Creating Safe Spaces To Know God In Ourselves More Deeply
These guided prayer exercises seek to bring us into God's presence where Love meets us as we need this day.
Painting by: Adele Wayman: "Daylily, always coming and going,"oil and oil stick on canvas, 28 x 37 inches, 2006 ©
In the season of Advent, as we wait actively for the One who is coming into the word in new ways this year, the work of preparation is to let go all the old ways of seeing and hearing and speaking that block awareness of Sacred Presence. We let go the habits of being and doing taking up space, claiming our attention and our life energy.
Read MoreEarly Friends exhorted us to walk in the Light, calling us to our higher selves and to conscious connection with God and with all of creation. 1 Thes 5:5 assures us we are children of the Light, something we can forget when fear assails us. The call to walk in the Light is also a call to wake up to the kingdom/kin-dom of God already here, not only in our midst, but within us as well. The guided meditation below gives us practice filling with Light.
Read MoreWe explored the so-called armor of God in my last blog post. In this guided meditation we will practice putting it on and allowing Spirit to interpret what we might need this day.
Read MoreHave you ever noticed how much in our lives recycles? How lessons we thought we’d learned long ago come back for us to deepen the learning, to let it move from our heads to our hearts and be lived in new ways?
Read More“Love your neighbor as you love yourself,” Jesus says (italics added). In focusing on loving our neighbor alone, we miss the part that will actually teach us to love.
Read MorePaul, and many witnesses over the years since, assure us that God uses everything in our lives to create good for us, whether it feels that way to us in the moment or not.
Read MoreOur bodies are wiser than we give them credit for most of the time. I’ve heard several people say recently that they aren’t sure how to pray. Maybe letting our bodies pray instead of our minds will help something shift for us.
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This guided prayer meditation was originally written and recorded for The Dream Big Campaign, (find it on FaceBook) which sought to offer positive, uplifting and informative content the day of the inauguration. Asked for a meditation on opening to love, I kept being brought back to how important it is to be able to love ourselves. When we can love even ourselves, we come to know God's love for us much more fully.
Lectio divina or sacred reading is a centuries old form of praying scripture. This passage has been speaking to me since Jan Wood used it in her guest meditation.
Read MoreWhen we have strong feelings like fear or anger or grief or when we are in some kind of pain, it is hard to be kind or patient or to respond to others caringly. As Richard Rohr often says, if we don’t heal and transform our pain and suffering, we will transmit it to others.
Read MoreI’ve been picking up a sense of fear from people (many who wouldn’t admit to it) off and on for months—regardless how they planned to vote. I was out walking a few days before the election with my mind jumping all over the map when...
Read MoreThe story of Jephthah’s daughter has been on my heart for the last several years. I have thought about it often and wondered what this story can teach us. This story, which is told in Judges 11, is about Jephthah, a commander in the Israelite army, and his unnamed daughter. Before a battle with the Ammonites, Jephthah makes a vow to God.
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“Who backs Goliath?” The question kept coming back from time to time as I drove. Knowing the popular Bible story of David and Goliath where God, once again, raises up the most unlikely person to be a champion of Israel, I wondered why this question kept demanding my attention. I went back to the story told in 1 Samuel 17.
Goliath was the champion of the enemy’s army, which faced Israel’s army on the opposite mountain. Goliath would swagger down into the valley wearing armor and bearing weapons meant to intimidate. He would yell taunts at the Israelites. He wanted an Israelite to come down and fight him on his terms, winner’s side takes all. Goliath was big. He was strong. To the soldiers, he was the very image of power. His enemies responded as they were supposed to—they were dismayed. They were terrified and hopeless.
Jesse had three sons in Saul’s army. One day he called his youngest son David to leave the sheep he was minding in another’s hands and take a care package to his older brothers. David was good-looking, but young and small. When he took the food to his brothers at the army encampment, he saw Goliath come down and issue his daily challenge. David asked so many questions that someone finally took him to Saul, the king. David, the scrawny shepherd boy, told Saul he would go up against Goliath, the powerful and well-trained warrior, in the name of the Lord. David assured him he was used to killing lions and bears as he protected his sheep.
Saul apparently had run out of options and put David in his own armor to go fight. Notice Saul assumed the terms that Goliath had set, even as he sensed God moving in David’s presence and faith. David couldn’t move in Saul’s armor and took it off. God apparently can use our vulnerability more than our self-protection. David took his light-weight sling and five smooth river rocks and went out to meet Goliath—whom we can imagine doubled over in laughter or throwing insults in righteous indignation at the affront. David made it clear he came in the name of One way more powerful than Goliath. He got off one shot with his sling—a rock to the forehead—and the man seen as powerful fell.
Are we questioning our assumptions about power yet? The Bible asks us to do so over and over and over. We’re pretty attached to our images of biggest and strongest and wealthiest when it comes to power. But we don’t have to be intimidated by them.
God uses the willing with what they have at hand. God calls us with the varieties of tools and gifts we know how to use and provides us with anything else we need. The God who can turn all things into good even uses our failures and our fear and shame when we offer them. God always seems to call and side with the underdog, with the vulnerable, with the overlooked ones.
But who backs Goliath? When we know the end of the story, it’s easy to trust that God will give David all he needs to prevail. Faith is about not knowing the end of the story and trusting God anyway. Don’t most of us, most of the time, put our trust in the Goliaths? Don’t we put our faith in the images of power portrayed all around us? Until David showed up, Saul’s army trusted Goliath and his brute strength more than they trusted God—and did they even then think there was any hope? We may secretly hope God will raise up a David to save the day, but don’t we want him to look like Goliath? In the meantime, in our fear we do our best to appease the Goliaths around us. How does that work for us really? David didn’t let Goliath define him. His strength was in being his real self, centered in God.
What are the Goliaths before whom we shake in terror? Are we praying God will raise up Davids and Davidas of all shapes and sizes for today’s needs? Or do we dismay? Do we believe and speak and act as if God is powerless to change anything? Do we give the Goliaths power by the ways we speak of them or by accepting the situations around us on their terms?
What if God is calling us to turn from the Goliaths we might look to for protection and have faith that here and now God is doing a new thing? What could happen if we offered God our fears and our weakness along with our gifts and the tools we use every day?
Sanctuary by Helen Parrish, ©.
© IMAGINING THE WORD, 2016.
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