by Lilly Lewin
Give us this day our daily bread!
I was at a retreat recently where Father Michael Sparough led us in the Lord’s Prayer as a body prayer using hand gestures/motions. The action for “give us this day our daily bread” was holding our hands out in front of us cupped like we were holding a bowl of rice.
As we prayed the Lord’s Prayer several times in this way, I was reminded of the Children of Israel in the Wilderness. They were commanded to gather enough manna for one day only . One day at a time, except for the Sabbath, then they could collect enough for two days only. Any extra would rot and have maggots. all we get too.
This was a powerful image for me in a world where too often we don’t feel like we have enough and we don’t believe we are enough. And sadly we don’t believe that God is enough.
Holding my hands out…
cupping them in the shape of a bowl is just the image I need!
I need to remember that God is Enough!
I need the reminder that Jesus is Enough!
The Holy Spirit is Enough!
We get enough for today
Enough Peace
Enough Joy
Enough Love
For Today!
For today is all we have! And tomorrow will take care of itself.
Today, I am sitting in a hospital room with my parents. My Dad is waiting & preparing for the possibility of open heart surgery next Tuesday.
A check up found a blood-clot in his newly replaced heart valve. So we are waiting to see if the blood thinners work. I am so thankful to be in a fantastic hospital with fantastic doctors!
Today we have more than enough!
God is enough!
God’s provision is enough.
God’s economy is abundance
And given daily, is enough.
What do you need today?
Hold out your hands cupping them in the form of a bowl.
Tell Jesus what you need today
Are you willing to believe in His provision for today?
Are you willing to let Jesus fill your bowl today with Enough?
Sometimes we need this reminder minute by minute, by hour by hour.
Hold out your cupped hands and allow Jesus to fill them with them with what you need. Hope, Love, Peace, Compassion, Healing, Joy, Energy, Forgiveness, Mercy, Resolve, ……. whatever you need enough of today.
I even found a bowl to use as a symbol of my “daily bread” provision. Along with my cupped hand prayer, I am using it as a tangible reminder that God is Enough.
By Faith Cho —
Today is National Day of Prayer! How can we curate sustaining a healthy prayer life in light of past disappointments? When I was a little girl, I sought after God in the quietness of my room. I would bundle up in a blanket, stare into the darkness and whisper, “ God, if you’re there, please show me something.” I would lie there for about five minutes, fully attentive for any sort of light show or grandiose response. After about ten minutes of uneventful silence, I would usually drift asleep. After a few months, I stopped asking. I guess I began to feel that if God truly were out there, He did not seem to care to respond to the likes of me.
I never really resolved the disappointment of my childhood prayers being unanswered. In my reasoning, I wondered why an almighty and powerful God would not find it worth His while to answer the prayers of a young child right in that instance. In due time, the Lord did make Himself known to me in very obvious ways. However, it took a while for me to take hold of the discipline of prayer.
When our prayers are met with silence, it’s discouraging. Sometimes, the opposite of your prayers can happen, and boy, does that make you feel rejected by God.
The revelation of what had happened actually came to me as I became a parent. I realized that God does answer all prayers. But, He has a deeper purpose to His answers. He does not answer to merely give us what we want in that moment. He answers to give us what we desire in our lifetime.
It is the same as when my children ask for sugary cereal or another episode of television. As a parent, I care about their everyday wants. However, even more than that, I care about their lifetime desires. I know they would want to grow up to be healthy, powerful adults. I keep these deeper, greater wants in my heart as I decide how to cater to their immediate requests.
The same is also witnessed in history. Hannah wanted a son. Every year, she went to worship God with her husband and his other wife’s family (1 Samuel 1). Year after year, she stood in front of His presence with no child by her side. I can imagine how much it hurt to wait, especially as the other wife provoked her. In those moments, you may wonder if God even hears your prayers. Is He some sort of sadistic teacher that is hoping that you learn something good from the torture you feel?
God’s silence was not a sign of rejection. It was a sign of a deeper preparation at work – a deeper preparation to fulfill a greater purpose.
One day, the time was right, and Hannah’s heart exploded with a new level of surrender (1 Samuel 1:9-14). She asked again for a son, and she dedicated this son unto Him. The fruit of this moment was a boy named Samuel, a prophet that changed the spiritual atmosphere of Israel.
God wanted to give Hannah what she wanted in that moment. However, He waited so that He could give her what she desired in her lifetime, which was to be a part of Redemption History.
The prophet Samuel would later anoint King David, who was the predecessor to Jesus Christ the Savior of the world. We can know for sure that God had this in mind, because at the end of it all, Hannah prayed with her own lips, “He will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed,” — a direct reference to the coming Messiah. It is also the first mention of the Messiah as king in the Bible. It was the most unique and powerful revelation of its time, a time when the Hebrew people did not have a king.
I have watched jobless people remain jobless for longer they would have wanted. I have contended for cancer patients who have remained sick. Sometimes people pray for peace within the home, and things get worse for a time. But, now I know. I know…that I know… that I know – God is always answering. He cares about the desires that are behind my prayers. In fact, He cares about them so much, that He answers in His way and by His time. Therefore, I give Him praise — always.
And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him. (1 John 5:15)
Dear Friends,
It is hard to believe that we are at the end of April. Here in Seattle the fruit trees are in full bloom and the early vegetables are growing rapidly.
I feel that Godspace is once more in full bloom too. We appreciate your encouragement during our transitions and the responsiveness to our posts and the new website.
Accepting the Sustainability Challenge
Our present series on sustainability is engaging people far more than we expected.
In response to Hilary Horn’s post Six Ways to Start Living Sustainably on a Tight Budget we have heard from people who have joined Buy Nothing groups across America. Others have read An Ocean of Plastic Hope and been challenged many to reduce their own plastic waste. Some like me have started making their own yoghurt or bread or the simple step of giving up plastic shopping bags. Still others after reading I Have 36 Slaves Working For Me are grappling with how to clothe themselves more responsibly. Every little step makes a difference.
Our call to a more sustainable life rhythm has also caught readers’ imagination. For example my post Living To a Sustainable Rhythm will be republished in the Mennonite World Review.
As we move towards Pentecost, check out our recently updated resource lists on Pentecost, Trinity Sunday and Ascension Day. Also don’t forget to download the FREE garden guide for those planning a community garden and if you are looking for a relaxing series of meditations for the quiet days beyond Pentecost consider our much read Rest in the Moment available in paper or downloadable formats.
Godspace contributor Jenneth Graser is running a free online retreat Poetry as Therapy in June, which I also highly recommend to you. Several other Godspace authors was well as myself, will be contributing.
Looking Beyond Pentecost
As we move beyond Pentecost there will be even more to keep your eyes open for on Godspace. Our theme will be Inspiring Creativity in Faith and Action. We are called to co-create with the living God yet often feel that expressing our creativity is discouraged. So let’s explore our creative impulses and encourage each other on the journey. Perhaps you would like to shared your own creative inspiration for writing, journaling, crafting liturgies, and poems, painting, composing music or gardening. We are always looking for new contributors. Or you might want to just read along and invite your friends to join you.
There are so many ways that we can express our God given creativity. We appreciate your prayers as Tom and I continue our own endeavors in this area. I am just completing a manuscript The Gift of Wonder to be published in March 2019 by IVPress and am working on a proposal for Abingdon on another project tentatively titled Rhythm of Life, Rhythm of Creation. Tom is also exploring writing another book and appreciates your prayers for wisdom and discernment
God’s blessings be with you over this coming month.
Christine Sine
Godspace Founder and Facilitator
By John Birch —
by Christine Sine
At the beginning of the Easter season with our emphasis on sustainability, I mentioned that there are four types of sustainability we talk about – human, economic, social and environmental.
It is the economic sustainability that seems to be the hardest for us to come to grips with. How do we make decisions that will make it possible for all the people of our planet to flourish economically? We have already talked about making ethical purchases when we buy clothes, and jewelry, but it surprises me how many Christians I talk to in the U.S. don’t believe that the minimum wage should provide a living wage for an employee. Even fewer seem to be concerned about where they invest their money, as long as they are making enough for their retirement.
When it comes to investing our money, it seems even more of a challenge. Ethical or socially responsible investing seeks to consider not just financial return but also social good. This has become a booming market in the last few years, but I struggle because it seems that financial gain is still often more important than social good. I also struggle with how to do that without replacing the bondage of slavery with that of dependency. How do we truly bring freedom and liberation?
One form of social investing that is very attractive to many Christians, microloans, is often geared towards the poor and seems to have the potential to bring freedom and liberation not just to those who live in poverty but to the rich too. I first learned about this form of transformative help when I worked with David Bussau of Opportunity International, on a document on the Biblical basis for micro finance in the early 90s. That document states:
A strong economic base provides the springboard for many dimensions of a family’s life. The provision of capital and income for a man who has been unemployed and ashamed of his inability to provide, often results in reconciliation of families that have been fragmented and separated. It can provide medical care for children whose parents were once denied this right and access to a decent education for children once forced into child labour. Families that have adequate income can provide the essentials of a decent life – shelter, nutrition, immunization, access to clean water and basic health care. These are all examples of the transformation Jesus would have advocated to see families restored to wholeness and abundant life.
Let’s Consider the Needs of Others.
I believe that we are called to consider the needs of others as more important than our own (Philippians 2:3,4) and above all else to strive to bring wholeness and abundant life especially to those who are poor and marginalized. Jesus showed particular concern for this segment of society, encouraging his followers to give up their possessions and give to the poor. Part of the responsibility of those of us who have resources is to share with those who have no resources. When we do this all our lives are transformed. South African Missiologist David Bosch expresses it well,
To become a disciple means a decisive and irrevocable turning to both God and neighbour…. In their being converted to God, rich and poor are converted toward each other.”
To be converted towards each other means that we are all transformed. The rich (and all of us who are middle class in Australia, New Zealand, North America and Europe, are rich) are transformed because we claim a new identity based not on the security of wealth and prestige but rather on the right and just relationships that are the standards of the God’s eternal kingdom. God sets the wealthy free to serve rather than control others and so devote their attention and wealth to the concerns of God’s eternal world of wholeness and abundance.
To the poor Jesus also offered a new identity – the opportunity to be free and responsible human beings with dignity and self-worth, able to serve God and others in society as God intended. By his words and actions, Jesus constantly demonstrated that the call of God’s eternal kingdom was to bring this kind of wholeness and abundance to to the lives of those at the margins. The equality Jesus envisioned was not a levelling down in which all became poor but rather a willing abdication of the rights of all so that through the practice of servanthood all might be fulfilled, live in harmony with God and develop fully the gifts with which God has endowed them.
So my question for all of us to consider this week is: How do we work for sustainability, for the wholeness and abundance of all God’s people and especially those at the margins? How do our decisions and actions set those who live in poverty free to be the liberated, fulfilled people God intends them to be?
Here we are on the journey towards Ascension Day (May 10th) in the second half of the season of Easter. Working our way in the church calendar to Pentecost (May 20th). How is your Resurrection journey going? Are you experiencing Easter, or is it still feeling more like Lent? I was just up in Chicago this week, and there, Spring is just beginning. The grass is finally turning green and the daffodils are finally starting to bloom. You could see the people coming back to life as they walked outside in the sunshine as the temperatures rose to 70 degrees! Maybe you are feeling like that. That the “winter” of your soul is still thawing and the blossom of Resurrection hasn’t happened just yet. Some time resurrection takes time. It’s definitely a process. Jesus appeared and reappeared over the course of forty days and the disciples were still a bit confused about what they were supposed to do next.
I’m there right now in my life, wondering what to do next. May 13th will be my 4th anniversary of knowing that I had cancer. I had a second opinion and the new doctor did “one more test” and found the cancer. Thankfully they caught it just in time so I only needed surgery and not chemo. This is still a BIG miracle to me. It’s been four years of change and transition. We moved across the country and started a new life in my old home town. It’s been a good move, but any time you move, or anytime there is a large event that happens like a death or an illness, it takes time to adjust. I feel i’m finally coming awake again and have energy to consider what is next and what Jesus wants to do in me and through me. Yet every year at this time, my fear and anxiety levels go way up as I worry that the cancer will return again.
I’ve heard it said that it takes three years to be present in a place and make friends. It may take even longer now that people don’t go to traditional jobs everyday but work in coffee shops and virtually. Three years. Jesus’s ministry with his disciples was that long or a bit longer. Jesus changed their world, rocked their point of view, changed their perspectives on everything. No wonder they were confused when he died, afraid when he reappeared ALIVE, and still questioning what they were to do next even after the Resurrection.
It gives me comfort that Peter takes some of the gang fishing in John 21. Peter goes back to what is familiar and what he knows how to do. Something that makes sense to him. Yet, they don’t catch any fish. They fish all night and catch nothing. Then the Stranger shows up on the beach and invites them to fish on the other side of the boat.
Am I willing to fish again where Jesus tells me to fish?
Even when i have fished all night?
Am I willing to LISTEN to Jesus?
Am I willing to jump out of the boat to swim towards Him? Even if it means leaving my friends in the boat?
My favorite part of the John 21 story is that Jesus already had fish cooking on the grill. Jesus had breakfast ready for Peter and the other guys.
Jesus knew they’d be hungry.
Jesus provided what they needed physically and then Jesus provided what Peter needed emotionally too.
Do I believe? Can I believe that Jesus knows my needs?
Can I believe, am I willing to trust, that Jesus has breakfast already cooked and ready for me in my life?
Am I willing to TRUST that the RESURRECTION is for me too?
After the abundant catch, and the picnic breakfast, Jesus reminds Peter of his call. Jesus gives Peter the “what’s next” and let’s Peter know that his betrayal wasn’t the end of the story.
Jesus asks Peter if he love Him. And Pete says three times, you know that I love you Jesus.
Jesus knows that I love Him too. Jesus knows that I have doubts, fears, and big anxieties and He knows when I betray Him and Loves me anyway.
He hasn’t forgotten me.
Jesus hasn’t forgotten you either.
Jesus thankfully knows the WHAT’S NEXT for all of us!
Today, I am willing to be willing to be on the journey, the adventure that is following Jesus.
Today, I will stop. Breathe, and Trust in the Hope of Jesus and His Resurrection.
BREATH PRAYER:
BREATHE IN: the love and hope and peace of Jesus.
BREATHE OUT: fear, anxiety, hopelessness
BREATHE IN: the love and hope and peace of Jesus
BREATHE OUT: fear, anxiety, hopelessness and doubt
BREATHE IN: the love and hope and peace of Jesus
BREATHE OUT: fear, anxiety, hopelessness and despair
BREATHE IN: LOVE
BREATHE OUT: HATE
BREATHE IN: LOVE
BREATHE OUT: FEAR
BREATHE IN: LOVE
BREATHE OUT: LOVE
AMEN
Today April 27, 2018 is Arbor Day! To celebrate, read this amazing post by Lynne Baab —
I have always loved trees. They speak to me of God’s creativity, complexity, beauty and provision.
In high school, we had three young birch trees in our back yard. To me, they looked like young girls dancing, reflecting the joy of living in God’s beautiful world.
As a university student, I took hundreds of photos of the sun shining through trees. I particularly admired the translucence of maple leaves backlit by the sun, speaking to me of the beauty of the Light of the World.
I often remember the trees from places I’ve traveled. The first time I travelled to New Mexico and Colorado in the fall, the round, golden aspen leaves made me gasp with pleasure. The trees looked like they were covered with gold coins, a picture of God’s rich beauty and abundance.
The eucalyptus trees in Australia were a revelation. I had always loved the smell of eucalyptus trees when I visited Northern California, but I thought “eucalyptus” referred to one kind of tree. In Australia, dozens of species of eucalyptus fill the streets and parks, each species with a slightly different color or shape. Of the 700 species of eucalyptus in the world, most are native to Australia. Seeing all those different kinds of eucalyptus trees made me feel like a kid in a candy shop of trees, all of them intricately created by the Maker of all beauty.
Trees are used throughout the Bible as metaphors for various aspects of faith. The tree planted by streams of water in Psalm 1 bears fruit in its season and has green leaves even in a drought. Who is like that tree? A person who loves God, does what is right, and meditates on God’s law day and night.
The vision of God’s abundance described in Isaiah 55:12 talks about joy and peace, which will be so powerful that the mountains will sing and “all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” I read that verse for the first time as a very young Christian, during my photographing-trees-in-the-sun phase, and I posted the verse on my bulletin board because it was so vivid and joyous.
In John’s vision of heaven, recounted in Revelation 21 and 22, the river of life flows through the city, with the tree of life growing beside it, “and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (Rev 22:2). The nations so desperately need God’s healing. I wonder if those healing leaves look like maple leaves with the sun shining through them. Perhaps those healing leaves are gold, like aspen leaves in the fall.
Trees take simple ingredients – carbon dioxide from the air, water and minerals from the soil – and turn them into beautiful branches and leaves, as well as delicious fruit and precious oxygen. Because humans and other mammals breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, trees give balance, providing the oxygen that is essential for human life. Without trees, the rising carbon dioxide level of the air would make life impossible for two reasons: lack of oxygen for mammals to breathe and ever increasing temperatures caused by carbon dioxide’s greenhouse effect.
Arbor Day focuses on planting trees, these miracles of beauty and oxygen. The first known Arbor Day was celebrated in 1594 in Spain. The United States celebrates Arbor Day on April 27, and many other countries have their own Arbor Day. This year, to celebrate Arbor Day, plant a tree. Draw a tree. Photograph a tree. Look out your window or go outside and enjoy the trees that you can see. And don’t forget to thank God for trees.
For further reflection:
The Arbor Day Foundation provides a wonderful webpage showing the benefits of trees. Take a look here.
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How they Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World by Peter Wohlleben will blow your mind. Did you know that trees communicate with each other? They do it through chemicals they release into the wind and through fungi and other plants in the earth. Take a look here.
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