One Word
This winter on The Daily Pattern we’re in a series called One Word. Each day we take one word – a feeling or circumstance – and bring a word from God to it. Let the Word of God speak to your life.
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 meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matt. 5:5) O Lord, I am lowly and humble. You alone are my inheritance. Amen.
Word: Psalm 4:8
“In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, LORD, make me dwell in safety.”
Meditation
Peace by Susan Becher Schultz
I have been typing out sentences and deleting them as I reflect on peace. Maybe because peace to me looks more like a blank page than one overflowing with words. It’s a brain not full of thoughts, a nervous system not sparking with anxiety, a clear day without a cloud in the sky. Peace.
Peace doesn’t come easy these days. When one variant of Covid disappears another steps in to take its place. When one stress ends another pops up on the horizon. A goal is finally reached after years of working toward it for another dream to form, one that requires even more of me. The to-do lists don’t stop. Requests for my time keep coming. Peace, if I don’t make space for it, doesn’t come at all.
I’m learning, as time goes on, that peace requires so very little of me, unlike everything else. All it asks of me to step away from chores and onto my back porch, even though I hate standing in the cold. There it waits, in the form of a pair of mourning doves, who look at me with curiosity as they perch on my deck railing. At first, I’m hardly impressed. But then, as they continue to stare, I hear their soothing coo. The same coo I heard every morning as a child. And in an instance peace finds me. It swells inside of me, a warmth, a feeling that everything is as it’s meant to be.
I chose Psalm 4:8 because it struck a chord of irony for me. Last year during my health trauma, my greatest pain came at night. Sleep became a place of danger, where if I shut my eyes my body would revolt. I still jolt up at night every once in a while clutching my stomach and my chest. Sleep was anything but peaceful.
Yet, eventually, as time went on and as I healed, I stopped warring with sleep and let it take over. Peace and sleep are deeply connected in that way. They are both forms of giving up power. Of surrendering to your own sense of control and letting God take over for a while. They ask you to put aside all that makes you feel important, and allow yourself to be no one for a while.
As we face these final weeks of winter I hope you can find a moment to throw on your winter parka and stand outside, even if it’s cold. Or maybe take notice of those quiet moments where your thoughts stop right before you fall asleep. However you make space for it, I hope peace finds you.
Lord, help me to make space for peace so I can experience the safety of your presence. Remind me that I don’t need to stay busy to have meaning, but that I am fully loved because I am yours.
Prayer for Family
· For my immediate family (parents, spouse, siblings).
· For extended family (cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents)
· For close friends that are as family to me.
· For those who don’t have families, or whose families are broken.
· For forgiveness and reconciliation where there is division in my family.
· For provision where there is need in my family.
· For God to be the foundation, and the cross the center of my family.
· For a generation yet unborn, future members of our family.
Closing Prayer
O Lord and King, your Kingdom comes even without our prayer. But we pray that it would also come among us. We are desperate for your reign and rule, for all we see is rebellion. Come into my heart, my home, my family, my work, my church, my community. Rule with justice and with mercy. Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.