Month: January 2010 (Page 3 of 4)

Devotions from “Living the Lord’s Prayer” by Albert Haase

There are no words to adequately describe our God and our limited understanding can not reach the heights of all that He is.  God is love but He is also so much more than what the human word Love means.

From the words of St. Francis: He is love, charity, wisdom, humility, patience, beauty, meekness, security, rest, gladness, joy, hope, justice, sufficiency etc etc. and so much more.  God is indescribable, unfathomable, in comprehensible. He is like the air we breathe: we can never grasp it with our hands. It is arrogant to think God can be captured, photographed, contained or described by the human heart or mind. God is God! 
Some people find that words, images and metaphors help make them more aware of His presence.  Others prefer the awe-filled silence and absence of images and metaphors.  Sometimes our prayer leads us to the gift of silent contemplation. When this happens, God quenches our thirst, feeds our hunger and  makes us forget all earthly things  It is like basking in the presence of God and is there anything more wonderful than that?!

Devotions from Albert Haase’s book, Living the Lord’s Prayer

Christian love is expresses in so many ways: friendship, acts of kindness, sharing our time, talents or treasures etc. 

Hospitality is one practical way to express love for our neighbor and reflects our love for our Father.

Part of hospitality is simply welcoming another sister or brother into the circle of our attention by welcoming words, handshake, hug, kiss, embrace etc.  This we have felt and experienced personally at our new church. Al often remarks that they couldn’t be more friendly to us.

The early Christians addressed one another as brother and sister and greeted one another with a kiss.
We also can go through all the motions of hospitality and still miss the importance of offering our undivided attention. 
We not only acknowledge someone else but accept them without judgment or criticism.  Just like Jesus called unworthy Zacchaeus out of a tree or accepted the sinful woman washing his feet with her tears.

Let us ask ourselves, how do we express hospitality?  Do we open ourselves up to others through love and graceful hospitality?

 Devotions from Albert Haase,s book, Living the Lord’s Prayer

Love of God and love of neighbor go hand in hand.  One love complements and completes the other. In John 4:20 it says we cannot love God whom we have not seen if we do not love our brother or sister whom we have seen.
In other words love for God is expressed in love of our neighbor and involves self-forgetfulness.
We are meant to be relational and to feel pity and compassion for the concerns of others. We cannot pray with our eyes closed to the world.

 “Authentic compassion and intercession are the natural and spontaneous responses of disciples as they live in and relate to the world. …..Disciples are constantly in labor as they struggle to perform selfless acts of sacrificial love for others in response to Abba’s love and compassion.”

Compassion changes our heart of stone into a heart of flesh.  It is a witness to the world that we belong to the Lord. The more our hearts are open to the needs of others the more we reflect our identity as His children.

Let us not be self absorbed but walk the way of love and compassion.

Devotions based on Albert Haase’s  book, “Living the Lord’s Prayer

Each Sunday when we go to church we find as many different images of God as there are people in the congregation.  Each of us has painted an image of God on our heart that is framed from our past experiences and shaped by our present situation. If our image of God is healthy, we will see Him as an unconditionally loving God being as close to us as a father to his child. This healthy God-image will call forth selfless, sacrificial love for others as an  expression of our response to God for His great love. .

Our God-image shapes everything about our spirituality from why we pray to how we understand suffering and evil in the world. Sometimes we find it hard to let go of our distorted unhealthy images of God.

When we call Him our Father does it bring up feelings of love, respect, trust, and familiarity?  Or do we picture our father as distant and aloof?  Jesus intimacy with God must have confounded people like the Pharisees who burdened people with endless rules. He wants to be close to us and for our image of Him to exude the unconditional love of God.  He desires to nurture us, to strengthen us, and to let us know He has chosen us. He loves us not because we are good and have done all the right things but because He is good. His love is not fickle and conditional, based on expectations and hidden agendas.  His love is extravagant!!! May our past distorted image of Him be replaced with the truth of the loving Father that He is.

Devotions from Albert Haases’ book, Living the Lord’s Prayer.

Haase is a priest, spiritual director, and former missionary to China

When a disciple asked Jesus “Teach us to pray” Jesus didn’t respond with a method or technique but with words that capture the essence of His teaching and ministry.

Much of the time when we pray the Lord’s prayer we assume it is God’s responsibility to do what we ask….to give us our daily bread, to forgive our sins, deliver us from evil etc.

 But Father Haase suggests that we should act too and be changed by our praying. He challenges us to live what we pray.  It is not just saying the words but to walk in the way of His disciple.

These words, attitudes and actions are the benchmark for us to reach our truest identity as His followers.

The Lord’s Prayer is like a summery of the Christian faith and is a guide for spiritual formation. As we pray it and live it, we will grow more deeply into Him.

It is easy to say this prayer without really letting the meaning soak in. But let us give flesh to its words today by the way we live.

Devotions from Mark McMinn’s book Finding Our Way Home

Heaven is “Where we find what we want, what we have always wanted.”  WE have always wanted to be home, surrounded in the security of perfect love and understanding. Sometimes we obscure this great good, this deep longing of our heart, by filling our lives with lesser good things or with distractions, and yet the longing persists.

In heaven what we want and what we have will be perfectly aligned. Today, we live in a broken world but someday all will be in focus.

We have to decide by faith whether we are living in a one-act play or a three-act play. If it is a one-act play, then we are in the midst of a slow progression from life to death. This is all there is.
But if we are living in a three-act play –creation, fall, and redemption- then the progression is from a full life to compromised life and back to full life. Then death is not the last word. Life is the final word.  We have an amazing future that awaits us. Heaven will be a place of desire and passion and adventure. We will dance and sing before the Lord as our heart’s deepest desires are expressed and fulfilled.

 Devotions from Mark McMinn’s book, Finding Our Way Home

God is high above us, transcendent in all ways, yet He is also with us, immanent in our day-to-day world. If we lean too far in the direction of transcendence we may view our creator as remote and not concerned about us. If we teeter the other way, we may drift into pantheism, that there is no room for the person to exist outside of creation.

 We need to look high to see God but we also need to be aware He is right here with us now, bursting with love for us and extending His grace.

He is our Creator and we are His creatures. He transcends us, existed before us, and is supreme over all creation. This takes the pressure off of us. We are not left to figure out truth on our own.

But let us not look too high up or too far away for God that we forget that He is with us, revealed in Jesus, inviting us to come as we are, clothed in the messiness of humanity.

As I go for prayer walks most days I am in noticing and appreciating God’s beautiful creation but often put my hand over my heart, realizing He is right there with me.

May your day be filled with the knowledge that He is there.

Devotions from  Mark McMinn’s book, Finding Our Way Home

Among the blessings in life, good friendship is among the very best.  Being with a good friends is like enjoying cool, fresh water after a long hot hike, quenching the thirst of our soul.  But in our friendships, our pride often keeps us from seeing the truth that we fail our neighbors and ourselves.   We may speak caustic words, have misunderstandings, become annoyed with them etc.  When we have a hassle in our long-term relationships it is like carrying a pebble along our journey. If another hassle comes up, then we have two pebbles and so on. If our little hassles go unmanaged and the pebbles start accumulating, they become weighty and weigh us down.  But as we resolve our differences, it’s like dropping our pebbles along the path.  God delights in restoring broken relationships and bringing healing. Jesus is the greatest reconciler of all and calls us to mend broken relationships whenever possible. “Courage is not found in denying our faults or minimizing how others disappoint us, but in getting up again and again to build shalom in the midst of complex relationships.”

Devotions based on  Finding Our Way Home by Mark McMinn

Jesus offers us a better way that ultimately leads to greater peace and joy than any life plan we could devise on our own. The path to the abundant life He came to bring calls us to give up trying to engineer our own happiness and to discover true life in Him.

The more we know God, the more we discover our truest self, and the more we discover our true self, the more fully we will know God.

The true self is the full, complete person we were each created to be as we walk securely in God’s love. The false self grasps to meet our needs in our own self-serving ways, attempting to find meaning apart from God.

Jesus said, “If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for me, you will find true life.” Matt. 16:25
To deny ourselves is not to stop caring about ourselves but the need to give up our selfish ambition  and deny our false selves.

TO discover our true self in God is a journey that we will never fully complete in this life, but we get glimpses of it as we live close to the center of God’s love.

May we remember that God’s way is better than anything we can devise on our own….Let us keep journeying towards our true life in Him.