Look upon me, O Lord, and let all the darkness of my soul vanish before the beams of your brightness. (Saint Augustine of Hippo)
…Listening In…
God said that light should shine out of the darkness. He is the same one who shined in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6; context)
…Filling Up…
We turn our discussion of light this week to a substance through which light shines. Have you ever wondered why churches have stained glass windows? You don’t see many stained glass windows in secular buildings or in private homes, and you certainly can’t find them for sale at Home Depot. No – churches pretty much have the market cornered on stained glass.
Leaving aside the fact that these windows are pretty and make interesting patterns of light dance across the floor, the purpose for stained glass has since medieval times been to tell stories. When most of the population was illiterate, the best way to teach the Bible was to tell it in picture form in the windows of churches. While some windows are purely decorative, in many the glass takes sunlight and bends it to tell a story. Each panel contains glass of various pigments and shapes, and strung together the light shining through shows scenes from Jesus’ life or images of the saints or other stories.
But I think that another reason that churches have stained glass windows is to remind the people who enter those churches that we are also a type of stained glass. Paul says that God shines in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ. God shines in our hearts.
Our hearts can be dim, dank places, but God’s light penetrates them and roots out all that darkness. When our hearts are bright, we can ask God to make us windows so that the light will shine forth from us. But we aren’t just any old windows. We are stained glass. God’s light shines from us each uniquely – our individual gifts and personalities and yearnings act as the panels of colored glass. Through these beautiful panes, God tells the story of how God is moving in our lives. So shine with the knowledge that God’s light has reached your heart. And be radiant.
…Praying For…
Dear God, thank you for shining your light in my heart. Help me to radiate that light forth from myself so that others may know that I am yours. Give me the grace to brighten the lives of all I meet; in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, knowing that you are a light that never goes out. You are always shining on the path that takes me home.
Look upon me, O Lord, and let all the darkness of my soul vanish before the beams of your brightness. (Saint Augustine of Hippo)
…Listening In…
This is the basis for judgment: The light came into the world, and people loved darkness more than the light, for their actions are evil. All who do wicked things hate the light and don’t come to the light for fear that their actions will be exposed to the light.Whoever does the truth comes to the light so that it can be seen that their actions were done in God. (John 3:19-21; context)
…Filling Up…
As we continue to think about light, I keep coming back to the same place: we humans have a tendency to speak of things from a human point of view. This is only natural, of course. But what we rarely take the time to notice is the fact that the human point of view is completely wrong sometimes. Here’s what I mean. You are standing out on your porch after dinner and watching the sun go down. The sky is on fire with yellows and reds deepening into purples and blues. You stand there transfixed until the last ray of light drops below the horizon.
That’s the human point of view. What really happened is this: You are standing out on your porch watching the effects as your little patch of the earth rotates away from the sun. The sky is on fire with yellows and reds deepening into purples and blues. You stand there transfixed until you spin fully away from the sun’s light.
So, in the end, there’s no such thing as a sunset. There’s only our perception of the sun dipping to the horizon. Like the sun, the light of the world (that’s Jesus for those of you keeping score) never goes down, never sets. The light of the world shines on us and into us and out from us all the time. We have the opportunity to walk in that everlasting light by living lives that reflect the truth, beauty, and grace of God. We also have the choice to turn our backs on the light and live lives of convenience, consumption, and degradation. The good news is this: the light of the world shines on us no matter which way we are turned. And the light warms our backs when we are turned away, beckoning us to turn around and walk in the light.
…Praying For…
Dear God, thank you for being the light that never goes out. Please shine on me and help me to reflect your light on all those I meet; in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, knowing that you are a light that never goes out. You are always shining on the path that takes me home.
Look upon me, O Lord, and let all the darkness of my soul vanish before the beams of your brightness. (Saint Augustine of Hippo)
…Listening In…
How long shall I have perplexity in my mind, and grief in my heart, day after day? How long shall my enemy triumph over me? Look upon me and answer me, O Lord my God; give light to my eyes, lest I sleep in death. (Psalm 13: 2-3; context)
…Filling Up…
Imagine that you are lying in bed and, for some reason – perhaps you accidentally set your alarm clock wrong or you have an early hockey practice – you wake up at about 5:30 in the morning. The diameter of the pupils of your eyes grows as your eyes adjust to the darkness of the room. There’s a tiny sliver of soft pre-dawn light sliding under the blinds on the windows – just enough light for pitch dark to soften to regular dark. You lie there trying to fall back to sleep. Sleep doesn’t return, so you try the trick of keeping your eyes open as long as you can in hopes that they will tire and close on their own.
Your eyes rove around your room, and you notice how different the walls and bookcases and trophies and posters look in the near darkness. Everything is there, exactly as you left it last night. But everything looks odd because the darkness has leached the color out of all the objects in the room. The first and second place trophies, usually distinguishable because of their blue and red colors are different only in height now. The clothes in your open closet look like hand-me-downs from the wardrobe department of a black and white film. The world as you know it faded to gray during the night.
“Give light to my eyes,” pleads the person who wrote Psalm 13. The psalmist knows that the world has no vibrancy, no vividness, no vitality without the wonder that is light. Without light, we have no hope of noticing the beauty of all the colors under the sun, all the paint that God brushed and scattered and sloshed onto creation’s canvas. It’s no wonder then that God created light first of all, perhaps because God knew that when we humans came along, we would need that light to live fully in this world. What a gift it is to be able to see all the hues of the flowers in a garden. What a gift it is to be able to tell the difference between football teams. What a gift it is to notice the subtle variations of color in a friend’s eyes. What a gift is light. And we never notice this gift until it’s not there.
…Praying For…
Dear God, thank you for the light with which you show the glory of your creation to your creatures. Give light to my eyes so that I might see all the things you would have me see in all the beauty and complexity that those things possess; in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, knowing that you are a light that never goes out. You are always shining on the path that takes me home.
Look upon me, O Lord, and let all the darkness of my soul vanish before the beams of your brightness. (Saint Augustine of Hippo)
…Listening In…
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…What came into being through the Word was life, and the life was the light for all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light. (John 1:1, 3b-5; context)
…Filling Up…
This week we are going to talk about light. And by extension that means we’ll also talk about darkness. These are two images that appear over and over again throughout the Bible. The Gospel according to John uses them quite a bit to talk about people who are living the way that Jesus teaches (those who walk in the light) and to talk about people who are not (those who walk in darkness). Often, people are confused into thinking that light and darkness are equal, but opposite concepts. But John sees it differently – in the poetry of the prologue to the Gospel (part of which is quoted above), John says that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness can’t really do anything to stop it.
This poetic use of light and darkness illustrate a more complicated theological point about good and evil, which boils down to this. Good wins. It may not always look like the mostly likely outcome, but this is the claim that John is making. Think about these two examples.
First, you walk down a dark hallway and stop in front of a door. Inside the room all the lights are on. You open the door. Now, what happens? The darkness moves from the hallway through the open doorway, and enters the room, right? Of course not. The light from the room always floods into the dark hallway. Darkness doesn’t extinguish light. In other words, evil doesn’t win in the end.
Second, lighting a candle in a dark room provides a sphere of dancing light around the flame. Have you ever seen a ball of dancing darkness in a bright room? Of course not. Light always triumphs over darkness. John uses the language of light to talk about Jesus Christ because of light’s power to brighten the dark places of the world and of our lives. Stay tuned for more about light in the days ahead.
…Praying For…
Dear God, you bathe us in the light of your grace. Help me to open the doors of my soul and let your light flood in. Help me to ignite my spirit with your fire and take it to dark places; in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, knowing that you are a light that never goes out. You are always shining on the path that takes me home.
Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness. (Mother Theresa)
…Listening In…
The LORD God formed the human from the topsoil of the fertile land and blew life’s breath into his nostrils. The human came to life. The LORD God planted a garden in Eden in the east and put there the human he had formed. (Genesis 2:7-8; context)
…Filling Up…
We began Monday talking about offering ourselves to God. This is a wonderful thing to do, but it’s also rather vague. So on Tuesday we went smaller and talked about offering this year: our goals and our plans for the foreseeable future. Then on Wednesday we talked about offering each day as a gift back to God who gave it to us in the first place. This brings with it a change in attitude: not my, but we (God and I) are going about this day together. Yesterday we went smaller still to each action and talked about the challenging practice of offering our actions to God before we take them.
With each day, our offerings got smaller, and I think, more difficult to give. It’s really hard to remember to give each action to God. What’s harder still is offering what we are talking about today: each breath. We’ve already given our lives – that is, the totality of who were are. This is offering on a macro scale. But offering each breath moves such giving to the micro scale. Like days tumbling out into years, our breaths tumble out into our lives, so focusing on each breath is another way for us to give ourselves to God.
But what does it mean to offer each breath? Seems a little too poetic to be practical, right? At first glance, perhaps, but consider this. “Respiration” is the act of breathing. The “spir” in the middle of the word also finds a home in “spirit,” as in Holy Spirit. This is not a coincidence. When we offer our breath to God, we participate in the life and movement of the Holy Spirit. With each breath, we inhale and exhale the grace of God given via the Spirit. When we breathe in, the Spirit nourishes our souls just as the oxygen nourishes our cells. When we breathe out, the Spirit rushes forth from us to come in contact with all those we meet.
Therefore, every word we speak is borne on the wind of Holy Spirit. Doesn’t this thought make you want to train yourself only to speak the truth in love, only to allow words that build up to leave your lips? When we notice the truth of God animating us through our breath, we remember just what God made us for: to love God and neighbor and to bring God’s kingdom a bit closer to earth.
So the next time you breathe (and I bet you just did), remember the Holy Spirit is moving through you.
…Praying For…
Dear God, you breathed life into the first human in the garden and continue to breathe life into me. Help me to live out my life remembering that you are sustaining me and calling me to follow you more closely. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, hopeful that I will have the desire and grace to give myself to you.
Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness. (Mother Theresa)
…Listening In…
Jesus said, “Be dressed for service and keep your lamps lit. Be like people waiting for their master to come home from a wedding celebration, who can immediately open the door for him when he arrives and knocks on the door.” (Luke 12:35-36; context)
…Filling Up…
Even more specific than the day ahead of us is the immediate action ahead of us. And while it is tenaciously difficult to remember to do this, we can offer each of our actions to God, as well as our lives, our years, and our days. To do so we have to install a new spiritual practice into our lives, one that adds a step to our actions.
Anytime we are about to take an action, we go through several steps. Our minds weigh various outcomes. Then we make a decision. Then our bodies grind into motion. Then we act. Sometimes these steps happen in the blink of an eye, like when reacting to a traffic light changing. Sometimes they are drawn out, especially if the action is some sort of life-altering one, like figuring out which college to go to.
Our new spiritual practice adds a step at the beginning of the whole process. Before engaging in the normal series of steps, give to God the action you are contemplating. Before we know if our actions are going to succeed or fail, before we know the consequences, if we pause and give them to God, then we actively invite God into the process that leads to the actions being taken. Rather than reporting to God after the fact, we become aware of God all the way through.
Notice how this will affect the kinds of actions we decide to take. An acquaintance is being bullied in the lunch room. You could join in the bullying or sit back and let it happen, or you could stop, give the impending action to God, and realize that neither of those choices is the kind of offering you desire to make to God. The tiny moment of offering the impending action to God might help you intervene.
When we take on this spiritual practice of mindfully and prayerfully giving our actions to God, we will find that God is so much more present in our lives. God will be no more present than God was before, but our awareness of that presence will be heightened. And our actions will more frequently conform to the life-giving way in which God yearns for us to walk.
…Praying For…
Dear God, you are always sending your will for me into my heart and soul. Help me to pause and discover that will before I act, so that I may invite you into all of my activities. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, hopeful that I will have the desire and grace to give myself to you.
Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness. (Mother Theresa)
…Listening In…
My very being longs, even yearns, for the LORD ’s courtyards. My heart and my body will rejoice out loud to the living God! Better is a single day in your courtyards than a thousand days anywhere else! (Psalm 84: 2, 10a; context)
…Filling Up…
Remember what I said yesterday: the more specific we are in what we offer to God, the harder it is to give. We started with the notion of giving our entire selves to God, which sounds awesome and momentous and life changing – and it is. But at the same time, it’s also rather vague. I can say, “I give myself to you, Lord,” and I can mean it. But how does the giving change my life?
As it so happens, our lives work out to be a series of days: the single, still frames of animation that make up a motion picture. Looking back, I find it hard to remember individual days, seeing instead the movie of my memory. But those days must have happened, because, after all, this one is happening now.
Since it’s hard to remember individual days, we can fall into the trap of thinking they don’t matter or into the other trap of looking past them to the amorphous future. But God gives us each day as a gift in and of itself. We acknowledge and thank God for the gift by giving the day back to God. When we do that, everything changes. The hours of the day, the activities we choose to do, the words we speak to people are no longer ours. They’re God’s because we gave them back freely. Actually, they are God’s all along, but when we give them back we participate in that reality.
When we enter into this reality, our attitude changes. No longer is it “I’m going to do such and such” or “My time.” Rather, “We’re going to do such and such together.” It’s “Our time,” God’s and mine. What could be more comforting than knowing that we’re not facing this day alone? What could be more challenging than knowing that God yearns for us to act – not next week, not when we’re ready, but today – in ways that bring God’s kingdom closer to earth?
…Praying For…
Dear God, you are my companion even when I do not return that companionship. Help me to welcome you into each of the days that you have given me and show me the paths that we will walk together. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, hopeful that I will have the desire and grace to give myself to you.
Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness. (Mother Theresa)
…Listening In…
You crown the year with your goodness; your paths overflow with rich food. Even the desert pastures drip with it, and the hills are dressed in pure joy. (Psalm 65:11-12; context)
…Filling Up…
Yesterday, we talked about the fact that giving our entire selves to God is actually easier than giving smaller bits of our lives to God. This seems paradoxical, but I think by the end of the week, you’ll see what I mean. The general rule here is this: the more specific we are in what we offer to God, the harder it is to give.
So first we’ll move through something less general than our entire lives but more general than most things – this school year. Giving an entire year of our lives to God is harder, I think, than giving ourselves to God because we can figure out pretty well the trajectory of the next year. We know the basic shape the year will take. Of course, there will be some curveballs, but that always happens. Offering a fairly known quantity to God takes more effort than offering the amorphous series of unknown events we call our lives. The former takes more effort because the offering involves planning.
Whenever you offer something to God (we’ll use “this year” as an example), ask yourself this series of questions. What does God yearn for me to do this year? How would this year look different if I were to offer it to God? At the end of the year, how will I have changed for the better because of God’s presence in my life?
Then bring each of these questions to God in prayer. Search your inner depths for the answers because God most often whispers to us from those depths. Then write them down. Stick them on your mirror or list them on the desktop of your computer screen. Offering this year to God brings with it this series of goals that you will have discerned through prayer. Use those goals to orient and prioritize your life for the next year. And at the start of the following year, do it again.
…Praying For…
Dear God, you are with me through each passing year for you are timeless and eternal. Help me to discern your will for me for the next year and give me the strength to live it out. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, hopeful that I will have the desire and grace to give myself to you.
Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness. (Mother Theresa)
…Listening In…
Every good gift, every perfect gift, comes from above. These gifts come down from the Father, the creator of the heavenly lights, in whose character there is no change at all. He chose to give us birth by his true word, and here is the result: we are like the first crop from the harvest of everything he created. (James 1:17-18; context)
…Filling Up…
Welcome back for the third season of devotiONEighty. It’s been a good run so far, and with God’s help, we’ll make it another school year. If you have a moment, tell a friend to head over the wherethewind.com and subscribe so he or she can start getting devo180 everyday too. Then you’ll have something else to talk about once Jersey Shore finishes its run.
This week we are going to talk about giving ourselves to God. We’ll start big and then go progressively smaller because I think, in some ways, it’s way easier for us to give our entire selves to God than it is to give each moment to God. So we’ll start big. In the quotation above from the letter of James, the writer says that we are “like the first crop from the harvest of everything [God] created.” James takes this image of the first fruits that the ancient Israelites gave to God and says that we (you and me) are that first crop. The offering of first fruits was an exercise in devotion and trust because, when you gave your first bit of crops to God, you had no idea if anything else was going to grow.
So it is with us followers of Jesus, who give ourselves to him. To be a first fruit means to give ourselves to God before we give ourselves to anything else. This is pretty hard because chances are we have already given ourselves to other, lesser things: the desire for money or security, the drive to be popular or successful, the pursuit of stuff.
The good news is that God is always ready to accept our offering of ourselves, whether we are first fruits or ninth fruits. God doesn’t seem to mind how late to the game we come, just so long as we want to play. But in the grand scheme of things, I think it’s rather easy to give ourselves to God. What’s hard is living as if we have done so. But that’s a topic for tomorrow.
…Praying For…
Dear God, thank you for accepting my offering, no matter when in my journey I have given it to you. Help me to continue to offer myself to you, not just one time, but everyday of my life. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, hopeful that I will have the desire and grace to give myself to you.
(Sermon for Sunday, September 2, 2012 || Proper 17B || James 1:17-27)
That’s me in 4th or 5th grade. This picture will make more sense when you get near the end of the sermon.
This past Thursday morning at about three minutes to eight, I found myself staring at a blank page on my computer screen. I had been contemplating this sermon since I awoke two hours before, but had yet to type more than a few halting phrases, which I erased as soon as I finished them. Today’s passage from the letter of James had really drawn me in, so I knew that this sermon would spring from James’s words, but I still didn’t know where the sermon was going exactly. Specifically, the first two verses from the reading really sparkled for me, so I focused in on them. Soon, I snatched the theme of this sermon out of the Holy Spirit’s mysterious creative ether. But then the minutes continued to tick by. 8am was approaching, and my page was still blank. I had my theme, but no words. I twiddled my thumbs, discouraged, and resisted the urge to surf the Internet.
Then, at three minutes to eight, I realized something. I realized (much to my chagrin) that I had failed to do the very thing that I’m about to start advocating. I had forgotten to act on the theme for this sermon that had come to me less than a half hour before. I had neglected to give to God the act of preparing the sermon. So I took a moment: I breathed deeply, a tiny prayer detached from within, and I offered my writing to God. And the words that I am now speaking to you began to flow.
That’s the theme, by the way: giving our actions to God – and not just giving them, but offering our actions to God as we get ready to take them. I’m spelling out this theme now so that I don’t forget again before I finish preaching this sermon.
The letter of James says, “Every generous act of giving, every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights… In fulfillment of [God’s] own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.”
Have you ever considered yourself to be part of the first fruits of God’s creatures? Until I read this passage this week, I hadn’t. James borrows this common image from the religious life of Israel and applies the idea of first fruits to Jesus’ followers. Because Israel was an agrarian society, the offerings people made to God most often consisted of crops and livestock. The concept of giving of your first fruits showed your utter dependence on God because, when you gave your offering, you didn’t know if the rest of the crop was going to grow or if the rest of the baby animals would survive. The first fruits went to God, which showed your devotion and your trust in God’s faithfulness.
James takes this idea of first fruits and applies it to people – both his own listeners and you and me. We ourselves are the first fruits of God’s creatures. To be first fruits means to give ourselves to God before we give ourselves to anything else. Now before you all jump out of your seats and head off to the nearest monastery, be assured that giving ourselves to God as first fruits does not usually lead to such an extreme action. Each of us, no matter to what level we are enmeshed in the life of faith, can give ourselves to God as first fruits.
Instead of running off to the monastery, I invite you slowly to build a new practice into your lives. New spiritual practices take a long time to make natural and usually involve quite a few stops and starts, so don’t give up after your first or one hundred and first failure. But over time they do become natural, like breathing or driving a manual transmission. And if you’re worried about not having time or resources to attempt a new practice, then don’t be. This spiritual practice that I’m about to describe takes next to no time out of your day, and you don’t even have to buy any expensive gear. But the practice is tenaciously difficult, one that takes a lifetime (and probably an afterlifetime) to master. However, even simply attempting this practice will help us fulfill our role as first fruits.
This new practice begins by adding a step to each of our actions. Anytime we are about to take an action, we go through several steps. Our minds weigh various outcomes. Then we make a decision. Then our bodies grind into motion. Then we act. Sometimes these steps happen in the blink of an eye, like when reacting to a traffic light changing. Sometimes they are drawn out, especially if the action is some sort of life-altering one, like when you contemplate asking someone to marry you.
Our new spiritual practice adds a step at the beginning of the whole process. Before engaging in the normal series of steps, give to God the action you are contemplating. Say to God, “I give you this action, a first fruits offering of myself.” By giving the beginning of our actions to God, we engage in the same devotion and trust that the ancient Israelites did when they gave the first fruits of their crops to God as offerings. Before we know if our actions are going to succeed or fail, before we know the consequences, if we pause and give them to God, then we actively invite God into the process that leads to the actions being taken. Rather than reporting to God after the fact, we become aware of God all the way through.
Notice how this will affect the kinds of actions we decide to take. Your son strikes out for the third time in the little league game. You could criticize and disparage his baseball ability, or you could stop, give the impending action to God, and realize that criticism and disparagement are not the kind of first fruits you want to offer to God. The tiny moment of offering the impending action to God helps you encourage instead of criticize.
Or you’re getting ready for your third date with a friend of a friend. You’re putting on your eyeliner, and you stop for a moment and offer the date to God as a first fruit of yourself. By giving the date to God, you are more likely to invite God in as you discern whether that friend of a friend is the right person to share your life with.
Or you’re getting ready to write a sermon, but no words come until you give the sermon to God.
Every action we take can be part of the first fruits that we offer to God when we invite God into the action from the outset. When we take on this spiritual practice of mindfully and prayerfully giving our actions to God, we will find that God is so much more present in our lives. God will be no more present than God was before, but our awareness of that presence will be heightened. And our actions will more frequently conform to the life-giving way in which God yearns for us to walk.
Speaking as someone who is still a novice in this spiritual practice, I will tell you that the few and far between times that I do remember to invite God into my actions, I find a peace and a trust that escape me at all other times. No matter if the action itself results in success or failure, the peace and trust linger, letting me know that God was present to me. And for the briefest moment, I was present to God, offering myself as a first fruit. Each of us is a first fruit of God’s creatures; each one of our actions is an opportunity to offer our fruitfulness back to God. And when we do, we will discover that God is always and forever offering God’s own self back to us, sustaining us in every action we take.
…Opening To…
Where the Wind... 