Copyright © 1998 Ken Gire.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1-56476-751-5
Chapter One
Reflections on the Word
DEVOTIONAL
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In my book, The Reflective Life, the primer in the series, I introduce three habits of the heart that nurture a reflective life: reading the moment, reflecting on the moment, and responding to the moment. In this devotional, they are specifically applied to what we see in the Scriptures:
Reading the Word is using our eyes to see what's on the surface.
Reflecting on the Word is engaging our mind to see what's beneath the surface.
Responding to the Word is giving what we have seen a place to live in our heart, allowing it to grow there, upward to God and outward to other people.
Ken Gire
Reading the Word
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. (Genesis 1:1-3)
Reflecting on the Word
Eons ago, the Spirit of God hovered over the nest of the new earth, working with the Word of God to bring form and fullness to the creation. The mechanics of the miracle remain a mystery. "Just as you do not know the path of the wind and how bones are formed in the womb of a pregnant woman," said Solomon, "so you do not know the activity of God who makes all things."
Going from the miracle of physical life to the miracle of spiritual life, the mystery remains. "The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from or where it is going," Jesus said. "So is everyone born of the Spirit."
The Spirit of God that moved over the waters of the young earth, that moved over the womb of a young virgin, still moves today. Just as miraculously. And just as mysteriously.
Our response, it seems to me, should be awe, not analysis; worship, not reasoning; joy, not jury duty on the way God has chosen to work in the world He has created.
Ken Gire
Responding to the Word
Creator Spirit, who broodest everlastingly over the lands and waters of the earth, enduing them with forms and colours which no human skill can copy, give me to-day, I beseech Thee, the mind and heart to rejoice in Thy creation.
Forbid that I should walk through Thy beautiful world with unseeing eyes:
Forbid that the lure of the market-place should ever entirely steal my heart away from the love of the open acres and the green trees:
Forbid that under the low roof of workshop or office or study I should ever forget Thy great overarching sky:
Forbid that when all Thy creatures are greeting the morning with songs and shouts of joy, I alone should wear a dull and sullen face:
Let the energy and vigour which in Thy wisdom Thou hast infused into every living thing stir to-day within my being, that I may not be among Thy creatures as a sluggard and a drone:
And above all give me grace to use these beauties of earth without me and this eager stirring of life within me as a means whereby my soul may rise from creature to Creator, and from nature to nature's God.
John Baillie
A Diary of Private Prayer
Reading the Word
Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind"; and it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good. Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." (Genesis 1:24-26)
Reflecting on the Word
In the Old Testament animals are often thought of with affection. Thus, the commandment about the Sabbath mandated that animals, too, should have rest on feast days. It is expressly forbidden that the ox who stamps out the grain on the threshing floor should have his mouth bound. Later, the Apostle Paul, in a marvelous passage in his letter to the Romans, describes how even the creatures sigh with us to be freed from anxiety and perishability.
Albert Schweitzer
A Place for Revelation
Responding to the Word
O God, I thank thee for all the creatures thou hast made, so perfect in their kind— great animals like the elephant and the rhinoceros, humorous animals like the camel and the monkey, friendly ones like the dog and the cat, working ones like the horse and the ox, timid ones like the squirrel and the rabbit, majestic ones like the lion and the tiger, for birds with their songs. O Lord give us such love for thy creation, that love may cast out fear, and all thy creatures see in man their priest and friend, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
George Appleton
The Oxford Book of Prayer
Reading the Word
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:27)
We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works (Ephesians 2:10)
Reflecting on the Word
We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. Here again we come against what I have called the "intolerable compliment." Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life—the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child—he will take endless trouble—and would, doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way; it is natural for us to wish that God had designed us for a less glorious and less arduous destiny, but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.
C.S. Lewis
The Problem of Pain
Responding to the Word
Eternal Father, you said, "Let us make humankind to our own image and likeness." Thus you were willing to share with us your own greatness. You gave us the intellect to share your truth. You gave us the wisdom to share your goodness. And you gave us the free will to love that which is true and just.
Why did you so dignify us? It was because you looked upon us, and fell in love with us. It was love which first prompted you to create us; and it was love which caused you to share with us your truth and goodness.
Yet your heart must break when you see us turn against you. You must weep when you see us abusing our intellect in pursuit of that which is false. You must cry with pain when we distort our wisdom in order to justify evil.
But you never desert us. Out of the same love that caused you to create us, you have now sent your only Son to save us. He is your perfect image and likeness, and so through his we can be restored to your image and likeness.
Catherine of Siena
Book of Prayers
compiled by Robert Van de Weyer
Reading the Word
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?" (Genesis 3:8-9)
Reflecting on the Word
Those who recall Francis Thompson's haunting image of God as the Hound of Heaven, pursuing us down the halls of time, might well ask who, in fact, is the hound and who the quarry, whether we seek God or whether we are sought. If we try to answer the question on those terms, however, we stray into theological foolishness. What we discover, instead, is that all the while we have been pursuing God, he has been rushing toward us with reckless love, arms flung wide to hug us home. God aches for every person, for every creature, indeed, for every scrap of life in all creation to be joined again in the unity that was its first destiny. So while we are crying out, "Where are you, God?" the divine voice echoes through our hiding places, "Where are you?" Indeed, the story of the Garden of Eden reminds us that it is God who calls out first, and to this we answer. God's yearning for us stirs up our longing in response. God's initiating presence may be ever so subtle—an inward tug of desire, a more-than-coincidence meeting of words and events, a glimpse of the beyond in a storm or in a flower—but it is enough to make the heart skip a beat and to make us want to know more.
Howard Macy
Rhythms of the Inner Life
Responding to the Word
For your heart that loves me, For your feet that pursue me, For your voice that calls out to me, I thank you, O God. Thank you for raising the questions that draw me into a dialogue with you about my life and how I have been living it. Thank you for every tug of conscience that has led to every timid step that has brought me out in the open in my relationship with you. My hope, O God, my only hope, is that you are more persistent in your seeking than I am in my hiding.
Ken Gire
Reading the Word
Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father's house, To the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him; and Lot went with him. Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. (Genesis 12:1-4)
Reflecting on the Word
In packing up his belongings and moving his family across the desert, Abram was taking the first step in what was to become the all-time classic life of faith. He was in addition to set in motion a stream of history which would change the Western world for three millennia, would allow Abram to contribute through his descendants more to modern music, drama, science and banking than any other man and would remain at the center stage of world history at the end of time. From his loins would spring not only kings and prophets but the redeemer of the world. It is impossible to estimate the effects on human history of Abram's decision to leave Haran.
But Abram had no means of foreseeing, let alone understanding Einsteinian physics, Rothsteinian banking or two thousand years of church history. He had but the word of God and the promise of a destiny. His decision to move out, sacrifice or no sacrifice, was essentially a gamble of faith. He trusted God that there were better things for him than lay in Haran.
I do not know what your Haran is. To leave it may be a less traumatic decision than Abram's. But in its way it will be just as momentous.
John White
The Cost of Commitment
Responding to the Word
Dear God,
Someone once said that writing a novel is like driving at night with your headlights on—you can only see a few feet ahead, but you can make the entire trip that way. Living a life is like that, too, I think. Certainly a life of faith. Give me the grace, O God, to live such a life . and to realize that though the light given me is never as much as I would like, it is enough. It is enough.
Ken Gire
Reading the Word
Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak And he said, "Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with me and have prevailed." (Genesis 32:24, 28)
Reflecting on the Word
"Heel grabber" is what Jacob's name means, a name you would expect of a wrestler. Jacob's entire life up till now was spent calculating his next move and maneuvering to a position of advantage so he could pry from God's hands so many of the blessings that God in time had wanted to give him anyway.
Now it was God's turn to grab Jacob's heel, to wrestle with this fundamental flaw in his nature, and touch him in a way so he would never forget the encounter. Through the ordeal, Jacob learned that God's blessing comes not from grabbing but from clinging.
There is something of Jacob in all of us, I think. If so, there must be a night of reckoning for us as well. A night when God finds us alone, grabs us, throws us to the ground, and wrestles with that fundamental flaw in our character. In that dark night of the soul, though He cripples us, in the dawn He blesses us.
For some of us, the crippling is the blessing.
Ken Gire
Responding to the Word
O persistent God, deliver me from assuming your mercy is gentle. Pressure me that I may grow more human, not through the lessening of my struggles, but through an expansion of them Deepen my hurt until I learn to share it and myself openly, and my needs honestly. Sharpen my fears until I name them and release the power I have locked in them and they in me. Accentuate my confusion until I shed those grandiose expectations that divert me from the small, glad gifts of the now and the here and the me. Expose my shame where it shivers, crouched behind the curtains of propriety, until I can laugh at last through my common frailties and failures, laugh my way toward becoming whole.
Ted Loder
Guerrillas of Grace
