Contemplative prayer – Page 6

Category: Contemplative prayer

God’s Life Finds A Way

2 July 2022 blogpastor Leave a comment

Along the side of the pavement at Chinese Garden MRT I saw this slope of tiles leading to the grated drain. Along its joints and grout I saw fine and green grasses sprouting out towards the sky. It caught my attention for a while and I stood there to wonder what the Lord has for me there. Nothing came to mind. I then took a picture of it with the intention of going back to ponder over it. God speaks to us through so many ways and one of them is through what we see.

A week or two later, I looked at the image as I would look at a text, and let myself be drawn to a particular aspect of it, allowing what resonated to speak to me its message. I looked at different parts of the picture slowly and found myself drawn to the green, light grasses sprouting from the tightest of spaces. I thought about how God’s grace and life are somehow able to find a way to express itself through my life in spite of all my weakness and imperfections, and my inattentiveness to him. God’s life finds a way somehow. And I am most grateful for such expressions of his life through mine.

I was such a shy, reserved and insecure teenager when the Lord rescued me. He put his life in me when I repented and believed in Jesus Christ. How that seed, that life found a way to express itself through me in the tightest of spaces is amazing. I cannot even speak and am socially awkward and yet I was slowly transformed into a speaker, a teacher of God’s ways, able to share his word with audiences big or small. He has also transformed me and made me more socially confident and able to easily relate to and befriend others.

God’s life always finds a way – even with the imperfect, limited material he has to work with. God’s life in us finds a way to express itself through us. Even if the space is tight and limited and not ideal. We saints are cracked pottery and have lots of imperfections. We are also ordinary clay jars not expensive rare ceramic or jade. However, we hold or contain a priceless amazing treasure, the Spirit of Jesus, a gift from the Father above (2 Cor 4:7). He is God’s seed, life, power and presence in us. He works in us to refine and fill our character with more of Christ. He empowers us with spiritual gifts and enablements that enhances what we already possess by nature or nurture, or where none was present at all. These graces and gifts are the expressions of his life through our ordinary life. It is expressed through us for God’s glory and for the benefit and blessing of others with whom we share these gifts and graces. We certainly ought to thank God for these expressions of life, however little or flimsy they may seem. Stop berating ourself but learn to give glory to God for all the little steps forward and the progress made thus far. Then we shall see even more of his life expressed through us.

How has God’s life found expressions in your life? Feel free to give glory to God by sharing with us in the comment box.

Oh To Be Like A Dove

22 June 2022 blogpastor 1 Comment

With ease the dove nestles in the gap that she calls home. Home is simple, bare yet solid. Sometimes the rain flushes the floor clean. However, life has its headaches. The jarring screech that vibrates the home throughout the day ceases only after midnight, and then restarts at dawn. She gets used to it. Not her ideal home but it will have to do. She feels content with her current life circumstances.

Here she finds rest and safety.

She enjoys unblocked views of the Chinese Gardens. On Sundays, she loves watching the foreign workers playing a game of cricket in the vast green before her.

Though she lives from beak to stomach there is no lack.

Anytime, she is free to take flight into God’s vast world and feel the joy of fulfilling all that God has designed her to be and to do. She feels close to God when she uses all the gifts that God has given her: feathers and wings, lightness of body, natural navigation system, sight, and sensitivity to airflow and predators.

God has graced her with peace, goodness and abundance.

Like the dove, I am thankful that God has put me in a place of grace and peace, of freedom and sweetness, of contentment and fulfilment. The Lord is more than enough. The vista ahead is exciting. The simple life is simply life-giving and life-freeing.

“Fear and trembling have beset me; horror has overwhelmed me. I said, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove I would fly away and be at rest. I would flee far away and stay in the desert; I would hurry to my place of shelter, far from the tempest and storm” (Psalm 45:5-8).

“Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you have died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:2,3).

Selah.

“Inviting the Mystic, Supporting the Prophet”: book reflection

18 April 2022 blogpastor Leave a comment

Initially I was intrigued by the title. It stoked my curiosity. As I read the foreword and introduction, I felt drawn to the authors’ thesis as it was something I wholeheartedly agreed with: the tests of authentic prayer are in the fruit of the praying life or community. I was interested in the relationship between prayer and service, the mystic and prophet.

I was not disappointed as the authors describe the symbiotic relationship between the mystic and the prophet in the believer’s life. “The starting point is not as important as that the circle be complete: prayer leading to life, and life leading to prayer. Real prayer lead to involvement; real involvement leads to prayer. Deeper spirituality impels to action; action impels to deeper spirituality, and the circle continues and deepens. The mystic becomes prophet, the prophet becomes mystic” (Dykman & Carrol, 80). For me it has been deeper prayer leading me to more involvement in life and service, and I must concede that deeper involvement in service had driven me often to God in helplessness and hope. It drew me more into prayer.

Spiritual Direction

I liked the authors’ description of spiritual direction. It was not narrowly confined to the guided development of the directees’ prayer life, but a journey with them in their faith development, which includes conversion, struggle, integration, awareness of reality, and a call to radical love. The call to radical love would include immersion in works of service, justice and compassion. “All these holy people are holy not just because they pray or write eloquently about that prayer, but because their prayer leads them to respond to Christ in the given historical cultural moment. All of them respond in a unique way to unique situations in which they find the Lord calling to his people. But all respond outside themselves in service. Each mystic becomes a prophet”(Dykman & Carrol, 82). This reminded me how this emphasis on mission and service is so similar to Ignatian spirituality. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises led people into an experience of forgiveness of sins, and commitment to Christ, and a life of service and praise to the Creator and Redeemer.

Dark Night or Desert Experience

I found the chapter on PRAYING THROUGH THE DESERT is particularly enlightening. The authors gave two descriptions of the desert experience in prayer: one from St John of the Cross, the 16^th Century mystic and poet, and another through Thomas Merton a 20^th Century mystic and poet. St John of the Cross described three signs in prayer that indicated that God was inviting a person to deeper levels of prayer. First, one experiences the frustration and lack of satisfaction from discursive meditation which majored on study, analysis, and abstractions. Words, thoughts, concepts, principles does not quench the spiritual thirst. Second, one finds it challenging to focus or a particular subject or fix the imagination. The logical is dead, the intuition is alive. Third, despite difficulties in prayer, one still had the desire to be with the Lord, to have solitude and prayer. Even though God seems far away. The wise counsel of St John of the Cross is for the spiritual director to help direct to look at his or her larger context and entire life, to see how God had been active and working in and around him or her. “We cannot judge our prayer, whether it be consoling or desolate, by how we feel when we pray, but rather by how we are loving when we live” (62). A person’s prayer life may be desert-like but an examen of his life may reveal God’s loving activities and presence in many areas of his life of service. This helps him see that God’s love is as strong as ever and that the desert may be God’s way of moving on the purification of his faith in and love for God and not the result of his sin.

Thomas Merton demystified the term. Merton sees in what he prefers to describe as a “desert experience”, a call to be faithful to a life of prayer despite spiritual dryness and blandness. It required a faith that was unsupported by a sense of God’s presence, a faith that blindly, faithfully, persistently continues its quest of intimacy despite dryness, feeling of hopelessness, meaninglessness and even discouragement and anguish. Often the person in the desert will blame himself for “moving away from God” through his sin, idols or failures. He or she needs a director to discern God’s loving and quiet action in the larger perspective of a whole life, not just the current period of desert experience.

I enjoyed this book and found myself underlining many sentences and paragraphs. These definitely deserve further study, reflection and meditation.