Reflections for Week of Jan. 7

Sunday-Ps. 72 is for epiphany. I tis the source along with Is. 60, of how the Magi transformed into kings. It provides a partial source for the variety of ethnicities of the Magi in many depictions. For us in 2018, we do well to pay close attention to its expectations of government.





Monday-Eberhard Arnold-The mysterious men from the Orient followed the star and discovered the place where the secret of love lay in the helplessness of a human baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes in the feeding trough of an animal. They discovered the place where God’s love came down. That is the most important thing for all people, to discover individually, in their own time and at their own hour, the place where God’s love has broken through, and then to follow the star that has risen for them and to remain true to the light that has fallen into their hearts.





Tuesday-Frederick Buechner writes, “The incarnation means that all ground is holy ground because God not only made it but walked on it, ate and slept and worked and died on it.” We are to live out our ordinary, everyday lives in the awareness that we are on holy ground in the presence of God. Elizabeth Barrett Browning beautifully expressed it: Earth’s crammed with heaven/ And every common bush afire with God:/But only he who sees takes off his shoes.





Wednesday-A Pueblo friend tells me it's the same in her Native culture: Listen for the truth by attending to our silences. -Kent Ira Groff Reflection: Prayer for Silence How silently, how silently The wondrous gift is given, So God imparts to human hearts The blessings of God's heaven. "O Little Town of Bethlehem" --Philips Brooks -I would be silent, now, and expectant,That I might receive the gift that I need That I might become the gift that others need.





Thursday-Lord, teach us to wait like your faithful servants. When our days are full of freedom and space, guard us from sowing hope in temporal things, which have no permanence and make us hollow. When our days are full of strife and pain, guard us from despairing of your love. Teach us to wait like Simeon, who lived only to see the Son of God. Teach us to wait like Anna, who made her home in the house of the Lord. Teach us, the church, to say with one voice, ‘mine eyes will see the salvation of the Lord.”Amen.Jessamy Delling





Friday-To go in the dark with a light is to know the light./To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,/and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,/and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.Wendell Berry





Saturday-The life that I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and time my touch will be felt. Our lives are linked together. No man is an island.The Hungering Dark