photo credit: http://wayneforte.com/picture/anointing-his-feet-2/
Meanwhile, Jesus was in Bethany at the home of Simon, a man who had previously had leprosy. While he was eating, a woman came in with a beautiful alabaster jar of expensive perfume made from essence of nard. She broke open the jar and poured the perfume over his head. Some of those at the table were indignant. “Why waste such expensive perfume?” they asked. “It could have been sold for a year’s wages and the money given to the poor!” So they scolded her harshly.
“Who was this woman?” We know where it occurred, the extravagant cost of the perfume and even the container that it was in, we not definitely who she was. There has been much speculation over the centuries about who and what she was but no one can be sure. Most people assume the worst and think that she was a prostitute, as Luke suggests or it might have been Mary as John suggests. To the disdain and rejection shown by those eating at table with Jesus we add our own disdain and rejection to this woman.
Possibly her rejection was just because she was a woman. We forget that in Jesus time and culture women did not eat together with men. Perhaps she was rejected because she made the dinner guests feel uncomfortable – the generosity and extravagance of her gift might have been contrasted with their own lack of giving. Or perhaps she was someone unacceptable within the society – if not a prostitute then maybe ill or poor, or maybe she was a Gentile. We don’t know for sure.
What is Your Response?
All of us have times when we feel like this woman kneeling at Jesus feet. We want to share our loving gifts lavishly, but feel that they are unappreciated or misunderstood.
Sit quietly for a few minutes and think back over your own life. Remind yourself of situations in which you have felt misunderstood and unappreciated. Now imagine Jesus taking up your gift with love and gratitude, fully appreciative of all that you have done.
Write down your response.
He Qi Woman anointing Jesus Feet http://www.heqiart.com/
This story occurs just a couple of days before the Last Supper and the foretaste of the communion feast. I wondered is this because this story challenges us to think about all those that we still exclude from our table fellowship. Jesus has embraced the outcasts and is eating at their table – the tax collectors, and Simon the leper are there but they are unwilling to welcome this woman.
I think that this woman is unnamed because she represents all the nameless and rejected ones in our society whom we still refuse to welcome to our table – people that we aren’t willing to listen to because they are different from us or unacceptable in our own Christian culture.
What is your response:
Who, I wondered are we still unwilling to welcome to our table? Whose voices are we unwilling to listen to and whose offerings are we unwilling to embrace?
Sit quietly for a couple of minutes with your eyes closed. Imagine your dining room table with a group of friends around it. Who would you invite? Who would feel excluded and why? Write down your impressions. Listen to the song below. What would it take for you to live in God’s freedom and come to God’s table as this song suggests? Pray about your responses and ask God if there is anything you need to change.
In my creative journey recently, I have been traveling down business lane, reviewing options for producing prints of my art work and methods for sharing them with the world.
I am aware of the irony involved in this undertaking. As with many aspects of life, opposing forces must be held in tension on the journey. I make art work by hand as a way to keep creativity and individual expression alive in the face of the homogenizing force of our visual culture’s global communication systems. Yet, ironically, those very systems are the mechanism to share my individual creative expressions!
I recently read a Facebook a joke about art journaling. The gist was “why buy something for $7 when you can make it yourself for $76 worth of art supplies? It’s funny because it is true. Many people ‘liked’ the post but one responder hit the nail on the head when she commented that what we are after is not the product but the creative experience. Certainly, there is an art journaling market that has risen in response to this internal hunger.
Keeping a visual journal, or art journal, is a sanctuary for creative expression, a way to nourish the soul. It is one way we celebrate and express our lives and make our individual voices heard. We record a view of our lives, creating an individual cultural product in the process.
The photo above is an example that I created this week to commemorate the delight I felt at once again being blessed with heat, new tree leaves, the color of green, and the miracle of shade after a long cold winter. Summer felt like it had arrived in mid-Spring so I took time to lay in the grass, admire the green, and soak in the life giving energy of the sun.
———————————————————————————————-
Cynthia A. Julian: artist, writer, teacher, woman of faith and contemplative practitioner. It is my nature to create. I ‘discovered’ mixed media art journaling about four years ago. I practice art journaling because I find it satisfies my hunger to create and results in unique expressions of my life’s journey. Visit my website This Creative Journey, where this article was first posted to see a portfolio of some of my creations.
This is the last of my series of posts on sleep and rest. It seems appropriate to remind us that the ultimate rest of all is the rest of God – the Sabbath rest – not a rest of exhaustion at the end of a busy week, but the rest of delight and accomplishment, the rest that says “Well done good and faithful servant”, the rest that looks around at all that has been done and says “It is good”.
This kind of rest in hard to achieve in a world that insists we never have enough – not enough stuff, not enough time, not enough “friends” on Facebook. Our society thrives on discontent and the quest for more. I sometimes wonder if its lack is part of what contributes to our sleeplessness on other days too.
So enjoy this prayer. Read it through slowly, savour it, take it to heart, and create for yourself a Sabbath rest.
————————————————————————————-
Other posts in this series:
On Screen/Off Screen Is It Hurting Our Sleep?
Let Us Rest With God – A Prayer
What’s the Problem With Insomnia
The discussion on Tuesday’s post What’s the Problem With Insomnia has made me realize that this is an extremely important issue for many of us. It is easy to make the excuse however that waking in the night is normal and then ignore the factors in our lifestyles that contribute to our sleeplessness. I wrote about this several months ago and hope that you will forgive me for repeating some of what I said then.
Sleeplessness is often more a function of our lifestyle than anything else. We can’t just blame the electric light however. Lack of time outside in the sunlight, lack of time in the dark at night, lack of exercise, stress and the inability to relax our minds before we go to bed can all contribute to lack of sleep. Inner Body Research has some great suggestions for those who struggle regularly with insomnia, including some simple ways to diagnose what may be the underlying cause of the problem. No wonder the sleeping pill industry is booming.
The problem is getting worse and our technology contributes to it. A few months ago I read this interesting article Reading On A Screen Before Going to Bed May be Killing You.
You’ve heard that using screens before bedtime can mess with your sleep, but new research suggests the problem is even more serious.
Reading from an iPad before bed not only makes it harder to fall asleep, but also impacts how sleepy and alert you are the next day, according to new research from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, said the findings could impact anyone who uses an eReader, laptop, smartphone, or certain TVs before bed. Read the entire article
This was not good news for me because I love to read before I go to bed and reading on my tablet means I don’t disturb my husband. Even before I get into bed, Tom and I often watch a movie on our TV before we retire – not necessarily good either.
As I have already mentioned, sleep is one of the essential rhythms of life. Without adequate sleep we soon cease to function properly, without any sleep, a condition that is fortunately fairly rare, we will die. Not only does the biphasic sleep pattern I talked about in my previous post seem more natural, there is even evidence that a siesta in the afternoon boosts our memory and cognitive functioning.
Faith and Sleep
Faith practices can also help us relax and enter into that sleep which is indeed a gift from God which as you know is part of the reason that I write prayers for both the morning and the evening. If we want to sleep properly a rhythm of prayer throughout the day can really help.
- In her article Christian Meditation – God’s Gift for Healthy Sleep Deborah Kukal talks about the important part that meditation on psalms can play in helping us relax and sleep. So when you’re struggling in the night, remember David’s words, and let God’s peaceful gift of meditation fill your soul with comfort, and your body with rest. read more
There are other Christian practices that can help too.
- Lectio divina and a reflective reading of scripture before we go to bed is a wonderful way to relax and go to sleep in the presence of God. Intentionally disconnecting from my laptop or kindle at least 1/2 hour before I go to bed and indulging in a meditative practice like lectio divina much a huge difference to my night’s sleep.
- The prayer of examen which helps us to review the day in the presence of God, encouraging us to leave the cares and worries we have encountered in God’s hands, is another wonderful way to end our waking hours. I have done this sporadically over the years and realize I need to reinstitute this practice.
- Breathing prayers which encourage us to breathe deeply and regularly can also be of great value. Evidently many of us spend most of our lives breathing too shallowly and deprive our lungs and other organs of the oxygen we need to remain healthy. More than that it can relieve anxiety, stimulate our immune system and even alleviate the symptoms of trauma. Read more. As you know I love to write breathing prayers and have found them to be wonderful tools for relaxing me.
- Centering prayers provide a way for all of us to sit in the contentment of the moment, shutting out the noise in order to focus completely on God. This is not a practice that comes easily or naturally to most of us which is probably an indication of the stress that we live under. If you don’t know much about this form of prayer I would heartily recommend Basil Pennington’s classic Centering Prayer to you.
- Prayer beads are, for many, a great stress reliever and can be a wonderful way to prepare yourself for sleep. You might like to design your own prayer to say with your beads before you go to retire for the night.
Many Americans are heading towards one of the most unrestful weekends of the year – BBQs and celebrations of July 4th with friends. So I thought that I would post this as a reminder for all of us to take time to rest in the midst of our partying and celebrating – no matter where in the world we are.
This prayer is part of a series I am posting this week on rest and sleep. There are the other posts so far:
What’s the Problem With Insomnia
Dream – artwork by Jennifer Hamlett Herrick
Over the last week I have posted prayers to welcome God into our day and into our night. I mentioned that one of these prayers was written as a response to my struggle the night before with insomnia. I was amazed at the number of people who responded with their own stories of sleeplessness and the frustration it caused them.
I have written about sleeplessness before but thought it was time to do a little more research on the subject. What I discovered is fascinating.
According to this article by Natalie Wolchover
More than one-third of American adults wake up in the middle of the night on a regular basis. Of those who experience “nocturnal awakenings,” nearly half are unable to fall back asleep right away. Doctors frequently diagnose this condition as a sleep disorder called “middle-of-the-night insomnia,” and prescribe medication to treat it.
Mounting evidence suggests, however, that nocturnal awakenings aren’t abnormal at all; they are the natural rhythm that your body gravitates toward. According to historians and psychiatrists alike, it is the compressed, continuous eight-hour sleep routine to which everyone aspires today that is unprecedented in human history. We’ve been sleeping all wrong lately — so if you have “insomnia,” you may actually be doing things right.
Normal isn’t really normal at all. According to Natalie and a growing number of researchers, until the invention of the electric light most people slept in four hour blocks, waking in the middle of the night for an hour or two in which they prayed, conversed together, made love or went for walks. Electric light meant we could stay up later. Instead of going to bed for 12-14 hours we suddenly only spent 8 hours or less in bed and expect to get all our sleep done in one go.
Evidently sleeping in the biphasic pattern helps us process our dreams which are part of the problem solving mechanism of our brains. It is no wonder that many people find that their night time wakefulness often ignites creative juices and helps them solve life’s challenges. It also explains why the monastic rhythms began with prayer at 2 or 3 am. This was not some rigourous, aesthetic discipline but rather flowed out of the natural rhythm of sleep and wakefulness. And think about how often in the Bible God awakens prophets and leaders with visions and dreams.
What I wonder are we missing out on because we try to control our sleep patterns? (More to come on this)
What do you think?
There are many images used in the gospels to describe the kingdom of God – a treasure in a field, a lost coin, yeast. My favourite is the mustard seed – a small seed that grows into a huge plant. Yet in many parts of the world, mustard is a noxious weed, something that no self respecting farmer would plant.
So the kingdom of God is like a weed? How could that possibly be?
When we think about it, the analogy does not seem so far fetched. Weeds are resilient, tenacious, ubiquitous. They emerge everywhere – not just in the garden but unexpected places like the crevice of rocks and through cracks in the concrete. No weed block keeps them out for long. We try to yank them out or poison them but in a couple of months they are back.
Just so the kingdom of God. It is constantly emerging in unexpected places. It cannot be suppressed. In the devastation of an earthquake in Nepal, strangers come from all over the world to help. In the violence and hatred in the Middle East, an Israeli woman protects a Palestinian child. In the presence of injustice, the Rosa Parks‘ emerge to show us the path to truth. Activists work for the rights of women, gays, illegal immigrants.
What is your response.
Go for a walk outside and look at the weeds in your garden (or your neighbour’s garden if you don’t have one). What are the unexpected places in which they are emerging? Now go inside and sit quietly thinking about the unexpected places in which you have caught glimpses of God’s kingdom emerging. Write these down. Each evening this week before you go to bed ask yourself – where have I caught glimpses of God’s kingdom today? Grow your list. Ask God if there is any further response you should make to grow the kingdom that is emerging.
Weeds are important in a garden. They are good indicators of soil conditions and often help improve the soil as they send down roots that grow deep loosening hard compacted soil and bringing up useful minerals from deep down. The Canadian thistle that some try so hard to eradicate, reaches down up to 20 feet for nutrients. It breaks up the soil, enriches it and makes it healthy so that other plants thrive.
Weeds make good cover crops, provide habitats for beneficial insects and prevent erosion. They provide essential food for wildlife, pollen and nectar for beneficial insects, and nutrition for livestock and humans alike. Here in the Pacific NW, blackberries grow everywhere. We want to rid of them, yet they provide a wealth of edible fruit packed full of vitamins.
The kingdom of God is like a weed, it improves the soil of the whole garden of God. It provides nutrients and food, and a protected place for all God’s creatures to dwell.
What is your response.
Sit quietly in the presence of God and think about the people in your life who irritate you, the situations that you wish would go away, the injustices you would rather ignore. Who or what are the weeds in your life or community that represent the kingdom of God? Where have you tried to yank out the kingdom of God from your life or your community because it made you uncomfortable? Make a list.
Now listen to the song below and prayerfully ask God how you should respond.
As an Amazon Associate, I receive a small amount for purchases made through appropriate links.
Thank you for supporting Godspace in this way.
When referencing or quoting Godspace Light, please be sure to include the Author (Christine Sine unless otherwise noted), the Title of the article or resource, the Source link where appropriate, and ©Godspacelight.com. Thank you!