Sunday Ps.19 links the order of creation to the moral order. Grace exists within structure. When do you chafe against divine order? When would you wish to see it more plainly? does science help you appreciate creation?
Monday-“It is important that giving be truly free. It must never degenerate into charity, in the pejorative sense. Alms-giving is Mammon’s perversion of giving. It affirms the superiority of the giver, who thus gains a point on the recipient, binds him, demands gratitude, humiliates him and reduces him to a lower state than he had before.” ~Jacques Ellul
Tuesday-“Like bread and wine, Jesus both makes the heart glad and strengthens it, for which we are thankful. Gratitude is key to understanding the Christian Eucharist: gratitude for God’s good creation; gratitude for Jesus Christ, and our redemption in him, both present and future; and gratitude for the Holy Spirit, by whom the risen Christ becomes present to us and for us. The Eucharist itself (from the Greek, eucharistein, “to give thanks”), is the pulsing heart of our assemblies for worship.” (Byars, “The Sacraments in Biblical Perspective,” p. 18)
Wednesday-"The state of prayer," writes Evagrius, "can be aptly described as a habitual state of imperturbable calm." The Greek word he uses meaning "imperturbable calm" is apatheia, a term drawn directly from the Stoic lexicon. This apatheia he continues, "snatches to the heights of intelligible reality the spirit which loves wisdom and which is truly spiritualized by the most intense love."
Thursday-"I remember mom always telling me that all in all in the end the only one you really have is God. I have come to a place in experience where, in every sense of the word, I have surrendered myself to our creator because there was literally no one else... And by God and by your prayers I have felt tenderly cradled in freefall. I have been shown in darkness, light and have learned that, even in prison, one can be free. I am grateful. I have come to see there is good in every situation, sometimes we just have to look for it."- Kayla Mueller, in a letter to her parents
Friday-”The spiritual life for a Christian is not rising above place and circumstance. The irony of Christian spiritual life is that it is always and in every way material. It is hassling with these particular people who make up my actual life ...and suffering through this loss and rejoicing over these mercies and trying to live in peace with those neighbors and dwelling in this community and dealing with that political tangle and building up these institutions and seeking in the midst of all of this messiness to serve the Jesus Christ who did not come as an idea or as a principle or as a spiritual experience but in the middle of the very same material muck and mire and 'in the flesh." Preaching from Memory to Hope
A ritual is the performance of an intuition, the rehearsal of a dream, the playing of a game.A sacrament is the breaking through of the sacred into the profane; a ritual is the ceremonial acting out of the profane in order to show forth its sacredness.A sacrament is God offering his holiness to men; a ritual is men raising up the holiness of their humanity to God.-Originally published in Wishful Thinking
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