Jean – Page 11

Confessional Prayer

There are many practices of prayer in the Christian life: prayers of petition, intercession, praise, worship, and others. One of those prayers that I think is important for the Christian is a regular time of prayer that helps us to confess our sins and receive forgiveness. One such prayer is traditionally called the prayer of examen. Developed in the 15^th century by St. Ignatius of Loyola, it has been used for centuries as a way to reflect on the day’s activities and give it over to God. This might involve ways of seeing God’s movement in the day, or it might be a way to release troubles or challenges we faced that day. Traditionally this prayer begins with acknowledging God’s presence. It continues with gratitude and reviewing the day and ends with asking God to show us how He wants you to respond.

The prayer of examen is not explicitly found in Scripture but the principles are certainly biblical. This practice has made a comeback in recent years as many Christians, especially Evangelicals, have been drawn to a deeper prayer life. Unfortunately, most of the versions I’ve seen omit what I think is critical for Christian formation – and that is regular confession of sin and receiving of forgiveness. One writer talks about the “two doors” to this prayer – the first being an examen of consciousness (being aware of God’s presence with us) and the second an examen of conscience (where we have fallen short).

I have found as well that most of us are probably able to identify sin in our lives but don’t know what to do about it other than feel guilty, so we just tend to ignore it. But our life with Christ is shallow without this practice of confession because this is the heart of the gospel and the very thing our baptisms and the Communion Table speak to – taking our place in Christ’s death and in His resurrection!

Leanne Payne in The Healing Presence quotes William Barclay as he reminds us: “An easy-going attitude to sin is always dangerous. It has been said that our one security against sin lies in our being shocked at it. Carlyle said that men must see the infinite beauty of holiness and the infinite damnability of sin. When we cease to take a serious view of sin we are in a perilous position. It is not a question of being critical and condemnatory; it is a question of being wounded and shocked. It was sin that crucified Jesus Christ. It was to free men from sin that he died. No Christian should take an easy-going view of it”.

This is also why I believe this prayer should always include an intentional receiving of Christ’s work on the Cross for that sin, for that struggle. We need to receive forgiveness! Perhaps it might better be said that we need to walk into the forgiveness of sin that Christ died for. He died once and for all time, but we often fail to hold onto that reality and so regular confession of sin and its resulting forgiveness becomes a way for us to apply His work to our lives.

For that reason, I am calling this regular practice of prayer – Confessional Prayer. It follows the principles of the prayer of examen but allows us to embrace our freedom in Christ through its adherence to dealing with sin.

There are four steps to this prayer. I’m including scriptures that I hope will help you go through each step

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never end; they are new every morning, great is your faithfulness
Lamentations 3:22-23

Begin by centering your heart in God’s presence… “The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.” Psalm 145.8. Give thanks to Him that you do not need to hide anything from him. Affirm that He is faithful and good, and his mercy and grace are “new every morning.”

Ask the Spirit to show you any sin you need to bring to Christ. Bring that to your confession. The list of questions listed below might help.

“Search me O God and know my heart, test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” Psalm 139:23-24

As the Holy Spirit is revealing those things you need to bring to Christ, simply confess as specifically as you can the sins that trouble you. Don’t rush through this process. Simply rest in God’s presence as He does this.

Now choose to let this go and receive Christ’s forgiveness for you. Remember:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1Jo 1:9 ESV)

And finally commit this confession to the Lord. As you rest in his forgiveness ask him how to walk this out. Ask for the supernatural power of His Spirit to give you what you need to move forward. Thank him that:

“[you] have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer [you] who live, but Christ lives in [you]” (Gal. 2:20).

I’m including at the end of this explanation a series of questions that you might find helpful in this prayer. At the same time, we are not called to introspect and try and find all those “hidden sins” we think must be there deep in our unconscious minds. I agree with the author of this quote: “The Examen is not primarily concerned with good or bad actions but with the impulses that drive them”. At the same time, making this prayer a regular practice of our prayer life will help us more quickly identify our diseased sins and attitudes.

In some weeks of this guide, I will include ways that this prayer might help us with the themes of that week. At other times, it will simply stand on its own.

“The act of penitence and the reception of pardon are definite acts – a very real transaction with God, and we fail in this when we turn from God to seek feelings or states of our own minds.”
Leanne Payne, Real Presence

I want to return to why guilt and shame can keep us from this practice of confession and pardon. It has to do with the distinction between our feelings about the guilt or shame and the objective act of confession itself. C.S. Lewis struggled much of his life with introspection, the drowning as it were, in the waters of subjectivity. He, like many of us, believed that his feelings about his sins were the most important thing about them. And because of that, he had a hard time trusting the act of receiving forgiveness for his sins. He might confess his sin and try to “receive” pardon, but the guilt would remain in his unconscious mind and pop up at the worst times! When that happens to us I think we believe that if we don’t hold onto the guilt or shame then we are not sufficiently repentant. Lewis would go on to conquer this bad habit and entered joyfully into confession and pardon!

Confession and pardon are acts of the will and are not to be swallowed up by our feelings or subjective beliefs. Quoting Leanne Payne here – “The act of penitence and the reception of pardon are definite acts – a very real transaction with God, and we fail in this when we turn from God to seek feelings or states of our own minds.” (I highly recommend reading Real Presence by Leanne Payne, chapter 6 and or looking up what Lewis wrote about this subject). When we find that we can be honestly objective about both the sin and the pardon- it lifts a weight off our souls that is incredibly freeing.

Helpful Questions for Examining your Heart

Where have I been drawn into the mindset of the world?
Where were/are my thoughts and desires not ordered toward God?
Where have I resisted the voice of God in this season of my life?
Is there a part of my heart/life that I keep back from God? a place I am unwilling to surrender?
Do I compare myself to others? Either in ways that convince me I will never measure up? or in ways that make me feel superior?
Where did I consciously sin today?
What patterns of sin do I struggle with these days?
How have I failed in love?
How have I failed in obedience to Christ?

Where We Begin: Into Our Bones

This phrase – “Into our bones” came from an article I read by James K.A. Smith., about worship. He said, “This is why God enjoins us to sing (Col. 3:16). Song seeps into our bones in ways that didactic information never will. To sing the story of God’s gracious acts is not just to recite them. In the embodied, affective rhythm of song, the Spirit plants the story in the epicenter of our being: in our desire, in our imagination. Singing the story is the way it gets into our bones and under our skin, shaping the very way we perceive our world.” (Singing the Story into our Bones, www.reformedworship.org/article/june-2013/singing-story-our-bones). This image of “singing the story” pictures how we enter into the story of God and His people. We all desire to inhabit this story of ours, and that it would go so deep into us that we would feel it in our bones.

I cannot answer the question, ‘What ought I do?’ unless I first answer the question, ‘Of which story am I a part?’
Alasdair Macintyre

Following the liturgical year, or the church calendar is a vital part of our Christian formation. We have the opportunity to enter the whole story of Salvation as we walk with Christ through his birth, passion, death, resurrection, and the final day of the Lord. From Advent to second Advent, we are confronted season after season with the foundational principles of our faith. Even more than that though, we enter the story, and we follow the story, and we internalize the story of who we are and what God has done for us. I love what Alastair Macintyre says: “I cannot answer the question, ‘What ought I to do?’ unless I first answer the question, ‘Of which story am I a part?’” )Alasdair MacIntyre (2013). “After Virtue”, p.250, A&C Black)

This always makes me think of the movie “City Slickers” and how Billy Crystal’s character is awakened ever year at 5:00 a.m. on his birthday! His mother calls and goes through the whole story of his birth. He of course acts like he hates it, but I bet that deep inside him, just as I would bet that in each of us is the cry to hear our story told repeatedly.

Memory is such a critical part of how we are formed, and the Christian story captures this perfectly. We are told to remember – remember who we are, remember what Christ has done for us, remember Him in the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the cup. One vivid picture of this is when Joshua is told by God right before crossing the Jordan to enter the promised land – to take 12 men and give them 12 stones and they were to carry those stones out to the camp and leave them as a memorial to future generations of the miraculous river crossing. (Joshua 4:2-3). This happens often in the Old Testament and was a sign of God’s actions on their behalf. These stones may have looked like a pile of rocks, but to the people of Israel they were a constant reminder who their God was and how He acted on their behalf.

A word about story. When I write about the church calendar as the opportunity to enter God’s story over and over – I hope you don’t hear me say – it’s “just a story” as if it might or might not be an accurate recording of the “real important events”. As moderns, we have a history of preferring facts over “story”, statements over experiences. But Jesus himself did not come with a list of propositions – how did he engage people? He told stories, He was present to real people with real needs. He healed more than he preached – and even then, he tended to preach to the Pharisees and other “intellectuals”.

I have known several great storytellers in my life. My father was a great storyteller. We would sit around the dining room table long after we had finished eating while he told stories of his childhood, mostly about his younger brother, whom he pictured as a scapegoat for all the scrapes they got in. Later, after learning how to play the guitar he would sing (well, it was more talking than singing) folk songs that told the stories of coal miners, or railroad vagabonds. Did I learn anything? About history or even his family? Probably not. But I learned how to be with him, to sit and let the stories wash over me. I learned that my family was more than what it felt like in the darker years.

One of my favorite children’s books, which I read to my children, is called Father Fox’s Penny Rhymes. It starts out – “The night is cold, the fire is warm, Old Father Fox, will you sing us a song”. Stories change our lives. A very close friend and mentor of mine was one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. She held weeklong schools about healing prayer and discipleship. Before she lost the energy to do much of the teaching, some of her best teachings came through her stories about Uncle Gus and Aunt Rhoda, or Peety the parakeet and Dr. Kilby. One year, we were in Denmark for a school, and I was walking with Leanne down the hall back into the meeting room. A young woman behind us, didn’t realize Leanne was there and muttered, loudly enough for me to hear it, “why doesn’t she stop telling stories and just get to the teachings that matter!” I understood totally where she was coming from but so wanted to let her know that much of her healing would come through the stories told during the week. Most of us who were a part of the ministry team were there to tell our “stories”, our testimonies. Rev. 12:10 -11, “And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, ‘Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.”

Whether we are conscious of this or not, stories are a part of formation, yet that formation might very well be the wrong kind of formation. We inhabit the stories of our brokenness, of generational sin, or even our own sins or mistakes. We all need a greater story to replace or at the very least mitigate our stories of shame or guilt. And that’s what we have in the Scriptures! – a holy story from beginning to end that in an unrelenting manner gives us the story of God and His love for His people, His creation!

And that’s where we find Christ – in the story of the Bible. We find the story of His incarnation, His life, His death, His resurrection, His ascension, and His final return. And smuggled right along in there is the story of the Holy Spirit, and the Father’s deep love for us, and the story of the Church. We have such great storytellers in the Scriptures. Take a moment and think about the writers of the four gospels. Why did we need 4? Why not just one oracle that spelled it all out? And think about Paul and the story of his persecution of the church, and his conversion and his love for the church and for Christ!

I believe that one of the ways we can be immersed in our story in the faith is by a regular immersion in the story God has given us in Christ. It’s a steady ramble from beginning to end – as we begin in Advent with His incarnation and we end in Advent with His return! And there is so much in between!

In that sense, we live in perpetual Advent – the place between two apocalyptic events – the birth of a baby, and the return of a King. Following the liturgical year helps us intersect with every part of God’s story, in season and sometimes out of season. For example, we may have an incredible insight and experience of the Cross, but not really understand His Ascension, until we approach it through a regular practice of observing the church year.

“Christian formation is the work of God’s Holy Spirit in the lives of his people, slowly growing then, into the image and character of Jesus. God does this by renewing our minds, re-ordering our loves, and redirecting our lives toward the end of glorifying God.” (www. cornerstonepresfranklin.org)

And it is liturgy that helps us do that. “The liturgical year, is the process of slow, sure immersion in the life of Christ that, in the end, claims us too, as heralds of that life ourselves.” (The Liturgical Year) What I am trying to do with the guide, Into our Bones, is to help us do that. The scope of this work (at this point anyway) will take us from Advent through Pentecost. I’ve planned this guide to help with our formation in Christ by approaching the Story through different formats. The week preceding the first week of Advent 2023 I will post an explanation of how we will approach this, and then I will include an introduction to each of the different formats I will include each week. Then on December 3rd, I will post a devotional/reflection and for the next five days I will post the different ways that devotional will take us!

I also will include a guide on each of these elements which will be uploaded to my blog before December 3, 2023 (which is the first Sunday in Advent).

My prayer is that you all would be inspired by the different avenues to formation in Christ that I’ve written to help us enter into the Biblical narrative. Our first half of the guide will cover Advent, Christmastide, and Epiphany. This will take us to January 21, 2024. It will then be followed by a guide that will cover Lent through to Pentecost.

I pray, Father, that You would so inspire us through Your Word, and Your Spirit, that we would know this love displayed by Your Son, and that it would go deep into our bones. Amen.

“Christian worship should tell a story that makes us want to set sail for the immense sea that is the Triune God, birthing in us a longing for a ‘better country – a heavenly one’ that is kingdom come.” (James K.A. Smith, You Are What You Love.)

“The liturgical year, is the process of slow, sure immersion in the life of Christ that, in the end, claims us too, as heralds of that life ourselves.”
The Liturgical Year

The Gratitude Project: Moving toward Resurrection

This month (March 23) marks the fourth anniversary of my grandson’s going home to be with Jesus. (For those of you unfamiliar with Zekey’s story I would encourage you to read my son’s blog (thesometimespreacher.com) and my daughter-in-law’s blog (breeloverly.com). Zekey passed into the arms of Jesus at four years old, after suffering a rare neurological disorder called Batten’s). Because of its proximity to Good Friday and Easter I associate his death with both Lent and Holy Week. In my last post I wrote of Zekey receiving the ashes of Ash Wednesday. And his journey continued from there until he passed into the arms of Jesus almost a month before Easter that year. I am reminded that with my memories of Zekey, just as in the memorial of Good Friday there is the paradox of conflicting emotions. We are relieved because Zekey no long suffers but we miss him with the longing for that reunion that will only come in heaven.

I believe we can honor Christ’s sacrifice by being both saddened (sobered) that the world had come to this place in our brokenness and sadness and sin that God’s only son had to die and joyful (grateful) that in his death is glory. The glory of the cross. I wonder if Satan rejoiced at Christ’s death or did he already know that in Christ’s dying the world was made new again – that Redemption was purchased through the blood of Christ? Christ experienced both the humiliation of death by crucifixion and its glory because it was through that death that He once and for all could demonstrate his unfailing, his eternal, his lasting love for us, sinners that we are.

How can we turn our backs on that love – either in our presumption to believe we are no longer sinners, or in our despair to believe that nothing can take away our sin? Our task both during Lent and throughout our Christian lives is to live in that space between sin and glory, death and eternal life.

Alexander Schmemann called Lent the season of Bright Sadness. And he did so, in the knowledge that we as Christians are called to walk the journey (passover) to Resurrection.

“For each year Lent and Easter are, once again, the rediscovery and the recovery by us of what we were made through our own baptismal death and resurrection”.

It strikes me that Christian maturity has a lot to do with our capacity to live in tension – to know we are sinners and at the same time saints; that we are called to die daily (to our sin) and to live daily (to the hope we have in Christ!) And such is Christian gratitude, which is so much more than the world offers. With Zekey, we could hate the “unmaking” of disease, but be eternally grateful for the redemption of Easter, of Resurrection. Because of Christ – #zekeylives.

One practice of gratitude that I find so helpful is the naming of the sin that binds me, and moving through that confession (to God and others) to receiving God’s grace, His unwavering love, and His unmitigated forgiveness of that sin. I do not need to be grateful for the hard circumstances of my life, or my sin, or the world’s sin… but I can be grateful that God, through His Son redeems what Satan intended for evil. How about you? What part of your story have you seen God redeem? And how does this journey to Easter reflect it?

GP: Lent

An Odd Thanksgiving: Two Powerful Lenten Experiences:

The year Zekey died, it snowed all winter. We had snow on the ground from November well into March. Andy and Breena had been with us since the preceding August. Cyrus and Eisley were in school, but that winter it seemed like they rarely went because of school delays or closings. Bexley (then 2) spent her days lying alongside Zekey who was camped in a bed by the window which looked out at the woods in our front yard. It seemed like they watched an endless loop of Lightning McQueen and Daniel Tiger. There was so much laughter coming from that bed – Bexley giggling and Zeke laughing at whatever show he was watching at the time. He couldn’t talk with words, but his laugh was riddled with meaning.

I cannot now remember when Easter was that year, but I’ll never forget Ash Wednesday. By this time we knew that Zekey would not be with us long. Andy brought him forward during our service that evening to receive the ashes and to hear the words: “From dust you came, to dust you will return”. Most of the church watched as Andy carried him forward, and we all wept at the reality of what was being done and said over him. His mortal body would soon be gone, but his immortal soul would be eternally yoked to Jesus – the one for whom we walked this Lenten journey.

The second profound Lenten experience happened a year later for me. My great friend and mentor had fallen and broken her hip a week after Zekey’s funeral and the next year was spent trying to find good care for her and to be with her as she prepared to leave this world for another. She had spent her life helping people prepare for death and resurrection. In her books and in her ministry the message of the Cross was central to all she did. In my own life, it was her message and ministry of Christ’s coming, his suffering, his death and resurrection that fully awoke in me the promise of wholeness. I remember hearing her speak for the first time, and thinking to myself – I have no idea what this woman is talking about but I desperately want what she has. It was like listening to the beauty of another language (French in particular!) and saying to myself – I want to, no I need to, learn that language.

She died on Ash Wednesday 2015. As she left this world for the eternal company of God – she brought home to those of us gathered around her, that indeed from dust we come, and to dust we return. Just as she had done in life, she did so in death: she bore witness to the promise of wholeness for the whole of our beings – our minds, our souls, our bodies, our spirits. She suffered, as Zekey did in the last months of her life, but it never diminished her soul’s capacity for joy.

These two Lenten experiences have made me very grateful for the walk to Resurrection Sunday. I can acknowledge my great dependence on Christ, and I can acknowledge my body’s frailty. I can yield my will’s inability to be who God has called me to outside of that total dependence on him. I can affirm that while the body may die, my soul like Zekey’s and Leanne’s will be tethered for all eternity to the great love of the Father, through the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ.

The GP: Sweater Weather

I’ve been waiting to be inspired for this week’s gratitude prompt – and a part of me thinks – “how in the world are you going to come up with 52 “original” prompts for gratitude this year?” Of course I need to be original and profound – which sorta sets me up for failure – since being grateful is not about profundity but about grace. It’s grace to be present to all that is going around us and to see God’s hand in it whether or not we bubble up with joy.

A hot topic these days (the cold snowy days of February) is of course the weather. How much snow, just how cold is it going to be, and what, another day off school (great for teachers, not so great for parents!)!

When I was eight years old my father moved us from our hometown of Charlotte NC (in the heart of the Southeast) to a suburb outside of Philadelphia. My mother agreed to go but in our eight years there she had a deep disdain for “Yankeeland” as she called it and the people who lived there – “those damn Yankees!”. My mother was also an alcoholic and while the weather obviously wasn’t the cause of it I do think that if she had lived here in the 21^st century she might very well have been treated for depression or quite possibly with SAD (seasonal affective disorder). The dark cold days after Christmas do indeed affect people in so many ways. I personally love the moodiness of rain (blame my Scottish heritage), the deep drifts of snow (as I look at it from my nice warm chair) and the crisp, sometimes sunny air of winter! If you were to ask me what season might drive me to depression I would have to say the hot humid 90 degree temperatures of August!

Please know I am not taking weather related depression lightly; I grieve for my mother thinking she might have had a very different life if she had been aware of her seasonal triggers. So, where am I going with this? Perhaps those of us who struggle with winter might find something to be grateful for in the midst of it? Many of us find it no struggle at all to thank God for bracing winds and snow capped fields. For that we can give thanks. Like last week’s prompt there is something liberating in looking up and out of our circumstances and be grateful in the midst of those circumstances. Perhaps you’ve found a secret to making it through to May (let’s face it, we have had snow in April before!) And the rest of us might pause and think about and pray for those people for whom Winter is truly depressing. What do you think?

The Gratitude Project – Look up and out!

When my children were growing up and my days were full with caring for them along with ministry concerns, I would go away by myself on a personal retreat on a regular basis. There I could not only rest and pray or journal, but also step outside the roles of my daily life – wife, mother, daughter, group leader… Most of the time I went north to Monroe, Michigan to stay in a little retreat house set back among woods and fields. I usually spent the first few hours napping, reading, or journaling. I especially loved it when there was no one else in the house so I could wander around the public areas. I loved having the routine of fixing a meal, making a mug of hot tea and eating that meal staring out the glass French doors right outside the kitchen. In the early morning, or at sunset I would sit there and let my eyes take in the broad view of the woods and fields. Often, I had come on retreat because I was troubled by something, or worn out by my responsibilities. If I were to paint a picture of the life I needed a break from, I would paint a picture of someone whose head was perpetually bowed down, eyes cast down, furrowed brow, closed in on myself like a turtle who doesn’t want to come out of his shell!

It wasn’t long when I realized the depth of my need to look up and out of the daily grind! As I looked out the windows – my eyes rested on the woods which were about 200 yards or so away from the house, and I would see the fields surrounding the house in whatever season we were in – snow, or wheat, or grass… bare woods, green pines or snow covered branches. There was something so healing about gazing at the horizon or at anything beyond what was typically right in front of me! And my anxiety over whatever need I had brought on retreat turned into gratitude! I was filled with thanksgiving that there was more to life and me than what was right in front of me.

A very wise man, a CS Lewis scholar at Wheaton college put together a list of resolutions for his students. And one of those resolutions went like this: “At least once a day, I shall open my eyes and ears, and will stare at a tree, a child, a flower or a cloud. I will not try and figure out what they are, but I will be glad that they are.” (my paraphrase!) Many many years ago I prayed with a woman who had struggled with mental and emotional illness most of her life. Her childhood was horrific, and her need for God great. But she couldn’t get out of the funk of always looking inward or downward. She came from Cleveland to see me, and I remember so clearly what happened on one of her visits. We were sitting on my front steps, basking in the warmth of the day, and she told me something tremendous had happened to her since her last visit. She was walking in the park (details fuzzy…) and she saw a bird fly by and rest on a tree branch. She looked up and marveled at the intricacy of its feathers, and beak, and wings… And seeing the “birdness” of that bird actually made a difference in her typical depressive introspection! Now, I’m not saying she no longer struggled or suffered in her pursuit of mental and emotional health. But I am saying that looking up and looking out and actually seeing a part of God’s creation and thanking Him for that lifted her spirit and her mood!

Gratitude makes a difference! This would be a great week to stop in the midst of your daily responsibilities, or anxiety or burn out. And look at, I mean really see, the face of a child, or the squirrel which just leaped for joy outside your window! Gaze at God’s creation for just a few minutes a day, and be grateful for that creation – and I bet it will make a difference in your life!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Jean

Epiphany – The Gratitude Project Week Two

Welcome to the second week of the gratitude project! This prompt has been on my mind lately, as I have considered the season that follows Advent. We don’t say much about it in our tradition but I love the idea of celebrating a season called Epiphany! Epiphany in Greek means manifestation and it often is associated with the wise men’s journey to see the baby Jesus. We find this account in Matthew chapter two where we are told: “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” (Mat 2:1-2 ESV)

What follows is the account of Herod scheming to kill all male children under the age of two. The wise men left Herod and continued to follow the star. They found Jesus when the star they had been following stopped over the place of his birth. And they bowed down and worshiped Christ as king. It had been revealed to them that He would be a gift from God.

We use the word epiphany today to describe what we think of as an “aha” moment. We were blind to something, and suddenly we see. What was blurry has become clear. What had been darkness, now is light. And to set that into the context of our faith, we experience an epiphany when we have a personal experience of God. So, this week, let’s thank God that He has revealed himself to us in Christ. As Paul in his letter to the Colossians said: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col 1:19-20 ESV).

May this week be a celebration of how God manifested Himself to us, both corporately and individually. Take a moment (or several) and remember how God revealed Himself to you in your conversion, in your baptism, in your formation as a Christ-follower.

Personally, I can remember so many ways through the years, when my eyes were opened to Christ as a Person. There was one moment long after I had become a Christian. I was about 30, pregnant with Rachel, and my life was a mess. I was deeply insecure about my place in the world around me, especially in the church. I was insecure in so many of my relationships, wondering if I had anything to offer anyone. Looking back now, I can see that the circumstances of my early life were impacting my world in the here and now. I was living out the memories of an alcoholic mother, my father’s early death and the deep sense of loneliness I felt all the time. But God broke into that and revealed to me the depth of the work of Christ on my behalf. It was like waking up after a long terrible dream. The gospel, the good news came home to me in ways I had not experienced in my conversion or baptism. Christ revealed Himself to me as One who had come, suffered and died for my sin, for the sins of others against me… for the sin of the world. I could honestly and firmly say I had an epiphany, a manifestation of the Presence of God! Even as I write this, I am filled with such thanksgiving for the Light that came into the world in Christ. (“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Joh 1:14 ESV)). The glory of God in Christ is the manifestation of all of who God is, His holiness, His grace, His love. This week, as you express your gratitude for the Light of the World, may you too, have an epiphany that is transformative!

Thank you for participating in the gratitude project!

Jean