Soon after my eight-day retreat, I queued up the last five blog posts so they would be published while I was away on vacation. It felt good to know I didn’t need to have another post ready until August 24.
That’s today and here I am writing it.
Usually, some experience or thought comes to mind that I want to share with you, but in the last few weeks, nothing’s surfaced except a vague uneasiness. I didn’t know its source until a friend and I were chatting about silent prayer, and I admitted how difficult it is for me to enter into silence and be present to God.
The next day I was sitting around a table with the other Living from the Heart facilitators from Calgary, Saskatoon, and the lower mainland. Before we began our work for the day, Brent Unrau led us in morning prayers. This passage from Lamentations was read aloud.
Gaining hope,
I remember and wait for this thought:
How enduring is God’s loyal love;
the Eternal has inexhaustible compassion.
Here they are, every morning, new!
Your faithfulness, God, is as broad as the day.
Have courage, for the Eternal is all that I will need.
My soul boasts, “Hope in God; just wait.”
It is good. The Eternal One is good to those who expect Him,
to those who seek Him wholeheartedly.
It is good to wait quietly
for the Eternal to make things right again.
In these encouraging words, I heard, “Just wait. The Eternal will make things right again.”
After a brief time of silence, Brent invited us to share what was stirred in us as in response to the reading. When it was my turn to speak, I told them what stood out for me. Then I hesitated and looked into the gentle faces of my friends. Could I say why?
“When I finished my eight-day retreat, I sensed that silence is the doorway to intimacy with God, but so often I can’t open that door.” Tears came as I spoke. “Then when I heard, ‘Just wait. The Eternal will make things right again.’ I felt hopeful. God will help me.”
As I sit here now with my computer on my lap, I feel those tears again. I recall my friends’ compassion. I remember the prayer when Jesus and I were on the beach and he took me through a doorway into another world. He showed me that God is actively redeeming every person’s life–including mine.
Have courage, for the Eternal is all that I will need.
–Lamentations 3:24 (The Voice)
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During my vacation, my brother Ron took me to his church’s annual Blues Brews N BBQs. For six years, Mount Olivet Lutheran Church in Plymouth, Minnesota, has hosted this music festival which has raised over $100,000 for community partners, Habitat for Humanity and PRISM in Minneapolis and St Paul. This year’s line up included Miss Myra and the Moonshiners, Harrison Street, and The Alex Rossi Band. Here are more photos of this amazing event.
What love mischief are you and God doing to care for the world?
Let me know and I will include it in an upcoming post.
An Everyday Pilgrim 