evening prayer :: 1

From the Book of Common Prayer, "Evening Prayer To Be Used in Families"

For Freedom From Worry.

O LORD, who hast pity for all our weakness: Put away from us worry and every anxious fear, that, having ended the labours of the day as in thy sight, and committing our tasks, ourselves, and all we love into thy keeping, we may, now that night cometh, receive as from thee thy priceless gift of sleep; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 


~lg

morning prayer :: 1

God of warming spring, turn your face toward our open windows. We welcome your light and the brisk air of season’s turning. Melt the chill of winter’s drifts and the things that lie buried within. Shake us from slumber and wake us to life. Fill us with the joy of chickadees, the hope of sap rising, the flooding love of water rushing down and down. Whisper the vernal secrets of your kingdom come, and give us ears to hear.

~lg 

A Pattern of Prayer: Finding a Groove

I'm trying to get into a groove here, with a rhythm, a pattern, a way to move through the day with prayer. 

{I am not a monk with hours of quiet contemplation, but a modern mom, held to the pace of a two and four year old and a hundred year old house in the country. I do not live by the chiming of a clock, though we have a flexible schedule that is the backbone of most days. Feeding the family, that is the reality around which the day revolves. And if I'm not careful, I can miss my own meal in all the preparation and serving and cleanup. I can miss my own meal. There is no end to the work, no bells to signal completion, no ticking off one box without adding three more, and it all can keep me running, running on hungry, and running down to empty.

I need to eat. Pause and break the bread of life, share this sweet communion. There is a time to wake, a time to work, a time to play, a time to rest. There is a time to eat.}

And so I imagine how I will translate the tradition of "hours" of prayer into my own moments of prayer, a movement of prayer, or rather of movement of self through the fabric of prayer.

This is the sketch in my head, rather like a line graph, with rise and fall and lots of scribbling, still in revision.

These are the moments I am learning to move into prayer:

1. Morning - A Gathering Prayer

"O lord, let my soul rise up to meet you as the day rises to meet the sun."*

Here is the gathering, the offering of the strands of my life, held out to be woven with God's own hands.
The reaffirmation to "Love the Lord my God with all my heart and with all my soul and with all my mind and with all my strength."
To begin the day in the light of His countenance.
To begin the day with the bread of His Word.

Before work, this worship.
Before my plans, His purpose.
Before movement, this deep breath.
Before feeding others, this filling up.

I gather manna fresh for this day, and pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." (Matt. 6:11)


2. Mid-morning - An Embracing Prayer

"Love thy neighbour as thyself." (Matt. 22:39)

Here I sit with the ones God has given me to love, sit with our morning snack and children's Bible, eating together.
Now is the time to spread our arms wide and embrace the needs around us, and carry our burdens to the Lord.
We pray for our neighbour and for ways to love them.
We spread our prayers into the world that they may go ahead wherever God may lead us.
We pray together, for others.
Here is compassion and intercession, and the faith of children.

"Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." (Matt. 6:10)


3. Noon - A Rising Prayer

It is right to give our thanks and praise.

Here at the height of the day, the height of the clock, I lift my eyes up, turn my thoughts toward heaven, and raise my thanksgiving.

Hands are busy, tummies are hungry, but my heart turns thankful.
I name the blessings, great and small, treasures of this very day.
In the middle of it all, there is always something to be thankful for.

This motion lifts the mundane into a living marvel and makes room for joy.

"From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets,
the name of the LORD is to be praised." (Psalm 113:3)


4. Mid-afternoon - A Centering (Abiding) Prayer

"No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine." (John 15:4)

Here, by chance, I catch my breath and a cup of coffee at the same time. The day is in full swing, but we have built time for rest into it, and rather than find ways to amuse myself, I try to find ways to abide in Him.

I stop. Remember. Rest my soul. Rejuvenate.
Calm the chaos and center into the deeper reality behind these fleeting hours.
I reach down, root myself.
Make a knot. 

"She is like a tree firmly planted by streams of water,
Which yields its fruit in season
And its leaf does not wither;
And in whatever she does, she prospers." (Psalm 1:3)

I take root that I may bear fruit.

"Establish thou the work of our hands." (Psalm 90:17)


5. Supper Meal - A Celebratory Prayer

"One generation shall praise Your works to another,
And shall declare Your mighty acts." (Psalm 145:4)

All together now, we give thanks.
We speak blessing.
(We practice table manners.)
We rejoice.
We recount.
We feast.


6.  Evening - A Prayer of Release

Now, night falls, and it is time to lay aside the day.
Release its worries, problems, and work.
Release my grip on the things I cannot control.
Release my spirit to rest in His presence.
I unravel the things that threaten to choke, examine my living of this day and confess my sins.

Lord, have mercy, Christ have mercy.

I entrust my soul to His tender care and unceasing watch.
I entrust my body to the sleep He gives His beloved.

"When you lie down, you will not be afraid.
When you lie down, your sleep will be sweet." (Prov. 3:24)

~~~

I am a child learning to dance, learning to move in a new way. I am forming these often faltering steps - habits - that soon I hope will catch on to the rhythm and carry me along. More than that, I am reaching out in faith and finding a Father who is more than eager to move toward me.



* From Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals. Shane Clairborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Enuma Okoro. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010. 


~lg

A Habit of Prayer

As I work out what it means to become this person of prayer, I am drawn to holy people through the ages who marked their days and nights with regular “hours” of prayer. They trained desire into a discipline by putting on a habit of prayer.

A habit. It is what the nuns wear to mark themselves as those devoted to God. It is an outward sign of an inward state. And habits, the patterns of living we either fall into or form for ourselves, these too are outward forces which have the power to direct what flows within.

In my longing for a life of prayer, I need more than desire. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. It needs to be trained. It needs a path to follow. This river needs banks so my good intentions don’t disperse and dissipate to other ends. Habits create channels for the spirit to follow, without having the burden of decision, that initial inertia, to overcome each time. Habits can take affections and transform them into effective energy. A habit is not a burden, but a gift that grace makes into a blessing.

Perhaps, like my sisters, I can put on a habit of prayer at particular times of the day, a pattern that repeats itself with the sun’s rising and setting. Perhaps I can live by a different sort of clock, a different sort of time. Perhaps I can clothe myself with a second nature that, by force of habit, stays put no matter what the day brings.

It’s not the tyranny of ritual, but the freedom of rhythm. It’s the worship of God through and with time. I have been given a finite number of hours and moments, and perhaps by ordering them firstly through prayer, the rest will find their fitting place. Time management through prayer? I’m willing to give it a try.

~lg

The heart of the universe

Another winter day and the world turns slowly toward spring, a sleeping beauty wakening to her long awaited lover. And morning by morning I wake to my own two grinning suns and the warmth that is their love.

And I can't help thinking, that at the heart of the universe, love is the most powerful reality there is.

Where does this come from?

We with the soul breath of life in our lungs, we long for it, grieve its loss, relish its nearness, suffer for its grasp, suffocate without it.
There is no substitute for love.

Where does this come from?

This world can be a confounded mess, and yet in these troubles and terrors there is one thing that breaks through the darkness, and every child knows this secret
- it is love.

Love overcomes and outlasts even death.
This, we with beating human hearts, know.
And if we know it not in experience, yet we long for it as a lost homeland.

Where does this come from?

Woven somehow into our nature,
marked somehow with a primordial kiss,
drawn by an invisible thread,
fingers tracing letters in the air. . .

God is Love.

And if it does not come from God, then from where?

Not from survival of the fittest, or the onward, merciless march of history.

But sacrifice of the fittest.
There evil stopped dead in its tracks,
where heaven and earth's history met in a blaze of glory.

Not letters in the air, or words in the sky of an abstract heaven,
but The Word
Made Flesh,
one Man
Who
Loved
Us
to
Death.

A love strong enough, pure enough, the original and best.
Outrageous, overwhelming, overcoming love.

And we saw this love and our hearts leapt within and the whole universe made sense in that instant we looked at the cross.

This is the shape of everything, right the way down.

Somehow the birds know it, in their joyful dive toward the earth,
and the river knows it, racing down and down to the freedom of the sea,
and the earth groans for what it has seen beneath the surface,
and the trees fling the late afternoon sun into patterns on the floor,
and my eyes, dazzled, might have seen a face in the play of light and shadow,
the image of the invisible burned into my mind's eye,
the shape of a man,
the shape of a cross,
the shape of love.

I blink, and the world goes on spinning,
and this reality spins inside me,
with its own gravity sending me delightfully off balance,
as only love can do.


~lg

Do the Juncos Know It's Ash Wednesday?

Do the juncos know it's Ash Wednesday, flitting from willows to crusted snow, seeking the half buried seeds? Their diet is unchanged today, and their winter foraging, their flight and fight for survival, goes on.

And yet, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. This I share with all creatures, those who dance in the cerulean heavens and those who seem intent on bringing hell to earth.

I sip my bitter coffee, this small denial, offer it up in fasting and prayer. No sugar. No sweetness on the tongue for forty days. In its absence I remember those who struggle for bread, let alone sugar, who struggle for life in the looming of death, for hope in the heavy drifts of despair.

I am one person, one graced by hope, one surrounded by beauty so myriad I almost feel guilty. I am one who falters on the pilgrim path, all too aware of my own tendencies to sin and selfishness. I am one who wonders how best to spend this life and the inheritance given, how to direct my energies into the howling vacuum of need at my fingertips.

And so I fast. And so I pray. And so I live Lent remembering that all I am is marked by this smudge of a cross, the unlikely mark in which all things must find their definition, in which my own life is defined and made clear, and is made somehow more than the sum of its dust.

The best way I know to reshape this life with all its passions, to order its loves to a fitting end, is through prayer. This is my prayer: form me into a woman who prays, for whom prayer is second gifted nature. For the one who prays seeks the face of God, from whom all blessings flow, from whom love bleeds out to join with human suffering, from whom all creatures live and move and have their being. And in the seeking, perchance to find, perhaps to see - aye, here's the rub! - and in seeing to be seen. For You are El Roi, the God who sees.

And Your gaze is my undoing, and my repentance, and in my repentance my remaking.

Remake me to be worthy of the shape of the cross. Remake me into a fitting vessel of love. Remake me so all my sweetness is found in the beauty of holiness.

Remake me so that in praying for those nearest and those distant I may be formed into your answer. Give me courage to be your arrows, flung into the heart of my aching prayers.

The juncos dash for the seeds, and there is a merry desperation in their movement. One flits, hovers near the window, flings a glance with its shining black eye to my strange indoor world. I suppose it's safer in here. But there are seeds to be had in the snow, with a little digging, and the slow but steady increase of the sun's reach, and the whole free sky.


~lg

The Armour of Marriage

Does the knight in shining armour still hold up as a model for marriage? Here are my thoughts on this over at Fun+Faith: The Armour of Marriage. 

And because none of this is possible on our own, here is Part II:

I could arm him with my love, my assurance that he is worth fighting for. I could strategize ways to protect his soul from the blows of life. I could be strength in his weakness. For better or worse, I had the honour to guard his heart as I did my own.

Become his armour.

In resolving to preserve and protect his worth, I am fighting for our relationship, rather than against it. Instead of plundering love for myself, I am putting it out there as his shield, and that ends up making us both stronger. We are in this together. We can face the battles of life, yes, even the weak points and wounds of marriage, because love is our armour, and he is arming me as I am arming him. I can lay aside my fear of being left out in the cold, because when he fails me, as I know he will, I am still covered. And when I fail him, as I know I will, he is still covered. There is a Love greater than anything we can fabricate for ourselves. It is what always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. God’s love never fails. It is our perfect armor.

And so the little knight in shining armour stands as my commitment to be his armor. He doesn’t stand alone, but in the strength of our sacred covenant and of a greater Defender. We stand together. We fight together. That little knight is a reminder to both of us that the only way to victory in marriage is through the sacrifice of love. 

~lg

Stories of Hope: Alison Gibson

This is part of the series "Stories of Hope," in which ordinary people share how hope makes them live differently. To read the introduction, click here. If you have a story of hope you'd like to share, why not send me a message?

Alison Gibson is one of my dearest friends. We grew up in the same small town in the Northwest Territories - her mother was my kindergarten teacher! Our slightly different ages meant that we didn't actually spend time together in our youth, but all these years later we have settled not five minutes from each other here on Prince Edward Island. I'm thankful for her friendship and her insight into life lived with God, and life lived with hope. She says, "hope is about Jesus, not about me!"

The word "hope" can be thrown about recklessly. I do it all the time. "I hope it is sunny tomorrow." "I hope Sobey's has butter on sale soon." "I hope that warning light on the van doesn't mean anything serious."

I have hoped more desperately for many things, things that truly mattered to me. Two years ago, when I was almost 11 weeks pregnant I hoped that the signs of miscarriage were wrong. I have hoped through 14 years of marriage that my husband would be healed of the mysterious illness that plagues him. I have hoped for relationships to be mended, for stress to decrease, for more time, for more money when income and expenses just didn't balance out. I have hoped for stability and a 'home' for my children through many moves across 3 countries and 3 provinces.

None of these hopes is wrong, but as the circumstances of life play out there is inevitably grief and disappointment when some hopes are not fulfilled, if we have set our hearts on them. As if this isn't hard enough, like the grief over a baby I will never hold, I have discovered that even a hope fulfilled can feel... empty. If I hope for years that I will one day have a 'home' and then finally arrive, only to discover that the home has its flaws, what then? If I hope for the new job, the new baby, the husband, the holiday and then those things happen, or they come and go, and I still feel a gnawing discontent, what then?

In all earthly, human hope like this there is a sense of waiting. This is the hope that says, "One day... If only...." But there is another hope. This hope is a gift from God. The waiting is completed in Christ Jesus. As the Israelites in the Old Testament hoped for deliverance, they looked to the day prophesied when the Messiah, the Saviour would come. All would be different then. If only He would come! As Christians this side of the resurrection, we look back on hope fulfilled. We can live in the present of hope fulfilled.

We need this true hope. It doesn't fade. It isn't swayed by the winds of circumstances. It is always fulfilled. Not later. NOW.

We almost need a different word for this kind of hope. Hope that is so real it supports us. It is not a mild mannered hope. It stands defiantly against the suffering thrown at us. It is a bulwark standing firm against the enemy attack.

How do we live in hope, immersed in a place of contentment? Romans 5 says, "Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."

We have a choice when suffering hits us. We can choose to walk through the suffering with God and allow Him to shape us through it, or we can struggle on in our own strength. True endurance is not picking ourselves up time and again when we get knocked down. It is continuing to believe that God is good. God is faithful. God is our ever present help in times of trouble. If we choose to seek God in times of suffering, we encounter a shift in perspective. We begin to hope less for our own comfort and hope more for the glory of God to be revealed in our lives.

My hope can be summed up in one word. It is always fulfilled. It is sustaining. It is true. It is eternal. It is "Jesus."

But how I hear you say. There is only one answer that I know of. No shortcuts. It is to look for the presence of God in all your circumstances. He is there, but you need to see Him. Praise Him. Thank Him. Listen for His voice.... and crucially believe that He is good even when everything around you feels so, so bad. His presence changes everything.

I am writing this the day before the 2 year anniversary of my baby, at 12 weeks gestation, being born. When I was having labour pains, lying alone and afraid in the spare room of the house we were living in, I cried out to God, "This hurts so much, but the pain is for nothing!" God answered, "The labour pains speak of life. Your baby is not dead, she lives with me."

That same day, as the labour pains progressed, I prayed about the baby I would never meet this side of death. I believed God had said the baby was a girl but prayed for a name. I wanted the baby to have a name that meant "love" for I already loved her so much! I thought that later, I could search for such a name. A few hours later, my brother was praying for me over the phone and the name "Amanda" flashed into my mind. When I looked it up, I found that it means "She who must be loved." God himself had named my baby.

Do I continue to grieve? Yes. I have experienced deep sorrow. Yet somehow, God's voice spoken into the darkness brings assurance. I have thrown myself into God through this pain and He has answered. If tempted to doubt His goodness, I read Scripture that speaks otherwise. I pray with a soft heart.

When I first went to emergency at the start of the miscarriage, I continued to "hope" the baby would live. I prayed desperately, "Lord, let her life make an impact and glorify God."

This prayer has been answered... in the true hope that has been birthed in me. Jesus' presence changes everything.

Stories of Hope: Judy Gillis

This is the first in a series of "Stories of Hope," in which ordinary people share how hope makes them live differently. To read the introduction, click here. If you have a story of hope you'd like to share, why not send me a message?

Judy Gillis is someone I am honoured to call friend, someone who has been into the valley of the shadow of death and has come out the other side somehow radiant. If you've ever dealt with deep loss, her story will resonate. You'll find out what hope looks like to her. Thanks for sharing, Judy! 

Today, I saw someone I hadn’t seen in quite a few months. As we were catching up, we got to talking about the car accident, the one that instantly took our youngest daughter’s life back in October 2013, the one that turned all of our lives upside down. My friend had seen the notice in the paper and wanted to know a few details. I'm okay talking about it... now. 

Of course, whenever I talk about it, I still have to kind of separate myself from the fact that I’m talking about my baby girl. She was 21 … far from home, living in her car, trying to make  her way in the world, and trying to find a place to live. She was so tired; she fell asleep at the wheel … and losing her was harder than any one event I’ve ever had to go through. And yes, there are times – many times – I long to feel her arms around me, to hear her laughter or to see some of the zany facial expressions she used to come out with.

But … so many amazing things have happened that we could never have predicted – so many people have been touched and helped by her story that there is a part of me that understands (in some small way) some of why God welcomed a homeless girl into the best home she could possibly imagine!

I often thank God that He reached down into her heart and showed her that He is real, that she embraced Him only a little over a month before she died. We were able to share wonderful things with each other in those last 35 days. She still had a lot of rough edges (but then again, so do I. So does everyone.) Her conversion – her “white light” experience as I sometimes call it - has given me such comfort. Knowing that right now she is happier than she ever could have been here, and that I will see her again, helps me get through the tough times when I see someone who looks like her, or I hear a song she used to sing off-key on purpose just to make me laugh. The tears spring to my eyes … and that’s okay. It’s okay to miss her. It’s okay.

I get to tell her story often, and in the telling, I heal a bit more because her story reminds me that no life ever goes unnoticed. Every person has great worth. God is still in control, even when it seems like life is crazy and the pain is so great and so senseless. The very areas in which I have been wounded - those self-same hurts, that grief, those tears – God takes those and turns them around for good … so that when someone else is going through a hard place, I can empathize and come alongside that person with assurance that “He’s GOT this.” It’s not just words. It’s real. He is really there.

That’s really what hope is. It’s not the “I hope I win the lottery” kind of hope. It’s a knowing, a settled feeling, a sense that all is well. It’s a deep-seated assurance, based on a personal and vital experience with God. She had that. She had such a child-like faith, a calm assurance that everything was going to be all right – and I believe that if she wanted to leave a legacy behind, it would be that “I-know-so because He-said-so” kind of rock-solid confidence. That’s the kind of hope that is an anchor for the soul. He gives that.

So many times, I hear people say to me that God took our little girl (for one reason or another, maybe He needed another angel … or whatever the case may be). My hope, my trust in Him is not based on some arbitrary version of a God who would “take” someone, who would rob a parent of a beloved child. It might be seen as a matter of semantics, but I believe that God didn’t “take” her; He knew she was coming and He welcomed her home.

More than ever I believe that He is love. More than ever before, I believe that He is in control, that He works all things – even the seemingly horrible ones – together so that we can be more like Him (which is the best good there is!) I’ve seen Him do way too much in too many people’s lives (including my own) to believe otherwise.

Like today – my friend heard me talk about the accident, how the peaceful and tangible presence of God was in that car that night, and she felt what she described as “goosebumps” all the way down to her feet. I was able to give her my blog address on one of her appointment cards, and tell her how to find the posts I linked to, above, so that she could find out more about the few weeks prior to the accident. She thanked me and put the card in her pocket after writing my name on it beside the blog address.

This kind of thing happens quite a bit. God opens doors for me to share how amazing He is, and I just walk through them. And I am so very glad He does it.

You can read more about Judy's journey at her blogs Get Unwrapped and Iconoclastic. 

~lg

Sharing Stories of Hope

"One who has hope lives differently." (Pope Benedict XVI)

Hope.

It's been a red letter word for me. When God first spoke it to my soul over a year ago, it was whispered into a place of disappointment.

I took heart. I took it as a promise that things would change. And they did, but not in the way I first expected. In fact, those circumstances remain unaltered. Yet God's word still stands. Because of that, I've been holding on to hope. I've been listening for it other ways. I've been looking for it in unexpected places. I've been noticing how "one who has hope lives differently."

The world around me abounds in hopeless, or, at the very least, hope-shrunk, situations. But hope is a watchword for our time, a banner unfurled, streaming down the mountainside with beautiful news.

The more I look, the more I see it. People who have every right to be discouraged, disappointed and downtrodden, yet continue to live with this buoyant hope. They live differently. This is good news worth sharing, and I'd like to share some of their stories with you.

Tomorrow I will introduce my first guest blogger in a series of "Stories of Hope." She is someone I am honoured to call friend, someone who has been into the valley of the shadow of death and has come out the other side somehow radiant. If you've ever dealt with deep loss, her story will resonate. You'll find out what hope looks like to her.

If you have a story of hope to share, why not send me a message? Maybe you'd like to add your own red letters to the blog series.

"Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given us." (Romans 5:5) 

~lg

Confessions of the Real Prodigal

Father,

Could it be that you come with a tender word, even for the likes of me, long steeped in the economy of law and merits of righteousness?

How many times have I stood out on the back step, all too aware of my failings, waiting for my "time out" to be over, when all the time you are waiting for me inside?

How many times have I stared at my own stumbling feet, fearing your furrowed brow of disapproval, when I could have looked straight into your eyes and seen mercy reflected?

How many times have I tried to earn my way, prove my worth, and pass the test? You gave me a playground, and I made an obstacle course. You gave me grace and I rationed it so I would have enough for the next mistake. You gave me a home and I tried my best to be the perfect housekeeper.

But, oh, I don't have enough rugs to sweep the crumbs under, and I live like Cinderella in the ashes when you are kneeling before me with a basin to wash my feet. Why is it so hard to put down the broom, the score card, the record of my wrongs?

You give love, and I need empty hands to receive it. If it were a wage to earn, I'd work myself into the grave, but it's an inheritance that's given on the basis of a family name.

And here you call me little child.

You have every right to scold and berate and throw in my middle name for effect, so I know you mean business. But it's not business at all, and the only transaction in this whole equation is the one and only life you gave for me so you could give me your name forever.

"All I have is yours," you say.

No rationing, no interest fees, no conditions.

Pure gift, pure love, pure family.

So I can truly let go of my tarnished earnings and take your hand, come into the house where I will always have a home, be still and know you are Father.


(Luke 15:11-32)

~lg

When the Snow Crunches

At minus twenty, the sound of snow beneath my boots changes – it's the sound of my childhood.

When the snow crunches, winter has settled in, and no use fighting it. Its tune is infinitely more joyful than the slushy shuffle-step of warmer days. It is the sound of Dad splitting chunks of spruce and pine on the big chopping block, of chickadees seed-diving and scolding the squirrels, of a cardboard Polar Express racing through the backyard after dark. It is the sound of my fingernail scratching peepholes in the frost of my bedroom window, and the breathless hush of northern lights over the Slave River. It is a single sigh – the beauty of resignation.

When the snow crunches, we have an understanding, winter and I. Our friendship goes a long way back, to the dimmest of infant remembrance – me and my red parka tumbling off the toboggan in the shadow of Bear Rock. It embraced me from the start, and I had no reason to let go. There is freedom in bringing out the long johns and Sorels, which is the only real way to dance with the season. For after resignation comes delight. When the snow crunches my toes still tingle with the frostbite of our more intimate moments.

At minus twenty, the sound echoes in some deeper soul chamber, formed by a reality that chose me before memory, and shaped me like fast water flowing under the ice. No use fighting winter when the snow crunches. 

~lg 

Relational Homemaking

This was a post I wrote back in June 2012 over at Little Hearth & Homestead. This is where the rubber of deep theology hits the road of daily life. 

Homemaking.

I have the choice –

Is it a series of chores, or a sacred career?

Am I biding my time, or building the kingdom?

I need some kind of framework on which to hang the fingerpainting of my days.

I need a vision that puts the mundane into perspective.

I need the why behind the what.

At the end of the day, my home is a gift from God, and I am its steward. It is not an end in itself, and I am not the Master. I am a servant, and all we have belongs to the King.

My home is the environment and atmosphere in which my family grows, and so its design is crucial to the direction of our growth – toward or away from God, into or out of love.

Here the physical should mirror the spiritual. This is a place where what is most important should be most visible.

And I have decided that my goals as a homemaker are inextricably connected to my relationships. All my homemaking efforts should be directed toward four main relationships, which are also gifts from God.

It is what I call Relational Homemaking.

God

How does our home nurture my and my family’s relationship with God?

How does our home reflect the unconditional nature of God’s love?

How does the shape of our home form us into the shape of Christ?

How does our home point us to seek God’s kingdom first?

Marriage

How does our home contribute to love and unity in our marriage? 

How does our home make room for intimacy?

How does our home bring us together in mutual activities and a shared vision?

How does our home promote co-labour as co-heirs of the grace of life?

Children

How does our home encourage my children to know and follow God?

How does our home provide opportunities for loving nurture?

How does our home provide order and wonder for my children?

How does our home facilitate in the training of my children?

Hospitality

How does our home enable me to offer hospitality to others?

How does our home provide peace to others?
How does our home foster deep friendships?

How does our home point people to Christ?

~lg

Book List 2014

I feel quite sure I've left something out! But here is what I remembered to record:

Les Miserables (Victor Hugo) – On last year’s list, but I think it should count for 2014 too!

The Snow Queen (Hans Christian Andersen) - The original "Frozen" 

Anything (Jennie Allen)

The Birth House (Ami McKay) - Library book club

The Sisters Brothers (Patrick deWitt) - Library book club favourite 

Water For Elephants (Sara Gruen) - Library book club

Too Busy Not To Pray (Bill Hybels)

Anne’s House of Dreams (L.M. Montgomery) - Perennial favourite

Capital (John Lanchester)

Follow Me (David Platt)

Meditative Prayer (Richard Peace)

Toilet Training in Less Than A Day (Nathan H. Azrin & Richard M. Foxx) - truly life changing, ha! 

The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien) - Re-immersion in Middle Earth 

Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Formation (James K. A. Smith) - excellent

The Mystery of Marriage (Mike Mason) - Highly recommended

Dared to Believe (Andrew Barron & Lindsey Gallant) - Revisiting what I wrote 7 years ago!

Rilla of Ingleside (L.M. Montgomery) - I cried this time

The Midwife (Jennifer Worth) - The real story behind the Call the Midwife series

Shadows of the Workhouse (Jennifer Worth)

Documents of Christian Worship (James F. White)

What's the best book you read in 2014? Any suggestions for must reads in 2015?

~lg

Prayer for a New Year

Let us walk over the threshold of this day with new hope.

Let us leave behind the shadows of a dying year, and journey in the light.

Let us press on to what lies ahead, and to the One whose hold will carry us through. 

Let us rise each day to the dawn of His countenance. 

"The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace." (Numbers 6:24-26)

Happy 2015!

~lg