the Exile in Babylon. Who are we? What is home? Is the Lord among us or not? Has the God who led Abraham and Sarah to father and mother a great nation forgotten us now? What is the future God has for us? These are all questions the Jews had during Exile.
And the prophet tells his people not to forget the stuff from which they are made. “Look…to the quarry from which you were dug.” In other words, call forth your strengths–first and foremost that you are God’s people, that you are people who know what Exodus and Promised Land are all about.
When we feel displaced in our lives, by job disruption or relationship difficulty or addiction or just the spin and whir of life, remember to remember the stuff from which we are made, the quarry from which we are dug. Spend time with God in prayer, with people who encourage faith within you, with the word of life in Scripture, all pointing you to God’s affirmation, “Behold, I am with you always.” (Matthew 28:20)
“Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18.3) Today in my sermon on prayer at Centennial United Methodist in Roseville, I shared that children inherently know what 5 key practices of prayer are all about: wonder, authenticity, thankfulness, asking, and listening. Which of these practices of prayer comes most naturally for you? Which comes hardest for you? Why? I’d love to hear from you…
I realized last week, which was the last Sunday in June, that 30 years ago on the last Sunday of June I preached my very first Sunday sermon as a United Methodist pastor, in Caledonia, a beautiful little city in the rolling hills and valleys of southeastern Minnesota. I was 25, just two years older than my son now is. Most of my seminary friends from Duke Divinity School were in Michigan or North Carolina. Jimmy Carter was President. I was four years away from my very first personal computer. No email. No cell phones. It was much harder to network and to share support and wisdom with colleagues and friends.
What a difference from today! I am thankful for the networking tools new clergy have now as they come out of seminary–cell phones, email, FaceBook, MySpace, Skype–and for the mentoring relationships that many denominations have put into place for them. Here in Minnesota, our new clergy have a leadership academy with a three-year curriculum to help make the transition from seminary life to parish life, as well as a bishop who invests wonderful energy into relationships with new clergy.
No doubt new clergy today have other great challenges that new clergy in 1980 did not have. For instance, 30 years ago the church was often perceived as the only game in town, spiritually speaking. Now it is much easier to find other religions to connect with, or create a do-it-yourself spiritual buffet. But the networking available now–across the state, across the nation, across the ocean–with fellow clergy is invaluable for launching and sustaining both the sprints and the marathon that parish ministry calls for.
I’m thankful for ecumenical colleagues I learned to rely upon in the 1980s and beyond. For tremendously honest and loving laypeople who were there for me when I stumbled. For my wife Kay who has walked beside me all 30 years–and who is now a commissioned deacon in the United Methodist Church, responding to her sense of God’s call upon her life as she deepens what has already been a rich ministry as a layperson. For God’s grace given through all these people.
Peace,
Brian
