This week's Friday Five:
1. What has encouraged you?
Over the weekend, I began reading Jane Redmont's When In Doubt, Sing where chapter-by-chapter she talks about different forms of prayer. The short readable text and the way it engages me with Scripture and prayer has been a real gift to my mornings.
2. What has inspired you?
Watching my youngest daughter work throughout this week to try out for middle school cheerleading. She has gone into something completely unknown to her (and me!) and is having fun while she is learning and practicing. Her excitement about what she is doing is contagious. It all wraps up this afternoon with the tryouts.
3. What has challenged you?
Nothing extraordinary this week. There was the ever-present challenge of balancing work, school, family and self and the give-and-take it requires. Both time and money feel scarce sometimes but at the very same time, I hear from others stories of loss and grief and realize how much I have to be grateful for.
4. What has made you smile?
On Sunday,two friends told me I looked relaxed. That doesn't happen often! It was my last day of a four-day sabbatical that I gave myself and my family after finishing spring exams. I have two more courses this summer and then I begin a full-time internship at St. Mark's Lutheran in downtown Asheville in August. While I still have a lot of unknowns awaiting, it is wonderful to begin to make this transition into public Christian leadership and full-time ministry.
5. What has brought a lump to your throat or a tear to you eye in a good way?
On Sunday, the boarding school where I live and work celebrated graduation and the boys who arrived with us in 2008 graduated and left for college. This is one of the places along the way where I have discovered how much you can learn from the young(er) people around you and I am grateful for them even when they make lug-headed decisions as teenage boys sometimes do. They also have insatiable curiosity, compassion for one another and fire for the things they hold dear.
What about you?
p.s. I could have written a much shorter answer. One event this week generated all five of these responses: On Sunday, many members of the first cohort of Distributed Learning MDiv candidates at Luther Seminary graduated with their MDiv degrees at Central Lutheran Church in St. Paul. Congratulations to all the graduates but especially to the men and women who began this pilot program in 2007!
Friday, May 25, 2012
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Surrender
What does it mean to surrender?
Too often, I think "surrender" sounds like giving up. Giving up power. Giving up the fight. I imagine Generals Lee and Grant at Appomattox or a tattered white flag waving in a Bugs Bunny cartoon (07:14):
In this fourth week at Willow Creek's Leadership Institute for Transformation (LIFT) in the "Leader's Soul" course, we are talking about surrendering ourselves with a daily prayer to God. In remembering our baptism, we daily die and are renewed as God's children.We can again grasp the promises God gives us and know we are forgiven our sin and made righteous through Christ. So, how does a daily practice help remember us these promises?
For me, speaking out loud or giving voice to a prayer that re-establishes me each day is helpful; otherwise, the noise of the world can begin to hum and buzz, kind of like mosquito's wings, and I get distracted by it.
Fortunately, unlike Bugs and Yosemite Sam, I know I am not surrendering to an enemy or opponent. When I am asked to consider how I can daily stay in a place of surrender to God, I know I am surrendering to Creator God, Life-giving God, Mother God. (These are just a few of the nurturing metaphors in Scripture that describe who God is.)
Surrender here doesn't leave me defeated. Instead, yielding my life to God means letting go of my human instinct to plan, map, control and execute life. It means stop being an obstruction, stop hesitating, and stop tuning out God's calling, Yielding to God's leading, yielding to God's timing, yielding to God's direction, I can rest in the promises that God gives each of us. Amen.
Do you have a prayer, poem or practice that you use regularly to reconnect with God?
Too often, I think "surrender" sounds like giving up. Giving up power. Giving up the fight. I imagine Generals Lee and Grant at Appomattox or a tattered white flag waving in a Bugs Bunny cartoon (07:14):
In this fourth week at Willow Creek's Leadership Institute for Transformation (LIFT) in the "Leader's Soul" course, we are talking about surrendering ourselves with a daily prayer to God. In remembering our baptism, we daily die and are renewed as God's children.We can again grasp the promises God gives us and know we are forgiven our sin and made righteous through Christ. So, how does a daily practice help remember us these promises?
For me, speaking out loud or giving voice to a prayer that re-establishes me each day is helpful; otherwise, the noise of the world can begin to hum and buzz, kind of like mosquito's wings, and I get distracted by it.
Fortunately, unlike Bugs and Yosemite Sam, I know I am not surrendering to an enemy or opponent. When I am asked to consider how I can daily stay in a place of surrender to God, I know I am surrendering to Creator God, Life-giving God, Mother God. (These are just a few of the nurturing metaphors in Scripture that describe who God is.)
Surrender here doesn't leave me defeated. Instead, yielding my life to God means letting go of my human instinct to plan, map, control and execute life. It means stop being an obstruction, stop hesitating, and stop tuning out God's calling, Yielding to God's leading, yielding to God's timing, yielding to God's direction, I can rest in the promises that God gives each of us. Amen.
Do you have a prayer, poem or practice that you use regularly to reconnect with God?
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