As a child I remember going on long car rides to visit out of town relatives. These car rides seemed like they lasted for ever but in reality they were only a couple of hours long. On these rides the car radio would be tuned to WCCO and we would listen to what ever was on. On program that I remember listening to on these rides was a brief program by Paul Harvey. Paul Harvey was a news caster who would give news updates at the top of the hour. As a child these news casts weren’t all that interesting to me but in the late afternoon he did a 5 minute broadcast called The Rest of the Story. He would start out the segment with an interesting tidbit about someone, giving you just enough information to peak your interest before cutting away for a commercial break. Harvey would then come back with an interesting twist to the story and would end the segment with the tag line “and now you know the rest of the story, good day.” I can still remember how he would say “good day.”
We just finished Holy Week and I invited you to spend time with a few different scripture passages leading up to Easter morning and the empty tomb. As we head into this post-Easter week I want to invite you again to spend some time pondering some passages that begin to explore “the rest of the story.” We are currently living in “the rest of the story” so you have the opportunity to help shape what that story might look like in your life and lives of those around you.
There are two spiritual practices I invite you to use as you spend time with the scriptures. One is the Prayer of Imagination which I invited you to use last week as we explored scriptures from Holy Week. In this practice you immerse yourself into the passages imagining yourself as one of the characters in the passage. What might you see, smell, hear, or feel as you become that character?
A second way to read through these scripture is a practice known as Lectio Divina or “Divine Reading.” Lectio is a practice about noticing what is grabbing your attention as you read through the passage. This noticing could be a word or phrase that invites you to spend a little time thinking about it. At the end of your Lectio time you ask the question “What is God inviting me to do with what I have been noticing?” Here is a brief step by step guide to Lectio Divina. First, find a quiet place to get comfortable and ask God to help you notice what He wants you to see in the passage. Second, read through the passage a couple of time to simply become familiar with it. You will want to spend a couple of minutes just sitting with the passage. Third, read the passage again this time noticing if there is a word or phase that grabs your attention. Again, spend a couple of minutes sitting with this word or phrase. Fourth, read the passage again paying attention to your word or phrase. This time as you sit with your word or phase notice how this word or phrase makes you feel. Is there an image or memory that your word or phrase evokes in you? Finally, read the passage one more time and as you sit with it ask God what he is inviting you to do with what you have discovered.
The key to both these practices is to allow the Holy Spirit to guide you through the process. These practices are not meant to be studies of the passage. You shouldn’t be jumping around to other passages or books to figure out what the passage means. There is a time and place for this type of work but this is not what either of these practices is about. Here is a link to a guided Lectio Divina for Proverbs 3:5-6 if you think that might be helpful to you.
These are the passages I am inviting you to explore so you may be see “the rest of the story, good day”:
Monday – Matthew 28:11-20
Tuesday – John 21
Wednesday – Acts 2:1-13
Thursday – Ephesians 4:17-32
Friday – 1 Peter 3:8-17
Saturday – 1 John 4:7-21
Sunday – Revelation 21:1-8