Sunday-Ps.118 appears during much of Holy week liturgy. Take a good long look at it, and it will become obvious. It has a mantra: give thanks to the Lord, for the lord is good;god’s steadfast love endures forever.” How do you understand god’s goodness and steadfast love, especially on Easter Sunday?
Monday- Roger Scruton’s 2010 Gifford Lectures, published as The Face of God (Bloomsbury, 2012).Roger Scruton explores the place of God in a disenchanted world. His argument is a response to the atheist culture that is now growing around us, and also a defence of human uniqueness. He rebuts the claim that there is no meaning or purpose in the natural world, and argues that the sacred and the transcendental are 'real presences', through which human beings come to know themselves and to find both their freedom and their redemption.
In the human face we find a paradigm of meaning. And from this experience, Scruton argues, we both construct the face of the world, and address the face of God. We find in the face both the proof of our freedom and the mark of self-consciousness. One of the motivations of the atheist culture is to escape from the eye of judgement. You escape from the eye of judgement by blotting out the face: and this, Scruton argues, is the most disturbing aspect of the times in which we live. In his wide-ranging argument Scruton explains the growing sense of destruction that we feel, as the habits of pleasure seeking and consumerism deface the world. His book defends a consecrated world against the habit of desecration, and offers a vision of the religious way of life in a time of trial. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-face-of-god-9781847065247/#sthash.rB8FroMP.dpuf
In the human face we find a paradigm of meaning. And from this experience, Scruton argues, we both construct the face of the world, and address the face of God. We find in the face both the proof of our freedom and the mark of self-consciousness. One of the motivations of the atheist culture is to escape from the eye of judgement. You escape from the eye of judgement by blotting out the face: and this, Scruton argues, is the most disturbing aspect of the times in which we live. In his wide-ranging argument Scruton explains the growing sense of destruction that we feel, as the habits of pleasure seeking and consumerism deface the world. His book defends a consecrated world against the habit of desecration, and offers a vision of the religious way of life in a time of trial. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-face-of-god-9781847065247/#sthash.rB8FroMP.dpuf
Tuesday-There is surely a great difference, which we all understand, between seeing something as just there (there for the taking) and seeing it as a gift. Only what is owned can be given, and gifts therefore come wrapped in the perspective of the giver, who has claimed them as ‘mine,’ and also relinquishes that claim for another’s sake. And the one who receives something as a gift receives it as a mark of the other’s concern for him; gratitude is not just normal – it is the recognition that the thing has really been given, and is not the first step in a bargain. Gifts involve conscious reflection on self and other, on rights and duties, on ownership and its transcendence. Hence they can only be offered I to I, and gifts are acts of acknowledgment between persons, in which each recognizes the freedom of the other.
Wednesday- Douglas Abrams said, “Gratitude is the recognition of all that holds us in the web of life and all that has made it possible to have the life that we have and the moment that we are experiencing. It allows us to shift our perspective toward all we have been given and all that we have. It moves us away from the narrow-minded focus on fault and lack and to the wider perspective of benefit and abundance.” (page 242)
Thursday- Jesus talked about God becoming king in order to explain what it was that he himself was doing when he told those parables in Luke 15 about the woman with the lost coin or the shepherd with the lost sheep or then the father who has these two sons.He is saying there is a party going on in the heavenly places and we are having a party here. This is a place where heaven and earth are joined because there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous people who don't seem to need to repent. So Jesus was doing the kingdom and talking about the kingdom, inaugurating the kingdom. His healings were all about signs of new creation. This is what it looks like when God takes his power and reigns.
Friday-Walter Brueggemann defines vocation as a purpose for being in the world that is related to the purposes of God. So one way we might pray with the third mark of mission is first to discern what is the mission of God. How is God working in the world? And then the second part would be what is my unique way of participating in God’s mission.- Br. Jim Woodrum
Saturday-so I tell you that we should learn to see God in all gifts and works, neither resting content with anything nor becoming attached to anything. For us there can be no attachment to a particular manner of behavior in this life, nor has this ever been right, however successful we may have been.Meister Eckhart:
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