Help Was There
To the objection "I prayed and cried out for help, but no help came," the answer is "But it did. The help was there it was right at hand. You were looking for something quite different, perhaps, but God brought the help that would change your life into health, into wholeness for eternity And not only would it change your life, but nations, society, culture." Instead od asking why the help has not come, the person at prayer learns to look carefully at what is actually going on his or her life, in this history, its leaders, its movements, its peoplesm anns ask, "Could this be the help that he is providng?" I never thought for this in terms of help, but maybe it is." Prayer gives us another, far more accurate way of reading reality than the newspapers. "Think of it!" exclaims Bernanos's country priest. "The Word was made Flesh and not one of the journalists of those days even knew it was happening" [The Diary of a County Priest].
I call to you, God because I'm sure of an answer.
So --answer! bend your ear! listen shar!
Paint grace-graffiti on the fences;
take in yout frightened children who
Are running from the neighborhood bullies
straight to you.
PSALM 17:6-7
2009-02-07
2009-02-06
Living the Message Feb. 6
Religion and Politics
For Christians, "political" acquires extensive biblical associations and dimensions. So rather than look for another word untainted by corruption and evil, it is important to use it just as it is so that by it we are trained to see God in the places that seem intransigent to grace. The people who warn that "region and politics don't mix" certainly know what the are talking about. The mix has resulted in no end of ills -- crusades, inquisitions, witch hunts, exploitation. All the same, God says, "Mis them." But be ever careful how you mix them. The only safe way is in prayer. It is both unbiblical and unreal to divide life into the activities of religion and politics, or into the realms of scared and profane. But how do we get them together without putting one into the unscrupulous hands of the other, politics using religion or religion using politics, when what we want is true mixture, politics becoming religious and religion becoming political? Prayer is the only means that is adequate for the great end of getting these polarities in dynamic relation, The psalms are our most extensive source documents showing prayer in action,
So rebel-kings, use your heand;
Upstart judgues, learn your lesson:
Worship GOD n adoring embrace,
Celebrate in trembling awe. Kiss Messiah!
PSALM 2:10-12
For Christians, "political" acquires extensive biblical associations and dimensions. So rather than look for another word untainted by corruption and evil, it is important to use it just as it is so that by it we are trained to see God in the places that seem intransigent to grace. The people who warn that "region and politics don't mix" certainly know what the are talking about. The mix has resulted in no end of ills -- crusades, inquisitions, witch hunts, exploitation. All the same, God says, "Mis them." But be ever careful how you mix them. The only safe way is in prayer. It is both unbiblical and unreal to divide life into the activities of religion and politics, or into the realms of scared and profane. But how do we get them together without putting one into the unscrupulous hands of the other, politics using religion or religion using politics, when what we want is true mixture, politics becoming religious and religion becoming political? Prayer is the only means that is adequate for the great end of getting these polarities in dynamic relation, The psalms are our most extensive source documents showing prayer in action,
So rebel-kings, use your heand;
Upstart judgues, learn your lesson:
Worship GOD n adoring embrace,
Celebrate in trembling awe. Kiss Messiah!
PSALM 2:10-12
2009-02-05
Living the Message Feb. 5
There Is No Private Prayer
The single most widespread American misunderstanding of prayer is that it is private. Strictly and biblically speaking, there is no private prayer. Private in its root meaning refers to theft. It is stealing. When we privatize prayer we embezzle the common currency that belongs to all. When we engage in prayer without any desire for or awareness of the comprehensive, inclusive life of the kingdom that is "at hand" in both space and time, we impoverish the social reality that God is bring to completion.
Solitude in prayers in not privacy. The differences between privacy and solitude are profound. Privacy is our attempt to insulate the self from interference solitude leaves the company of others for a time in order to listen to them more deeply, be aware of them, serve them. Privacy is getting away form others so that I don't have to be bothered with them; solitude is getting away form the crowd so that I can be instructed by the still, small voice of God, who is enthroned on the praises of the multitudes. Private prayers are selfish and thin; prayer in solitude enrolls in a multivalued, century-layered community; with angels and archangels in all the company of heaven we sing, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty."
While it was still night, way before dawn, he got up and went out to a secluded spot and prayer. Simon and those with him went looking for him. They found him and siad, "Everybody's looking for you."
Jesus said, "Let's go to the rest of the villages so I can preach there also. This is why I've come."
MARK 1:35-38
The single most widespread American misunderstanding of prayer is that it is private. Strictly and biblically speaking, there is no private prayer. Private in its root meaning refers to theft. It is stealing. When we privatize prayer we embezzle the common currency that belongs to all. When we engage in prayer without any desire for or awareness of the comprehensive, inclusive life of the kingdom that is "at hand" in both space and time, we impoverish the social reality that God is bring to completion.
Solitude in prayers in not privacy. The differences between privacy and solitude are profound. Privacy is our attempt to insulate the self from interference solitude leaves the company of others for a time in order to listen to them more deeply, be aware of them, serve them. Privacy is getting away form others so that I don't have to be bothered with them; solitude is getting away form the crowd so that I can be instructed by the still, small voice of God, who is enthroned on the praises of the multitudes. Private prayers are selfish and thin; prayer in solitude enrolls in a multivalued, century-layered community; with angels and archangels in all the company of heaven we sing, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty."
While it was still night, way before dawn, he got up and went out to a secluded spot and prayer. Simon and those with him went looking for him. They found him and siad, "Everybody's looking for you."
Jesus said, "Let's go to the rest of the villages so I can preach there also. This is why I've come."
MARK 1:35-38
2009-02-04
Living the Message Fed. 4
And know. The word know often has sexual connotations in biblical writings. Adam knew Eve. Joseph did not know Mary. These are not, as so many suppose, timid euphemisms; they are bold metaphors. The best knowledge, the knowledge that is thorough and personal, is not information. It is shared intimacy--a knowing and being known that becomes a creative act. It is analogous to sexual relationship in which two persons are vulnerable and open to each other, the consequence of which is the creation of new life. Unamuno, a Spanish philosopher, elaborates: "'To know' means in effect to engender, all all vital knowledge in this sense presupposes a penetration, a fusion of the innermost being of the man who knows and of the thing know" [The Agony of Christians]. The knowing results in a new being that is different from and more than either partner. No child is a replica of either parent; no child is a mere amalgamation of parents. There are characteristics of both, but the new life is unpredictable, full of surprises, a life of it's own.
This sexual knowing that results in newly created life is the everyday experience that is used to show what happens when we pray: withdrawal from commotion, shutting the door against the outside world, insistence on leisurely privacy. This is not an antisocial act. It is not a selfish indulgence. It is no shirking of public responsibility. On the contrary, it is fulfilling of public responsibility, a contribution to the wholeness of civilization. It is, precisely, creative: You cannot make love in traffic. For all his marvelous creativity, Michelangelo never painted or drew or sculpted anything that compares with any newborn infant. For all his wide-ranging Renaissance inventiveness, Leonard da Vinci never faintly approximated what any peasant couple brought forth by simply going to bed together. People who pray give themselves to the creative process at this same elemental, world-enriching, self-transcending place of surprise and pleasure.
I gave up all the inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power...
PHLIPPIANS 3:8
This sexual knowing that results in newly created life is the everyday experience that is used to show what happens when we pray: withdrawal from commotion, shutting the door against the outside world, insistence on leisurely privacy. This is not an antisocial act. It is not a selfish indulgence. It is no shirking of public responsibility. On the contrary, it is fulfilling of public responsibility, a contribution to the wholeness of civilization. It is, precisely, creative: You cannot make love in traffic. For all his marvelous creativity, Michelangelo never painted or drew or sculpted anything that compares with any newborn infant. For all his wide-ranging Renaissance inventiveness, Leonard da Vinci never faintly approximated what any peasant couple brought forth by simply going to bed together. People who pray give themselves to the creative process at this same elemental, world-enriching, self-transcending place of surprise and pleasure.
I gave up all the inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power...
PHLIPPIANS 3:8
2009-02-03
Living The Message Feb.3
Be Still
After the first command of Psalm 46,the second follows....
The second command is "Be Still, and know that I am God." Be still. Quit rushing through the streets long enough to become aware that there is more to life than your little self-help enterprises. When we are noisy and when weare hurried, we are incapable of intimacy--deep, complex, personal relationships. If God is the living center of redemption, it is essential that we be in touch with and responsive to that personal will. If God has a will for this world and we want to be in on it, we must be sill long enough to find out what it is (for we certainly are not going to learn b watching the evening news). Baron von Hugel, who has a wise word on most subjects, always held out that "nothing was ever accomplished in a stampede."
Step out of the traffic! Take a long,
loving look at me, your High God,
above politics, above everything.
Psalm 46:10
After the first command of Psalm 46,the second follows....
The second command is "Be Still, and know that I am God." Be still. Quit rushing through the streets long enough to become aware that there is more to life than your little self-help enterprises. When we are noisy and when weare hurried, we are incapable of intimacy--deep, complex, personal relationships. If God is the living center of redemption, it is essential that we be in touch with and responsive to that personal will. If God has a will for this world and we want to be in on it, we must be sill long enough to find out what it is (for we certainly are not going to learn b watching the evening news). Baron von Hugel, who has a wise word on most subjects, always held out that "nothing was ever accomplished in a stampede."
Step out of the traffic! Take a long,
loving look at me, your High God,
above politics, above everything.
Psalm 46:10
2009-02-02
Living The Message Feb.2
Creative Action
God is engaged in worldwide disarmament. All the ways in which men and women attempt to forcibly impose their wills on neighbors and enemies are thrown into the trash heap. Violence does not work. It never has worked. It never will work. Weapons are not functional.
The history of violence is a history of failures. There has never been a won war. There has never been a victorious battle. The use of force destroys the ever reality that is exercised in its behalf, whether honor, truth or justice. living in the kind of world in which we do and being the sinners we are, we somtimes cannot avoid violence. But even when it is inevitable it is not right. God dos not engage in it.
A steady, sustained look at God's works sees that our grantic, foolish arms build-up (whether personal or national, whether psychological or material) is being sujected to systematic and determined disarmament. Violent action is the antithesis of creative action. When we no longer have the will or the patience to be creative, we attempt to express our will by coercion. The lazy and the immature account for the most of the violence in the world. But however prevalent violence is, the person at prayer sees that is not the way most of the world, the world of Gos'd action, works. But it takes energy and maturity to see it and to sustain the vision.
Attention, all! See the marvels of God's!
He plants flowers and trees all over the earth,
Bans war from pole to pole,
breaks all the weapons of war across his knee.
PSALM 46:8-9
God is engaged in worldwide disarmament. All the ways in which men and women attempt to forcibly impose their wills on neighbors and enemies are thrown into the trash heap. Violence does not work. It never has worked. It never will work. Weapons are not functional.
The history of violence is a history of failures. There has never been a won war. There has never been a victorious battle. The use of force destroys the ever reality that is exercised in its behalf, whether honor, truth or justice. living in the kind of world in which we do and being the sinners we are, we somtimes cannot avoid violence. But even when it is inevitable it is not right. God dos not engage in it.
A steady, sustained look at God's works sees that our grantic, foolish arms build-up (whether personal or national, whether psychological or material) is being sujected to systematic and determined disarmament. Violent action is the antithesis of creative action. When we no longer have the will or the patience to be creative, we attempt to express our will by coercion. The lazy and the immature account for the most of the violence in the world. But however prevalent violence is, the person at prayer sees that is not the way most of the world, the world of Gos'd action, works. But it takes energy and maturity to see it and to sustain the vision.
Attention, all! See the marvels of God's!
He plants flowers and trees all over the earth,
Bans war from pole to pole,
breaks all the weapons of war across his knee.
PSALM 46:8-9
2009-02-01
Living The Message Feb.1
The Works of the Lord
The next four days are reflections of Psalm 46.
two commands direct us from the small-minded world of self-help to the large world of God's help. First, "Come, behold the works of the LORD." Take a long, scrutinizing look at what God is doing. This requires patient attentiveness and energetic concentration. Every-body else is noisier than God. The headlines and neon lights and amplifying systems of the world announce human works. But what of Gog's works? They are unadvertised but also inescapable, if we simply look. They everywhere. They are marvelous. But God has no public relations agency. He mounts no publicity campaign to get our attention, He simply inviteds us to look. Prayer is looking at the works of the Lord.
Reach out and experince the breadth! Test its length!
Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:18-19
The next four days are reflections of Psalm 46.
two commands direct us from the small-minded world of self-help to the large world of God's help. First, "Come, behold the works of the LORD." Take a long, scrutinizing look at what God is doing. This requires patient attentiveness and energetic concentration. Every-body else is noisier than God. The headlines and neon lights and amplifying systems of the world announce human works. But what of Gog's works? They are unadvertised but also inescapable, if we simply look. They everywhere. They are marvelous. But God has no public relations agency. He mounts no publicity campaign to get our attention, He simply inviteds us to look. Prayer is looking at the works of the Lord.
Reach out and experince the breadth! Test its length!
Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:18-19
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