Prayers
Page: 2
A Mentoring Round Table Prayer For all the different stuff on our plates and stirring in our hearts, Father, we ask for a generous dose of your Spirit’s care and nurture. We recognize very clearly as we look around this table of folks, seeing face-upon-face of individuals who know deeply your blessing in their lives, may these people have […]
Each Tuesday morning we meet as a VP3 team over Zoom. And each Tuesday morning one of us brings a focusing thought. This morning Pam brought a prayer. As we read it aloud to each other, twice through, I think it quieted us and centered us a bit, which is not necessarily easy in this […]
We have all experienced many small and large changes over the past couple months. And it has all been so disorienting. One of the first things that happens when we are thrust into a time of disorientation is loss of language. We simply don’t have the words. Whether we feel like we have “walked off the […]
One of the persistent challenges of my life, one which I have been keenly reminded of over the past few weeks of Covid-19 shelter-at-home realities, is the hard work of simply “being with” people. No one who knows me well would accuse me of being a hyper-productive individual, but still I have always found it […]
“Give us this day the freedom to be amazed and to trust your way among us, even when the world seems closed to all futures.” Last week a friend sent me a brief video that captured the experience of a woman named Sheryl in his congregation who had recently walked through The Journey process with […]
A few weeks back a friend texted me a link to a song that had been sustaining him amidst some major difficulties within his family. So I began to listen to it… then again and again and again. I am still listening to it. Meditating on it actually. It has even entered the regular rotation […]
Over the past couple years we have chosen a poem or a prayer to center us as we look ahead expectantly to our work together in the upcoming year. For 2018 it is the prayerful words of Emily Freeman from her book Simply Tuesday: Small-Moment Living in a Fast-Moving World that will guide and support and challenge […]
Throughout our VP3 study Growing Up: A Lifelong Journey we invite a group into the practice of moving from Reflection to Conversation to Prayer. Each of the seven conversations include a prayer. The first and last conversation conclude with the poet Luci Shaw’s prayer. For those of you who may be gripping too tightly onto your own […]
The other night we were out for a walk in our neighborhood and noticed the early signs of the fall season. The grass felt stiffer with a few more rusted leaves to kick around, the air was cooler and smelled fresher, the horses in the pasture across the road seemed a bit more mischievous, and […]
“I wonder how you would sum up the Christian situation in the world today. For me, it’s a strange, rather tragic, and disturbing paradox. On the one hand, in many parts of the world the church is growing by leaps and bounds. But on the other hand, throughout the church, superficiality is everywhere. That’s the […]
Susan (my wife) and I decided to tag team leading a Journey group in our church. Seven strong women (Judy, Jayme, Carla, Hannah, Rebekah, Andrea, Susan) as well as Seth and myself (we felt much less strong at times) made up our group. Everyone who leads a VP3 group believes they have the best one, […]