Today’s prayer by Thomas A Kempis is another that I like to repost as I contemplate my journey towards the love of God. Then watch the video below and take time to reflect on Thomas A Kempis words on love. What does the love of God mean for you and the way you live your life?
By Trevor Horn —
Two weeks ago we welcomed into the world our second son, Abram Lynn Horn. Words cannot fully describe how this little one has changed our lives in such a short time and I am not sure any parent fully has the words when a new little one comes into this world but I will do my best to give it a shot.
Days before Abram was born it finally hit me that we were having a baby. I know this may sound dumb, but those who know me know that I am extremely focused and move quickly when making transitions. So days before I finally had the space after months of intense work and the mind to finally start to prepare. And all sorts of questions started to jump into my head but one main one….how will I have the capacity to love two kids as much as I did one? The math in my head didn’t seem to add up as at times I felt like one was a lot to love but I left the matter until we met little Abram for the first time.
The day of the birth (Sunday, August 6th) came and we woke up with a mix of nervousness and excitement. In a weird way it felt like the feeling before the first game of a new football season as you can imagine all of the good and bad possibilities this season could go. Yet the second baby was different then the first. We had been here before and done this before but under much different circumstances. Our first baby (Ephraim) had come after a long 48 hour labor process and an unplanned c-section. Abram had been on the calendar for weeks as a scheduled c-section and we knew what to expect going in with him.
Finally the decisive moment had come as Hilary laid on the operating table awaiting our little one’s arrival into the world. Rather quickly they made quick work and Abram was with us. I remember when the nurse asked me, “Would you like to hold him dad?” With all the excitement and nervousness I held little Abram in my arms for the first time. And that question how can I love two babies the same melted away as I realized that I absolutely couldn’t. Abram was completely and totally different than his older brother and in no way could I love them the same. It hit me me as I looked upon his little hands and feet that this love would be a new love, a different love with different challenges and difficulties but still love nonetheless emanating from the goodness of God, our creator and sustainer.
So, no I cannot love Ephraim and Abram the same because they are two completely different people but God in his goodness has helped me a find a new stream of love that will daily overflow to help me to love Abram in a unique and wholly different way. With this I have found solace in David’s reflection in Psalm 139:
“13 For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.”
Trevor Horn is the lead pastor of Kardia Church, a new faith community in urban Seattle. His main roles are as a visionary, communicator, bible teacher and disciple-maker. He is equally sought after to teach on the main stage from megachurches to church plants as well as teaching in classroom settings. Through his ministry experiences he has had the opportunity to pioneer in several new church starts and ministries in various contexts from the inner city, suburban, country and urban environments. He is close to graduation with a Master’s degree in Biblical and Theological Studies from Western Seminary. Trevor also holds two bachelors degrees from the University of Puget Sound in Business & Leadership and Religious Studies. You kind find out more about Trevor and his family, here.
This prayer is one that I always like to repost when facilitating a series about the love of God. Recognizing the depth of God’s love as it is expressed in the story of Jesus as he plays with kids, celebrates with friends and weeps over the broken, falling in love with this God whose love has no limits, really does change everything in a way that totally transforms our lives. And it very definitely transforms hate into love.
The prayer is attributed to Father Pedro Arrupe (1903- 1991) from the Basque region of Spain who became the 28th Superior General of the Society of Jesus. I was first given this prayer on a card several years ago but have recently also come across it on Ignatian Spirituality.com
Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is,
than falling in love in a quite absolute final way.
What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination,
will affect everything.
It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekend,
what you read, who you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in love,
stay in love,
and it will decide everything.
For Labor Day this year, I invite you to ponder the pattern of your life – looking at the hours you spend doing things – and the ways you pray for the various components of the pattern. I’ll use my own life as an example of what I’m inviting you to do.
Each week has 168 hours, and I sleep an average of 8 hours a night. I wake up really slowly, and of course I do things to get ready for bed. So I’m going to allow about 9.5 hours per day for sleep and the activities that surround sleep. That’s 66.5 hours, the biggest allotment of hours in my week.
Illustration by Dave Baab
I work about 35 hours per week on paid work and volunteer work. I work from home, so I don’t have commuting time like so many people do.
My husband and I babysit our granddaughter one afternoon each week for about 5 hours. Plus we host a weekly dinner for our kids and granddaughter. I usually do the cooking for that dinner. That dinner takes up about 5 hours per week total, so I spend about 10 hours a week with our kids and granddaughter.
I work from home, and my husband and I don’t eat out too often, so I plan and prepare 6 or 7 lunches and dinners each week, including a lot of leftovers. Leaving out the cooking time for the family dinner, I estimate I spend 6 hours per week shopping for food and preparing meals. But I don’t do any dishes! My husband and I eat those lunches and dinners together, which totals maybe 8 hours a week.
Here are my totals so far:
sleeping – 66.5 hours
work – 35 hours
kids and granddaughter – 10 hours
preparing and eating meals – 8 hours
That’s only 119.5 out of 168 hours in the week. That leaves 48.5 hours for exercise, time with friends, conversations with my husband, my women’s prayer group, church, household tasks, prayer times, lots of reading, and other miscellaneous things.
I’ve been comparing how I spend the hours of the week with how I spend my time praying. I read the news for 30 minutes or less every day, which represents only 3.5 hours per week, 2% of the time in the week. Yet my prayers for things happening in the world occupy much more than 2% of the things I pray for. Is that good? In my view, yes, for sure.
My kids and granddaughter occupy roughly 10 hours per week, 6% of my week. They occupy more than 10% of my prayer time. Again, that seems very right.
For me, work takes up 21% of my time. For many people, that figure would be much higher, when taking into account commuting, emails after work hours, and thinking about strategies for work when not working. I suspect that for most people, work is underrepresented in their prayer times. Yet many of us spend more time working than anything else we do except sleeping.
If you’d like to pray for your work more systematically, here are some ideas:
- God’s help on a daily basis. “Help me” prayers are my most common form of prayers for my work. I often ask for guidance.
- People. God is always concerned about relationships. We can pray for many aspects of relationships at work, both for our relationship with others, and for their well being.
- Tasks. Many specific tasks at work are worthy of prayer. We can ask that the tasks we do would serve God and people.
- Fruit. One of my favorite words is “fruitfulness,” the notion that our job is to stay grounded in God, and God will bring fruit from what we do. Fruit is long term, and we can pray for long term good things to come from our work.
- Placement. Am I in the right place in my work? Should I look for another job?
- Thankfulness. Don’t forget to thank God for the aspects of your work that you enjoy, and for the fruit that you can see.
These areas of prayer work well as we pray for others in their work life as well. For Labor Day this year, I encourage you to think creatively about how you pray for your work and for the work of the people you love.
For Labor Day this year, I invite you to ponder the pattern of your life – looking at the hours you spend doing things – and the ways you pray for the various components of the pattern. I’ll use my own life as an example of what I’m inviting you to do.
Each week has 168 hours, and I sleep an average of 8 hours a night. I wake up really slowly, and of course I do things to get ready for bed. So I’m going to allow about 9.5 hours per day for sleep and the activities that surround sleep. That’s 66.5 hours, the biggest allotment of hours in my week.
Illustration by Dave Baab
I work about 35 hours per week on paid work and volunteer work. I work from home, so I don’t have commuting time like so many people do.
My husband and I babysit our granddaughter one afternoon each week for about 5 hours. Plus we host a weekly dinner for our kids and granddaughter. I usually do the cooking for that dinner. That dinner takes up about 5 hours per week total, so I spend about 10 hours a week with our kids and granddaughter.
I work from home, and my husband and I don’t eat out too often, so I plan and prepare 6 or 7 lunches and dinners each week, including a lot of leftovers. Leaving out the cooking time for the family dinner, I estimate I spend 6 hours per week shopping for food and preparing meals. But I don’t do any dishes! My husband and I eat those lunches and dinners together, which totals maybe 8 hours a week.
Here are my totals so far:
sleeping – 66.5 hours
work – 35 hours
kids and granddaughter – 10 hours
preparing and eating meals – 8 hours
That’s only 119.5 out of 168 hours in the week. That leaves 48.5 hours for exercise, time with friends, conversations with my husband, my women’s prayer group, church, household tasks, prayer times, lots of reading, and other miscellaneous things.
I’ve been comparing how I spend the hours of the week with how I spend my time praying. I read the news for 30 minutes or less every day, which represents only 3.5 hours per week, 2% of the time in the week. Yet my prayers for things happening in the world occupy much more than 2% of the things I pray for. Is that good? In my view, yes, for sure.
My kids and granddaughter occupy roughly 10 hours per week, 6% of my week. They occupy more than 10% of my prayer time. Again, that seems very right.
For me, work takes up 21% of my time. For many people, that figure would be much higher, when taking into account commuting, emails after work hours, and thinking about strategies for work when not working. I suspect that for most people, work is underrepresented in their prayer times. Yet many of us spend more time working than anything else we do except sleeping.
If you’d like to pray for your work more systematically, here are some ideas:
- God’s help on a daily basis. “Help me” prayers are my most common form of prayers for my work. I often ask for guidance.
- People. God is always concerned about relationships. We can pray for many aspects of relationships at work, both for our relationship with others, and for their well being.
- Tasks. Many specific tasks at work are worthy of prayer. We can ask that the tasks we do would serve God and people.
- Fruit. One of my favorite words is “fruitfulness,” the notion that our job is to stay grounded in God, and God will bring fruit from what we do. Fruit is long term, and we can pray for long term good things to come from our work.
- Placement. Am I in the right place in my work? Should I look for another job?
- Thankfulness. Don’t forget to thank God for the aspects of your work that you enjoy, and for the fruit that you can see.
These areas of prayer work well as we pray for others in their work life as well. For Labor Day this year, I encourage you to think creatively about how you pray for your work and for the work of the people you love.
by Christine Sine
As we move into September and October we are shifting the focus on Godspace. Our theme for the next couple of months is Let Hate Become Love. As I mentioned in the Godspace update last week, violence and hatred seem to prevail in our world today, yet God is a God of love. So the question I am contemplating is: What does love look like in our world today and how can we be instruments of God’s love into our world and the lives of those around us?
One way I suggest in my post last week, is to do things together like singing, dancing, eating and serving. These all help turn hate into love. Yet we live in an increasingly individualistic and self centred world. How do we bring people together so that hate can indeed be transformed into love?
Lets Introduce Awe and Wonder
This week, as I did research for my new book on creative spirituality, I discovered one way to bring us together that had never occurred to me: Let’s introduce some awe and wonder into our lives. Research suggests that even brief experiences of awe, such as being amid beautiful tall trees, lead people to feel less narcissistic and entitled and more attuned to the common humanity people share with one another. Awe helps bind us to others, motivating us to act in collaborative ways that enable strong groups and cohesive communities. It reorients our actions towards the needs of those around us and can even help us find a sense of purpose for our lives.
Unfortunately, research also suggests that we are awe deprived. We spend more time working and commuting and less time in nature, involved in art and music or with other people, the main situations that invoke awe and wonder. So here are some suggestions for a good dose of awe and wonder:
- Get our into nature. Take a walk in your local park or forest, sit on the beach and watch the sunset, listen to birdsong or a waterfall.
- Take notice of the small beautiful things around you. Pick up a leaf and examine its delicate structure. Examine the petals of a flower, or the details of an ant.
- Seek out what gives you goosebumps. Awe can be triggered by an unexpected smile, a helping hand on the bus, a mural on a wall. Think about what gives you a sense of awe and look for those triggers around you.
- See the world differently. Walk with a child and marvel at their perceptions and curiosity. Look through a camera lens or under a microscope. Close your eyes and rejoice in the beauty of touch and smell.
- Slow down and take notice. Lie on the grass and look at the clouds. Watch the light dance off a raindrop. Listen to your favourite piece of music. read through your favourite poem. Share your experiences in your journal or with a friend.
What is Your Response?
The Bible of is full of expressions of awe and wonder both of God and God’s creation. We see it in Moses awe and wonder at the great creator of the universe as expressed in Deuteronomy 10: 14, 17 (NIV) Look, the highest heavens and the earth and everything in it all belong to the Lord your God…. For the Lord your God is the God of gods and Lord of lords. He is the great God, the mighty and awesome God, who shows no partiality and cannot be bribed. We see it in David’s exclamation of praise of creation in Psalm 65:8 The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy. I think we also see it in Jesus encouragement to his followers to go out and look closely at the birds and think about the wild lilies in Luke 12:27. God and God’s world are meant to inspire us with awe and wonder.
Here too I think we are awe deprived. When was the last time you sat in awe of God’s greatness?
What inspires you with awe when you think about God?
Watch the video below and reflect on this question. How do you feel you could respond?
By Lilly Lewin
So it’s here! A new month, a new beginning! I love starting a new month with a clean calendar. It’s a fresh start for everything. For some it’s the start of the rhythm of the new school year, for others it’s just a new month. And for some of us it’s hard to turn the calendar page because we find ourselves somewhere back in June or July.
Since we are starting a new month, we are transitioning our theme at Godspace from Shalom to the new theme of “Let Hate Become Love”
For me, this is really all about living out the shalom of God in my real life, not just on paper or online.
Let Hate Become Love.
What helps me move from hate to love?
Thankfulness and a grateful heart.
Gratefulness and thankfulness help us experience the shalom of God and when we see all the gifts God is giving to us we are able to give love and peace away to others. I believe Gratitude is a spiritual practice. It takes time and effort to focus on thankfulness when you are having a bad day or when tragedy and suffering are all around, or when the kids are fighting and there is laundry and dishes to be done and the to -do list feels unending. It is really hard to practice thankfulness and gratitude when everyone around you seems to be whining and complaining and you’re ready to join in!
So let’s start practicing. I always say to my family and friends, baby steps!
Grateful Prayer Practices for the weeks ahead.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the people in Texas who are suffering and will be recovering from Hurricane Harvey for months and even years to come. And this led me to some grateful prayer practices:
WATER: When you wash your hands
Take a shower
Wash your clothes
Be thankful for running water.
Thank you God for running water, for both hot and cold running water, for this gift.
As you do the laundry or dishes,
Pray for those who are without running water in the areas flooded by Hurricanes and Typhoons. Or just because they have no access.
Pray for those people around the world who have to walk miles to fill jugs each day
in order to have water for drinking, cooking and cleaning.
ELECTRICITY: As you open the fridge, run the dishwasher, plug in your phone,
Use the computer, Express your thankfulness for electricity
And technology that works.
Thank you God for the resource of electricity.
Help me to remember that it is a gift.
God help me to remember that my complaints about my phone, or lack of a charger, or when the cable goes out are so “first world” and help me to put the whining away and be thankful instead.
Pray for the work crews in areas of crisis, like southeastern Texas, who are rebuilding infrastructure and working on getting power back to homes and businesses.
Pray for people in areas of crisis and those without access to electricity.
As you plug in your phone or computer to charge them, pray for Refugees around the world who are seeking life’s basics.
FOOD:
As you eat a meal, take time to savor the food.
Take time to truly be thankful for the people who grew it,
the people who cooked it (even if it’s you!) and thankful to God for this provision.
When shopping this week, buy an extra item or two and donate it to your local food bank, or clean out your pantry and see if there are things you can donate. (check the expiration dates!)
Thank you God for my daily bread.
BREATHE:
Today, stop. Take a deep breath.
Breathe in and out.
Pause. Listen.
Ask God to fill you with peace and open your heart to thankfulness.
What do you hear around you?
As I pause to listen, as I write this, I can hear the rain on the roof and see the rain hitting the window.
We had the remnants of hurricane Harvey blow through Nashville last night with tornado warnings and flash flooding. Thankfully there wasn’t too much damage around town and none at our house.
Today I am thankful for the very necessary things of a dry house, electricity and coffee!
I’m going to use September as a month to practice thankfulness and gratitude for the things I take so easily for granted. And let love and thankfulness lead the way.
What are three things you are grateful for today?
PS…We are often good at responding to emergency situations and major disasters but not very good at responding to local on going concerns. Find out what’s needed at your local homeless shelter. New socks and underwear in various sizes ( including XXL) are always welcome! and don’t forget diapers!
And here are some practical ways to respond to Hurricane Harvey
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