Patty Wysong has created a fun meme where once a week bloggers posted on the letter of the week. Check out the details here. It is called A2Z: Take 2. A2Z as she challenges bloggers to write a post each week going through the alphabet. Take 2 since this is the second time she has used this meme. Anyone can join in and you don’t have to always participate. This fun meme has now progressed to the letter R: A good R word is: Radio.Praying like a Radio – Tuning into GodImagine a listening to one of the great radio shows on an old time receiver. You lean forward with eager expectation. Adjust the knobs just right. Pay close attention to every word. As you listen, you melt completely into the story being told.Don’t you wish our prayer life worked like that? I know I do."God does speak—sometimes one way and sometimes another—even though people may not understand it." Job 33:14 (NCV)Prayer is tuning the heart into the frequency of God.I love the image of the radio as a vehicle of prayer. … [Read more...]
Five Questions From the Bible to Add Depth to Your Prayers
Patty Wysong has created a fun meme where once a week bloggers posted on the letter of the week. Check out the details here. It is called A2Z: Take 2. A2Z as she challenges bloggers to write a post each week going through the alphabet. Take 2 since this is the second time she has used this meme. Anyone can join in and you don’t have to always participate. This fun meme has now progressed to the letter QQuestions I am thankful we have a God who we can question, explore, debate, and even wrestle. I believe the more we are honest with Him and reach out to Him with our doubts, fears, and anger – the closer He draws us to Him. God is bigger than any of our emotions. I know I ask Him a multitude of questions in my faith walk. But this past year I have let Him turn the tables and ask me questions. I have created a list of 50 questions from the Bible and often use one of them in my morning prayer to jump-start my meditation. Since this week’s letter is Q, I naturally thought … [Read more...]
Prayer by Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt (Photo credit: onecle)Our Father, who has set a restlessness in our hearts and made us all seekers after that which we can never fully find, forbid us to be satisfied with what we make of life. Draw us from base content and set our eyes on far off goals. Keep us at tasks too hard for us that we may be driven to Thee for strength. Deliver us from the fretfulness and self-pitying; make us sure of the good we cannot see and of the hidden good in the world. Open our eyes to simple beauty all around us and our hearts to the loveliness men hide from us because we do not try to understand them. Save us from ourselves and show us a vision of the world made new.Eleanor Roosevelt … [Read more...]
What’s on Your Nightstand?
I am a reader. I love books and am a firm believer in “there is no such thing as too many books.”I am one of those readers with several books going at the same time. We are called “poly-readers.” I think it is easier to do that with non-fiction, my usual fare.My husband laughs at me: I have books on the living room end table, the nightstand, on my desk and in my car. And yes I have a Kindle with several books in progress there too.I heard on NPR the Chicago Tribune cultural critic Julia Keller say:“I mean, I like the idea of books, not just this thing off to the side of our lives, but they're right in the midst of our lives. We're, in effect, living our fiction and our nonfiction. And you can do that when you're reading multiple books. You do kind of just get this idea that you're moving through this forest of words and stories and characters. It's not just this block of paper or a Kindle or an iPad sitting at your elbow. It's a part of your life. It's something you're moving through, … [Read more...]
10 Provisions for Your Spiritual Journey
My husband and I traveled last week in Arizona. We didn’t know the roads or what awaited us beyond each turn in the road. But we were loaded down with all the essentials to find our way: our GPS unit, one city and two state maps, plus the one sheet map given to us by the rental car agent. I brought along the AAA Arizona guidebook, several dozen brochures, and two sheets of Google map directions.We only got lost twice. Not bad for two Midwesterners exploring the west.I wondered what I bring along to help me find my way on my spiritual journey. Reflecting on this last night when I couldn’t sleep (my body was tired, but my mind still believed we were in the Pacific time zone) I began a list of what has helped me grow closer to God and ideas of some tools God may be inviting me to use before I get lost or stuck on a long dusty detour. The first five I do okay with, the last five I have far to learn yet and need more practice:1. Sitting with the Sacred – Prayer is an essential to any … [Read more...]
The Tender Gaze of God – a Silent Retreat Experience
How do you describe time spent in the presence of God? First I want to thank many of you who held me in prayer when I went to the four-day silent retreat last week. I encourage you if you have never gone on retreat, whether a silent one or one filled with life-giving presentations, to try this spiritual practice. You will receive priceless nourishment for your journey in life.Even as a writer, I have difficulty finding the words to illustrate these precious quiet days with God. So I will borrow a phrase from Anthony de Mello:Look at God…looking at you… and smiling.I experienced being enfolded in the hands of God and beheld in His tender, loving, and unfailing gaze.I found this statuette and took multiple photos of this father and baby since they best represent how I felt.“You are precious in my eyes. I honor you and love you." Isaiah 43:4Often at the beginning of a retreat, the director will suggest some Bible verses that may guide us on our weekend. As soon as Susan mentioned Hagar, I … [Read more...]
Journaling our Journey
Patty Wysong has created a fun meme where once a week bloggers posted on the letter of the week. Check out the details here. It is called A2Z: Take 2. A2Z as she challenges bloggers to write a post each week going through the alphabet. Take 2 since this is the second time she has used this meme. Anyone can join in and you don’t have to always participate. This week’s letter is JJ = Journaling our JourneyTEN! I counted ten people continually carrying journals. More than one third of the people on the silent retreat with me last weekend carried some form of journalwith them. Blank notebooks, plain or with fancy covers, spiral notebooks, sheets of loose papers – many scribbling, capturing precious moments and lessons learned in sacred stillness of the retreat.I watch them. Prayfully they held their journals in the chapel. Slowly they recorded thoughts, prayers, verses, and experiences within these treasured pages in the reflection room. I am sure many of them wiped tears from those … [Read more...]
Three Ways to Use Your Imagination Spiritually
I played in a spaceship when I was seven years old. I spent hours exploring new worlds found in my imagination while never really leaving my backyard. My spaceship? A stocky tree with great climbing branches planted next on the southeast corner of our house. Different limbs warped into sections of my spacecraft: the galley, the lookout, the bridge for guiding my rocket into the mysterious universe.Sigh. I loved that tree.Patty Wysong has created a fun meme where once a week bloggers posted on the letter of the week. Check out the details here. It is called A2Z: Take 2. A2Z as she challenges bloggers to write a post each week going through the alphabet. Take 2 since this is the second time she has used this meme. Anyone can join in and you don’t have to always participate. This week’s letter is I.Image via WikipediaI = ImaginationImagination can be a helpful tool, even for adults. We use our minds to dream up decorating ideas, plots for novels, and innovative approaches to problem … [Read more...]