Category: Sister Judy (Page 263 of 271)

Devotions from Just Between Us magazine on waiting on God

God often answers our prayers with the four letter word WAIT. Waiting is hard and painful and tiring but it is a discipline that is intended to strengthen us. It is a discipline that produces righteousness and peace. ( Heb. 12:11-12)

While we are waiting we need to spend consistent time in God’s presence, seeking His purpose and reviewing His  promises. God knows us and our situation intimately.
We must not become so obsessed with a “Wait” event in our life, that we miss the other blessings of God. Not only do we need to watch for the blessings in other areas of our lives, but we need to seek out opportunities to help and comfort others.

In James 1 we are told to consider it joy when we go through trials and the discipline of waiting can be a trial. We need to live the abundant life that Jesus promised even while waiting.  Joyful living should not be ‘’paused” like the button on a DVD player while we are waiting. How often do we say we will be happy when we sell the house or get a better job.  We need to practice joy now not when.
Often in hindsight we can see how our character was developed as we waited.
We can focus on our purposes, or we can focus on our problems…one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get our focus off ourselves and onto God and others.

Devotions from an article in Just Between Us on Soul Friendship
Soul friends fight for us to become the person God intended all along, reminding us where we are going. They see who we will be, not necessarily who we are now.

“To truly love someone is to see them as God intended.” Said Dostoyevsky

There is no greater gift than to have a soul friend come along side us and as we journey and to feel our pain and bring us before the Father in love. Just being listened to helps us gather strength.

With a real friend we don’t have to be “fine” We don’t’ have to be someone with all the answers and none of the problems of life. We can be a wreck. They can hold us in our messiness, not feeling like running the other way or trying to fix us up. 

Soul friends hold our hearts and redirect our attention to God and encourage us to hold on.
Chesterton was right: “There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.”

Devotions from Leighton Ford’s book, The Attentive Life

God’s love reaches out to us and calls us to our heart’s true home.
“Love is seeking us, the only Love that redeems time, that takes the fragments of what is past and the hope of what is coming, and binds them together in the love of God which is in Christ our Lord.”

A prayer by St. Fursey for this day:
“The arms of God be around my shoulders

the touch of the Holy Spirit upon my head,

the sign of Christ’s cross upon my forehead,

the sound of the Holy Spirit in my nostrils,

the vision of heaven’s company in my eyes,

the conversation of heaven’s company on my lips,

the work of God’s church in my hands,

the service of God and the neighbor in my feet,

A home for God in my heart,

And to God, the Father of all, my entire being.

Yesterday’s sermon spoke especially to me as I had been contemplating these past couple weeks on the Lord singing over me with love, from scripture. I know we all know this in our heads, but do our hearts really know He delights in us and sings over us?  Any way Pastor Thea’s sermon was on music and how the Lord sings over us with love. What confirmation to my heart.

Devotions from Leighton Ford’s book  The Attentive Life

The season of midlife, when the curve of our energy begins to drop, is a time to rest and enjoy the fullness of what life has to offer and to let go of regrets over what may have passed us by. It is not a time of retreat but of renewal, a time to explore and develop new and overlooked parts of ourselves. This is especially the time to make fresh room for God in our heart. It is a time to embrace the now and the inevitable contradictions in ourselves and around us.
Like a rest in a musical score, we pause to come to a stop between light and night, busyness and quietness, between winding up and winding down.

God’s rest for us involves freedom- to trust, to live out His dream for us, to work, create, play , let go, and move on. The rest God offers is the freedom to be fully present in the moment, free to reflect and enjoy what has been; to let go of the deficits and regrets that wear us down; free to envision what will be, what we are being re-created for; free to unburden ourselves of regretful thoughts about our yesterdays and anxious thoughts about our tomorrows.

Thomas Keating says we spend the first part of our lives finding our role-what we are conditioned by our culture to DO- and the next part finding our true selves, what we are called by God to BE.

God puts a sense of eternity in our hearts, and true rest in this life is a foretaste.

May you embrace the day and be present in the moment.

Devotions from Leighton Ford’s book, The Attentive Life

We all go through dark times of doubt, depression, disappointment, betrayal etc  If we learn to embrace our suffering, to carry it rather than lying under its weight and letting ourselves be crushed, then something strange happens.: We have lifted the weight and instead of being crushed by it we find it light-  “My yoke is easy, my burden is light”.

Without the depths, the height would not exist or appear so magnificent.

Where are the spiritual highs and lows in our life? Where was God in all of this?

Corrie ten Boom use to say,” There is no pit so deep that His love is not deeper still.”

The love of Christ is boundless: it is bottomless; it is infinite: it is divine. It passes knowledge.

We will strike the bottom of every other love; but never His love. We will never come to the length, breadth, depth or height of it. To all eternity, the love of Christ to us will be new.

God watches over our heart and mind as a mother hen watches over her chicks.

Thus, we can walk into the darkness rather than to try to outrun it. May we allow ourselves to be transformed by our suffering rather than to avoid it.

Devotions from Leighton Ford’s book The Attentive Life

As shadows start to lengthen, we realize that things don’t last forever and we need to pay more attention to the things that endure.

We begin to wonder what we must let go of. What we need to hold on to closely. What do we need to reach out to more hopefully.

In this season of our lives we begin to see our losses like health, relationships, jobs, and we may sense a time of darkness.

To enter this darkness is to enter into the mystery of God and to the darkness of the unknown.  But it is also a time to know God more deeply. When our hearts break, they break open: then the word of God can enter deeply.

There are many deaths that we die throughout our lives: the death of our youth, of our dreams, of even our ideas of God and our church.  Yet these many deaths may be God’s way of bringing transformation and new life to us.

Just like the 40 days between Jesus death and resurrection and the coming of Pentecost, we must allow our spirit time to grieve the old , to be prepared to let go and receive the gift of the Spirit we need for our new life.

The author suggests for us to 1.Name our deaths. 2.Claim our births. 3.Grieve what we have lost and adjust to the new reality. 4. Do not cling to the old, and let it ascend and give you its blessing. 5. Accept the spirit of the life that you are in fact living.

We may not enjoy the dark times but they can be precisely the times when we have grown most deeply.

May we live this day paying attention to what is important.

Devotions from Leighton Ford’s book The Attentive Life
“We must be still and keep on moving.”  T.S. Elliot  

We need to be still because we are not God and He is.

When we are still our knowing comes not from without but from within, or more truly, what I see and experience without is received and illuminated within.

We must just BE before God.

When we are still God can break though the many layers with which we protect ourselves so that we can be poised to listen.

When we are on “automatic” we know many things very partially. In a mindful state we know a few things quite well.  In true contemplation we know one thing at a time deeply. And the many things fuse into one thing.

The paradox of our modern world is that we know so much about so many things, about how things work, but so little about who we are as persons, why we are.

When we reach the midpoint of our lives, we begin more and more to integrate the inner and the outer and discover a hidden wholeness as we begin to become our true selves.

May we stop long enough to pay attention to what God is saying to us, no matter where we are in our journeys. Our times are in His hands.

Often at the midpoint of our lives we are susceptible to distractions and fatigue.

Distractions are not necessarily bad if they are divine interruptions by which God gets our attention and turns us in a new direction.  Think of Saul when his life was interrupted by a divine light.  We need to pay attention when we are given a grace-giving distraction. (Example of Mary whose marriage plans were turned upside down by the angel’s announcement!) 

Sometimes important discoveries are made about life, the world, and ourselves from those moments of interruption when our attention is called away to something new.

This kind of distraction is different from the distractibility that diverts us from our true calling.

In fact we can suffer from SADD, a kind of Spiritual Attention Deficit Disorder as we get so busy and fatigue sets in.  We need to stop and realize how much is going on right now that we are missing.

Why don’t we give the Lord our full attention?
When we become overtired, maybe it is because we try to do it all ourselves and are not trusting God’s strength fully enough.

When we are anxious, maybe we don’t trust his goodness and power enough.

When we are apathetic we have not trusted his grace enough

When we are afraid, we have not trusted his love enough.

But when we turn to Him, His all-compassionate love is waiting to stream into our lives.

Devotions from Leighton Ford’s book, The Attentive Life
Why is it that we so often let many busy things of life pull us away from the main thing that should get our full attention?

Distraction comes from the Latin word to pull apart. When we are distracted we pull away from what deep down we know is our most fundamental goal, purpose or direction. We become confused by conflicting emotions or worries and get restless. Hurry is the enemy of the life of the Spirit.

Even the church may have so many activities that we are not “physically fit” to join the church!
Distraction splits us down the middle and divides us against ourselves.

Martha was so busy that she missed enjoying the present moment with Jesus. We need to pay attention to both our Martha and Mary parts…we are contemplatives in the midst of life!

Only one thing is needful.

“The things that don’t matter can be regarded with indifference and forgotten

The good things of life take priority.

But the best and deepest are discovered only through attentive waiting.”

Devotions from Leighton Ford’s book  The Attentive Life

Too often we hurry through our day and rush into things rather than doing things thoughtfully and will a whole-hearted attention. Much of the time we are only half looking, and half seeing and too  preoccupied with our thoughts to live in the present.

Before we launch into each day it is important that our “root system” is in place, that we are rooted and grounded in love.

Is our root system deep, wide, long and strong enough to withstand the pressures of each day?  It is most important that we abide and stay connected to the Vine so we can be fruitful and at home with Him.

To abide is not to settle down and forget the rest of the world. “It is a summons to stick with Him on the way, wherever that may lead, the promise that whatever comes He will stay with you.” It means constantly looking to Him and listening for His voice, seeking His ways. It is a continual conversation in which I listen to God’s voice and speak back to him.
Henri Nouwen said to pray without ceasing is to think, speak and live in the presence of God.

As we begin the day, may we quietly sit in His presence, waiting for His voice, hearing from His word ,and trusting Him who longs to spend time with us.