Christ is at work in our lives.

Jesus tells a story from Mark 4 about the farmer who sowed some seed and went to sleep.  And while he was sleeping the crops grew.  He didn't have to stand over them and say start growing. The farmer didn't force the seeds to grow, as if he could.  The story reminds me that God is at work in our lives.   There is a difference between trying to live for Jesus and allowing Jesus to live through us.  Jesus doesn't just ask us to do his will.  He offers to come in and possess us so that he can enable us to do what we could never do ourselves.  Our job is to get out of the way and let Christ do his wonderful work.

Hmm, knowing that Christ is at work in me, you'd think I'd learn to sleep more often, worry less and embrace what Christ is doing.  

Prayer:  Lord, I give my life, I give my all to You,  to be a willing vessel, to use me through and through. You are the Potter,  I am the clay.  Mold me and make me, have Thine own way.  

"But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect.  No, I worked harder than all of them - yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me."  
1 Corinthians 15:10

"... for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose." Philippians 2:13

Time with Jesus

Time with me cannot be rushed.  When you are in a hurry, your mind flitters back and forth between Me and the tasks ahead of you.  Push back the demands pressing in on you; create a safe space around you, a haven in which you can rest with Me.  I also desire this time of focused attention, and I use it to bless you, strengthening and equipping you for the day ahead.  Thus, spending time with Me is a wise investment. 

Bring Me the sacrifice of your precious time.  This creates sacred space around you - space permeated with My presence and My peace. 

Jesus Calling

by Sarah Young

May 30 devotion p.157

Fr. Anthony

Each day we had a morning and afternoon seminar with one of the monks.  In one of our seminars I met Fr. Anthony.  At the age of 86, he is the oldest monk in residence.  He became a monk in 1948.  As a monk he has visited the poor with Dorothy Day,  prayed with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and discussed theology with Thomas Merton.   It is hard to imagine that someone like  Fr. Anthony has maintained the same daily schedule of prayer and contemplation for 66 years. 

To live the holistic manner envisioned by founder of this order St. Benedict is to live knowing that "God does not demand the unusual, spectacular, the heroic," but rather "that I do the most ordinary, often dreary and humdrum things that face me each day with a loving openness that will allow them to become my own immediate way to God."  This is the monastic way, yet it can also be the way for us.  Benedictine spirituality is grounded in the idea that God's presence is everywhere, and that it is our job to seek it out even in the most ordinary, mundane of life. Indeed, we can learn to see God's graces in our life, even in the midst of the daily grind.  We just need to look, God is there.  

A swimmer plunges into the water stripped of his garments to find a pearl; a monk stripped of everything goes through his life to discover in himself the pearl- Jesus Christ; and when he finds him, he seeks no longer for anything existing beside him.  (Issac of Turin)

O God, source of love, bright light out of darkness, order out of chaos, from death creating life. Open our eyes to see, our minds to know, that we may be transformed in Christ, the risen Christ.