With all the noise in the world, do you hear the voice of God? Your calendar tells you what to do, but do you remember who you are? Being comes before doing. This is a call to put first things first. Return to the Lord with this daily pattern of prayer and devotion. Set aside this time as a sanctuary. Find a space free of distraction and follow this pattern.
Invocation
Make the sign of the cross and say,
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Invitation Prayer
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 5:3) O Lord, my poverty is the place where you meet me with grace. My spirit finds all I need in you. Amen.
Meditation: “Changed, and a little crazy” (An Excerpt from Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott)
In Traveling Mercies, writer Anne Lamott explains the “series of staggers” that led her to her Christian faith as an adult. Lamott identifies the following moment as the “lily pad” that marked the beginning of her belief in God. Lamott was studying Kierkagaard’s Fear and Trembling and read the philosopher’s retelling of Abraham and Isaac on Mt. Moriah. She found Abraham’s faith—his obedience to God and his trust in God’s covenant—to be so incredible that it had to be true. Lamott writes:
In the interior silence that followed my understanding of this scene, I held my breath for as long as I could, sitting there under the fluorescent lights—and then I crossed over. I don’t know how else to put it or how and why I actively made, if not exactly a leap of faith, a lurch of faith. … I left class believing—accepting—that there was a God. I did not understand how this could have happened. It made no sense. It made no sense that what brought me to this conviction was the story of a God who would ask his beloved Abraham to sacrifice the child he loved more than life itself. It made no sense that Abraham could head for the mountain in Moriah still believing in God’s goodness. It made no sense that even as he walked his son to the sacrificial altar, he still believed God’s promise that Isaac would give him many descendants. It made no sense that he was willing to do the one thing in the world he could not do, just because God told him to. God told him to obey and to believe that he was a loving god and could be trusted. So Abraham did obey.
I felt changed, and a little crazy. (Lamott, Traveling Mercies, pg. 28-29)
Dear Father, help us to obey, help us to trust. Help us to remember that even in the darkest, most confusing times that you love us. Change us to be more like you. Amen.
Benediction
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Eph. 3:20-21)