Category: Lectio Divina

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Sunday Pondering “LOVE”

I’ve been sitting this morning with the creation story as written in Genesis 1:1 – 2:2. God spoke and creation happened. I love that I serve a creative God. The piece that caught my attention today was verse 1:26 “God spoke: “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature” (The Message). In the past when I have read this verse it seems I always through about “image” as form. The second part of this sentence struck me today as I read “make them reflecting our nature.”

What does it look like to reflect the nature of God? The nature of the triune God: Father, Son, and Spirt. What quality is it we are to reflect? I don’t know about you but I am not omniscient (the older I get the more true this becomes), I’m not omnipresent or any of the other divine qualities of God. The only quality I could come up with, the only image of God that I could hope to reflect is LOVE.

Jesus tells us to love God, love others, and love ourself (Matthew 22:34-40). In 1 John 4 we see that God is love and we are to love one another. Jesus showed His love for us by choosing death on the cross. Love is the image of God woven into each one of us.

Unfortunately, we often choose to dull this reflection of God. We live in an ever fracturing world. The things that divide us are many. We tend to vilify the one who stands across the divide from us so that we can justify treating them less than lovingly. I am a simple man who doesn’t have the answers to some of the systemic divides (racial, socioeconomic, religious, etc) that are tearing our world apart. I know that these are divides that need to be closed.

What I want to encourage us to do is work at the personal level and create what Martin Buber called “I-Thou” relationships with those who stand opposite you. Love God, Love Others, Love Yourself. Blessing.

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Holy Week Invitation

We are entering into what the Christian faith calls Holy Week. This is a week of joy and celebration, betrayal, disbelief and death, and finally resurrection and rejoicing. The Gospel stories of this week paint vivid pictures of the emotions and events that took place this week. To may Christians these stories are very familiar. What I invite you to do this Holy Week is spend some time rereading the narrative of Holy Week in a manner that I was introduced to my Ignatius Loyola.

Ignatius promoted a type of prayer were you immersed yourself into the Gospel story through you own power of imagination. For example, inn the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem imagine what it would be like to be in the crowd. What character might you be? What might you be hearing, feeling, or experiencing? Would you be someone in the crowd, one of the disciples, or perhaps on of those looking to kill Jesus? Then move on to the Passover meal or the night in Gethsemante. Which disciple would you be? Put yourself in Peter’s shoes as he denies know Jesus. 

Where would you be standing at the trial of Jesus? What emotions would you be feeling? Now place yourself at the base of the cross as Jesus hangs there suffering an agonizing death. Who do you identify with? Finally move on to the empty tomb and seeing the resurrected Christ. Spend time sitting with the different characters from these stories to experience their emotions and feelings. 

Remember you are reading these stories 2000 years after the events. Ignatius invites you to imagine the stories as they are happening. By using you imagination you might be able to experience Holy Week in a new way. Below is a suggested Holy Week reading schedule. Spend a little time each day reading and meditating on the scripture passage asking God to guide your thoughts. Pay attention to what God is inviting you to focus on in each of the passages. 

Sunday – Matthew 21:1-11
Monday – Mark 11:12-26
Tuesday – Matthew 22:34-40
Wednesday – Luke 21:29-22:6
Thursday – John 13:1-20
Friday – Mark 15:6-15, 21-32
Saturday – John 19:28-42
Sunday – Luke 24:1-12

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Your New Life

Verse
Now that you’ve cleaned up your lives by following the truth, love one another as if your lives depended on it. Your new life is not like your old life. Your old birth came from mortal sperm; your new birth comes from God’s living Word. Just think: a life conceived by God himself! That’s why the prophet said, The old life is a grass life, its beauty as short-lived as wildflowers; Grass dries up, flowers droop, God’s Word goes on and on forever. This is the Word that conceived the new life in you. (1 Peter 1:22-25 MSG)

My Word or Phrase
Life conceived by God’s living Word

My Image
The image I see is that of a sunflower turning its head to track the sun. Our new life involves turning our head to track the Son.

My Invitation
My invitation is to live my new life loving one another as I go through my day.

As you meditate on this verse, what are you being invited to do?