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Psalm 43 is a cry for God’s refuge in times of sorrow, turmoil, and disappointment. This new guided prayer over at Soul Space is perfect for facing the uncertainty of Election Day and whatever happens in the days ahead. Listen and find solid ground in our only true source of hope, certainty, and joy.
Find me on Instagram @ravishedbylight
I’m so excited to announce my friends and fellow spiritual directors Janine Rohrer and David Buchs have launched our new website, Soul Space. At Soul Space, we create room for your soul to breathe. Our vision is to make space for busy people to find rest, nourishment, and inspiration for their souls. We offer guided meditations, spiritual direction, and retreats.
To go with the new website, we’ve posted a new guided meditation, set to David’s ambient music. Based on Psalm 25, it leads the listener to prayerfully reflect on trust, hope, and repentance and on God’s guidance, compassion, and love.
Listen to it now and let your soul find rest from a busy day! We’ll be releasing a new recording next week, too!
You can also find archived reflections on our Soul Space page at Soundcloud.
Find me on Instagram @ravishedbylight.
I’ve been thinking about a line from the poem “Death Shall Have No Dominion,” by Dylan Thomas. First of all, my sense of the absurd is tickled by its presence on a site called “Funeral Helper,” where it is listed as a “popular non-religious funeral poem.” Do people at funerals actually want to hear this poem? It’s not entirely comforting. Its language is properly Biblical (which seems problematic enough for the “non-religious” set) but becomes so bleak and at times grotesque that it seems unlikely to make anyone feel better. Unless “Twisting on racks when sinews give way” is an image that warms your cockles, in which case you probably liked Fifty Shades of whatever way more than I did.
On the plus side, it’s at least honest about torture being a sucky way to die.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering what “cockles” means, which I did, Google tells me they are either the ventricles of your heart, from the root word “cochlea,” which said ventricles resemble, or a shellfish that tastes delicious boiled and with a dash of white wine vinegar.
Also, they’re alive, alive o.
A bit of family lore: My husband wanted to name our son Dylan Thomas, but I objected to naming him after a hard-drinking, soul-tortured poet, however beautiful the lines he composed. Wouldn’t that be asking for trouble? So we struck that name off our list. Then, we accidentally gave him the name of a famous comedian. Which is totally fine, because most comedians are well-adjusted teetotalers, right?
But getting back to the poem, the line sticking in my head is this: “Faith in their hands shall snap in two.” It’s stuck because it’s set up echoes in my head with a passage in a book called Interior Freedom, which was written by a member of a Carmelite community with the perfectly perfect French name of Jacques Phillipe.
Jacques writes:
Desire can only be strong is what is desired is perceived as accessible, possible . . . We cannot effectively want something if we have the sense that “we’ll never make it” . . . [But] Through hope, we know we can confidently expect everything from God . . . But for hope to be a real force in our lives, it needs a solid foundation, a bedrock of truth. That solid foundation is given by faith: we can “hope against hope” because “we know whom we have believed.” Faith makes us cling firmly to the truth handed on by Scripture, which tells us of the goodness of God, his mercy, and his absolute faithfulness to his promises” (105).”
I can’t set my heart on something I don’t believe is possible – whether that something is a fulfilling relationship, a satisfying job, a dream home, a reconciliation with someone I care about. If I don’t believe those things will happen ever, not in a million years, then why waste time hoping? But the converse is this: Faith provides us with the assurance that we need in order to hold out hope, even in difficult circumstances. It’s not faith in any thing, but faith in a person – in God who is good and always keeps his promises. In Jesus who is the living embodiment of love, truth, and unfailing mercy towards us. Faith, as it says in Hebrews 11:1 “shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.”
That’s why, when we are standing before the Risen Christ and death has been defeated once and for all, we will have no need for faith. We will have all the evidence we need, right before our eyes, that God has been making all things new, all along. The reality of everything we have hoped for will have come to pass. Faith, which has sustained us through all our years, will be obsolete, as unnecessary as a childhood blankie long loved but outgrown.
This morning, as I was thinking and praying about my next Advent reflection, the news was coming in about the bombing in the subway tunnels of Midtown Manhattan. Thankfully, there were only a few minor injuries and the bomber was caught.
In light of the attack this morning, here are my thoughts on the name “Mighty God.” I will post the missing reflection on “Counselor” later this week.
For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. – Isaiah 9:6.
READ
Jeremiah 23:5-6
“For the time is coming,”
says the Lord,
“when I will raise up a righteous descendant
from King David’s line.
He will be a King who rules with wisdom.
He will do what is just and right throughout the land.
And this will be his name:
‘The Lord Is Our Righteousness.’
In that day Judah will be saved,
and Israel will live in safety.
REFLECT & PRAY
“Living between the resurrection of Jesus and the final coming together of all things in heaven and earth means celebrating God’s healing of the world, not his abandoning of it” – N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope
This morning, a bomb exploded in a subway station in Midtown Manhattan. It did very little harm, and the would-be suicide bomber has been captured. But we know there are more people like him bent on violence of one kind of another, all over the world. Everywhere we turn, there are “wars and rumors of wars.”
It seems only fair to wonder: Where is God and why isn’t he doing anything about all of this?
Centuries ago, God gave the prophet Jeremiah a glimpse into his plan. He told Jeremiah he would send a King unlike any other – a perfect ruler who would bring wisdom, justice, and security. He would bring his divided people back together, back from war and exile. The new King would give his people his righteousness. He would restore their ability to live in a rich, intimate relationship with God.
God’s promise, given through Jeremiah, brought much-needed hope at a time when his people were caught in political turmoil, fear, and heartache. And it brings hope to us today.
Jesus, our Mighty God, came to be King not just of Israel but to all of us. When Jesus defeated death and evil at the cross, he began his reign. He began extending his rule over everyone and everything, a process of healing and restoration that will only be complete when he returns to earth again. In that day, he will bring lasting peace, prosperity, and joy to all of creation. As N.T. Wright explains, God hasn’t abandoned the world; he is healing it.
More than ever, we need Jesus to come and bring his promised peace. While we wait, we have the incredible privilege of working alongside Jesus, to bring healing and hope in our own spheres of influence. Sometimes that might not feel like much, but empowered by the Holy Spirit, we can work and pray, with faith, towards that time when Jesus’ reign is complete.
OBEY
Speak to Jesus about your hopes and fears for today and for the future. Ask him to give you a vision for his “healing of the world” and how you can play a part in it. Pray for the courage and faith to follow your calling.
Ask the Holy Spirit to show you a person in need of encouragement. Ask Jesus what words of hope he has for that person. Contact that person and pass on Jesus’ words.
Summer in the Psalms is a series from the Revised Common Lectionary. Sunday sermons and written reflections are based on the Psalm and additional passages for each week.
Guest writer: Mercy Perez
Read
Reflect
I made the decision to follow Jesus at the age of sixteen. I was at a youth conference when the invitation was extended and I accepted. I was young and had the notion that if I became a Christian my life would be problem free.
A few years into my walk as a believer, that notion was shattered. I realized that, believer or not, I was not exempt from the harshness that surrounded me. I was not exempt from the consequences of my poor decisions, nor from the consequences of others’ poor judgments and decisions.
But Jesus had sowed the good seed in me: the message of hope and life that flourished and deepened my desire to continue to follow him. That hope sown in me served as a lifeline when doubt, fear, discouragement and disappointments grew like weeds threatening to destroy me.
When I was at my weakest I heard the Holy Spirit whisper to me, telling me how much I was loved and that no matter what assailed me or where I turned, God would always be there.
Respond
Reread Psalm 139 for a reminder that no matter where you go, God is always guiding and holding you. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you receive and meditate on God’s love. Let the experience of being loved by God wash away any anxiety or feelings of being overwhelmed.
Thank God for having fearfully and wonderfully knit you together in your mother’s womb (Psalm 139:14) and for being with you every day since.
Day 8 of my 30-day writing challenge / Summer in the Psalms (sermon series and reflections from Vineyard One NYC, based on the Psalms and linked readings from the Revised Common Lectionary) .
Read: Matthew 9:35-10:8
. . . But the one who endures to the end will be saved (v.22).
Reflect
I kind of hate passages like this one in Matthew. They start off great: Jesus healing people and casting out demons, then empowering his disciples to do the same.
But then the other shoe drops. Jesus tells the disciples about the terrible price they will pay for their mission. They’re going to be arrested and beaten, betrayed, hated, and even killed. Their lives will be spent fleeing from town to town, perhaps finding temporary refuge in one or two, before leaving for the next.
Jesus is blunt with his followers about the suffering that they can expect. He doesn’t soften the blow by saying, “Oh, it won’t be so bad.” Instead, he tells them to endure – that they will be rewarded in the end.
I don’t know how Jesus’ disciples took this news, but I think it stinks. If I wanted to go through pain in the moment for the sake of long-term rewards, well, then, I’d . . . exercise.
If I’d heard Jesus’ teaching at the time, I’m pretty sure I’d have been tempted to run screaming in the other direction. Sometimes I still am. Sometimes I wonder why anyone would buy what Jesus is selling here.
There are two main reasons that I’ve learned to reconcile myself with Jesus’ teaching about persecution and pain for the sake of the Gospel. The first is that, without persecution, the Gospel would probably only be known in a small part of the world. When the Christians in the early church faced persecution where they lived, they left for other places. They took their faith in Jesus with them, faith that had been tested and strengthened by fire. That’s how the Good News spread. Does this make it okay that Christians are even now being killed and driven out of their homes in different parts of the world? No, it doesn’t. And I really doubt it helps the people it is actually happening to. But still . . . it tells me, on the basis of factual, recorded history, that the persecution of Christians actually does result in more people knowing who Jesus is.
The second reason is that, while we live on this planet, we are going to suffer. People get sick, lose their jobs, fall pray to accidents and natural disaster, or get hurt by other people who are damaged or infantile or just plain mean. There’s no way to avoid pain, or to choose not to experience it. But each of us can choose to suffer for the sake of Christ, rather than for some other person or cause. We can ask for the grace to see suffering as Jesus did: as redemptive in the end, as bearing fruit in ourselves and in other people, and as motivated by our love for Christ and the people that he gave his life for.
The Apostle Paul was no stranger to pain and persecution. The wisdom and encouragement he shared with the early church in Romans 5:1-5 was hard-won:
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.
And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
The hope we have in Christ is neither facile or naive. It’s not as Karl Marx accused, pain meds for the masses, there to dull our emotions and make us into mindless puppets of a higher power. Instead, it’s the very real, historically demonstrable love of God for us, a love that continues to spread and change the world.
Respond
Pray for Christians who are suffering persecution, whether in small or life-shattering ways. If this describes you, ask someone to pray for you.
Thank God for how he uses even the worst circumstances to bring more and more people into his family. Pray for Christ’s redeeming love to be ever more present in our lives.