Sunday-Ps.71 is written from the perspective of growing old, so I love it. It has the sense that our ties to God and others fray with age, so it clings to the presence of god as refuge and source of help.As you look over the course of life, where do you perceive the hand of god, the protection of God?
Monday-Martin Luther describes our "dull sloth" and what to do about it in his Small Catechism:"Our sinful self with all its evil deeds and desires should be drowned through daily repentance (so that) day after day a new self should arise to live with God in righteousness and purity forever." And again, "In baptism God forgives sin, delivers from death and the devil, and gives everlasting salvation to all who believe what he has promised."God Pause
Tuesday-Don't just stand there, do something." Turn the saying on its head: "Don't just do something, stand there." Often we equate believing with doing, when in fact non-action might become the creed--and even the deed. Ask:Contemplate a time when by not racing into action but by pulling back your presence became a gift to yourself or another?
Wednesday-"Stability is the solid anchor which helps us to avoid falling into the shadow side of seeking where we are always looking beyond the horizon for the next thing to save us, never savoring our current experience and recognizing the grace and sacredness already present."--- Christine Valters Painter
Thursday -I do not remember an elderly woman’s name. What she said that I do remember was simple but profound: at every stage of our lives, there are things that we cannot do. And the corollary is that at every stage there are things that we can do. Now that I am no longer so young, I take courage from this woman's observation and Jeremiah's (1:4-10)example.From God Pause
Friday-"We thirst and we hunger after God, but we are not filled because we refuse to be filled. We go only far enough, take only enough of a drink or a taste to say, 'Ah, that is good. Thank you.' But we do not drink to fill or eat the feast provided. In a solitary place God waits for each of us, to show us ourselves in radiant, direct honesty, to show us our abject hunger, our spiritual dehydration. God waits in the desert, in the wilderness of trials for us. And if we want God we must go there alone. This is the painful news: Our need is great, absolute. Without [God] we will die. This is the good news: [God] waits for us in the solitude of transformation. [God] promises to fill us and to send us on changed."
Saturday-“Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.” – Terry Tempest Williams
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